Bootnotes

Reg reader traumatised by MS Live Messenger paradox

Download feedback loop

Lester Haines Wed 10 May 2006 // 11:56 UTC

Readers attempting to download Microsoft's new Windows Live Messenger Beta should be aware that they may not find themselves instantly enjoying the benefits of VoIP telephony, but rather caught in a brain-rattling paradox feedback loop, as reader Graham Smart discovered:

The MS Live Messenger paradox

Try not to think too hard about it, since mental trauma will most certainly result. As Graham put it before he succumbed to synaptic collapse: "Basically the NEW MSN installer wants you to close the MSN installer to install the MSN installer that wants you to close the MSN installer that installs the MSN inst……" ®

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TikTok: Yes, some staff in China can access US data

We thought you guys were into this whole information hoarding thing

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Sat 2 Jul 2022 // 00:30 UTC

TikTok, owned by Chinese outfit ByteDance, last month said it was making an effort to minimize the amount of data from US users that gets transferred outside of America, following reports that company engineers in the Middle Kingdom had access to US customer data.
"100 percent of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure," TikTok said in a June 17, 2022 post, while acknowledging that customer information still got backed up to its data center in Singapore. The biz promised to delete US users' private data from its own servers and to "fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the US."
That pivot has not yet been completed. According to a June 30, 2022 letter [PDF] from TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, obtained by the New York Times on Friday, some China-based employees with sufficient security clearance can still access data from US TikTok users, including public videos and comments.

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W3C overrules objections by Google, Mozilla to decentralized identifier spec

Oh no, he DIDn't

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 21:50 UTC

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has rejected Google's and Mozilla's objections to the Decentralized Identifiers (DID) proposal, clearing the way for the DID specification to be published a W3C Recommendation next month.
The two tech companies worry that the open-ended nature of the spec will promote chaos through a namespace land rush that encourages a proliferation of non-interoperable method specifications. They also have concerns about the ethics of relying on proof-of-work blockchains to handle DIDs.
The DID specification describes a way to deploy a globally unique identifier without a centralized authority (eg, Apple for Sign in with Apple) as a verifying entity.

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Cyberattack shuts down unemployment, labor websites across the US

Software maker GSI took systems offline, affecting thousands of people in as many as 40 states

Jeff Burt Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 20:41 UTC

A cyberattack on a software company almost a week ago continues to ripple through labor and workforce agencies in a number of US states, cutting off people from such services as unemployment benefits and job-seeking programs.
Labor departments and related agencies in at least nine states have been impacted. According to the Louisiana Workforce Commission in a statement this week, Geographic Solutions (GSI) was forced to shut down state labor exchanges and unemployment claims systems, and as many as 40 states and Washington DC, all of which rely on GSI's services, could be affected.
In a statement to media organizations, GSI President Paul Toomey said the Palm Harbor, Florida-based company "identified anomalous activity on our network," and took its services offline. Toomey didn't elaborate whether GSI was hit with ransomware or some other type of malware.

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One of the first RISC-V laptops may ship in September, has an NFT hook

A notebook with an RV SoC is cool enough. Did we really need the Web3 jargon?

Dylan Martin Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 19:59 UTC

It seems promoters of RISC-V weren't bluffing when they hinted a laptop using the open-source instruction set architecture would arrive this year.
Pre-orders opened Friday for Roma, the "industry's first native RISC-V development laptop," which is being built in Shenzen, China, by two companies called DeepComputing and Xcalibyte. And by pre-order, they really mean: register your interest.
No pricing is available right now, quantities are said to be limited, and information is sparse.

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Crypto sleuths pin $100 million Harmony theft on Lazarus Group

Elliptic points to several indicators that suggest the North Korea-linked gang was behind the hack

Jeff Burt Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 18:11 UTC

Investigators at a blockchain analysis outfit have linked the theft of $100 million in crypto assets last week to the notorious North Korean-based cybercrime group Lazarus. The company said it had tracked the movement of some of the stolen cryptocurrency to a so-called mixer used to launder such ill-gotten funds.
Blockchain startup Harmony announced June 23 that its Horizon Bridge – a cross-chain bridge service used to transfer assets between Harmony's blockchain and other blockchains – had been attacked and crypto assets like Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin, Binance Coin, and Tether stolen.
According to blockchain analytics company Elliptic, the attacker immediately turned to Uniswap, a decentralized exchange, to convert most of the assets into 85,837 Ethereum, which researchers said is a common method used by hackers to avoid the stolen assets from being seized.

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2050 carbon emission goals need nuclear to succeed, says International Energy Agency

Without it, $500b more in investments is needed to reach C-neutrality

Brandon Vigliarolo Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 17:29 UTC

There's more than one path to net zero emissions by 2050, but the only practical one runs straight through nuclear power, according to the International Energy Agency.
In a report [PDF] released yesterday, the IEA said worldwide nuclear power output, currently at 413GW, would need to double to 812GW by 2050 to meet carbon neutrality goals and limit global warming to 1.5°C, per its own framework.
The IEA doesn't see nuclear power as the solution to net zero emissions, though, rather a part of the transition process to preferred forms of renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric. "Building sustainable and clean energy systems will be harder, riskier, and more expensive without nuclear," the IEA said. "Nuclear power has the potential to play a significant role in helping countries to securely transition to energy systems dominated by renewables."

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Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

Thanks to Linux wunderkind Rudra Saraswat, not Canonical, this time

Liam Proven in Prague Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 16:33 UTC

Good news for especially determined fans of Ubuntu's formerly in-house desktop: there's a new version.
Unity 7.6 just appeared, although there is a more complete list of changes in the earlier announcement that it was in testing.

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Cloudera adopts Apache Iceberg, battles Databricks to be most open in data tables

Move follows Databricks' donation of Delta Lake 2.0 to Linux Foundation

Lindsay Clark Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 15:48 UTC

Cloud data lake vendor Cloudera has announced the general availability of Apache Iceberg in its data platform.
Developed through the Apache Software Foundation, Iceberg offers an open table format, designed for high-performance on big data workloads while supporting query engines including Spark, Trino, Flink, Presto, Hive and Impala.
Iceberg started out as a Netflix project before it was donated to the Apache foundation two years later in 2018.

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NASA delays SLS rollback due to concerns over rocky path to launchpad

The road to the Moon is paved with... river rock?

Richard Speed Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 15:33 UTC

NASA's Moon rocket is to trundle back into its shed today after a delay caused by concerns over the crawlerway.
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Datacenter operator Switch hit with claims it misled investors over $11b buyout

Complainants say financial projections were not disclosed, rendering SEC filing false and misleading

Dan Robinson Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 14:30 UTC

Datacenter operator Switch Inc is being sued by investors over claims that it did not disclose key financial details when pursuing an $11 billion deal with DigitalBridge Group and IFM Investors that will see the company taken into private ownership if it goes ahead.
Two separate cases have been filed this week by shareholders Marc Waterman and Denise Redfield in the Federal Court in New York. The filings contain very similar claims that a proxy statement filed by Switch with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in regard to the proposed deal omitted material information regarding Switch's financial projections.
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