Bootnotes

• Imagine a world where Apple shacked up with Xerox in the '80s: How might it look today?

  An alternative history of the computer revolution
  Mark Pesce Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 10:02 UTC

  Column Looking back over the last 40 years of computing, it's hard to imagine how things could have been different. When Steve Jobs travelled up the Valley in late 1979 to visit Xerox PARC, he found the missing piece of the puzzle that had eaten away at him ever since Woz hacked together the first Apple I: how to make a computer that everyone could use.

  The genius computer scientists at PARC had solved that problem with WIMP: Windowed Interface, Mouse Pointer. Add in a high-resolution display, an operating system built upon components written in the spiffy object-oriented Smalltalk programming language, plus a high-speed network interface to connect all of the systems together, and, well, that's pretty much all of modern computing, even today.

  Xerox got pre-IPO shares of Apple; Jobs found a path forward – but one that would take years to bring to bear fruit. By July 1981, the two firms felt comfortable enough to ink a partnership agreement that looked like a bit of marketing fluff at the time – each promised only to promote the other's products – but which quickly changed the world.

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• ZTE Axon 30 Ultra: Strong effort from an entity-lister, but your tiny child hands may struggle

  What a whopper
  Matthew Hughes Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 09:15 UTC 2

  Review Most phones are compromised in some way, which makes it all too easy to overlook the good bits. An example of this would be the Huawei Mate 40 Pro, which was near perfect, except for the lack of apps.

  For the ZTE Axon 30 Ultra, the downside is a real ache in the first dorsal interosseous muscle between the thumb and index finger, at least for those with paws smaller than a bear's. That's a big but for a phone that ticks lots of boxes. It looks good, it's fast, it's well polished, and it comes with a set of decent cameras. Too big to hold and that whole proposition falls apart.

  Those with large mitts, however, are well-catered for. It's a flagship, but it's not priced as such. The base model starts at £649, which puts it alongside the Samsung Galaxy S20FE, but cheaper than most Android flagships like the Galaxy S21 or the OnePlus 9 Pro.

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• Report: 83% of UK software engineers suffer burnout, COVID-19 made it worse

  Lessons of Agile still relevant, still not being applied
  Tim Anderson Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 08:30 UTC 16

  A report on the wellbeing of UK software engineers (developers and DevOps professionals) found 83 per cent suffering from some degree of burnout, with most agreeing that COVID-19 was partly to blame.

  This survey [PDF] was conducted in June 2021 by pollsters Survation, on behalf of DevOps company Haystack, and although the number of participants was small (just over 250) it was conducted by interviews, rather than online forms which are vulnerable to low-quality responses.

  The respondents were 26 per cent pure software developers, 30 per cent operations (such as DevOps or reliability engineering), and 44 per cent software engineers who do elements of both. There is no detail on company size but we were told that it spanned from very small to enterprise.

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• Hong Kong working to share its digital IDs with mainland China

  App currently used for 110 government services, more to come
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 08:03 UTC 2

  Hong Kong’s Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) has revealed that the territory is investigating the use of its digital ID in mainland China.

  In a Q&A, Secretary for Innovation and Technology, Mr Alfred Sit, said “the OGCIO is exploring with relevant authorities in the Mainland and Macao the collaboration opportunities between their identity authentication systems and iAM Smart.”

  iAM Smart is a marketing abbreviation for “internet Access by Mobile in a Smart way”. It was launched in December 2020 as a “single digital identity” and authentication tool for government transactions. Adopters were promised a one-stop-shop for complete e-forms and documents, renewing car licences, paying taxes and bills, registering to vote, booking vaccines, checking vaccine status and more.

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• Google fined €500m for not paying French publishers after using their content on web

  If the Chocolate Factory doesn't play ball soon it'll be an extra €1m a day
  Katyanna Quach Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 07:41 UTC 11

  Google was fined €500m ($590m, £425m) by the French Competition Authority on Tuesday for failing to negotiate fees with news publishers for using their content.

  In April last year, the regulator ruled the American search giant had to compensate French publishers for using snippets of their articles in Google News, citing European antitrust rules and copyright law. Google was given three months to figure out how much to pay publishers. More than a year later, no licensing deals have been struck, and Google did not "enter into negotiations in good faith," we're told.

  “When the Authority imposes injunctions on companies, they are required to apply them scrupulously, respecting their letter and their spirit,” Isabelle de Silva, the FCA’s president said in a statement. “In the present case, this was unfortunately not the case.

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• South Korea’s top telco launches “metaverse”

  SK Telecom's ‘Ifland’ offers 66 facial expressions, 800 fashion items, plans to offer more serious collaboration real soon now
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 07:17 UTC 3

  South Korea’s top Telco, SK Telecom, has launched a “metaverse” virtual environment and plans to grow it from a fun place to hang online into a forum for more serious collaboration.

  Known as “Ifland” and aimed at the “MZ generation” – the overlapping cohorts of millennials and Generation Z – the service offers users the chance to visit 18 different types of virtual spaces, among them conference halls, outdoor stages, and rooftops. All can hold 130 participants.

  Users are promised a choice from “a wide variety of virtual avatars” customisable with “800 different virtual items including costumes, hairstyles, and so on”. Avatars can display their feelings with “66 different emotional expressions to engage in rich communication with others”. More will be added over time

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• What follows Patch Tuesday? Exploit Wednesday. Grab this bumper batch of security updates from Microsoft

  Four flaws already being abused in the wild to compromise victims
  Iain Thomson in San Francisco Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 06:20 UTC 3

  Microsoft released an XL-sized bundle of security fixes for its products for this month's Patch Tuesday, and other vendors are close behind in issuing updates.

  The Windows goliath's batch for July has 117 patches, 13 for what's said to be critical bugs, 103 important, and one moderate. Normally, we'd encourage you to install these updates, testing them as appropriate prior to deployment, before miscreants develop exploits for them. However, four of these holes are already being exploited in the wild, according to Microsoft, so you best get your skates on.

  Here's a run down of those four:

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• Cybercriminals took advantage of WFH to target financial services companies, says Financial Stability Board report

  Home WiFi was an obvious target, but evildoers also knew to probe cloudy connections
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 05:38 UTC

  Criminals targeted security gaps at financial services firms as their staff moved to working from home, according to a report issued by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on Tuesday.

  Established after the G20 London summit in April 2009, the FSB makes recommendations about the global financial system and coordinates financial rules for the G20 group of nations in a non-binding way.

  “Working from home (WFH) arrangements propelled the adoption of new technologies and accelerated digitalization in financial services,” the report states.

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• NEC to move its IT into Azure and give staff – all 110,000 of ’em – a cloudy Windows desktop

  Japanese services giant deepens ties with Microsoft and reckons it can address Japan’s ageing population
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 05:01 UTC 2

  Japanese tech services giant NEC has struck a “new multi-year strategic partnership” with Microsoft.

  The immediate impact of the deal will be NEC migrating all its on-prem infrastructure into Azure, and “deploy Azure Virtual Desktop and other Azure services among the NEC Group’s 110,000 employees worldwide”.

  Neither NEC nor Microsoft has said why the virtual desktops will be deployed, nor what it means for the Japanese firm’s operations. But in a video announcement of the new alliance, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and NEC CEO Takayuki Morita both spent a lot of time talking about the importance of using technology to create “personalised work styles” that transcend location and include plenty of video collaboration.

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• Microsoft names Chinese group as source of new attack on SolarWinds

  Bad actor likes to work through insecure consumer routers and has form attacking tech companies and military targets
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 03:44 UTC

  Microsoft has attributed a new attack on SolarWinds to a group operating in China.

  The software giant on Tuesday posted details of the attack, which SolarWinds on Monday patched and revealed as a Return Oriented Programming attack that targets its Serv-U managed file transfer product and allows an attacker to run arbitrary code with privileges, install programs and alter data on cracked targets.

  SolarWinds acted promptly to issue the patch, however it and Microsoft both urged swift application because an actor actively exploiting the flaw had already been identified.

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• Beijing bans merger of Tencent gaming outfits Huya and DouYu, to prevent a monopoly

  Want to know what did get approval? Tencent’s bring-it-home acquisition of search engine Sogou
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 14 Jul 2021 // 02:16 UTC 2

  Chinese regulators have refused to approve the merger of two Chinese game streaming services, citing the potential for creating a monopoly in the industry for the part-owner of both companies — tech giant Tencent.

  According to a State Administration of Market Supervision (SAMR) statement released Saturday, the Chinese antitrust watchdog conducted a review of the planned merger of Huya Company and DouYu International and decided it shouldn't happen.

  Tencent currently holds sole control over Huya and joint control over DouYu. DouYu and Huya jointly control more than 70 per cent of of China’s gaming market.

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