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Faster, Sysadmin! Install! Install!

The Chromium crew has revved its engines and decided it will soon emit a new stable release every four weeks and create a new type of release for those who are built for comfort rather than speed.…

Tech visa reform pledged, alongside diplomacy to write new rules for tech

The Biden administration has named China as the most threatening nation the United States faces, on grounds that it can combine its technological and other capabilities like no other.…

Despite perils of 500PB data trove, 'microservices abuse' and need to rapidly bring Asian tech to the world

PayPal says it managed to deliver 30 per cent more features than usual during 2020, a year in which its teams worked from home.…

Software remains pretty much the same... but at twice the price

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server has maintained the same starting price over the past few years. Now, changes to the way the software is licensed have doubled the cost for some self-support customers using virtual machines.…

Assuming your content blocker can scrutinize DNS

AdGuard on Thursday published a list of more than 6,000 CNAME-based trackers so they can be incorporated into content-blocking filters.…

Charges filed against head of content as cast and crew apply for 'anticipatory bail'

Amazon Prime India has issued a rare-for-Big-Tech apology for material deemed offensive in Bezos's streaming arm's political thriller, Tandav and legal writs fly.…

Good news for memory makers, not such great news for wider tech world

US memory maker Micron Technology expects the chronic shortage of DRAM in the market to continue throughout this year, according to senior veep and CFO David Zinsner.…

Hit the organ-grinder, not just the monkey

US payments processing biz Brightspeed Solutions and its founder have been accused of handling $63m on behalf of tech support scammers who preyed on the elderly and less technically adept while posing as reps of Microsoft and Symantec.…

Come to Outlook Mobile. The water's lovely

Microsoft issued a reminder during its Ignite shindig this week that for every shiny new service it launches, it nudges an older one aside once the lustre has worn off.…

Apple could face an EU antitrust charge sheet in the coming weeks following a 2019 complaint by music streaming service Spotify, Reuters reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The charge could force changes to Apple's lucrative business model, they said. The European Commission could send the statement of objections setting out suspected violations of the bloc's antitrust rules to Apple before the summer, one of the people said. The case is one of four opened by the EU competition enforcer into Apple in June last year. The EU charge sheet usually indicates whether a fine is merited and what companies have to do to halt anti-competitive practices.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wooloohoo shares a report: Livestock researchers in Africa are looking to genome editing and other new technologies to identify genes that could help them tame the spread of a parasite that spreads sleeping sickness in animals and humans. In addition to work aimed at eradicating African trypanosomiasis, scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi are using gene editing to introduce such desirable traits as heat tolerance and disease resistance into cattle and chickens, said Prof. Steve Kemp, program leader in livestock genetics at ILRI. However, he said the effort is still at the preliminary research stage. African animal trypanosomiasis is a parasitic disease that causes serious livestock losses due to anemia and lower reproduction rates, according to the Center for Food Security and Public Health. Losses in cattle are especially prominent, though other animals, including dogs, can also be affected. Untreated cases can be fatal, and the mortality rate is high in some outbreaks. "Eradicating African animal trypanosomiasis is extremely important as we estimate that Africa loses US$1 billion annually due to human and livestock diseases," Kemp said. The people keeping livestock have experienced huge losses due to animal diseases, said Abdikadir Mohamed, chief executive officer of the Kenya Livestock Marketing Council (KLMC). "This leads to people getting poorer. Some sickly animals are rejected during market days, yet they come from far to sell the livestock. There is also a security threat as herders go back with their livestock. We need to stop these persistent diseases by available technologies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

High-growth hungry investors worrying you? Try hyperscalers!

Snowflake has more than doubled its annual revenue in the last year but investors seem unimpressed with the $33bn IPO company's efforts.…

U.K. authorities have launched an investigation into Apple's App Store over concerns it has a dominant role that stifles competition and hurts consumers. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said Thursday it was looking into "suspected breaches of competition law" by Apple. The announcement adds to regulatory scrutiny of the iPhone maker's app distribution platform, which is also the subject of three antitrust probes by the European Union's executive Commission. Apple said the App Store is "a safe and trusted place for customers" and a "great business opportunity for developers." The investigation was triggered in part by complaints from app developers that Apple will only let them distribute their apps to iPhone and iPad users through the App Store. The developers also complained that the company requires any purchases of apps, add-ons or upgrades to be made through its Apple Pay system, which charges up to 30% commission. "Millions of us use apps every day to check the weather, play a game or order a takeaway," Andrea Coscelli, the authority's CEO, said in a statement. "So, complaints that Apple is using its market position to set terms which are unfair or may restrict competition and choice -- potentially causing customers to lose out when buying and using apps -- warrant careful scrutiny." The watchdog said it would consider whether Apple has a "dominant position" in app distribution for Apple devices in the U.K., and, if it does, whether the company "imposes unfair or anti-competitive terms on developers" that results in less choice or higher prices for consumers buying apps and extra.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bit of a pain switching the thing on, but you can't have everything

Unwilling to wait the few months until the launch of the first Apple Silicon iMac, a popular retro computing vlogger has retrofitted a 2011 27-inch model with the innards of the latest M1 Mac Mini. And it worked. Sort of.…

Red Hat's State of Enterprise Open Source might have an answer

A shift within the enterprise to open source is gathering pace due less to total cost of ownership and more to innovations around infrastructure and container technologies, according to a new report.…

Square has agreed to buy a majority stake in Tidal, the streaming music service led by rapper Jay-Z, as part of an effort to expand the company's suite of financial tools to musicians and emerging artists. From a report: Square will pay $297 million in a mix of cash and stock to become Tidal's "significant majority" owner, though Jay-Z and Tidal's other existing artist-shareholders will retain some ownership in the company. Tidal will operate independently within Square, according to a company release, and Jay-Z will join Square's board of directors. "New ideas are found at intersections, and we believe there's a compelling one between music and the economy," Square Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in a prepared statement. Bloomberg News previously reported that Dorsey and Jay-Z, who are friends, had discussed a potential deal. It's not immediately clear how Square will help Tidal build its business, but there is a lot of overlap between the music industry and Square's existing market, which includes payments and commerce, says Jesse Dorogusker, the Square executive who will serve as interim leader of Tidal inside its new parent company.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Talk about a hostile environment... It's £70k+ but you'll really sweat for it

For the brave – or perhaps foolhardy – senior IT jobs hunters there is an opening at the UK Home Office for a Deputy Director of IT Operations in a lovely '70s era highrise in Croydon.…

SpaceX has launched another batch of its Starlink satellites -- the usual complement of 60 of the low Earth orbit spacecraft, which will join the more than 1,000 already making up the existing constellation. This is the fifth launch of Starlink satellites for SpaceX this year, and the 20th overall. From a report: Earlier this year, SpaceX opened up Starlink access to anyone in a current or planned service area via a pre-order reservation system with a refundable up-front deposit. The company aims to continue launches like this one apace throughout 2021 in order to get the constellation to the point where it can serve customers over a much larger portion of the globe. SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell has previously said that the company expects it should have coverage over much of the globe at a constellation size of around 1,200 satellites, but the company has plans to launch more than 30,000 to fully build out its network capacity and speed. While SpaceX is making good progress on Starlink with its Falcon 9 launcher, it's also looking ahead to Starship as a key driver of the constellation's growth. Starship, SpaceX's next-generation launch vehicle currently under development in South Texas, will be able to deliver 400 Starlink satellites at a time to orbit, and it's also being designed with full reusability and fast turnaround in mind.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Partly chalked up to someone applying a plunger to the supply chain blockage

The prospect of a return to office-based work as vaccinations increase has done nothing to dampen PC demand, with IDC forecasting double-digit growth for traditional consumer and business computing devices in Q1.…

We don't want to take 'first past the post' candidates, says contract award notice. Ahem

Perhaps learning from the not-insignificant errors attributed to the Army’s efforts at recruitment IT, the UK’s Navy and Airforce have decided to farm out development of their systems with the award of a £9.5m contract to low-code software specialist Pega Systems.…