Software

• Australian regulator finds Google dominates adtech, seeks powerup to fight back

  Calls for global approach to curtail self-preferencing behaviour, unhelpful opacity that crimps competition
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Tue 28 Sep 2021 // 02:17 UTC 1

  Google utterly dominates Australian advertising, and only new rules can curb the harm its dominance does to local and global markets.

  So says Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in the final report from its Digital Advertising Services Inquiry, released on Tuesday.

  The thrust of the report can be divined in the title of a subhead in its executive summary: "Google's dominance in the ad tech supply chain creates problems for competition, advertisers and publishers".

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• Story of the creds-leaking Exchange Autodiscover flaw – the one Microsoft wouldn't fix even after 5 years

  Redmond reckoned protocol weakness is not a security vulnerability
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 23:57 UTC 2

  Microsoft Exchange clients like Outlook have been supplying unprotected user credentials if you ask in a particular way since at least 2016. Though aware of this, Microsoft's advice continues to be that customers should communicate only with servers they trust.

  On August 10, 2016, Marco van Beek, managing director at UK-based IT consultancy Supporting Role, emailed the Microsoft Security Response Center to disclose an Autodiscover exploit that worked with multiple email clients, including Microsoft Outlook.

  "Basically, I have discovered that it is extremely easy to get access to Exchange (and therefore Active Directory) user passwords in plain text," he wrote. "It doesn't necessarily require any breach of corporate security, and at its most secure, is only as secure as file level access to the corporate website."

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• Self-sailing Mayflower ship to have another crack at Atlantic crossing next year

  Big Blue to return to the big blue waves
  Katyanna Quach Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 22:14 UTC 3

  The Mayflower, the crewless, autonomous ship built with the help of IBM, will try to sail across the Atlantic again next year, after its first attempt failed shortly after it left the UK for the US.

  Created by maritime non-profit Promare, the vessel was designed to not only steer itself but also collect data for scientists to study all sorts of stuff from microplastics to whales. The Mayflower was designed to operate autonomously; it has a mixture of cameras, radar sensors, and machine learning software to detect objects in its environment and navigate safely around cargo ships and fishing vessels. It also has GPS to stay on course, and runs on solar power with a diesel generator for getting through rough conditions.

  In June, three days into an attempt to sail over 3,000 miles from Plymouth in the UK to its counterpart port Plymouth in Massachusetts, it suddenly malfunctioned, and was brought back to British shores for some engineering attention.

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• As Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

  From January 2023, add-ons built with Manifest V2 API will fail
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 20:51 UTC 7

  Google this month said Chrome browser extensions written under its Manifest V2 specification will stop working in January 2023.

  Thereafter, only Manifest V3 extensions will be supported in Chrome, a change that critics fear will hobble the add-ons and make them little more than toys.

  "Years in the making, Manifest V3 is more secure, performant, and privacy-preserving than its predecessor," said David Li, product manager for Chrome extensions and the Chrome Web Store, in a blog post. "It is an evolution of the extension platform that takes into consideration both the changing web landscape and the future of browser extensions."

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• Amazon delivery staff 'denied bonus' pay by AI cameras misjudging their driving

  Plus: Why trans gamers are turning to deepfake voices, and more bits and bytes
  Katyanna Quach Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 19:06 UTC 18

  In brief AI cameras inside Amazon’s delivery trucks are denying drivers' bonus pay for errors they shouldn’t be blamed for, it's reported.

  The e-commerce giant installed the equipment in its vehicles earlier this year. The devices watch the road and the driver, and send out audio alerts if they don't like the way their humans are driving.

  One man in Los Angeles told Vice that when he gets cut off by other cars, the machine would sense the other vehicle suddenly right in front of him, and squawk: “Maintain safe distance!” Logs of the audio alerts and camera footage are relayed back to Amazon, and it automatically decides whether drivers deserve to get bonuses or not from their performance on the road.

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• Container security without governance is neither secure nor governed

  Encryption in a Kubernetes environment
  Timothy Prickett Morgan Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 17:00 UTC

  Sponsored In the first article of our four-part series on Kubernetes in the enterprise, we outlined the data services that underpin a properly constructed Kubernetes container environment. Data security, data governance, data resilience, and data discovery are the pillars that support the evolution of Kubernetes from raw storage, either persistent or ephemeral, to true data services that are suitable for deployment in enterprises.

  In this and subsequent articles we will drill down to those specific data services. Here, we cover data security and data governance together because they are in some ways two sides of the same coin. You can think of security as a layer in data governance or data governance as a higher-level kind of security.

  With containers flitting about a cluster of machines, spawning chunks of microservices code and demanding access to data, it is vital to secure data at the storage layer underneath Kubernetes and from within the Kubernetes platform itself.

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• Two months after Microsoft's fee slash, Google prepares to take a lower cut from vendors on Cloud Platform

  It's dev-ine intervention
  Paul Kunert Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 16:15 UTC 1

  Google Cloud Platform – the perennially third-placed provider in the infrastructure-as-a-service sales race – will reportedly slash the fees charged to third-party vendors that use its cloud marketplace to punt their own services.

  According to CNBC, GCP will take a 3 per cent cut of the revenues generated by other vendors on its digital souk instead of the 20 per cent it has historically swallowed.

  A spokesperson at the Chocolate Factory refused to confirm or deny the specific financials in the change but sent us a statement:

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• Samsung is planning to reverse-engineer the human brain on to a chip

  'Here I am, 100 billion neurons and all you want me to do is calculate all the ways this could possibly go wrong?'
  Matt Dupuy Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 15:16 UTC 53

  Industrial mega-conglomerate Samsung is working to "copy and paste" the structure of the human brain onto computer chips.

  The Korean megacorp has linked with Harvard University to replicate the make-up of the brain in a chip format in the hope that doing so will allow future chips to access the brain's "low power, facile learning, adaptation to environment, and even autonomy and cognition" capabilities.

  According to Samsung: "The brain is made up of a large number of neurons, and their wiring map is responsible for the brain's functions. Thus the knowledge of the map is the key to reverse engineering the brain."

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• UK's National Crime Agency WLTM Deputy Director of Digital Data & Technology

  Up to £118,000 and use of Cycle2work scheme for successful applicant
  Paul Kunert Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 14:31 UTC 4

  Britain's National Crime Agency – charged with thwarting serious and organised crime – is putting out the feelers for a senior figure to head up, among other things, the threat response, analysis, capability exploration and research unit, otherwise known as TRACER.

  The Deputy Director of Digital Data and Technology (DD&T) role at the law enforcement agency is being advertised with a wide-ranging salary of between £71,000 and a little under £118,000, presumably dependent on the levels of skills the chosen candidate can demonstrate.

  The winning candidate will also operate as the NCA's Chief Science and Innovation Officer.

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• Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: iFixit prises open the iPhone 13 Pro

  Battery still swappable – rest fiddly
  Richard Speed Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 13:44 UTC 10

  It wasn't only eager fanbois awaiting their Apple deliveries last week - teardown terror iFixit also got its hands on the iPhone 13 Pro and did what it does best.

  The team took on the 128GB version of Apple's A15-powered iPhone 13 Pro, replete with 6GB RAM, a 6.1-inch (2,532x1,170 pixel) screen and 12MP triple camera system.

  Prising open the phone in a similar way to the iPhone 12 Pro revealed a worryingly flimsy combined digitiser and display cable, and an L-shaped battery.

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• Fake 'BT' caller fleeces elderly victim of £30k in APP app scam

  That's authorised push payment – where they get the mark to make the transfer
  Tim Richardson Mon 27 Sep 2021 // 12:58 UTC 49

  Police have issued an urgent warning after an elderly man was scammed out of £30,000 by phone fraudsters pretending to be from BT.

  The incident happened last Thursday (23 September), prompting West Mercia Police to issue a bulletin warning people to be on their guard against suspicious phone calls.

  In this case, the victim was called with the perpetrators pretending to be from BT. They then asked him to download an application onto his mobile.

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