Science

• What have the Romans ever done for us? In ServiceNow's new Rome release, replaced intranets, for one

  Adds Teams integration for new ‘Employee Centre’, automated automation for service desk
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 13:01 UTC

  ServiceNow has loosed the new "Rome" release of its SaaS workflow platform on a waiting world.

  This one's very much a "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" affair as it doesn't diverge markedly from ServiceNow's current strategy of providing a platform that creates and orchestrates workflows. But there's also a bit of an "All roads lead to Rome" flavour to it, if you substitute "Rome" for apps that try to make sense of running a business at a time when people no longer come to the office every day.

  In ServiceNow's take on the "new normal", hybrid work is perfectly possible, but in its view needs some additional tools to replicate the office experience.

  Continue reading

• Computer and data scientists should be as highly regarded as 'warriors' says top UK cybergeneral

  Translation: Skills shortage here!
  Gareth Corfield Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 12:14 UTC 2

  DSEI 2021 Military computer scientists ought to be treated with the same regard as pilots and warship captains, the head of the Army's cyber command has said.

  In a speech delivered at the DSEI arms fair in London, General Sir Patrick Sanders said: "I have more need of Q than I do 007 or M," referring to characters from the James Bond films.

  The general, head of the Ministry of Defence's Strategic Command which oversees military hacking units, told the conference he wanted "equal value and afford equal status" to computer scientists and "cyber operators", putting them on the same platform as the Army's "traditional warrior elite".

  Continue reading

• UK funds hydrogen-powered cargo submarine to torpedo maritime emissions by 2050

  Green machine will also suck up microplastics between Glasgow and Belfast
  Tim Richardson Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 11:28 UTC 12

  A hydrogen-powered cargo-carrying submarine has received taxpayer funding as part of the UK government's goal to slash maritime emissions by 2050.

  UK-based Oceanways is to use the money to investigate the feasibility of building and testing a prototype automated cargo submarine powered entirely on green hydrogen.

  Boat-building boffins will also be looking to gain an edge in understanding the technical and economic challenges before building a prototype capable of carrying a cargo payload equivalent to a standard 20ft (TEU) shipping container.

  Continue reading

• Technology doesn’t widen the education divide. People do that

  And no, we don’t want a generation of early-years coders
  Joe Fay Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 10:45 UTC 6

  Register Debate Welcome to the latest Register Debate in which writers discuss technology topics, and you – the reader – choose the winning argument. The format is simple: we propose a motion, the arguments for the motion will run this Monday and Wednesday, and the arguments against on Tuesday and Thursday. During the week you can cast your vote on which side you support using the poll embedded below, choosing whether you're in favour or against the motion. The final score will be announced on Friday, revealing whether the for or against argument was most popular. It's up to our writers to convince you to vote for their side.

  This week's motion is: Technology widens the education divide. Arguing AGAINST the motion today is JOE FAY, who has covered the technology business, and the UK’s inability to produce enough technology specialists, for 30 years. Joe has two teenage children and therefore knows the damage technology can to young people – and the damage that they can do to technology.

  The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly highlighted disparities in access to technology. Whole families having to share a tablet, or even a not so smartphone, and a flaky data connection are clearly going to be at a disadvantage compared to their peers with a suite of MacBooks and full-fat broadband.

  Continue reading

• UK Cabinet Office calls off its search for a 'partner' in Whitehall SaaS ERP migration

  'This is not the outcome you were hoping for,' bidders told
  Lindsay Clark Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 10:00 UTC 1

  The UK's Cabinet Office has cancelled a procurement to move a group of central government departments off Oracle's wares to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ERP systems.

  In a procurement document, the team responsible for co-ordinating cross-government activity said it would end the search for a supplier to transfer the Cabinet Office, Department for Work and Pensions, Ministry of Justice, and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from a hosted Oracle eBusiness Suite (version R12), which supports 8,500 staff in the UK, to a SaaS application.

  Procurement began for the implementation 'partner' in April 2020 in a move designed to help shift the government departments away from the "Single Operating Platform" supported by SSCL, a Sopra Steria-run joint venture, to SaaS, hence the, er, catchy moniker SOP2SaaS.

  Continue reading

• Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov on CLU and why programming is still cool

  Error handling and encapsulation remain the name of the game
  Richard Speed Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 09:15 UTC

  Interview It has been 13 years since Barbara Liskov won a Turing Award for her contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, and these days the creator of the CLU programming language continues to work on some interesting problems.

  We spoke about innovation, abstraction and encapsulation in the 1970s and today in a recent chat.

  Liskov, now in her 80s, leads the Programming Methodology Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently, she has been working on parallel computing and, with a student, invented Byzantine Fault Tolerance* [PDF] in the 1990s, "which turns out to be very significant for the blockchain world," she says.

  Continue reading

• De-identify, re-identify: Anonymised data's dirty little secret

  Jeffrey Singh, stamp-collecting bachelor (35) of Milwaukee, Wisconsin – is that you?
  Danny Bradbury Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 08:28 UTC 27

  Feature Publishing data of all kinds offers big benefits for government, academic, and business users. Regulators demand that we make that data anonymous to deliver its benefits while protecting personal privacy. But what happens when people read between the lines?

  Making data anonymous is known as de-identifying it, but doing it properly is more challenging than it seems, says Wei Wang, professor of computer science and director of the Scalable Analytics Institute at UCLA.

  "It's one thing to remove the identity, but we also need to keep in mind that the remaining data right after we remove that entity is still useful," she says.

  Continue reading

• Myanmar junta demanded telcos activate phone interception tools – and we refused, says Telenor

  Norwegian carrier insists it's quitting Asian nation to defend human rights – but the buyer it lined up is accused of shady dealings
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 07:57 UTC 10

  Norwegian mobile carrier Telenor has revealed one reason it is quitting Myanmar is that the nation's ruling junta wanted it to intercept calls carried on its network.

  Myanmar's democratically elected government was usurped by a military junta in February 2021. Internet blackouts followed as the military sought to limit opposition. Telenor, which has a history of championing human rights, voiced its opposition to those blackouts, wrote off the value of its Myanmar operations, then sold its local network to a Lebanon-based entity called M1 Group.

  We'll revisit M1 Group in a few paragraphs.

  Continue reading

• Virtual reality means the future of education is right before our eyes

  Keeping the headset clean is as important as keeping the content clean
  Joseph Martins Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 07:30 UTC

  Sponsored Virtual reality means the future of education is right before our eyes Keeping the headset clean is as important as keeping the content clean

  Changes in education can prompt strong emotions, never more so than when it involves new technology. But while the 3Rs undoubtedly remain at the centre of learning, VR is poised to play an increasing role.

  Virtual reality has been around since the 1960s, and most of us could easily draw a line from efforts around flight and surgery simulation or product design in the 1990s to the current day. The technology certainly has enough of a history to have generated serious research on exactly how VR, or immersive learning, can deliver tangible benefits for students.

  Continue reading

• Oracle sets its own JDK free, sort of, for a while

  Welcome to the No-Fee Terms and Conditions, which makes the Java dev kit a bit more appealing
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 06:57 UTC 7

  Analysis Oracle this week made Oracle JDK "available for free," for personal, commercial and production use, including quarterly security updates, for a limited time.

  "Free" in this context means the software is now licensed under the Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions (NFTC) license, having been previously under the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) License Agreement for Oracle Java SE.

  But "free" does not mean developers may do as they please. Oracle's NFTC forbids redistribution of its Java software for a fee.

  Continue reading

• It's time to delete that hunter2 password from your Microsoft account, says IT giant

  And go passwordless, use auth app, keys, Windows Hello, or codes to login
  Laura Dobberstein Thu 16 Sep 2021 // 05:58 UTC 35

  From this week, Microsoft won't require you, or your password manager, to come up with strings of letters, numbers, and special characters forming a silly sentence or a reconfiguration of an ex’s name and birthday to access the Windows giant's services.

  That is to say, you can delete the password from your Microsoft account, and login using the Microsoft Authenticator app, Windows Hello, a security key, or a verification code sent to your cellphone or email inbox. When you set it up, you'll be rewarded with this chirpy dialog box...

  Continue reading