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Department of Commerce relents on blockade plans

US telcos will be able to continue doing business with Huawei for the time being.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: In the latest Top 500 supercomputer ratings, the average speed of these Linux-powered racers is now an astonishing 1.14 petaflops. The fastest of the fast machines haven't changed since the June 2019 Top 500 supercomputer list. Leading the way is Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Summit system, which holds top honors with an HPL result of 148.6 petaflops. This is an IBM-built supercomputer using Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. In a rather distant second place is another IBM machine: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Sierra system. It uses the same chips, but it "only" hit a speed of 94.6 petaflops. Close behind at No. 3 is the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, with an HPL mark of 93.0 petaflops. TaihuLight was developed by China's National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC) and is installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. It is powered exclusively by Sunway's SW26010 processors. Sunway's followed by the Tianhe-2A (Milky Way-2A). This is a system developed by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). It's deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in China. Powered by Intel Xeon CPUs and Matrix-2000 accelerators, it has a top speed of 61.4 petaflops. Coming at No. 5, the Dell-built, Frontera, a Dell C6420 system is powered by Intel Xeon Platinum processors. It speeds along at 23.5 petaflops. It lives at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas. The most powerful new supercomputer on the list is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Computational Innovations (CCI)'s AiMOS. It made the list in the 25th position with 8.0 petaflops. The IBM-built system, like Summit and Sierra, is powered by Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA V100 GPUs. In closing, ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes: "Regardless of the hardware, all 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers have one thing in common: They all run Linux."

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T-Mobile President and COO Mike Sievert will succeed John Legere as CEO on May 1, 2020, the company announced Monday. CNBC reports: Sievert has been the heir apparent as Legere was expected to step down as CEO once T-Mobile's merger with Sprint is completed. Legere's contract ends on April 30, 2020, according to the announcement. Leger tweeted Monday that the decision "has been under development for a long time." When T-Mobile and Sprint first announced their intention to merge in April 2018, the companies said Legere would lead the combined business as CEO, with Sievert continuing to serve as President and COO. Legere's next move is still not known. CNBC and The Wall Street Journal reported last week that WeWork had spoken to him about taking over as CEO following Adam Neumann's ouster. But CNBC later reported that Legere is not taking the job, according to people familiar with the matter. On a conference call Monday, Legere denied that he was ever in talks to be the WeWork CEO.

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Terminator it ain't, but should prove useful and a little lovable

The US Army has is building a new 248-strong robot regiment to help defuse or detonate explosives and has just spent $109m on the new hardware, which bears an unfortunate similarity to the beloved cartoon character WALL-E.…

Apple is holding a special event on December 2nd to highlight its favorite apps and games of 2019. The live event will take place in New York City. 9to5Mac reports: Invites went out this afternoon for the surprise event that will be held in just two weeks. Curiously, it appears the event will just be to highlight Apple's top app and game picks from 2019. In the event invitation, Apple leads with the tagline "Loved by millions. Created by the best." While Apple normally livestreams its events it's also not known whether this will app event will be broadcast live. Apple's Special Events landing page doesn't include any information on the December event.

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Google Maps will soon begin testing a new feature that's more common to social networks like Facebook, rather than a maps app: the ability to find and follow other users. From a report: In Google Maps' case, it's specifically rolling out the ability to follow top "Local Guides" -- its community members who actively review business and share to Google Maps photos and other knowledge as part of a larger rewards program. The Local Guides program launched in 2015 as a way to take on Yelp Elites by allowing the most active Maps contributors to earn status as a tastemaker of sorts for their own hometown. Guides write more in-depth business reviews and post photos in order to help other Google Maps users learn about the area. In exchange, they receive a variety of perks, like early access to new features, exclusive local meetups, free access to Google services, discounts and coupons and more. Now, Google says, it's kicking off a pilot program that will allow Google Maps users in select markets to follow top Local Guides by clicking a new "Follow" button on these users' profile pages. By doing so, the Guides' recommendations will be surfaced for you when you're using Google Maps. In a new section on the "For You" tab in the app, you'll find the area recommendations from the Local Guides. Google is piloting the program in Bangkok, Delhi, London, Mexico City, New York, Osaka, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Tokyo, for the time being. Presumably, if all goes well, it would expand to more markets. Further reading: Google Maps Has Introduced So Many New Features and Design Changes in Recent Months That Getting Directions On It is Becoming an Increasingly Challenging Task; and Ten Years of Google Maps, From Slashdot to Ground Truth (2015).

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Aggrieved that their matches aren't "quality" enough, some men share techniques to cheat the dating app's algorithm and raise their status. An anonymous reader shares a report: Like most apps that have a pay function, the easiest path to a better Tinder experience is with cash. Super Likes, according to the app, will triple your chances of getting a match as they're a manual override of the algorithm, forcing you to the head of someone's swipe queue. You still have to earn a right swipe, but the person is all but guaranteed to see your profile. Then, of course, there's the various DIY swipe combos and techniques, like my friend's, that people are convinced will result in better matches. "I cracked Tinder," redditor joikol exclaimed on the Tinder subreddit a year ago [sic throughout]. "I had cracked how to not only get the hottest girls to appear, but also how to make my profile appear on their Tinder. The trick: for every girl you like, reject 5 girls. Or, in simple terms, have very high standards for liking girls. The Tinder algorithm will see that you're not satisfied with the lot you've gotten and improve its delivery. It will also think that you're some hotshot and make you appear more on girls' Tinder." But alas, he continued, "Then I realized that this strategy was a fail because when you do this, you need to be 11/10 as well. The hot girls won't swipe right on you, and the average ones won't be available as you swipe left on them." Two other popular alleged algorithm hacks: 1. Resetting your account (especially via a Google number or burner phone), since Tinder gives new users a first-day boost. (This can definitely backfire, though, since it's something Tinder knows people are doing and punishes them for it with a shadowban.) 2. Changing your location or expanding your geographical range. "I used to have it so that my distance was like 200 kilometers and then leave it like that for a few hours," says 24-year-old Kelly from Canada. "Then I'd change it back to 10-kilometers distance. I'd immediately get a ton of guys who were 10 kilometers away swiping right on me! It was quite the confidence booster!"

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Juul Labs was sued by California for allegedly targeting teenagers with ads for its e-cigarettes, after a series of lawsuits filed by schools, parents and others against the market leader as deaths and illnesses linked to vaping add up across the U.S. From a report: "Juul adopted the tobacco industry's infamous playbook, employing advertisements that had no regard for public health and searching out vulnerable targets," said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who announced the lawsuit at a news conference Monday in Los Angeles. "Today we take legal action against the deceptive practices that Juul and the e-cigarette industry employ to lure our kids into their vaping web." The San Francisco-based e-cigarette company has become a target of government regulators attempting to stem an epidemic of new nicotine users who have flocked to the sleek device even though many have never smoked cigarettes. Becerra alleges that Juul targeted young people in its advertising, failed to include required warnings, knowingly delivered tobacco products to consumers without verifying their age, kept the personal e-mails of minors who tried and failed to make a purchase, and proceeded to market Juul to them.

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Will take the GDPR hit for all cloud biz so you don't have to

Microsoft says it will be making a data protection deal it struck with the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security into a global policy for its cloud services.…

New submitter Shad0wz writes: Microsoft's Core Network team just announced they plan on supporting DoH in the Windows resolver. In the blog post, the company writes: Providing encrypted DNS support without breaking existing Windows device admin configuration won't be easy. However, at Microsoft we believe that "we have to treat privacy as a human right. We have to have end-to-end cybersecurity built into technology." We also believe Windows adoption of encrypted DNS will help make the overall Internet ecosystem healthier. There is an assumption by many that DNS encryption requires DNS centralization. This is only true if encrypted DNS adoption isn't universal. To keep the DNS decentralized, it will be important for client operating systems (such as Windows) and Internet service providers alike to widely adopt encrypted DNS. With the decision made to build support for encrypted DNS, the next step is to figure out what kind of DNS encryption Windows will support and how it will be configured. Here are our team's guiding principles on making those decisions: Windows DNS needs to be as private and functional as possible by default without the need for user or admin configuration because Windows DNS traffic represents a snapshot of the user's browsing history. To Windows users, this means their experience will be made as private as possible by Windows out of the box. For Microsoft, this means we will look for opportunities to encrypt Windows DNS traffic without changing the configured DNS resolvers set by users and system administrators. Privacy-minded Windows users and administrators need to be guided to DNS settings even if they don't know what DNS is yet. Many users are interested in controlling their privacy and go looking for privacy-centric settings such as app permissions to camera and location but may not be aware of or know about DNS settings or understand why they matter and may not look for them in the device settings. Windows users and administrators need to be able to improve their DNS configuration with as few simple actions as possible. We must ensure we don't require specialized knowledge or effort on the part of Windows users to benefit from encrypted DNS. Enterprise policies and UI actions alike should be something you only have to do once rather than need to maintain. Windows users and administrators need to explicitly allow fallback from encrypted DNS once configured. Once Windows has been configured to use encrypted DNS, if it gets no other instructions from Windows users or administrators, it should assume falling back to unencrypted DNS is forbidden.

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Juno, an upstart ride-hailing company in New York City, is shutting down as part of a new partnership between parent company Gett and Lyft. From a report: Gett's corporate customers will now be able to book rides via Lyft in the U.S., and some Belarus-based employees are joining Lyft, the latter tells Axios.

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The Trump administration is giving American companies another three months to do business with the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, the Commerce Department said Monday. From a report: It is the third time the U.S. has extended a reprieve, which is meant to help ease disruption for Huawei customers. Many Internet and cellphone carriers in rural parts of the U.S. buy networking equipment from Huawei, and the temporary extension means they can keep their networks up to date. "The Temporary General License extension will allow carriers to continue to service customers in some of the most remote areas of the United States who would otherwise be left in the dark," said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in a statement.

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Microsoft is rolling out new privacy provisions in its Online Services Terms (OST) contracts for all commercial customers after European privacy regulators began investigating it over potential violations of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). From a report: The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) last month said it had "serious concerns" over Microsoft's contracts with European institutions and compliance with GDPR rules. It kicked off an investigation in April after the Dutch Ministry of Justice found that telemetry data Microsoft collected from Office 365 ProPlus and Office 365 users violated GDPR. However, EDPS in October also noted that a new agreement between Microsoft and the Dutch Ministry of Justice (MoJ) for contractual and technical safeguards and measures to mitigate risks to individuals was a "positive step forward". The new OST reflect the contractual changes Microsoft developed with the Dutch MoJ, according to Julie Brill, Microsoft's chief privacy officer and corporate vice president for global privacy and regulatory affairs.

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Multinational cop agency reportedly set to issue statement

Multinational police agency Interpol is due to say that tech companies deploying strong encryption helps paedophiles – unless they build backdoors for police workers.…

It's Magic!

The MacBook keyboard nightmare is over – Apple's latest attempt reverts back to something remarkably similar to the key design it was using up until 2016. The one that worked.…

By Friday this week, Intel plans to remove old drivers and BIOS updates from its official website. From a report: "This download, BIOS Update [BLH6710H.86A] 0163, will no longer be available after November 22, 2019 and will not be supported with any additional functional, security, or other updates," reads a message posted to the download page of one of the impacted components. "Intel recommends that users of BIOS Update [BLH6710H.86A] 0163 uninstall and/or discontinue use as soon as possible," the message continues. The downloads are drivers and BIOS updates for Intel desktop components and motherboards the company released in the 90s and early-to-mid 2000s. Downloads for hundreds of components are believed to have been impacted, from motherboards to NIC cards and graphics cards. Most of the drivers are for Windows versions like 98, ME, XP, and older Windows Server editions -- old Windows OS versions that have themselves reached end-of-life (EOL) All components and motherboards reached (EOL) years ago, and Intel stopped delivering firmware updates as a result. Its website was merely hosting the older files for convenience.

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You have four days left to nab what you need

Intel is removing drivers and BIOS for its old desktop boards so anyone running an old Pentium-based PC has four days to get hold of anything they might need.…

At Microsoft's Ignite conference this month, the company announced a new vision for its personal productivity assistant, Cortana -- one which aimed to make it more useful in your day-to-day work, including email, but one which also saw Microsoft scaling its ambitions back from Cortana as a true Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant competitor. Now, the other shoe has dropped, as Microsoft says it's planning to shut down its standalone Cortana mobile apps across a number of markets. From a report: The company quietly revealed its plans to wind down support for Cortana on iOS and Android in several regions, with an end-of-life date of January 31st, 2020. After this point, Cortana mobile app will no longer be supported. Microsoft also said it will release an updated version of its Microsoft Launcher, that will have Cortana removed. Microsoft tells us the impacted markets include Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India. While the U.S. isn't in this list today, it would not be surprising to see its support pulled at a later date. The Cortana app for iOS is only ranked No. 254 in the Productivity category on the App Store, and only No. 145 on Google Play, according to current data from Sensor Tower.

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High Court throws out Nathan Wyatt's extradition appeal

A Briton once suspected of hacking Pippa Middleton's iCloud account – although he was cleared after a police probe in 2016 – now faces deportation to America.…

Few companies have more riding on proposed privacy legislation than Alphabet's Google and Facebook. To try to steer the bill their way, the giant advertising technology companies spend millions of dollars to lobby each year, a fact confirmed by government filings. From a report: Not so well-documented is spending to support highly influential think tanks and public interest groups that are helping shape the privacy debate, ostensibly as independent observers. Bloomberg Law examined seven prominent nonprofit think tanks that work on privacy issues that received a total of $1.5 million over a 18-month period ending Dec. 31, 2018. The groups included such organizations as the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Future of Privacy Forum and the Brookings Institution. The actual total is undoubtedly much higher -- exact totals for contributions were difficult to pin down. The tech giants have "funded scores of nonprofits, including consumer and privacy groups, and academics," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director at the Center for Digital Democracy, a public interest group that does not accept donations from Google or Facebook. Further, he says, their influence is strong. The companies have "opposed federal privacy laws and worked to weaken existing safeguards," Chester said. Accepting donations from these "privacy-killing companies enable them to influence decisions by nonprofits, even subtly," he said.

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