Software

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1. After years of dragging its feet, FCC finally starts tackling America's robocall scourge

2. FCC urges Americans to run internet speed app to counter Big Cable's broadband data fudging

3. Who'd have thought the US senator who fist pumped Jan 6 insurrectionists would propose totally unworkable anti-Big Tech law?

4. NSA helps out Microsoft with critical Exchange Server vulnerability disclosures in an April shower of patches

5. Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

• What the FLoC? Browser makers queue up to decry Google's latest ad-targeting initiative as invasive tracking

  'Federated Learning of Cohorts' groups users together and is already being tested in Chrome
  Tim Anderson Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 19:33 UTC

  Google's FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) mechanism for ad personalisation, currently being trialled in the Chrome browser, has been rejected as privacy-invasive tracking by other browser makers including Vivaldi and Brave.

  FLoC is part of what Google calls the Privacy Sandbox initiative, a proposal to "support business models that fund the open web in the absence of tracking mechanisms like third-party cookies," according to Chrome engineering director Justin Schuh and product manager Marshall Vale.

  Third-party cookies are widely used (or abused) for tracking users across the web, and are increasingly likely to be blocked. Google is determined to preserve its ability to target and personalise advertising and claims the Privacy Sandbox APIs "enable use cases such as ad selection and conversion measurement, without revealing individual private and personal information."

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• Huawei tells the FCC it can't force US carriers to scrap its gear – that's Congress's job

  We're sure the comms watchdog will take that on board
  Matthew Hughes Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 18:45 UTC

  Huawei has argued that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cannot force US carriers to remove its equipment from their networks, and can only reimburse those that voluntarily choose to do so.

  The filing [PDF] made by the Chinese giant to the FCC is yet another salvo in the ongoing fight for Huawei's survival in the US carrier market. Although Huawei has never really had much of a foothold with the main carriers (AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, and Dish Wireless), the company previously enjoyed a degree of popularity with smaller networks serving rural areas.

  In November 2019, the FCC issued a prohibition against rural carriers using federal subsidies to acquire new equipment from so-called high-risk vendors, including Huawei. The following February, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that allocated $1bn to rip and replace existing hardware. This pot was expanded to $1.9bn last December as part of the second stimulus bill, passed during the final months of the Trump US presidency.

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• Wish HCI could do more? Maybe it’s time for some disaggregation, says HPE

  If you don't know what you'll need three to six months from now, 'disaggregated dHCI can be a better play'
  Joseph Martins Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 18:00 UTC

  Sponsored Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of organizations.

  Recent figures from IDC showed growth in the overall converged systems market was static in the fourth quarter of 2020, but sales growth for hyperconverged systems accelerated, up 7.4 percent and accounting for almost 55 per cent of the market.

  It’s not hard to see why this might be. The pandemic means that many organizations are having to support largely remote workforces, meaning a surge of interest in systems that can support virtual desktop infrastructure. Those all-in-one systems seem to offer a straightforward way to scale up compute and storage to meet these challenges in a predictable, albeit slightly lumpy, way.

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• Chrome and Chromium updated after yet another exploit is found in browser's V8 JavaScript engine

  JS component seems to be focus of researchers and miscreants alike
  Gareth Corfield Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 17:02 UTC

  Google has announced new updates to Chrome 89 following the discovery of yet another live exploit for a vulnerability in the V8 JavaScript engine.

  One of the flaws affects V8, which in January was found to suffer from a heap overflow bug severe enough to prompt a round of updates. This time round the V8 vulnerability is accompanied by a use-after-free vuln in Chrome's rendering engine Blink.

  The Blink vuln was discovered during the Zero Day Initiative's Pwn2Own competition last week. No proof-of-concept code has yet been released by legitimate sources, though a very short gif of it in action was published on Twitter by bug hunters Dataflow Security.

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• SAP's operating profits might be down but cloud-fixated ERP biz thinks things are looking up enough to hike full-year guidance

  Shrugs off 21% slump – that's just infra shift, share awards
  Paul Kunert Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 16:01 UTC

  SAP says cloud sales jumped 7 per cent in its Q1 and has upped full-year forecasts on renewed hopes for higher growth, indicating senior execs reckon customers will begin spending in greater numbers this year after projects slowed in pandemic-struck 2020.

  For the quarter ended 31 March, cloud revenue came in at €2.14bn, up 7 per cent, software licences also expanded 7 per cent to €480m, but software support shrank 5 per cent to €2.8bn and services revenues was down 18 per cent to €900m. All of which meant group turnover fell 3 per cent to €6.35bn.

  These are preliminary numbers and subject to change when SAP publishes the final set on 22 April. SAP said it has seen a "sharp acceleration" in new cloud business, described software licence as "strong," and talked of "significant competitive wins," not least of which was Google switching from Oracle.

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• A keyboard? How quaint: Logitech and Baidu link arms to make an AI-enabled, voice-transcribing mouse

  Dictates 3 languages, translates into 6, available only in China
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 14:56 UTC

  Swiss computer peripherals manufacturer Logitech has teamed with Chinese AI and internet company Baidu to make a voice-dictation mouse.

  The Logitech Voice M380 wireless mouse looks and acts like a regular mouse but with a special button to initiate voice dictation. Baidu claimed recognition facilitates content creation at two to three times the speed of what one can type.

  The device supports dictation in Chinese, English, and Japanese, and can translate content to English, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, and Thai. However, as of this month, you can only pick it up in China. There's no word on when or if it will be available elsewhere.

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• UK watchdog blesses Virgin Media and O2's union, says there's no risk of market distortion or competition loss

  Hard luck, BT
  Matthew Hughes Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 13:55 UTC

  The UK's competition watchdog has provisionally cleared the proposed merger of Virgin Media and O2 after concluding it would not materially impact competition (and thus the price and availability of services) in the telecoms wholesale market.

  The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) started its more inquisitive second phase of the review in December following a request from O2 owner Telefónica and Virgin Media parent Liberty Global.

  This review focused on whether the marriage of O2 and Virgin Media would give the combined company an incentive to degrade the standards of wholesale companies provided to other mobile networks and ISPs.

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• There's no place like GNOME: System 76 introduces COSMIC desktop GUI for its Pop!_OS Linux

  Private preview for now, Windows and macOS users sought for testing
  Tim Anderson Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 13:03 UTC

  System76, a US company which markets laptops, PCs and servers running Linux, is developing a new GNOME-based desktop GUI called COSMIC for its Pop!_OS distribution.

  System76 has its own Linux distribution, called Pop!_OS, which is based on Ubuntu, though with a customised installer and drive encryption by default. The company said it is now developing COSMIC (Computer Operating System Main Interface Components) in time for the next release of Pop!_OS in June. This will be called version 21.04, based on the Ubuntu 21.04 release expected later this month.

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• US Homeland Security sued for 'stonewalling' over use of Clearview facial recognition

  Potential surveillance nightmare could be unfolding in secret, civil-rights warriors fear
  Katyanna Quach Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 12:15 UTC

  The US Department of Homeland Security and its law enforcement agencies – Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection – have been sued for failing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about their use of Clearview AI’s facial-recognition technology.

  Four non-profit organizations focused on civil and immigration rights – the ACLU of Northern California, Mijente, Just Futures Law, and the Immigrant Defense Project – filed the lawsuit [PDF] on Tuesday in northern Cali. They all put in freedom-of-information requests to Uncle Sam over its use of Clearview's tech last year, and have had no response.

  “Facial recognition algorithms erroneously match and misidentify Black and Brown people at a disproportionate rate,” said Jennifer Jones, Technology & Civil Liberties Fellow at the ACLU of Northern California in a statement.

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• Element rolls out bridge for Microsoft Teams to cross into Matrix's encrypted comms land

  For a small fee, of course – and no video or voice yet
  Richard Speed Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 11:30 UTC

  Exclusive Element Matrix Services (EMS) is asking users tied into Microsoft's Teams platform but who "actually want [end-to-end] encrypted secure comms" to take a stroll over a newly built bridge to its own message network.

  The managed bridge permits Teams users to message EMS users and vice versa while staying in their respective apps. Both group and individual messaging are supported as well as unlimited users over unlimited channels. There is, however, a cost to the managed service.

  Matthew Hodgson, co-founder of Matrix and Element, told The Register that the cost of the Teams bridge service would be 50 cents per user per month from the Teams side, and "from the Matrix side, there isn't any additional cost at all, people are just using Matrix."

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• State of Maine says Workday has shown 'no accountability' for farcical $56.4m HR upgrade

  It takes two to tango, says SaaS vendor
  Lindsay Clark Wed 14 Apr 2021 // 10:49 UTC

  Maine has accused Workday of showing "no accountability" for its part in a flawed process to replace the US state's HR system.

  Following a request for an official review into the $54.6m project, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability has published correspondence that Workday would almost certainly rather remain private.

  In a May 2020 letter to the SaaS vendor about the replacement of the state's ageing HR and finance system, Kirsten Figueroa, commissioner of the Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services, said the project last year missed two go-live dates.

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