It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date [Fri Mar 1 2024]

Hi {NAME}, Daily Headlines - 1 March 2024 ***************************************************************** It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date Fuel pumps refuse payment, smartwatches stop – all part of the rich tapestry of computer calendars ***************************************************************** Off-Prem * Alibaba Cloud cuts prices – hard – for multi-year commitments in mainland China This might solve its twin problems of low growth and short-term customers On-Prem * Elon and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad legal week Workers allege discrimination, missing payments * Turns out cops are super interested in subpoenaing suspects' push notifications Those little popups may reveal location, device details, IP address, and more * White House goes to court, not Congress, to renew warrantless spy powers Choose your own FISA Section 702 adventure: End-run around lawmakers or business as usual? * Electronic Arts frags hundreds of workers 'to grow fandom' Dating app Bumble also finds breaking up is easy to do for a third of its crew * Sandra Rivera’s next mission: Do for FPGAs what she did for Intel's Xeon Chipzilla resurrects Altera brand as former datacenter chief takes the helm * Water worries flood in as chip industry and AI models grow thirstier Mega makers already operate in water-scarce areas, and worry is they'll drink us dry * Atos hires three board directors to stop ship from sinking One of them, One Point CEO David Layani, tried to buy rudderless integrator * Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs Too late to prevent Q1 from being 7th straight decline for US titan Security * GitHub struggles to keep up with automated malicious forks Cloned then compromised, bad repos are forked faster than they can be removed * Chinese 'connected' cars are a national security threat, says Biden No Chinese automakers sell cars in the US, but the feds are still going to investigate whether they're a threat * Ransomware gangs are paying attention to infostealers, so why aren't you? Analysts warn of big leap in cred-harvesting malware activity last year * Meta's pay-or-consent model hides 'massive illegal data processing ops': lawsuit GDPR claim alleges Facebook parent's 'commercial surveillance practices are fundamentally illegal' * Chinese PC-maker Acemagic customized its own machines to get infected with malware Tried to speed boot times, maybe by messing with 'Windows source code', ended up building a viral on-ramp * Australian spy chief fears sabotage of critical infrastructure And accuses a former Australian politician of having 'sold out their country' Software * The Who’s Who of AI just chipped in to fund humanoid robot startup Figure $675 million to accelerate development of machine that can lift, but can’t keep up with humans * KDE Plasma 6.0 brings the same old charm and confusion The big new version of the other desktop, complete with improved HDR and a spinning desktop cube * It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date Fuel pumps refuse payment, smartwatches stop – all part of the rich tapestry of computer calendars * Snowflake share price falls after revenue forecasts dip below expectations CEO Frank Slootman announces retirement as former data cloud rising star sees value sink * Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff Global 'Resource Actions' to hit Europe hard, with Enterprise Ops & Support, CIO, HR and Real Estate in firing line * Lightweight Windows-like desktop LXQt makes leap to Qt 6 with version 2.0 Following in the same direction as the good ship KDE Plasma * Oracle Cerner system implementation risks future patient deaths, coroner warns Doctors voiced concern over lack of Red-Amber-Green rating system, says report * Nutanix doesn't expect a rush of VMware refugees – maybe for years Beats guidance as renewals grow and waits for Broadcom and Cisco to bring more bucks * Baidu admits it may never get leading-edge GPUs again Execs swear Chinese cloud will beat local rivals with a superior software stack that makes AI sing * Toyota admits its engines are overrated – by its own power testing software Japan's government slapped it for using the wrong code to produce too-powerful results Offbeat * Google sued by more than 30 European media orgs over adtech Meanwhile, the Google News Initiative is pushing AI tools for publishers * Uncle Sam explores satellites that can create propellant out of thin air Very low Earth orbit birds could sip the outer atmosphere on their way up ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This email was sent to {EMAIL} You can update your preferences here: or unsubscribe from this list: Situation Publishing Ltd, 315 Montgomery Street, 9th & 10th Floors, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA The Register and its contents are Copyright © 2024 Situation Publishing. 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