Oracle's slides: The base specs of Sonoma
How it compares to its bigger sister, the M7
Sonoma's 4th-gen Sparc brains match the M7 – plus the crypto-unit
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Blueprints revealed: Oracle crams Sparc M7 and InfiniBand into cheaper 'Sonoma' chips
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Apple files fresh appeal to stop court order demanding external payment systems in iOS apps
iGiant warned developers it could still charge fees for third-party financial transactions anywayContinue readingApple has appealed a judge's decision forcing the company to allow developers to add external third-party payment systems in their iOS apps by December 9.
The iGiant is still embroiled in a legal battle with games maker Epic in an ongoing case at the Northern District Court of California. Although Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple wasn’t a monopoly, she agreed its in-app purchasing fee, which allows the company to take up to a 30 per cent cut in sales, was anticompetitive.
App developers, like Epic, believe these fees can be avoided if only they could offer customers alternative payment options. Rogers thus ordered an injunction giving Apple 90 days to allow developers to add links or buttons in their apps directing users to third-party purchasing systems. Apple tried to ask for an extension whilst it cobbled together an appeal, but Rogers denied the motion. Now, Apple has taken its request up with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Amazon accused of grossly underreporting COVID-19 cases to US labor agency
'Yes, we had nearly 20,000 cases last year but only 27 were directly work-related. Honestly.'Continue readingIt's claimed Amazon reported only 27 COVID-19 cases among fulfillment center workers to federal government health officials, despite the company's admission that nearly 20,000 employees had been infected last year.
The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), a coalition of four labor unions, has called for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate Amazon’s failure to report work-related cases accurately.
“Allowing Amazon to continue to evade effective federal oversight on COVID safety risks sending the message that the company can continue to prioritize its profits over its workers' health,” according to a letter [PDF] written by the SOC and directed to the US department of labour.
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Qualcomm makes its own mobile gaming rig, hypes new Windows 11 chips
G3x Handheld Developer Kit born from hookup with RazerContinue readingSnapdragon Tech Summit Qualcomm needs just one word to take on the mighty in the gaming and PC markets: 5G.
Qualy has created a new handheld gaming console and introduced new Windows PC chips as it unloads 5G on every imaginable device.
The new handheld rig, called G3x Handheld Developer Kit, was created by Qualcomm with Razer. The device smartly won't challenge Nintendo Switch in the open market, but instead go to developers to go wild on their craziest mobile gaming ideas.
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Google sued for firing staff who claim they tried to follow 'Don't be evil' motto
Civil complaint dovetails with ongoing litigation over alleged union bustingContinue readingAround 2001, Google adopted the motto "Don't be evil" to summarize its avowed values and to spell out the ethical behavior expected from employees.
That motto until late April or early May, 2018, featured prominently in the company's Code of Conduct. It read, "The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put 'Don’t be evil' into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct."
But a handful of Google employees who tried to put that motto into practice – by protesting company cooperation with US government agencies carrying out Trump administration immigration policies – were fired for their activities in 2019.
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Microsoft's Teams Essential tier seems designed to coax people on to Business Basic
Looks like good value, but sorely lacking in some important areasContinue readingBecause not everyone is a Microsoft 365 customer, Microsoft has launched a Teams Essentials standalone product to try to nab those remaining holdouts.
With the likes of Zoom squarely in its sights, the product is aimed at small businesses and raises the capabilities of the freebie version of Teams, starting at $4 (£3+VAT) per person per month.
Jared Spataro, corporate veep for Microsoft 365, said "the world isn't going back to the 'old' way of working." And, of course, Microsoft still needs to add paying customers to its bottom line and fend off the increasing number of conference and collaboration rivals.
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Russia: It isn't just us – a bit of an old US rocket might get as close as 5.4km to the ISS
Meanwhile, Soyuz Cluedo continues: It was someone, with the drill, in the habitation moduleContinue readingRussian news agency TASS has reported that a chunk of a US Pegasus carrier rocket is due to whizz past the International Space Station (ISS) at a minimum distance of 5.4km this week.
In a report that entirely failed to mention the debris cloud created by a Russian Anti-Satellite Test a few weeks ago, space agency Roscosmos was quoted as saying: "No decision has been made on the need to carry out an avoidance manoeuvre.
"Specialists of the Flight Control Center and the Main Information and Analysis Center continue keeping the situation under control."
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Microsoft: What's that? A patch for make-me-admin vuln? Sorry – can't hear you. Have a new jumper instead
Redmond fiddles with Paint while Windows burnsContinue readingUsers wondering if Microsoft is going to do anything about the holes in its flagship operating system will be relieved to note it has found time to fiddle with Paint dialogs and unleash another Christmas jumper.
Despite yet another make-me-admin vulnerability turning up in products last week, Microsoft has fiddled with its inbox stalwarts, smearing the poor things with the Windows 11 UI brush.
This time it was Microsoft Paint that got the treatment. The application had already received user interface changes, and Microsoft showed off changes to the colour picker and image resize and skew dialog for Windows 11 Dev Channel users (those lucky enough to receive the update – our M1 Mac running Windows still enjoys some delightfully retro designs).
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So it turns out Google would like to pass Knative to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation after all
That means the 'forseeable future' at Mountain View is... about two yearsContinue readingWhat a difference two years makes. Knative has applied to become a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) incubating project.
Google had insisted in 2019 that it would not be donating the framework to any foundation "for the foreseeable future" but a few short years later it has kicked off the process to donate the IP, trademark, and code to CNCF.
CNCF was obviously cock-a-hoop about the whole thing, and Priyanka Sharma, the foundation's executive director, told The Register: "Knative is a powerful technology that is enmeshed in the cloud native ecosystem making it easy to run serverless containers on Kubernetes. We welcome the decision and look forward to the Knative community contribution as it goes through the CNCF project proposal process."
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What a cluster fsck: New scheduling code plus Intel's Alder Lake CPU mix equals a slower Linux kernel 5.16
Can we just postpone these changes to next year?Continue readingThe mixture of performance and efficiency CPUs in Intel's 12th-gen Core processors, code-named Alder Lake, hasn't just caused problems for some Windows gamers – it's led to complications for Linux.
Phoronix' Michael Larabel noticed that Release Candidate 1 of the future kernel ran slower than expected on Alder Lake motherboards.. What may be a partial fix, at least, has just landed.
This performance regression involves two related problems. What's interesting is that the origins of at least one of the issues affecting the latest Intel chips lies in a totally different architecture.
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Singapore and UK ink digital trade agreements at Future Tech Forum in London
Such memorandums of understanding are all the rageContinue readingSingapore and the UK signed three memorandums of understanding (MoUs) this week, hoping to strengthen digital connectivity between the two island nations.
In a canned statement, Singapore's Minister for Communications and Information, Josephine Teo, said the agreement would "further strengthen the links between Singapore and the UK in digital trade facilitation, digital identities and cybersecurity."
Nadine Dorries, the UK's Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said it would "reduce costs for businesses and make it easier for [the UK's] thriving impact startups to trade internationally."
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Pension cold-calling financial services biz cops largest ever fine from UK data watchdog
EB Associates facing £140k penalty for 107,000 illegal callsContinue readingEB Associates, a London-based financial advisory business, is facing a £140,000 fine from the UK's data watchdog after it instigated 107,000 illegal cold calls to people about their pensions.
The fine, the largest ever issued by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), follows a wider investigation into organisations dialling up unsuspecting folk to discuss financial arrangements for later in life.
The practice of pension cold-calling was banned by the government in January 2019 to stop people being scammed of their life savings. Companies that make unsolicited calls could be be penalised up to £500,000.
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