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Edge computing set for growth – that is, when we can agree what it is
Analyst predicts double-digit percentage uptick in '22Continue readingWorldwide spending on edge computing is expected to see double-digit growth this year, according to new figures from analyst IDC.
It also predicted investments in edge will reach $176bn in 2022, an increase of 14.8 per cent over last year.
"Edge computing continues to gain momentum as digital-first organisations seek to innovate outside of the data centre," IDC research vice president Dave McCarthy said in a statement, adding that the diverse needs of edge deployments have created a market opportunity for technology suppliers, increasingly through partnerships and alliances.
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Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game
Stop horsing around. Pony upContinue readingOpinion There's much talk of the Open Source Sustainability Problem. From individual developers to Google's White House lobbying, the issue seems simple but intractable. Is the willingness of volunteer coders a solid enough basis for the long-term health of essential infrastructure?
This is, of course, balderdash. It's not an open source problem, it's a software problem. All software needs resources to adapt as the working environment changes, resources the changed environment may not provide. Look how many out-of-support versions of Windows still limp on like superannuated footy players in the Sunday leagues.
According to StatCounter, as of December 2021, one in seven PCs still runs Windows 7. One in 200 is on XP. Try getting Microsoft to update either.
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Planning for power cuts? That's strictly for the birds
Please Mr Hitchcock, no more. The UPS can't take itContinue readingWho, Me? "Expect the unexpected" is a cliché regularly trotted out during disaster planning. But how far should those plans go? Welcome to an episode of Who, Me? where a reader finds an entirely new failure mode.
Today's tale comes from "Brian" (not his name) and is set during a period when the US state of California was facing rolling blackouts.
Our reader was working for a struggling hardware vendor in the state, a once mighty power now reduced to a mere 1,400 employees thanks to that old favourite of the HR axe-wielder: "restructuring."
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North Korea pulled in $400m in cryptocurrency heists last year – report
Plus: FIFA 22 players lose their identity and Texas gets phony QR codesContinue readingIn brief Thieves operating for the North Korean government made off with almost $400m in digicash last year in a concerted attack to steal and launder as much currency as they could.
A report from blockchain biz Chainalysis found that attackers were going after investment houses and currency exchanges in a bid to purloin funds and send them back to the Glorious Leader's coffers. They then use mixing software to make masses of micropayments to new wallets, before consolidating them all again into a new account and moving the funds.
Bitcoin used to be a top target but Ether is now the most stolen currency, say the researchers, accounting for 58 per cent of the funds filched. Bitcoin accounted for just 20 per cent, a fall of more than 50 per cent since 2019 - although part of the reason might be that they are now so valuable people are taking more care with them.
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Tesla Full Self-Driving videos prompt California's DMV to rethink policy on accidents
Plus: AI systems can identify different chess players by their moves and moreContinue readingIn brief California’s Department of Motor Vehicles said it’s “revisiting” its opinion of whether Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving feature needs more oversight after a series of videos demonstrate how the technology can be dangerous.
“Recent software updates, videos showing dangerous use of that technology, open investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the opinions of other experts in this space,” have made the DMV think twice about Tesla, according to a letter sent to California’s Senator Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Senate’s transportation committee, and first reported by the LA Times.
Tesla isn’t required to report the number of crashes to California’s DMV unlike other self-driving car companies like Waymo or Cruise because it operates at lower levels of autonomy and requires human supervision. But that may change after videos like drivers having to take over to avoid accidentally swerving into pedestrians crossing the road or failing to detect a truck in the middle of the road continue circulating.
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Alien life on Super-Earth can survive longer than us due to long-lasting protection from cosmic rays
Laser experiments show their magnetic fields shielding their surfaces from radiation last longerContinue readingLife on Super-Earths may have more time to develop and evolve, thanks to their long-lasting magnetic fields protecting them against harmful cosmic rays, according to new research published in Science.
Space is a hazardous environment. Streams of charged particles traveling at very close to the speed of light, ejected from stars and distant galaxies, bombard planets. The intense radiation can strip atmospheres and cause oceans on planetary surfaces to dry up over time, leaving them arid and incapable of supporting habitable life. Cosmic rays, however, are deflected away from Earth, however, since it’s shielded by its magnetic field.
Now, a team of researchers led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) believe that Super-Earths - planets that are more massive than Earth but less than Neptune - may have magnetic fields too. Their defensive bubbles, in fact, are estimated to stay intact for longer than the one around Earth, meaning life on their surfaces will have more time to develop and survive.
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And relax: No repeat car crash financials for SAP in 2021 as cloud services come good
Let's not mention on-premise licences....Continue readingERP specialist SAP saw Q4 cloud revenue jump 28 per cent compared with the same period a year earlier to hit €2.61bn
In preliminary results, total revenue for calendar 2021 was up 6 per cent year-on-year to €7.98bn - a marked contrast to the car crash financials served up by SAP for 2020.
Customer migration to the vendor's latest in-memory ERP platform was sluggish prior to initiatives SAP put in place to convince customers to migrate. The prelims show those plans are working.
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Google and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves
Latest iteration of Texas-led antitrust complaint against Google expands claims of bad behaviorContinue readingThe alleged 2017 deal between Google and Facebook to kill header bidding, a way for multiple ad exchanges to compete fairly in automated ad auctions, was negotiated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and endorsed by both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (now with Meta) and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, according to an updated complaint filed in the Texas-led antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Texas, 14 other US states, and the Commonwealths of Kentucky and Puerto Rico accused Google of unlawfully monopolizing the online ad market and rigging ad auctions in a December, 2020, lawsuit. The plaintiffs subsequently filed an amendment complaint in October, 2021, that includes details previously redacted.
On Friday, Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint [PDF] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages.
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US-China chip cold war? It's only helping the Middle Kingdom, silicon makers warn
It's blowback time againContinue readingChina's cold war with the US on chips isn't slowing down the country's rapid growth in semiconductors, the Semiconductor Industry Association said this week.
The US sanctions on Chinese companies didn't have the intended effect of restricting China's semiconductor industry. In fact, the saber-rattling is only serving for China to get its act together on semiconductors, the industry body warned.
China's semiconductor industry sales totaled $39.8bn in 2020, a growth rate of 30.6 per cent from 2019, the SIA said. In 2015, China chip sales were just $13bn, or a 3.8 per cent market share.
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Alibaba ponders its crystal ball to spy coming advances in AI and silicon photonics
Machine learning to propel us into glorious era of scientific discoveryContinue readingAlibaba has published a report detailing a number of technology trends the China-based megacorp believes will make an impact across the economy and society at large over the next several years. This includes the use of AI in scientific research, adoption of silicon photonics, the integration of terrestrial, and satellite data networks among others.
The Top Ten Technology Trends report was produced by Alibaba's DAMO Academy, set up by the firm in 2017 as a blue-sky scientific and technological research outfit. DAMO hit the headlines recently with hints of a novel chip architecture that merges processing and memory.
Among the trends listed in the DAMO report, AI features more than once. In science, DAMO believes that AI-based approaches will make new scientific paradigms possible, thanks to the ability of machine learning to process massive amounts of multi-dimensional and multi-modal data, and solve complex scientific problems. The report states that AI will not only accelerate the speed of scientific research, but also help discover new laws of science, and is set to be used as a production tool in some basic sciences.
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Lawmakers propose TLDR Act because no one reads Terms of Service agreements
The bill calls for concise, machine readable summaries of how websites and apps use client dataContinue readingAlmost no one bothers to read the Terms of Service agreements on websites so a group of US lawmakers on Thursday proposed a bill to require that commercial websites and mobile apps translate their legalese into summaries that can be more easily read by people and by machines.
The bill, titled the Terms-of-service Labeling, Design and Readability (TLDR) Act [PDF], was introduced by Lori Trahan (D-MA-03), Senator Bill Cassidy, (R-LA), and Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), making it technically a bipartisan effort – something of a rarity at a time when the two major US political parties can't agree on basic facts like who was lawfully elected President in 2020.
"For far too long, blanket terms of service agreements have forced consumers to either ‘agree’ to all of a company’s conditions or lose access to a website or app entirely," said Congresswoman Trahan, a member of the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, in a statement. "No negotiation, no alternative, and no real choice."
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