Legal

• VMware's divorce from Dell is complete: Virtualization giant now a separate biz with $64bn valuation

  Wants to be the 'Switzerland' of cloud
  Agam Shah Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 23:02 UTC 1

  VMware completed its divorce from Dell on Monday – and immediately signaled its intent to go out find more partners and acquire companies.

  That means Dell Technologies has formally spun off VMware into a separate, independent software business, completing an April transaction to offload its 80.5 per cent ownership in the company, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission submitted by the virtualization specialist.

  Dell received VMware as part of its $67bn merger in 2016 with EMC, which created the world's largest private company at the time. It was a part of a string of takeovers that ballooned Dell's debt.

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• FCC officially opens its $1.9bn purse to reimburse those ripping out and replacing Huawei, ZTE kit

  You've got just over a couple of months to get your compensation requests filed
  Katyanna Quach Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 22:23 UTC 2

  The FCC is now accepting reimbursement requests from companies in the US that are ripping out and replacing their now-unwelcome Chinese Huawei and ZTE networking equipment.

  Small to medium-sized companies with fewer than ten million customers can ask the American watchdog to cover the costs of removing, replacing, and disposing of the gear. Organizations have until January 14, 2022 to apply for a slice of the FCC’s $1.9bn Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program.

  As a reminder, in December telcos and similar outfits were strong-armed into agreeing to extract and replace Huawei and ZTE technology in their networks on the grounds of maintaining national security. US communications providers had to fall in line with this order, and dump their Chinese boxen, if they wanted to tap into the FCC's Universal Service Fund, a subsidy they pretty much all rely on. Thus, the carriers and co had little choice.

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• Apple's macOS Monterey upgrades some people's laptops to doorstops

  Reports of bricked computers suggest it may be worth waiting for better-behaving code
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 20:36 UTC 7

  Apple's latest desktop operating system, macOS Monterey, has downgraded some users' machines to the equivalent of a brick, according to multiple complaints posted to social media.

  Major operating system updates often cause problems for some indeterminate subset of users, which is why many technically inclined types recommend waiting for a revision or two before gambling that all will work well under a new OS version.

  Apple, in theory, should experience fewer technical snafus with macOS and iOS due to its control over hardware – the Windows hardware ecosystem is far more diverse, and so more potential problems might be expected. Nonetheless, the iBiz's conscious coupling of hardware and software manages to go awry often enough.

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• Apple's anti-ad-tracking iPhone feature took a '$10bn' chunk out of social network revenues

  What's that, the world's tiniest violin playing?
  Lindsay Clark Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 18:48 UTC 8

  In a move bound to incite a collective "diddums" from industry watchers, Apple's decision to change the privacy settings on iPhones has left an estimated $9.85bn crater in the revenues of Facebook, Snap, Twitter, and YouTube.

  Introduced in April, the App Tracking Transparency led to the number of Facebook and Instagram users on iOS agreeing to be tracked for targeted ads falling drastically in the week since Apple's iOS 14.5 debuted.

  The App Tracking Transparency framework in iOS 14.5 requires companies to ask permission to observe the activities of iOS app users – that is to say, to link application usage and data with user or device information collected from other sources for targeted advertising or analytics.

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• Trojan Source attack: Code that says one thing to humans tells your compiler something very different, warn academics

  Bidirectional character attack – simple and nightmarish
  Gareth Corfield Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 17:18 UTC 15

  Updated The way Unicode's UTF-8 text encoding handles different languages could be misused to write malicious code that says one thing to humans and another to compilers, academics are warning.

  "What if it were possible to trick compilers into emitting binaries that did not match the logic visible in source code?" ask Cambridge student Nicholas Boucher and Professor Ross Anderson in a paper published today.

  They say it is possible, and outlined a new threat [PDF] that could be deployed by future supply chain attackers – making detection of something like the SolarWinds attack at code level even harder than it is already.

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• Microsoft wins JEDI contract, Amazon complains. Amazon wins NSA contract, watchdog says Microsoft right to moan

  US Government Audit Office upholds Redmond's protest
  Liam Proven in Prague Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 16:17 UTC 5

  The US Government Accountability Office has agreed Microsoft was right to contest the award of the National Security Agency's $10bn cloud computing contact, saying it found parts of NSA's evaluation to be "unreasonable".

  According to a GAO statement about the project, code-named "WildAndStormy" (or WandS), it "sustained the protest filed by the Microsoft Corporation." It added: "GAO found certain aspects of the agency's evaluation to be unreasonable and, in light thereof, recommended that NSA reevaluate the proposals consistent with the decision and make a new source selection determination."

  WildAndStormy was won by Amazon Web Services in August, but Microsoft wasted no time in challenging the winning bid, just as AWS had done when Microsoft won the JEDI deal, itself also a $10bn decade-long single supplier agreement.

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• Having made £1bn in gross savings well ahead of March 2023 deadline, more cuts could be on BT's agenda

  Now exec talk turns to defence against corporate takeovers and where next for efficiency gains
  Paul Kunert Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 15:15 UTC 9

  BT is said to be mulling whether to widen the multibillion-pound cost savings initiative that began in 2018 after meeting financial goals well ahead of the deadline.

  The former state monopoly, which reports its latest quarterly Profit & Loss accounts on 4 November, released a statement today updating on its progress.

  "BT confirms that it has delivered on its £1bn of gross annualised cost savings 18 months ahead of the March 2023 target," it told the London Stock Exchange.

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• Linux 5.15 kernel released with new NTFS driver: Next LTS or will 5.16 sneak in?

  Also SMB3 server in the kernel, and new DAMON memory monitor
  Tim Anderson Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 14:31 UTC 8

  Linus Torvalds released version 5.15 of the Linux kernel yesterday with a new NTFS driver, an SMB3 server and an advanced memory monitor among the features. 5.15 is likely to be an LTS release unless 5.16 squeezes in before year end.

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• Battery in 2021 MacBook Pro way easier to replace, says iFixit – shame about the rest

  When we say 'way easier,' you better have a steady hand and nerves of steel
  Richard Currie Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 13:45 UTC 6

  The fearless iFixit website has taken its tools to the M1-powered 2021 MacBook Pro and come away with a repairability score that will be of no surprise to followers of Apple's pricey hardware.

  While taking a moment to marvel at the number of ports that have returned to the company's flagship laptop (USB-C, HDMI, headphone jack, and SD card reader), the crew was heartened to find no adhesive securing the rear plate – once the proprietary pentalobe screws had been dealt with, that is.

  Inside, iFixit noted that the chassis was crammed wall to wall with speakers and batteries, as well as a "robust-looking" fan setup.

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• Android has its head in the sand with AbstractEmu malware rooting phones

  Plus Microsoft funding community security to fill US skills gap
  Iain Thomson in San Francisco Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 13:01 UTC 3

  In Brief A new and dangerous form of malware for rooting Android phones has been spotted in 19 apps on Google's Play store, as well as in several in the Amazon Appstore, the Samsung Galaxy Store, and other third-party sites.

  Dubbed AbstractEmu by bug-hunters at Lookout, who first spotted the code, the malware would give full access to all functions on an Android device and would be almost impossible to remove without doing a full system wipe. One of the infected apps, Lite Launcher, already had over 10,000 downloads before it was removed from the store.

  "We think the actors are a well-resourced group with financial motivation," Lookout said. "Their code-base and evasion techniques – such as the use of burner emails, names, phone numbers and pseudonyms – are quite sophisticated. We also found parallels between the malware and banking trojans, such as the untargeted distribution of their apps and the permissions they seek."

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• Google lab proposes solar-powered moisture farming to provide water for billions

  From Tatooine to Earth
  Lindsay Clark Mon 1 Nov 2021 // 12:13 UTC 34

  Star Wars-style moisture farming could provide safe drinking water for approximately 1 billion people here on Earth, according to research from a Google-owned research lab.

  Solar-powered atmospheric water harvesting is an untapped source of clean drinking water, a global assessment modelled on hypothetical devices has shown.

  X Development, owned by Google parent Alphabet, said that 2.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water worldwide, with the highest populations located in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

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