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Not secure enough for UK.gov use either

Huawei has not showed British government overseers a “credible plan” for dealing with security shortcomings flaged in a report issued last year, the technical director of the National Cyber Security Centre has said.…

It's now easier than ever in France to act out Star Wars fantasies. The country's fencing federation has officially recognized lightsaber dueling as a competitive sport, granting the weapon from George Lucas's space saga the same status as the foil, epee and sabre, the traditional blades used at the Olympics. From a report: Of course, the LED-lit, rigid polycarbonate replicas can't slice an opponent in half. But they look and sound remarkably like the blades that Yoda and other characters wield in the blockbuster movies. The physicality of lightsaber combat is part of the reason why the French Fencing Federation is now equipping fencing clubs with lightsabers and training would-be lightsaber instructors. Like virtuous Jedi knights, the federation sees itself as combatting a Dark Side: the sedentary habits of 21st-century life. "With young people today, it's a real public health issue. They don't do any sport and only exercise with their thumbs," says Serge Aubailly, the federation's secretary general. "That is why we are trying to create a bond between our discipline and modern technologies, so participating in a sport feels natural." In the past, Zorro, Robin Hood and The Three Musketeers helped lure new practitioners to fencing. Now, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader are joining them. "Cape-and-sword movies have always had a big impact on our federation and its growth," Aubailly says. "Lightsaber films have the same impact. Young people want to give it a try."

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A team at Switzerland-based research center CERN has rebuilt WorldWideWeb, the world's first browser created in 1990 for its researchers. From a report: Earlier this month a group of developers and designers convened at CERN, or The European Organization for Nuclear Research, to rebuild WorldWideWeb in celebration of its 30th anniversary. The WorldWideWeb browser was built by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 on a NeXT machine, following his March 1989 proposal for a 'Mesh' or global hypertext system for CERN that he would later call the World Wide Web. The system aimed to address information loss that came with a high turnover and CERN's constantly changing technology. This was an acute problem at CERN that Berners-Lee predicted the world would also face within the next decade. Besides the browser, Berners-Lee developed 'httpd', the first hypertext server software for serving up early webpages. The WorldWideWeb browser simulator is now available online to view in a modern browser. For anyone curious to know how to use it, the developers have provided written instructions and a video demo.

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Marketing biz decides 'GD PR' was getting it noticed in all the wrong ways

Almost a year after the General Data Protection Regulation came into effect, the European Union's stricter privacy law has claimed another victim.…

From a report: Logitech has announced it is bringing back the "legendary" (the company's word, not mine) MX518 gaming mouse. The announcement says "many consider [it] to be the finest gaming mouse of all time." I am definitely one of those people. Logitech first released the MX518 in 2005, as the successor to the already-pretty-good MX510 gaming mouse released in 2004. The MX518 was around for six years before Logitech tried to replace it with the G400 gaming mouse in 2011. I say "tried" because, well, it just wasn't the same. Logitech has finally admitted as much, after eight years of trying. The company is promising that the reborn MX518 will have the same shape and feel as the original. The materials have been updated, and there's a new "Nightfall" finish but, crucially, it's still an MX518.

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First-ever pure-64-bit-only Armv8-A SMT server processor brains may lure chip designers

If your humble Reg hack had a dollar for every Arm server processor pre-launch, launch, and car-crash failure he's witnessed, he'd be able to treat himself to a round of San Francisco's finest avocado on toast and a quad-espresso latte this morning. In other words, about 15 bucks.…

Whoops! Oh gosh

+Comment Google has apologised for not telling Nest smart home kit owners there was a microphone in their gear.…

Nefarious activity of cyber villains continues, but don't fret: AccountGuard will save you

American tech giant Microsoft revealed this morning it has detected a wave of attacks against European democratic institutions as miscreants continue malware insertion attempts.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Qualcomm is urging U.S. trade regulators to reverse a judge's ruling and ban the import of some Apple iPhones in a long-running patent fight between the two companies. Qualcomm is seeking the ban in hopes of dealing Apple a blow before the two begin a major trial in mid-April in San Diego over Qualcomm's patent licensing practices. Qualcomm has sought to apply pressure to Apple with smaller legal challenges ahead of that trial and has won partial iPhone sales bans in China and Germany against Apple, forcing the iPhone maker to ship only phones with Qualcomm chips to some markets. Any possible ban on iPhone imports to the United States could be short-lived because Apple last week for the first time disclosed that it has found a software fix to avoid infringing on one of Qualcomm's patents. Apple asked regulators to give it as much as six months to prove that the fix works. Qualcomm brought a case against Apple at the U.S. International Trade Commission in 2017 alleging that some iPhones violated Qualcomm patents to help smart phones run well without draining their batteries. Qualcomm asked for an import ban on some older iPhone models containing Intel chips. In September, Thomas Pender, an administrative law judge at the ITC, found that Apple violated one of the patents in the case but declined to issue a ban. Pender reasoned that imposing a ban on Intel-chipped iPhones would hand Qualcomm an effective monopoly on the U.S. market for modem chips, which connect smart phones to wireless data networks. Pender's ruling said that preserving competition in the modem chip market was in the public interest as speedier 5G networks come online in the next few years.

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ERP biz reportedly ringfencing jobs of machine learning and analytics types

German ERP biz SAP’s €950m restructuring, which will see 4,400 staffers given the boot, will hit Germany and the US hardest – but those in areas like machine learning reportedly won’t be in the firing line.…

Staff told: 'Do not come to work tomorrow. Do not attempt to re-enter the store for any reason'

Apple's community of third party sellers shrunk slightly this week when retail chain Solutions Inc shuttered stores and called in an administrative receiver FRP Advisory.…

Not exactly... But we might be seeing a toe twitching

Text messaging volumes have been in decline for the past decade as smartphones, bundled data plans and the ubiquity of Wi-Fi allowed people to bypass telco charges and use OTT (over-the-top) messaging apps like WhatsApp.…

Aloogle? Goolooma? Take your pick

Google has hoovered up data pipeline pusher Alooma for an undisclosed amount as the ad slinger continues its efforts to clamber up the cloud charts.…

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg: Apple wants to make it easier for software coders to create tools, games and other applications for its main devices in one fell swoop -- an overhaul designed to encourage app development and, ultimately, boost revenue. The ultimate goal of the multistep initiative, code-named "Marzipan," is by 2021 to help developers build an app once and have it work on the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers, said people familiar with the effort. That should spur the creation of new software, increasing the utility of the company's gadgets. Later this year, Apple plans to let developers port their iPad apps to Mac computers via a new software development kit that the company will release as early as June at its annual developer conference. Developers will still need to submit separate versions of the app to Apple's iOS and Mac App Stores, but the new kit will mean they don't have to write the underlying software code twice, said the people familiar with the plan. In 2020, Apple plans to expand the kit so iPhone applications can be converted into Mac apps in the same way. Further reading: Tim Cook, in April 2018: Users Don't Want iOS To Merge With MacOS.

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Nigerian and Brit augmented boffinry could save billions

Rejoice, Brexit Galileo worriers! Your hand-wringing is at an end thanks to research by Brighton-based Professor Chris Chatwin and Dr Lasisi S Lawal of Nigeria's Obasanjo Space Center. Kind of.…

technology_dude writes: One by one, thresholds are being crossed where the collection and storage of personal data is accepted as routine. Being recorded by cameras at business locations, in public transportation, in schools, churches, and every other place imaginable. Recent headlines include "Singapore Airlines having cameras built into the seat back of personal entertainment systems," and "Arizona considering a bill to force some public workers to give up DNA samples (and even pay for it)." It seems to be a daily occurrence where we have crossed another line in how far we will go to accept massive surveillance as normal. Do we even have a line the sand that we would defend? Do we even see anything wrong with it? Absolute power corrupts absolutely and we continue to give knowledge of our personal lives (power) to others. If we continue down the same path, I suppose we deserve what we get? I want to shout "Stop the train, I want off!" but I fear my plea would be ignored. So who out there is more optimistic than I and can recommend some reading that will give me hope? Bill 1475 was introduced by Republican State Senator David Livingston and would require teachers, police officers, child day care workers, and many others to submit their DNA samples along with fingerprints to be stored in a database maintained by the Department of Public Safety. "While the database would be prohibited from storing criminal or medical records alongside the DNA samples, it would require the samples be accompanied by the person's name, Social Security number, date of birth and last known address," reports Gizmodo. "The living will be required to pay [a $250 processing fee] for this invasion of their privacy, but any dead body that comes through a county medical examiner's office would also be fair game to be entered into the database."

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Because it'll be fiiiiine... probably

Hands On Hot on the heels of Oppo, Chinese phone maker AGM is the second newcomer to launch in the UK in 2019 hoping to turn a niche into a much more mainstream habitat.…

NHSX: UK.gov's new tech, data and digital quango

The UK government has plans for another health quango that will not only oversee data, digital and tech procurement but have an "open door" policy with the IT industry.…

Procurement heads fail to finalise specs for replacement deal, extend current agreement with DXC Technology

The Ministry of Defence is set to prolong the British armed forces' payroll, HR, and pensions admin contract with DXC Technology by half a year – because the military's procurement team has run out of time to find a replacement.…

The alternative being memorizing a bunch of really long unique passphrases

A bunch of infosec bods are taking some of the most popular password managers to task after an audit revealed some mildly annoying, non-world-ending security shortcomings.…