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You can prove them wrong, but they'll still get you on a non-technicality On Call On Call is back from an Easter adventure with another reader-contributed - and perhaps tear-inducing - tale of tech support....

Algorithms as PHBs - who wouldn't want that? Nearly half of US office workers expressed concern that AI might take their jobs in a February survey by investment banking biz Jefferies....

Just disabling Siri requires visits to five submenus A study has concluded that Apple's privacy practices aren't particularly effective, because default apps on the iPhone and Mac have limited privacy settings and confusing configuration options....

Today's lesson covers the potential for Loongson's made-in-China architecture to hurt Microsoft and Intel China's long march towards creation and adoption of its own information technology stack has taken a long stride forward after a school district commenced a trial of 10,000 PCs powered by domestically designed processors....

Some equipment suffered minor damage, but the silicon show must go on Wednesday's earthquake in Taiwan will hit at least one chipmaker in the wallet, but won't weaken the overall silicon supply chain, according to analyst outfit TrendForce....

Japan's Hoya also makes components for chips, displays, and hard disks, and has spent four days groping for a fix If ever there was an incident that brings the need for good infosec into sharp focus, this is the one: Japan's Hoya - a maker of eyeglass and contact lenses, plus kit used to make semiconductor manufacturing, flat panel displays, and hard disk drives - has halted some production and sales activity after experiencing an attack on its IT systems....

Will buy tens of thousands of Nvidia's prized accelerators, which will be collateral for the loan Lambda Labs, operator of a GPU-infused cloud, on Thursday revealed it has secured a $500 million loan to fund the expansion of its accelerators-as-a-service offering....

But don't worry, if tech takes your job, we'll retrain you Of all the tech CEOs touting AI's potential to empower workers, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has been among the most vocal about its ability to replace them....

State Dept keeps schtum 'for security reasons' Updated Uncle Sam is investigating claims that some miscreant stole and leaked classified information from the Pentagon and other national security agencies....

Fifty-one years of community contributions, software, and clever cryptanalysis contributed Three men received recognition in December 2020 for cracking the Zodiac Killer's 340-character cipher (Z340) - but they want to share credit with the community of sleuths who helped with the 51-year code breaking effort....

At $4.6 billion, this Moon malarkey is getting expensive NASA has selected three companies to develop designs for a lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) to transport astronauts around the Moon....

If you're popular enough at Elon's party, that is What Elon taketh away, Elon also giveth. Fee-free blue checks on Twitter are back, but only for users with a certain number of followers who pay for X Premium....

Ad-free search experience might not be on the cards Google is reportedly considering tweaks to its search engine, including making some AI features subscription-only - an ad-free search experience is seemingly not on the cards....

CEO addresses whirlwind start to 2024 and how it plans to prevent a repeat Ivanti has committed to adopting a secure-by-design approach to security as it gears up for an organizational overhaul in response to the multiple vulnerabilities in Connect Secure exploited earlier this year....

Targeted ads in Edge may be blocked before they even arrive Analysis Inspired by Google's Privacy Sandbox ad tech renovation initiative, Microsoft last month announced plans for a "privacy preserving" mechanism to deliver interest-based ads in its Edge browser....

'Complete digital sovereignty' ... sounds familiar Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's most northern state, is starting its switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, and is planning to move from Windows to Linux on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions....

Think before you pull the trigger, warn analysts If you're planning to save money by cutting out the unbundled Teams product from your Microsoft 365 subscription, the decision might not be as straightforward as you'd think....

Nerfed GPU included in revised list of cards deemed to be too powerful The US government has published an updated list of tech export controls that looks to be bad news for Nvidia as it now includes the company's "China special" RTX 4090D GPU in items that need an export license....

After slew of AWS deals signed under MoUs, CDDO says current approach might weaken its position Exclusive The UK government has admitted its negotiating power over billions of pounds of cloud infrastructure spending has been inhibited by vendor lock-in....

Watchdog concerns about price hikes and consolidation remain unresolved Britain's competition regulator is kicking off a deeper investigation into the potential impact caused by the merger of Vodafone and Three in the UK after neither resolved previously expressed concerns....

INC Ransom emerges as a growing threat as some ex-LockBit/ALPHV affiliates get new gigs Leicester City Council is finally admitting its "cyber incident" was carried out by a ransomware gang and that data was stolen, hours after the criminals forced its hand....

The Mercury 7: 'Not one of us knew what he was in for' Sixty-five years ago this week, NASA introduced its first astronauts, saying they'd be launched into space in the agency's new capsule. They were immediately dubbed The Mercury 7....

We're really just getting started, says OpenTofu community member Interview HashiCorp might be less than impressed with the rise of the Terraform fork, OpenTofu, but where Hashi sees challenges, the maintainers of the open source project see opportunities....

Rivals and regulators might disagree, so might users that are paying for software they don't need It's always interesting to see how technology executives crop their marketing messages to suit the audience....

3.2 glorious gigapixels to make 'the greatest movie of all time' Construction of the LSST Camera, destined for the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile has been completed at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Silicon Valley....

Desire to build brainboxes will also see optical interconnects go mainstream Three imminent improvements to the Ethernet standard will make it a better alternative to host AI workloads, and that will see vendors back the tech as an alternative to Nvidia's InfiniBand kit, which is set to dominate for the next two years....

'Caracal' improves AI capabilities and is pitched as an alternative to VMware The OpenInfra Foundation has loosed an update of OpenStack on the waiting world and - like everyone else that can spell "virtualization" - has pitched it as fine alternative for those pondering a move away from VMware....

Nonetheless DRAM prices may yet feel slight aftershocks Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has shrugged off the impact of yesterday's earthquake....

Sounds so much cooler than 'come back to the office or else' In an effort to get its employees back into the office, Infosys has reportedly instituted mandatory in-person attendance for select roles - but dubbed the program "In-Person Collab" weeks. Because that's how the young people talk, right?...

Is there no cure for this cyber-plague? Nearly one million individuals' personal details, financial account information, and medical records may well have been stolen from City of Hope systems in the United States....

The downside? You probably won't see kit to use it until 2027 Analysis The PCIe 7.0 spec is on track for release next year and, for many AI chip peddlers trying to push the limits of network fabrics and accelerator meshes, it can't come soon enough....

As WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, other Meta bits plus Apple stuff fall offline today Updated Omni Hotels & Resorts' computer systems have been offline since Friday due to what the American luxury hospitality chain called a "disruption."...

'Necessary,' 'focusing our efforts,' 'deliver maximum impact' ... sounds just like all the other tech layoffs lately Hundreds of Amazon Web Services employees are being shown the door this week - a move the American technology behemoth said is necessary as it, like many others, moves to streamline operations....

First they came for the taxis and I did nothing because I was not a taxi driver Bad news if you're income-boosting, or God forbid trying to make a living, as an Uber Eats delivery driver because the robots are coming - to one part of the United States, at least....

Pendulum returns to the Obama era - don't be surprised if it swings right back The Federal Communications Commission has confirmed proposals to vote on rules to restore net neutrality in the United States later this month - whether it'll stick this time is anyone's guess, though....

Actions sent homeless victim to jail and a mental hospital for more than a year An Iowa system administrator has pleaded guilty to charges related to stealing and assuming a former coworker's identity over a 33-year period....

CTO shared code from his laptop with investigation after FTX collapsed Crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction was expedited by the cooperation of the chief software engineer at his FTX crypto exchange, prosecutors have revealed....

What's a few microseconds between friends? Quite a lot actually NASA, which isn't known for timeliness, has been tasked by the White House with implementing a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) zone for the Moon traceable to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)....

150 variants from about 50 families to choose from Opera has added experimental support for running large language models (LLMs) locally on the Opera One Developer browser as part of its AI Feature Drop Program....

Microsoft has a workaround but it's not a great look Emails from users with Outlook.com country domains may not be reaching Gmail addresses but fear not - Microsoft has a workaround....

Hint: It will keep going up every year Microsoft has laid out the ground rules for getting Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) as market share figures indicate users are still giving Windows 11 a wide berth....

Using copyrighted material to train models affects artists' livelihoods, says open letter The Artist Rights Alliance has launched a petition to end the use of AI that infringes upon or devalues the work of humans....

A man with a list of accolades long enough for several lifetimes, friends remember his brilliance Obituary Venerable computer scientist and information security expert Ross Anderson has died at the age of 67....

Device Bound Session Credentials said to render cookie theft useless Google reckons that cookie theft is a problem for users, and is seeking to address it with a mechanism to tie authentication data to a specific device, rendering any stolen cookies useless....

Follows the vendor's decision to overhaul licensing of the popular cache database Cloud giants AWS, Google, and Oracle have come out in support of a Linux Foundation open source fork of Redis, the popular in-memory database frequently used as a cache, following changes to its licensing....

Way to whip that LLaMA's ass A handy open source tool for packaging up LLMs into single universal chatbot executables that are easy to distribute and run has apparently had a 30 to 500 percent CPU performance boost on x86 and Arm systems....

CEO Gelsinger promises sunny days ahead as he confirms reorg Revenue at Intel's foundry business declined in 2023, leading to a $7 billion operating loss, and CEO Pat Gelsinger says this year could produce even nastier numbers as he revealed a reorg to help the chipmaker behave more like its rivals....

Mega framework set to replace earlier deals coming to an end next year The UK government has launched the procurement of a package of tech deals worth up to 8 billion ($6.36 billion), attempting to consolidate two earlier purchasing arrangements....

Next time you get in a Facebook argument, just let ChatGPT handle it If you're scratching your head wondering what's the use of all these chatbots, here's an idea: It turns out they're better at persuading people with arguments....

Web devs advised to do their part to limit UI redress attacks Web browsers still struggle to prevent clickjacking, an attack technique first noted in 2008 that repurposes web page interface elements to deceive visitors....