Science

• Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an Electron rocket descending to the ocean?

  Everything but catching the thing: Rocket Lab prepares for recovery
  Richard Speed Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 11:12 UTC

  Interview New Zealand's Rocket Lab is set to launch another Electron rocket - a precursor to the rocketeer's first attempt at catching a descending booster. The Register caught up with CEO Peter Beck to discuss helicopters, Mars and visiting Venus.

  The launch, dubbed "Love at First Insight", is currently scheduled for no earlier than 16 November (owing to an "out of family ground sensor reading" when the launch window opened yesterday morning) and has the primary objective of popping a pair of Earth-observation satellites into orbit for Black Sky. Also featuring on the launch is Rocket Lab's latest evolution of its recovery technology.

  Unlike SpaceX's crowd-pleasing propulsive antics, the first stage of the Rocket Lab Electron will descend by parachute and attempt a controlled splashdown into the ocean, making it the third ocean recovery (if all goes well.) The eventual plan is for a helicopter to snag the stage as it descends. This time, however, everything will be done except an attempt to catch the rocket.

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• HP's solution to running GPU-accelerated Linux apps on high-end Z workstations: Rely on Microsoft's WSL2

  Because Windows is what Linux users really want, right?
  Liam Proven in Prague Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 10:15 UTC 5

  Facing rising demand for high-end Linux boxes but also issues supporting the software on its high-end kit, HP is trying solve the problem for customers by using Windows as a universal shim.

  That is, it enables Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) out of the box on some of its own high-end Z workstations, boosted by Nvidia graphics processors.

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• BOFH: You drive me crazy... and I can't help myself

  Service provider? You sure about that second bit?
  Simon Travaglia Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 09:15 UTC 18

  Episode 20 >knock< <knock<

  "Come in."

  "Hey there," I say. "I'm just here to fix your desktop machine."

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• The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

  Weekend upgrade shows how many MoD staff made personal use of tech
  Richard Speed Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 08:30 UTC 32

  On Call A reader takes us back to a bygone era, when Blighty's brass inhabited wood-panelled offices, and the air was thick with pipe smoke and WW2 anecdotes. Welcome to On Call.

  Our story takes place in the 1980s as the era of officers that served in the Second World War was coming to an end and computerisation was slithering into departments that had been hitherto resolutely manual.

  Register reader "Nigel" was dealing with a software update for some Ministry Of Defence (MoD) kit. "The software," he said, "was Uniplex ported to a modified secure version of Unix running on Honeywell Bull XPS-100s."

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• WTF is ‘Computing First Networking’? Think load balancers for the age of edge

  The ‘pre-process data on the edge’ idea turns out not to be that simple
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 07:14 UTC 8

  A new buzz-phrase crossed your correspondent’s desk: “Computing First Networking”.

  WTF is it?

  According to a brief from analyst firm Gartner, it’s “an emerging networking solution that provides services for computational tasks by sharing computing resources from multiple edge sites” and “a new type of decentralized computing solution that optimizes the efficiency of edge computing.”

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• AMD reveals an EPYC 50 flaws – 23 of them rated High severity. Intel has 25 problems, too

  Think of an attack – DDOS, arbitrary code execution, memory corruption - and one of these problems allows it
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 06:02 UTC 4

  Microsoft may have given us a mere 55 CVEs to worry about on November’s Patch Tuesday, but AMD and Intel have topped that number with fixes for their products .

  AMD alone dropped 50 new CVEs on Thursday, 23 of them rated of “High” concern, meaning they’re rated at between 7.0 and 8.9 on the the-point Common Vulnerability Scoring System.

  Let’s start with the 27 flaws in the AMD Graphics Driver for Windows 10 – 18 of them rated High – because at least they’re in software and Microsoft and Adobe’s patch issuance cadence means readers could be in the mood to fix code.

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• There's no Huawei back now - Biden signs Act that forbids US buyers acquiring kit on naughty list

  FCC Commissioner said the act closes the “Huawei loophole”
  Laura Dobberstein Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 04:26 UTC 21

  US President Joe Biden has signed The Secure Equipment Act yesterday, legislation that prevents US regulators from even considering the issuance of new telecom equipment licenses for companies deemed security threats - which means the likes of China's Huawei and ZTE .

  In October, the legislation was unanimously approved by the US Senate, while the House of Representatives passed it on a 420-4 vote.

  According to the White House, the law, H.R. 3919, “requires the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules clarifying that it will no longer review or approve any authorization application for equipment that poses an unacceptable risk to national security.”

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• Huawei hands its cloud Linux to China's only open source foundation

  OpenEuler now an Open Atom Foundation project, China Telecom has released a cut, tech minister loves the idea
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 02:58 UTC

  Huawei has donated the cut of Linux it created to run on its cloud, and silicon, to China's only open source foundation.

  The Chinese giant's OS is called EulerOS and is derived from CentOS. EulerOS runs on x86 silicon but is tuned for top performance on the Arm64 architecture – which is what Huawei uses in the Kunpeng 920 CPUs it designed to power its own servers, cloud, and even the occasional laptop.

  Huawei's list of the operating system's features and benefits states it includes KVM virtualization, ext4, the GFS2 cluster file system, systemd, Linux containers, and can manage user identities across Linux, UNIX, and Windows domains to help with your SSO needs.

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• Apps made with Google's Flutter may fritter away CPU cycles. Here's what the web giant intends to do about it

  Chocolate Factory's cross-platform framework seems to struggle to craft efficient desktop software
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Fri 12 Nov 2021 // 01:44 UTC 9

  Google's Flutter cross-platform app framework appears to have a thinking problem: in certain situations, Flutter desktop apps consume too much processing power.

  How much is too much? Try an extra six to ten per cent CPU usage just to recreate the blink of a cursor in the style of a native macOS app. That's an improvement over the 100 per cent CPU usage reported in 2019, though that was when Flutter desktop app support was in alpha stage.

  This would be a showstopper on mobile devices, where users won't tolerate apps that make their phones go dark from battery exhaustion. But energy inefficiency hasn't proven to be a common problem in Flutter Android and iOS builds recently, though it was something of a concern as Flutter has matured. The more pressing issue on mobile devices for Flutter devs is still trying to reduce "jank" – lag created by shader compilation.

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• Philippines gov takes down passport application website amid privacy leak fears

  Google searches reportedly produce applicants' personal information
  Laura Dobberstein Thu 11 Nov 2021 // 23:52 UTC 1

  The Philippines' Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has disabled its online passport application tracker, citing a "data privacy issue" and hinting that information could have leaked.

  "The DFA's IT Unit is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding this issue and is taking appropriate measures to secure the data that may have been exposed," states a notice on the DFA website. "An internal audit will also be conducted to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future."

  The Philippines requires citizens to use the site, which launched only a couple of months ago, to apply for a passport – walk-in applications are allowed only under exceptional circumstances. However, at time of writing, the tracker is returning a 404 error. Citizens therefore have no way knowing when or if passports will be approved and/or dispatched.

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• What, Uber charges disabled people fees for taking a while to get into their ride? Doesn't seem fair, says Uncle Sam

  Plus: Trips now more expensive in the UK to woo new drivers, tackle demand
  Katyanna Quach Thu 11 Nov 2021 // 23:00 UTC 12

  The US government sued Uber this week, claiming the ride-hailing app giant unfairly charges disabled riders waiting fees if they need extra time to get into vehicles.

  A surcharge is added on top of a ride fare if a passenger takes longer than two minutes to enter a vehicle after it arrives. Uber added wait time fees in some US cities in 2016 before expanding the policy across the country.

  These fees, however, discriminate against people with mobility or visibility issues, federal prosecutors argue. In one example in the government's lawsuit [PDF], the DoJ refers to “Passenger A,” who has spinal cord injuries and needs a wheelchair to get around. When her Uber arrived, her wheelchair needed to be folded away into the vehicle, and a nursing assistant helped her into the car. The whole process took about five minutes.

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