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Enterprise Edition to be offered on OCI inside Redmond's cloud

Oracle is expanding its database services on hyperscale clouds outside of its muscle-car Exadata system.…

Apple is undergoing a rare shake-up of its executive ranks, aiming to get its artificial intelligence efforts back on track after months of delays and stumbles, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development, so he's moving over another top executive to help: Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. In a new role, Rockwell will be in charge of the Siri virtual assistant, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves haven't been announced. Rockwell will report to software chief Craig Federighi, removing Siri completely from Giannandrea's command. Apple is poised to announce the changes to employees this week. The iPhone maker's senior leaders -- a group known as the Top 100 -- just met at a secretive, annual offsite gathering to discuss the future of the company. Its AI efforts were a key talking point at the summit, Bloomberg News has reported. The moves underscore the plight facing Apple: Its AI technology is severely lagging industry rivals, and the company has shown little sign of catching up. The Apple Intelligence platform was late to arrive and largely a flop, despite being the main selling point for the iPhone 16. Further reading: 'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino'

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Meanwhile, open source video codec Ogg Theora stirs in its crypt

After a seven-year nap, version 3.0 of FOSS image editor GIMP is arriving with a splash, while a long-dormant open video format wakes from its slumbers and lumbers into beta.…

Cosmologists have uncovered stronger evidence that dark energy -- the mysterious force accelerating cosmic expansion -- may be weakening over time. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration presented their latest findings at the Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, reinforcing their preliminary results from last year. The DESI team analyzed data from approximately 15 million galaxies collected over three years, more than doubling their previous dataset of 6 million galaxies. Combined with supernova observations and cosmic microwave background data, their analysis shows a 4.2-sigma deviation from the standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model, which assumes dark energy remains constant. "We are much more certain than last year that this is definitely a thing," said Seshadri Nadathur of the University of Portsmouth, a key DESI researcher. These findings align with recent independent results from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which earlier this month reported a similar 3.2-sigma tension with Lambda-CDM -- a tension that disappears if dark energy is allowed to vary. If confirmed, evolving dark energy could fundamentally alter cosmologists' understanding of the universe's ultimate fate. Instead of expanding indefinitely until all particles become impossibly separated, the universe might follow alternative trajectories. "It challenges the fate of the universe," explained Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki from the University of Texas at Dallas. "It's game-changing." Moreover, these findings challenge the simplest explanation of dark energy as vacuum energy, which quantum physics suggests should remain constant. Instead, the results indicate unknown physics, possibly involving a new particle, a modification to Einstein's theory of gravity, or even a new fundamental theory. DESI will continue observing through 2026, eventually producing a final map expected to include 50 million galaxies, potentially providing definitive evidence for this cosmic paradigm shift.

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Fix testing to stretch into the summer. When will aerospace giant decide enough is enough?

Comment The return of Crew-9 from the International Space Station (ISS) in a Crew Dragon has raised the question of what the future holds for Boeing's Calamity Capsule, also known as the CST-100 Starliner.…

Industry leaders want broader strategy, citing supply chain gaps, investment needs, and global trade uncertainty

European chipmakers want local politicians to look beyond the region's Chips Act and do more to support research and development, materials, and design, not just manufacturing.…

Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky has warned that the company's revived smartwatch line will face significant functionality limitations when paired with iPhones, blaming Apple's restrictive policies that favor its own Apple Watch. "It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things," Migicovsky wrote in a blog post, adding that the situation has "actually gotten worse over the last 8 years." A 2024 class action lawsuit cited in the post claims Apple has added further restrictions since iOS 13, including requiring users to display full content previews on their lock screens for notifications to reach third-party watches. Pebble is still developing an iOS app because 40% of potential customers use iPhones, he said. Migicovsky warned that the watch will "always appear to have less developed functionality on iOS than Android" and some features will arrive on Android first.

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How to avoid another SolarWinds, Log4j, and XZ Utils situation

Organizations concerned about software supply chain attacks should focus on role-based access control, system monitoring, and boundary protection, according to a new preprint paper on the topic.…

Wow, a government project that could be on time for once ... cos it's gonna be wayyyy more than a decade

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) today started the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) countdown clock by claiming organizations have ten years to migrate to a safer future.…

The credit-card market has quietly split in two, Atlantic argues in a new story: one offering generous benefits to wealthy Americans, the other offering expensive debt to the poor. Credit-card balances have reached an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, with serious delinquency rates climbing to their highest point since the Great Recession. "Transactors" pay off balances monthly and earn valuable rewards worth up to $3,000 annually in taxable income equivalent, while "revolvers" carry balances at a brutal 21.5% average APR. The poor subsidize the rich through two mechanisms: swipe fees that drive up retail prices by $1,700 annually for the average family, and late fees and interest charges that finance rewards programs. Interest revenue for credit-card companies has ballooned from $76 billion in 2020 to $170 billion in 2024. The economy now appears to be slowing down. High-income families are increasingly resembling working-class families in credit data, with three in five households earning over $80,000 annually carrying balances for more than a year. Card companies are now offering fewer cards to subprime borrowers, creating a troubling dilemma - while expensive credit cards are harmful, having no credit access might be worse. Bipartisan legislation now aims to cap interest rates and lower swipe fees.

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Testing? We've heard of it

Users of Microsoft's email service might be feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu after the web version of Outlook last night blocked access to Exchange Online mailboxes.…

You might need that – the file system has some hard-to-squish bugs

A new version of the handy all-in-one bootable system toolkit distro is here, now with a whole new file system for you to play with.…

Microsoft is developing a new Windows 11 feature that will explain how hardware limitations affect PC performance. The latest preview builds include a hidden FAQ section in system settings that addresses GPU memory, system RAM, and OS version impacts. The feature, discovered by Windows observer "phantomofearth" in this week's Dev Channel build, requires manual activation. It provides specific recommendations for configurations like low RAM or GPUs with less than 4GB memory, and flags outdated Windows versions.

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VMO2 starts in the north of England, says it's already contacted 'known vulnerable customers'

UK telco Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) is preparing to retire its 3G services, and is set to start with the city of Durham in northeast England this April.…

Even looming support deadline isn't tempting ECC users to haul themselves over to S/4HANA, say analysts

The majority of SAP's ECC users have not purchased licenses for S/4HANA – meaning its unlikely some of the world's largest businesses will migrate before mainstream support for the legancy platform ends in 2027.…

Fedora Asahi Remix 42 still scheduled for release in about a month

Another developer has dropped out of Asahi Linux, the project to get Linux up and running on Apple silicon.…

The National Archives has released thousands of pages of declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. From a report: The records were posted to the National Archives' website, joining recently released records posted in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2017-2018. "This release consists of approximately 80,000 pages of previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions," said the announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Additional documents withheld under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, and records subject to section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, must be unsealed before release." President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 23 directing the release of all remaining records related to the assassination, saying it was in the "public interest" to do so. Tuesday's initial release contained 1,123 records comprising 32,000 pages. A subsequent release on Tuesday night contained 1,059 records comprising 31,400 additional pages.

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Begun, preparation for orbital wars has

China has practiced co-ordinated satellite maneuvers in space that resemble aerial combat, according to a US Space Force General.…

Nvidia has not been approached about acquiring a stake in Intel, CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday, addressing speculation about potential semiconductor industry consolidation. "Nobody's invited us to a consortium," Huang told reporters at Nvidia's annual developer conference. "Nobody invited me. Maybe other people are involved, but I don't know. There might be a party. I wasn't invited." Reuters previously reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) had approached Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices about joining a potential joint venture to operate Intel's factories. Other media outlets reported Intel was considering separating its manufacturing operations with U.S. President Donald Trump's support, potentially transferring control to a TSMC-led consortium.

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Japanese tech investor expects its own hyperscalers and e-com giants to collaborate, which could take a bite out of x86 market

Japanese tech investment house SoftBank Group has announced its intention to acquire Ampere Computing, the chip design firm that makes server-grade silicon based on the Arm architecture.…