Science

• Now you can surf the web from the driving seat of your Polestar 2

  With Vivaldi. While parked
  Richard Speed Wed 22 Dec 2021 // 12:01 UTC 6

  Chromium-based browser Vivaldi has ported its eponymous Android Tablet browser to Android Automotive, making it the first web browser on the operating system and available in the Polestar 2 electric car.

  Electric cars and browsers have been a thing for a while; a Chromium-based browser has lurked within Teslas, but for cars running Android Automotive on their dashboards, options were limited.

  Its presence on the Polestar 2, Swedish carmaker Volvo's sub-brand, was announced prior to the vehicle's availability last year. Unlike Android Auto, which simply mirrors Android apps from a device onto a car's information and entertainment display, Android Automotive is designed to be embedded within the vehicle itself.

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• Boffins' first take on asteroid dust from Japanese probe: Carbon rich, less lumpy than expected

  The five grams of Ryugu we got suggests it's made of the same stuff as the outer Sun
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 22 Dec 2021 // 10:03 UTC 20

  Researchers have published the first analyses of samples plucked from asteroid 162173 Ryugu by Japan's spacecraft Hayabusa2, revealing, for the first time, the physical properties and composition of a carbonaceous asteroid.

  The 5.4g of asteroid sample collected from two surface locations on asteroid Ryugu landed in the South Australian outback a year ago before being shipped to Japan for investigation.

  Some of the space pebbles went to NASA, but the bulk remained with Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA and its scientists.

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• A proposal to beat below-the-belt selfies: Crowdsourced machine learning using victims' image stashes

  Empty your inboxes, people, we can duck this problem together
  Mark Pesce Wed 22 Dec 2021 // 08:05 UTC 26

  Column It’s often said that the second most important job in Australia – behind Prime Minister – is captain of the Australian men’s cricket team.

  The last holder of that office recently resigned in disgrace after it emerged a flurry of texts he exchanged with a staffer crossed the line from racy to harassment as one message included an unsolicited dick pic.

  After his resignation, a friend who is both a cricket fan and an AI expert messaged me.

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• Nvidia says its SmartNICs sizzled to world record storage schlepping status

  But did so operating as NICs – the real fun starts in mid-2022 when VMware’s hypervisor for SmartNICs should land
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 22 Dec 2021 // 06:02 UTC 1

  Nvidia has claimed a world record for storage IOPS using its Bluefield data processing units (DPUs).

  The Bluefield kit is Nvidia’s take on a “SmartNIC” – a network interface card bulked up with a decent CPU so it can run workloads such as firewalls or encryption engines, so that CPUs can be freed for more important tasks. Hyperscalers routinely use SmartNICs and the likes of Nvidia, Intel, and VMware are working to bring them into mainstream data center scenarios.

  Nvidia’s benchmark saw a pair of HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen 10 Plus servers hooked up with a dual-100GB ethernet Bluefield aboard each, in a configuration that offered 400Gb/s wire bandwidth between initiator and target. The company used the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) and FIO test, and also targeted the Linux kernel.

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• Of course a Bluetooth-using home COVID test was cracked to fake results

  The Ellume COVID-19 Home Test was connected to the internet of woefully insecure things for a while
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 22 Dec 2021 // 03:58 UTC 6

  Security vendor F-Secure has faked a COVID test result on a Bluetooth-equipped home COVID Test. Thankfully the vendor’s since fixed the device.

  The firm tested the Ellume COVID-19 Home Test, a device selected specifically because it uses a “Bluetooth connected analyzer for use with an app on your phone.”

  As F-Secure probed the device and its companion app, its researchers spotted an un-exported activity called com.ellumehealth.homecovid.android/com.gsk.itreat.activities.BluetoothDebugActivity Users with root level access to an Android machine can launch that activity to “help interact with the analyzer over Bluetooth”, F-Secure found.

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• Think small, score big: India details subsidies for chipmakers

  More advanced manufacturing processes will attract the big rupees, but scheme seems unlikely to make India a major player
  By Agam Shah in New Jersey Wed 22 Dec 2021 // 01:58 UTC

  India’s government has revealed more details about its plans to become a major chip manufacturing hub .

  The nation yesterday published a document [PDF] that reveals its government will cover up to 50 to per cent of the set-up cost for manufacturers looking to establish 28-nm or more advanced nodes, up to 40 per cent for 28-nm to 45-nm nodes and up to 30 per cent for 45-nm to 65-nm nodes.

  India’s plan requires companies to establish 300-mm wafer factories, and to start work on at least 40,000 wafers per month. Companies need to show at a minimum competency to produce on the 28-nm process. The government will support companies for up to six years.

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• New submarine cable to link Japan, Europe, through famed Northwest Passage

  Alternative route will skip the Suez Canal and other tricky spots
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Tue 21 Dec 2021 // 23:30 UTC 22

  In the 15th century, European traders that hoped to reach Asia had problems: a round trip by land or sea took years and involved many lethal perils. Navigators of the day therefore imagined sailing the “Northwest Passage,” a route across the Atlantic, then over the top of North America, before sliding south to Japan.

  Sadly, ice is seldom absent at the far northern latitudes the Passage occupies. Nor is there a simple route through the glacier-carved archipelago atop Canada. Navigating the Passage therefore proved impossible for four hundred years, failed attempts like the Franklin Expedition became maritime lore^*, and the route turned out to be so finnicky it’s not commercially viable.

  In the 21st century, Europeans have a similar problem: network latency between northern Europe and Asia is uncomfortably long.

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• It's your Loki day: The Reg takes Elementary OS Jólnir for a quick test drive

  Just four months on, 6.1 is Odin with a facelift
  Liam Proven in Prague Tue 21 Dec 2021 // 16:01 UTC 17

  Review A new minor version of Elementary OS, a rather modernist and minimalist Ubuntu derivative, fixes a lot of small details. The Register took it for a quick spin.

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• UK's Defra and Ministry of Justice facing £120m IR35 tax bills thanks to inaccuracies in assessing contractors' status

  Central government still struggling with its own off-payroll tax rules
  Lindsay Clark Tue 21 Dec 2021 // 14:44 UTC 30

  Updated The UK government's own employment checker tool and guidance has led to wrong calls on the tax status of freelance workers, costing £120m across two Whitehall departments.

  According to recently published financial reports, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [PDF] are facing combined additional tax bills of at least £121m due to incorrectly determining the status of their contractors, despite following Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs' "accompanying guidance" and using HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool.

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• Belgian defence ministry admits attackers accessed its computer network by exploiting Log4j vulnerability

  Perpetrators' ID unknown, however
  Gareth Corfield Tue 21 Dec 2021 // 12:33 UTC 23

  The Belgian Ministry of Defence has suffered a cyber attack after miscreants exploited one of the vulnerabilities in Log4j. The attack marks the first occasion that a NATO country's defence ministry has fallen victim to the flaws.

  The attack took place last week, as reported by Flemish-language TV news station VRT, which said "some of the ministry's activities were paralysed for several days."

  Belgian MoD spokesman Olivier Severin said in a prepared statement seen by The Register: "Defence discovered an attack on its computer network with internet access on Thursday. Quarantine measures were quickly taken to isolate the affected parts. The priority is to keep the defence network operational."

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• Nottingham University awards cloud finance and HR deal in £29.75m deal 2.5 years after Unit4 upgrade

  Meanwhile, search for service partner stalls after early engagement over possible £80m contract
  Lindsay Clark Tue 21 Dec 2021 // 09:42 UTC 9

  Updated Just two and a half years after upgrading its Unit4 HR and finance system, the University of Nottingham has awarded a £29.75m deal to Oracle partner Evolutionary Systems.

  In a contract award notice, the institution, which has around 45,500 students on its books, said it was replacing its existing HR, finance, payroll, and procurement systems with "modern technology that will enable [it] to make a step-change in the way it manages its human and financial resources, with knock-on benefits for teaching and research."

  According to an earlier procurement notice published in December 2020, the system is expected to support approximately 250 users for HR and finance, 100 professional users for procurement and approximately 5,700 full-time and 2,300 part-time other staff.

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