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1. University duo thought it would be cool to sneak bad code into Linux as an experiment. Of course, it absolutely backfired

2. China has a satellite with an arm – and America worries it could be used to snatch other spacecraft

3. Microsoft revokes MVP status of developer who tweeted complaint about request to promote SQL-on-Azure

4. Would be so cool if everyone normalized these pesky data leaks, says data-leaking Facebook in leaked memo

5. We seem to have materialized in a universe in which Barney the Purple Dinosaur is designing iPhones for Apple

• What links AMD CPU guru Jim Keller, an AI chip upstart, and SiFive? This vector-wrangling 64-bit RISC-V processor

  Stressing the ex in x86
  Chris Williams, Editor in Chief Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 13:00 UTC

  Canadian AI chip startup Tenstorrent, which is headed by former top AMD engineers, has picked one of SiFive's latest RISC-V CPU designs for its unconventional machine-learning processors.

  Specifically, Tenstorrent will license SiFive's Intelligence X280 processor cores to slot them into its homegrown AI training and inference chips alongside its own Tensix cores.

  The X280 is a 64-bit multi-core-capable RISC-V CPU design that supports the open-source instruction set architecture's vector math extension. That extension is expected to prove useful in accelerating machine-learning applications.

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• 10 years later, Chrome OS starts to look like a proper OS with hardware diagnostics and the ability to scan documents

  Are you really going to replace that battery, though, kids?
  Matthew Hughes Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 12:52 UTC

  Whether it's a chilling situation or a welcome one is up for debate, but what started as an attempt to pare down an operating system to just the browser has become something more fully fledged, as the latest update to 10-year-old* Chrome OS demonstrates.

  The newest version of the Linux-based operating system, Chrome OS 90, has been packed with features you'd reasonably expect from a first-class operating system. First on the list: the ability to monitor battery health as well as CPU and memory usage.

  On Chrome OS 90, this information has been tucked away in a new Diagnostics app, which can also perform routine performance and health tests to determine whether the machine has an underlying hardware problem.

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• Capgemini scores £150m contract to help Student Loan Company overcome its IT problems 5 years after £50m superfail

  Fragmented, inflexible estate? Reach for French outsourcers
  Lindsay Clark Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 11:17 UTC

  Capgemini has won a £150m contract with the Student Loan Company (SLC) as the non-profit looks to write the next chapter in a troubled history with information technology.

  The outsourcing and consultancy firm is to become a "Strategic Partner for Platform Delivery and Technology Services" to the non-departmental public body, according to a tender notice. It is expected "to deliver a wide range of services across our Platform Delivery and Technology Services area with the SLC Technology Group".

  The contract started on 15 April 2021 and is set to run until 14 April 2028, the document said.

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• Sucks to be you, any aliens living anywhere near Proxima Centauri's record-smashing solar flare

  Our stellar neighbor's biggest-ever belch would frazzle us Earthlings
  Katyanna Quach Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 10:32 UTC

  Astronomers have described the most energetic solar flare yet detected from Proxima Centauri, the Sun's closest stellar neighbor.

  It was a cosmic belch so intense, it's now pretty clear the star cannot provide the right conditions to support familiar DNA-based life on its exoplanets.

  On May 1, 2019, researchers led by the University of Colorado, Boulder, spotted a sudden burst of light erupting from Proxima Centauri unlike any other flare previously seen before.

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• Sure, your app is crap, but Windows won't tell. Promise

  One billboard outside Blairsville, Georgia
  Richard Speed Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 09:15 UTC

  Bork!Bork!Bork! Windows for Billboards appears to be a thing and, judging by this example of the breed, it is a little under the weather.

  Unless, perhaps, the billboard spotted by Register reader Paul last month is a bit of snark directed at Redmond by an opportunistic arch-rival. What better way to demonstrate the occasional wobbliness of Windows than by flinging up a truck-sized error dialog for all to see?

  More likely it is a sign that there are some places where Windows simply doesn't belong, and smart signage is one of them.

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• But can it run Avid? The Reg hands shiny new M1 MacBook to video production pro, who beats it with Bender, Handbrake, and ... Hypercard?

  He was there the day Steve Jobs moved off Power PC to Intel, and says the Arm transition looks better
  Piers Goodhew Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 08:45 UTC

  Review I was three-quarters of the way through the third rewrite of this review before I remembered I was actually at Apple's WorldWide Developer Conference in 2005 when Steve Jobs got up and said: "Yep, we're going to Intel."

  I mention that memory because the last Apple chip transition was quite a long time ago now. Maybe you've blanked out some details, but I'm confident you can't say it left any permanent scars.

  If we're honest, decades of continually improving silicon speeds mean the release of a faster computer shouldn't be noteworthy. Perhaps the fact that this continues to fill us with wonder should be.

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• Apple, you've AirDrop'd the ball: Academics detail ways to leak contact info of nearby iThings for spear-phishing

  Too bad there's no suggested solution... oh, wait
  Iain Thomson in San Francisco Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 08:16 UTC

  Apple's AirDrop has a couple of potentially annoying privacy weaknesses that Cupertino is so far refusing to address even though a solution has been offered.

  A bug-hunting team at Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany reverse engineered AirDrop – iOS and macOS's ad-hoc over-the-air file-sharing service – and found that senders and receivers may leak their contact details in the process. More than a billion people are said to be at risk of this, in that there are now more than a billion active iPhones at any one time. Despite the team alerting Apple to the oversight in May 2019, and suggesting ways to address it last October, the iGiant hasn't issued a fix.

  "We started looking at the protocols in 2017," Dr Milan Stute at the uni's Secure Mobile Networking Lab told The Register on Wednesday. "We reverse engineered a lot of stuff and found two major issues."

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• In 2020, VMware said its remote work kit was brilliant. Now it says you need its new stuff to do it right

  Improves integration and maturity, not quite the new-buzzword-worthy step-change Virtzilla wants
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 06:55 UTC

  Throughout 2020, VMware told anyone who would listen that its end-user compute products enabled work from anywhere, on any device, with marvellous security, and were therefore just the thing to keep your organisation operating safely during lockdowns and whatever came next.

  But now the virtualization giant wants you to buy more services to achieve the same outcome, with more sophistication.

  Which seems odd because in March last year, VMware shared stories of customers who felt that the company’s Workspace ONE application publishing suite let their employees work from anywhere in a zero-trust environment.

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• Microsoft loves Linux – as in, it loves Linux users running Linux desktop apps on Windows PCs

  Come inside, penguinistas, install that WSL GUI preview, yes, open source is totally winning here
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 06:18 UTC

  Video Microsoft this week released a preview version of Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI, or WSLg, which provides a way to run Linux applications with graphic interfaces on Windows devices.

  Foretold last year at the software titan's virtual Build 2020 conference, WSLg takes the previously released WSL 2 beyond Linux command line tools and apps and makes it the foundation of a functional Windows/Linux desktop chimera.

  "You can use this feature to run any GUI application that might only exist in Linux, or to run your own applications or testing in a Linux environment," explained Craig Loewen, program manager for the Windows Developer Platform at Microsoft, in a blog post.

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• Asian buyers set for security spending spree to catch up on shabby strategies

  China already growing even faster than 13% regional acceleration
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 04:18 UTC

  Asian businesses are set for a security spending spree, according to analyst firm IDC.

  The firm's new Worldwide Semiannual Security Spending Guide for 2021 has tipped the APAC region to spend US$23.1bn on security products and services in 2021, an increase of 12.6 per cent. Things are only getting better for vendors, as the analyst predicts five-year compound annual growth rate of 13.3 per cent over the period 2019-24, with spend in the last year totalling US$35bn.

  Simon Piff, IDC’s APAC veep for trust, security, and blockchain research, suggested local businesses are playing security catch-up.

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• Huawei wins big intellectual property case in Europe – against fashion house Chanel

  Court finds linked 'U' used on Smart Home app can't be confused with linked 'C' used on overpriced tat
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Thu 22 Apr 2021 // 02:29 UTC

  Logowatch Huawei has had a big intellectual property win in Europe, defeating an action brought by fashion house Chanel over a new logo it introduced in 2017.

  The Chinese company filed an application for the new logo in 2017 and described it as applicable to “Software and mobile applications to control and manage smart home devices and appliances, routers.”

  Here is said mark.

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