BT's Wi-Fi Disc ads banned because there's no evidence the things work [Thu Mar 19 2020]

Hi {NAME}, Daily Headlines - 19 March 2020 ***************************************************************** BT's Wi-Fi Disc ads banned because there's no evidence the things work Ad watchdog puts telco on the naughty step over range extender promotion ***************************************************************** Business * HPE celebrated diversity on International Women's Day not with pictures of its own staff but stock images of models IT giant eventually swaps pic for photo of actual staff after El Reg prod * IBM puts 1,248 frontline techies at risk of redundo, warns of data centre closures The axe prepares to fall on Global Tech Services staffers, including former Lloyds and Vodafone peeps that TUPED across * Philippines sends all workers home, outsourced call centres for Acer and telcos suffer degraded service We get the lowdown on the lockdown from a BPO operator in the heart of Manila Data Centre * Virtual reality: Now even the online Google Cloud Next event is postponed No, this is not business as usual as the C-virus continues to wreak havoc * BT's Wi-Fi Disc ads banned because there's no evidence the things work Ad watchdog puts telco on the naughty step over range extender promotion * Ampere's server chip has 80 Arm CPU cores? Yeah, well, our ThunderX3 will have 96 with 384 threads, says Marvell Plus: Intel ditches forthcoming Cooper Lake single, dual-socket 14nm Xeons from its roadmap Emergent Tech * The show Musk go on: Tesla defies SIlicon Valley coronavirus lockdown order, keeps Fremont factory open Elsewhere, Geek Squad still sending out techies to elderly people's homes * Yes, true, fusion reactors don't work quite yet, but, er, maybe AI can help us stop our experiments from imploding No neural networks here, though, only decision tree algos * Eight-core 3.8 GHz CPU. 12 TFLOPS GPU. 1TB NVME SSD. 16GB RAM. Not a half-decent workstation, it's the new Xbox Microsoft drops some more detail of fourth-gen console: The Series X * One whole day: That's how long Facebook's COVID-19 content moderation went without a mess AI flagged good content as bad content – and it took the founder of Godwin's Law to point it out Personal Tech * Official: Apple debugs MacBook Air of sucky Butterfly keyboard Scissor switches in, plus a silicon upgrade * Apple updates iPad Pro with a trackpad, faster processor. Is it a real computer now? Ooh, check us out rivals, we've got a 'keyboard'.. well, not a real one. It's Magic, OK? * Looming ventilator shortage amid pandemic sparks rise of open-source DIY medical kit. Good thinking – but safe? Googler publishes plans for Arduino-based equipment to help hospitals Security * Forget James Bond's super-gadgets, this chap spied for China using SD card dead drops. Now he's behind bars Tour operator used job in America as cover while acting as a data mule for Beijing, stealing secrets from biz * Dear Adobe, Trend Micro users: Please vaccinate your software – at least some of these security holes were exploited in the wild Genuine Integrity doesn't exactly live up to its name * Freedom of Information coverup clerk stung for £2k after deleting council audio recording ICO notches up first successful FoI prosecution * Small business loans app blamed as 500,000 financial records leak out of ... you guessed it, an open S3 bucket Bank info, driver's license copies and more found, report researchers * Pervasive digital surveillance of citizens deployed in COVID-19 fight, with rules that send genie back to bottle Israel is up for it. America, Iran, Thailand may be, too. China is there already, natch Software * Reach for the sky: Pixar founders win Turing Award for pioneering 3D animation – and getting rid of jagged edges Pat Hanrahan, Ed Catmull split $1m for their graphics work * Git our app, you've pulled: We love open source... but not enough to share code for our own app, says GitHub Reviews mixed as mobile software hits GA * Who needs an iPad Pro? Look everyone, Windows Terminal has mouse input Version numbering reaches double figures with GA lurking around the corner * All about that DBaaS: NoSQL cheerleader MongoDB sees revenue spike, but expects 'up to' $25m Covid-19 hit for 2021 Vows to be one of 'key beneficiaries' of 'platform shift towards the cloud' * Come to Malmö for St Peter's. Stay for the Bork Swedish Scandi-BSOD, anyone? Science * SpaceX beats an engine failure to loft another 60 Starlink satellites Falcon 9? Falcon 8 more like, as booster takes an unplanned bath Bootnotes * British Army adopts WhatsApp for formal orders as coronavirus isolation kicks in Yh capten 🎖 bruv, charlie fireteam brups  dat tr33line 🌳 at 9 🕘 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This email was sent to {EMAIL} You can update your preferences here: or unsubscribe from this list: Situation Publishing Ltd, 14 Gray's Inn Road, London, WC1X 8HN, UK The Register and its contents are Copyright © 2020 Situation Publishing. All rights reserved. Find our Privacy Policy here: