Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis
Video One of the microphones on Perseverance, NASA’s latest and greatest Mars rover, has recorded the sounds of its autonomous helicopter Ingenuity flying on the Red Planet, providing scientists with the first ever audio samples of an aircraft operating on another planet.…
Posted on 8 May 2021 | 6:39 am
Tesla CEO Elon Musk's public statements about the state of his automaker's Autopilot assistive driving technology overestimate the system's capabilities, according to documents released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 11:41 pm
The number of Facebook and Instagram users on iOS agreeing to be tracked by the social networking behemoth for targeted ads has fallen drastically in the week since Apple's iOS 14.5 debuted – and Zuck & Co have hit back.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 9:40 pm
MariaDB has added proprietary bells and whistles, in the form of distributed SQL, for its DBaaS and supposedly developer-friendly front end.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 7:51 pm
Russian spies from APT29 responded to Western agencies outing their tactics by adopting a red-teaming tool to blend into targets' networks as a legitimate pentesting exercise.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 6:49 pm
GitLab says a surge in demand and a technical shortcoming resulted in the DevOps outfit yanking a free certification offer barely two days after turning on the tap.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 6:06 pm
TSB admitted today it still hadn't fixed a transaction processing issue that has for days held up customers' payments, with users continuing to have issues at the time of publication.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 4:44 pm
Microsoft has announced plans to ensure data processing of EU cloud services within the borders of the political bloc in a move that expert observers claim reveals problems with the firm's existing setup.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 3:20 pm
An Apple exec has spoken of his shock after Fortnite creator Epic Games installed a hotfix that allowed it to deploy its own payment methods, thus skirting the 30 per cent App Store tax.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 2:35 pm
Open source audio software outfit Audacity, now under new management, is adding some "basic telemetry", much to the alarm of many of its community.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 1:49 pm
The tiny Suffolk town of Mildenhall is the second place where Openreach has stopped selling copper products as the company develops its strategy for withdrawing legacy telephone lines.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 1:04 pm
Bork!Bork!Bork! There are certain things that do not belong in pizza. One is pineapple. Another is the Windows Start Menu.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 12:14 pm
Bug of the week Here's a programming gremlin that caught our eye this week: a share price exceeded the 32-bit unsigned integer limit of a stock exchange's code.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 11:24 am
In an attempt to make Twitter feel less like a small-town Wetherspoons at closing time, the company will start asking users to reconsider sending tweets its algorithms perceive to be mean.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 10:26 am
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Argh, where did I put that old comic? Someone told me it's a collector's item! It has value!…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 9:28 am
A permaban from Perl events over "unacceptable" behaviour has been reduced to a year for the developer concerned, named by several separate Perl sources as Matt Trout.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 8:30 am
Black Hat Asia Computer vision systems display “correlation bias” that makes it possible to create adversarial images, that could have real-world consequences such as messing with self-driving cars’ ability to accurately interpret road signs.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 8:01 am
On Call Corporal Cockup meets Major Outage in this week's episode of On Call as a reader's helpful walkthrough takes down the telephony server.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 7:30 am
Tired of space junk and weapons, US military commanders presented to Congress on Wednesday an argument to create a framework for rules-based order in space.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 7:01 am
root and execute arbitrary commandsCisco has revealed a pair of critical bugs in its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure product.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 5:52 am
Black Hat Asia Asian nations in which governments are keen on citizen surveillance struggle to develop ethical hackers, as prospective workers fear their activities may be misunderstood, according to security specialist Mika Devonshire.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 5:11 am
China has protested India’s decision to prevent local carriers using made-in-China 5G kit in network trials.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 4:03 am
Google has decided the time has come to require app developers to disclose the data their wares collect, and their security practices, in their Play Store listings.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 2:57 am
America's consumer watchdog, the FTC, today scolded technology makers for their anti-repair practices, and signaled it will support new legislation that ensures people can mend their own stuff without penalty.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 1:49 am
Google has marked World Password Day by declaring "passwords are the single biggest threat to your online security," and announcing plans to automatically add multi-step authentication to its users' accounts.…
Posted on 7 May 2021 | 12:52 am
IBM Research says it's made the world’s first 2nm process node chips, squeezing 50 billion transistors onto each of the fingernail-sized dies.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 11:04 pm
Broadband companies in 2017 launched an $8.2m campaign to repeal America's net neutrality rules that spent $4.2m to sway policymakers with millions of fake comments. But only their hired guns are being held accountable.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 9:06 pm
An NHS Digital-run vaccine-booking website exposed just how many vaccines individual people had received – and did so with no authentication, according to the Guardian.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 6:37 pm
Facebook has released Cinder, used internally in Instagram to improve Python performance, while another faster Python, called Pyston, has released version 2.2 and made the project open source (again).…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 5:36 pm
A heap overflow vulnerability in Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip modem firmware, used in Android devices, could be exploited by baddies to run arbitrary code on unsuspecting users' devices, according to Check Point.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 4:11 pm
One in five Googlers will be permanently working from home once the pandemic abates but for the majority it seems free meals in staff canteens, guest celebrity speaker appearances, resident gyms and massage therapy are irresistible lures.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 3:15 pm
The legal spat between Epic Games and Apple entered somewhat philosophical territory on Wednesday as the battling sides debated over whether the iPhone legitimately constitutes a general-purpose computing device, or is merely a locked-down platform with a specific purpose, such as a games console.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 2:30 pm
In another chapter to a saga that refuses to die, the US government has recommended [PDF] that the Supreme Court rejects Oracle’s efforts to overturn a Department of Defense decision to award the $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 1:31 pm
The Microsoft-sponsored .NET Foundation has released a survey-based "State of .NET" report showing that efforts to broaden the appeal of the technology beyond its own platform have had limited success so far.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 12:45 pm
The beast is back... almost. A "100 per cent compatible Visual Basic 6 solution" has been promised to the backers of a Kickstarter. There is, however, no word on how much it would cost to ensure it stayed dead.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 12:15 pm
Consumer org Which? reckons more than two million Britons are connected to the internet through routers that were last updated in 2016.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 11:30 am
French cloud provider OVH has outlined a three-point plan designed to avoid a repeat of the loss of data and services resulting from the fire which engulfed its Strasbourg operations on 10 March.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 10:45 am
Event We’re checking the lighting, tapping the mikes, and ironing out the gremlins before kicking off Continuous Lifecycle Online on Monday, May 10 from 0900 BST – and we’d really like to see you there.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 10:01 am
Graphic images Everyone knows the trope. The baddies smash their way in and gun down the guard standing in front of the vault. "Dammit," says the lead bad guy, "it's a biometric scanner, we'll never get in!" His most grizzled henchman turns round, holding up the dead guard's lifeless arm. "Oh yes we will…"…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 9:15 am
Updated Highways England, the authority responsible for the nation's roads and related infrastructure, is asking tech vendors to bid for a project worth up to £15m to replace its ageing pavement information management systems.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 8:30 am
Singapore’s dominant ride-sharing app Grab has added a service for large dogs, or humans who own large numbers of dogs.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 7:55 am
Version 90 of Google's Chrome browser includes a bit of extra security for users of recent versions of Windows and the latest x86 processors, in the form of hardware-enforced stack protection.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 7:23 am
Video SpaceX’s latest test of its Starship vehicle has stuck its landing for the first time.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 6:15 am
Black Hat Asia A trio of researchers at Palo Alto Networks has detailed vulnerabilities in the JET database engine, and demonstrated how those flaws can be exploited to ultimately execute malicious code on systems running Microsoft’s SQL Server and Internet Information Services web server.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 4:59 am
Blue Origin is planning to launch its first crew into space on July 20 – and a seat on this inaugural spaceflight is up for auction.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 3:48 am
UPDATE VMware has admitted its vRealize Business for Cloud product includes an “unauthorised VAMI API” that can be exploited to achieve remote code execution on the virtual appliance. The security flaw is rated critical, scoring 9.8 on the ten-point Common Vulnerability Scoring System.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 2:52 am
Chinese web giant Baidu has commenced operations of actual autonomous taxis on the streets of Beijing.…
Posted on 6 May 2021 | 12:50 am
Microsoft this week released a Python tool that probes AI models to see if they can be hoodwinked by malicious input data.…
Posted on 5 May 2021 | 11:27 pm
Encrypted messaging service Signal on Tuesday made a show of trolling Instagram and its parent company Facebook by creating ads that incorporated audience targeting categories into its ad copy.…
Posted on 5 May 2021 | 8:54 pm
Jason Fried, CEO of project management tool Basecamp, has issued a public apology following a major bust-up over new policies that discouraged employees from discussing "societal politics" at work.…
Posted on 5 May 2021 | 8:00 pm