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Teams rival hopes to consign cross-business email ping-pong to history The tit-for-tat feature race between Slack and its besuited rival Microsoft Teams has resumed with the creation of Slack Connect, allowing 20 organisations into a single Slack channel.…

Bank on the receiving end of massive 418Gbps traffic barrage Akamai reckons it blocked what may be the largest distributed denial-of-service attack ever, in terms of packets per second.…

Code shack is a great place for others to collaborate, but not so strong at collaboration for itself GitHub has redesigned its web repository layout for an "improved mobile web experience", but developers were quick to find flaws in the new approach.…

UCL study informs app that documents daily activities during quarantine Taking conference calls in your pyjamas? Furloughed into endless gaming? A University College London study is now saying that far from instigating a pandemic of bone-idleness, the lockdown has prompted healthy exercise and interest in meditation.…

Sure, you can make calls, for instance, but you can't end them WWDC One year ago, at 2019's WWDC, Apple showed off a set of accessibility features designed to help people operate their iPhone, iPad, or Mac without the use of their hands.…

'My work here is done, but my day job just got complicated' is the gist of it SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son will depart Alibaba's board to focus on his main business as it struggles during the coronavirus pandemic.…

Mmmm... microwaved protein chunks in spiced slurry – with rating by top analyst Special report Businesses everywhere are thinking on their feet to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes global airline catering outfit Gategourmet, which started selling the food it usually packages for consumption on airplanes as take-home ready meals, priced at the astounding rate of 10 dishes for AU$25 (US$17, £14).…

Retailer creates ‘Counterfeit Stuff Investigation’ team staffed by former federal prosecutors to go after dodgy merchants and makers When you log on to shop at Amazon.com in the near future you may benefit from the work of a CSI team the retail giant has created to crack down on counterfeit kit and haul its makers into court.…

From the belly of Perseverance comes a revolution in Red Planet exploration Vid NASA this week championed its autonomous helicopter Ingenuity, which is next month due to blast off to Mars attached to its buddy, the Perseverance rover.…

Make America Bake Again movement not going well, Europe also increasingly out of the picture Taiwan has become the world’s number one chipmaker, according to specialist semiconductor analyst house IC Inisghts.…

But the real money is in services and IaaS, not software, says Gartner’s first lash at container futures Analyst firm Gartner has completed its first forecast for container management software and services, finding that while adoption will be rapid the technology won’t be a big money-spinner for software vendors.…

All sorts of services all over the world with no word of explanation – but hey, Big Blue’s cloud gets a new Twitter support feed tomorrow Let’s call it Wobbly Wednesday: 30 services on IBM’s cloud took unplanned naps on June 24th and Big Blue’s offered little or no explanation for the incidents.…

Look, we wrote it! You're all wrong! The most debated and criticized piece of law in the United States at the moment is Section 230 of Communications Decency Act (CDA), which makes it all that much more frustrating that nobody seems to understand it.…

India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand can now bring the Amazonian cloud on-prem Amazon Web Services has extended the availability of its Outposts to four Asian nations, and New Zealand.…

Request for injunction raises pressure on cash-burning ride hailing apps California's Attorney General and the City Attorneys from Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco have asked a judge to force ride-hailing services Lyft and Uber to classify their drivers as employees.…

Another machine-learning model that can't tell people of color apart? Shocker The American Civil Liberties Union has formally complained to Detroit police, who wrongfully arrested and locked up a dad after he was misidentified as a thief by facial-recognition software and a security guard.…

Lawmakers will attempt to bend the laws of mathematics to their will A trio of Republican senators on Tuesday proposed legislation that requires service providers and device makers in America to help the Feds bypass encryption when presented with a court-issued warrant.…

Non-profits call for independent probe into disastrous effort to sell TLD registry The non-profit organizations that fought to halt the sale of the .org registry to a newly created private equity firm are demanding an independent review into the fiasco, which pitted charities against domain registrars over the billion-dollar aborted deal.…

$600k starting bid, say public extortionists, or $42m to keep schtum Ransomware criminals claiming to have siphoned confidential docs on Nicki Minaj, Mariah Carey, and Lebron James from an American law firm are threatening to auction off the info.…

Separating widgets from App Icons is how Apple will avoid Microsoft's mistake WWDC Apple introduced WidgetKit during day two of its WWDC developer event yesterday, describing it as "the best way to bring your app's most useful information to the home screen."…

Rebrand accompanies tech launches as CEO hits 18 months in job Information Builders, that 45-year-old data management biz, has rolled out automated analytics wares and a corporate rebranding with a view to profiting off a burgeoning market for ML-powered enterprise data tools.…

Triumphant F#-major to return with upcoming macOS Big Sur As the saying goes: Out with the old, in with the… old. After temporarily ditching the iconic Mac "chime" in 2016, Apple is finally bringing it back with the upcoming release of macOS Big Sur.…

Top judge replies: Don't understand what you're on about A top judge told a barrister for the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) today that his legal arguments against police facial-recognition technology face "a great difficulty" as he wondered whether they were even relevant to the case.…

A quarter? That's pretty weak Brits are spending more time than ever online, according to comms watchdog Ofcom's latest Online Nation report, and it's all thanks - surprise, surprise - to coronavirus. In April, at the height of lockdown, the average person was online for four hours and two minutes each day.…

This is the Apple-Google API one, not the 'world-beating' one Harriet Harman MP, chair of Britain's Commons Human Rights Committee, has written to UK health secretary Matt Hancock seeking clarity on privacy aspects of the government's latest coronavirus contact-tracing app.…

3DoF bad, 6DoF good Updated Facebook-owned Oculus has bowed to the seemingly inevitable and told the world about the demise of its entry-level Oculus Go VR headset.…

Researchers used a pretrained off-the-shelf model from Nvidia A new computer vision technique that helps convert blurry photos of people into fake, realistic images has come under fire for being racially biased towards white people.…

Makes sense while enterprises wrestle with new ways of working The hackneyed saying that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is reality might easily be applied to Blue Prism, the vendor of software robots and automation tools.…

Tanks put through their paces SpaceX popped another Starship tank yesterday as NASA prepared to conduct a final structural test of its SLS rocket.…

Bungling cybercrooks throw toys out of the pram as negotiations shut down The Maze ransomware gang has threatened to publish information stolen from an American firm that overhauls airliners and installs flight control software upgrades – because its victim refused to pay a demanded ransom.…

I just can't quit you, Skype. Oh maybe I can... they've tweaked the close function Hot on the heels of Teams getting personal comes a shake-up for Skype that will see Skype for Windows 10 and Skype for Desktop becoming one.…

Mysterious object's mass has challenged astrophysics models Astronomers have detected what could be either the tiniest black hole or the largest neutron star found to date.…

The big release with nothing in it. Thanks Oracle! Interview The Eclipse Foundation has released a preview of Jakarta EE 9, the next major version of what used to be called Java Enterprise Edition.…

No intelligent pentesting systems were available to comment on this assertion Puny humans still think they're superior to AI when it comes to infosec – and a significant number still don't venture into meatspace or get enough sunlight.…

High-spec £249 blower – but can it play Crysis Call of Duty? Review Bargain-basement phones like the Redmi Note 9 Pro helped establish Xiaomi. And, having spent time with the Chinese firm's latest blower for the UK market, it's really not hard to see why.…

Bork on, bork on... with hope in your heart.. And you'll never bork alone Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork returns to Blighty today, with the proud people of Liverpool contributing their own entry into the annals of Windows being a bit sad.…

How Bitdefender's security software was caught napping by ad-block bod Folks running Bitdefender's Total Security 2020 package should check they have the latest version installed following the disclosure of a remote code execution bug.…

Scantily-clad presenters and vulgar language 'corrupt the social atmosphere' and 'endanger the healthy growth of young people' China's internet watchdog has called out several live-streaming channels for showing trash TV amid Beijing's crackdown on "unhealthy content".…

Springer ditches paper from research tome after mass protest by boffins over junk science Springer Nature has reversed its decision to publish a paper describing a neural network supposedly capable of detecting criminals from their faces alone – after top boffins signed a letter branding the study harmful junk science.…

Jakarta region is live now. And hopefully high and dry Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, is literally sinking. But Google has just opened a cloud region there anyway.…

HomeKit still playing catch-up though facial rec and better automation still a step in the right direction WWDC Apple has added facial recognition and new automation features to its smart home products, edging its HomeKit system forward while still playing catch-up in the market.…

Founder posts bail as German investigators probe accounting scandal Markus Braun, who resigned as CEO of financial services firm Wirecard AG last week, was arrested by police in Munich, Germany, on Monday and released after posting €5m ($5.7m) bail.…

We’re not buying the idea it could buy Virtzilla, but selling a stake could work Dell and VMware are talking to finance folks about some sort of transaction, according to The Wall Street Journal.…

Seems sensible to assume it's going after India's new electronics investment incentives Electronics manufacturer to the stars Foxconn has signaled it will make further investments in India.…

It's frolicking with the Sinclair C5 at a puffed-up press conference in the sky In yet another reminder that the heady days of the noughties are but a distant memory, the classic Segway is set to officially end production after a near-twenty-year run.…

Sorry, I was busy, came the reply There was a time when there was a certain amount of pride in the fact internet engineers all knew one another, that systems critical to the internet’s functioning were run in the back of other facilities, and a single person was often in charge of whole services.…

Redmond knows a thing or two about tackling malware – amirite, Windows fans?! Microsoft has extended its antivirus package for servers – better known the Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) for servers suite – to Linux as a general availability release.…

The Lord of the iThings will see you now WWDC Apple on Monday promised to reform its app review process this summer with a way to appeal app rejections and to challenge rule legitimacy, and to allow bug fixes through without review.…

Middle Kingdom completes its third-generation positioning system The delayed launch of China's 35th and final third-gen Beidou satellite today gives the Middle Kingdom a completed advanced global positioning network.…

A plan to inject life into the flagging PC industry? Meet the Predator Shot: putting the spin in spinach Carving a living in the cut-throat world of PCs sales is a tough business, just ask Taiwanese vendor Acer. Perhaps in the hope of injecting more fizz into its upcoming line-up, the business has rolled out an energy drink alongside a slew of brand spanking new computers.…