Legal

• So it is possible for Jeff Bezos to lose: Court dismisses Blue Origin complaint about Moon contract award to Elon Musk

  NASA and SpaceX to resume working on the next lunar lander
  Katyanna Quach Fri 5 Nov 2021 // 03:18 UTC

  The US Court of Federal Claims has dismissed Blue Origin’s complaints that NASA unfairly awarded its $2.89bn next-generation lunar lander system contract to SpaceX.

  The lander, known as the Human Landing System or HLS, is expected to launch the next man and first woman to the Moon. It's part of NASA’s Artemis program, a project to get humans back on the lunar surface. We haven't been there since 1972.

  Commercial aerospace companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics jumped at the chance to build the spaceship that would take future astronauts to Earth's natural satellite.

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• Red Hat forced to hire cheaper, less senior engineers amid budget freeze

  Email tells bosses to down-level open positions to control costs
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Fri 5 Nov 2021 // 00:57 UTC 7

  Exclusive Next year, IBM's Red Hat plans to cut back on hiring senior engineers in an effort largely to control costs.

  An internal email sent on Wednesday by Timothy Cramer, SVP of software engineering, to Red Hat managers directs hiring requisitions to be made at a lower level of seniority than usual.

  "All new plan reqs should be opened at a level below senior (e.g., Associate Software Engineer or Software Engineer)," the message says.

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• Cisco warns 'unintentional debugging credential' left in some network switches can be abused to hijack equipment

  Pair of 10/10 critical bugs demand your attention, as does a 9.8-rated SSH SNAFU
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Fri 5 Nov 2021 // 00:22 UTC 3

  Cisco this week revealed a pair of critical flaws, rated ten out of ten in severity, in its family of Catalyst PON Series Switches Optical Network Terminals.

  One of these vulnerabilities, CVE-2021-34795, is "an unintentional debugging credential," as Cisco put it, baked into the devices.

  What on Earth is an "unintentional debugging credential"? It kinda smells like a backdoor left in by engineers for testing. Cisco's not explained how such a credential was left in a shipping product; we've asked for more details.

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• There, that wasn't so hard, was it? South Korea makes Google allow rival payment systems in Play store apps

  All right, which country's next?
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 23:28 UTC

  Google says it will comply with South Korean law by allowing Android apps hosted on Google Play to include third-party in-app billing systems, a decision that shows the dominant app store duopoly – represented by Apple and Google – losing control of their mobile app platforms.

  In August, the South Korean parliament passed a law that banned major app store operators from requiring that developers use only the platform-endorsed payment system for in-app transactions.

  "In response to the recent legislation, developers will now be able to add an alternative in-app billing system, alongside Google Play’s billing system, for their mobile and tablet users in South Korea," said Wilson White, senior director of public policy at Google, in a blog post. "At checkout, users will be able to choose which billing system to use."

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• Kyndryl spins out of IBM, stock starts trading on NYSE – and shares tumble

  We're sure everything will be OK, its revenues have only fallen 37 per cent in the past decade
  Paul Kunert Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 21:56 UTC 3

  IBM has finally cut loose its multi-billion-dollar managed infrastructure business, renamed to Kyndryl, sending 90,000 staffers into a life that is less big and less blue.

  The spin off, announced in October 2020, was completed today, meaning Kyndryl is now being traded as a separate entity on the New York Stock Exchange. Martin Schroeder, a former IBMer and now Kyndryl CEO and chairman, said:

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• Expired cert breaks Windows 11 snipping tool, emoji panel, S Mode features, other stuff

  And we're talking about shipped code, not some Insider beta, here
  Iain Thomson in San Francisco Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 20:00 UTC 22

  It has proved an unfortunate Halloween for Microsoft, with the ghost of an expired certificate haunting Windows 11 users. The upshot is: various built-in programs may stop working properly or cannot be opened at all.

  Redmond yesterday said "some users" are affected, so you may or may not notice the blunder. This all applies to at least Windows 11 version 21H2.

  The cryptographic cert at the heart of this affair ran out at the end of October leading to failures this month, according to Microsoft: "Starting on November 1, 2021, some users might be unable to open or use certain built-in Windows apps or parts of some built-in apps. This is caused by an issue with a Microsoft digital certificate, which expired October 31, 2021."

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• Teams has a mute button all of its own in taskbar of latest Windows 11 preview build

  Another way to make sure the yawns don't get through
  Richard Speed Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 18:56 UTC 5

  Microsoft has added a mute button for Teams into the taskbar of the latest Windows 11 preview build.

  This should prove very handy for when one lets loose with the expletives due to the collaboration platform behaving poorly.

  The feature has turned up in build 22494 and pops a microphone icon into the taskbar when the user joins a meeting, assuming one is a member of the subset of Windows Insiders lucky enough to have the feature switched on, and also have the work or school version of Microsoft Teams installed.

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• JEDI mind tricks: Google said Pentagon contract didn't align with company values. Now it's chasing another defence gig

  Don't Be Evil... unless...
  Liam Proven in Prague Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 17:38 UTC 7

  Google has changed its mind about dealing with the US Department of Defense and is chasing a juicy chunk of the Pentagon's new Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract.

  Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be Evil"? The Reg speculated about when it'd quietly drop that way back in 2013, and sure enough, by 2018 it was banished to the very end of the code of conduct. Called it.

  There must have been some lingering memories of the slogan when Google dropped out of the bidding for the Pentagon's $10bn JEDI contract, saying that it wouldn't align with the company's values.

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• Microsoft: Many workers are stuck on old computers and should probably upgrade

  What was that, Brad Smith? You're at climate summit COP26 talking about sustainability plans? You're breaking up... Going in a tunnel
  Richard Speed Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 16:28 UTC 62

  Microsoft published a report today that highlights the "problem" of users sticking with ageing devices.

  It's all in the name of productivity, of course, as the company pointed to a potential gap between staff using old kit compared to those with newer computers as remote working becomes the norm for more employees.

  The report, titled "Device Decisions", ponders changing considerations in the IT workplace, and found that two-thirds of employees with a company laptop were still using the same kit they had at the start of the pandemic. That just won't do. "More than a third of employees who received new devices since the onset of COVID-19 reported a resulting increase in their productivity," said Microsoft.

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• Angular 13 arrives: Ivy everywhere, View Engine and IE11 support cut

  Cruft removed to improve performance
  Tim Anderson Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 15:45 UTC 3

  Version 13 of the Google-sponsored Angular JavaScript framework is here and the old View Engine renderer is gone, as is IE11 support, making Angular faster and smaller.

  The latest release is as notable for what has been cut out as for what is included. Google developer relations engineer Mark Thompson said the deprecated View Engine, the old Angular compilation and rendering engine, is no longer available. According to Thompson, this means "teams can look forward to faster compilation because metadata and summary files are no longer included."

  The current rendering engine, called Ivy, is now used everywhere and is being further improved and optimized. This allowed the modernization of the Angular Package Format (APF) and less use of the compatibility compiler ngcc, as well as simplification of the component API, resulting in more concise code.

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• Imagination mulls adding DirectX to its GPU roadmap amid customer interest

  For now, here's an IMG CXT processor with real-time ray-tracing abilities
  Agam Shah Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 15:00 UTC 2

  Imagination Technologies says supporting DirectX is becoming a bigger consideration for the company when it comes to designing GPUs.

  "We've definitely been speaking to a lot of customers around DirectX; it's something that, looking forward, for sure [is] for the roadmap. Obviously it's a big investment, and something that our customers clearly think is very important," Andrew Girdler, product manager at Imagination, told The Register.

  The design house's heritage is in embedded and mobile graphics processors, particularly for Android devices and other Linux-based systems. Support for DirectX, which is the primary low-level graphics and multimedia framework used by games on Windows, is becoming a consideration as Imagination tries to break through into the PC market with more capable GPUs.

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