Earth to Voyager 2: standby for connection

Chromebook sales in recession: Market saturation blamed as shipments collapse more than 63% in Q4

PC makers ditch Google OS portables for higher-margin Windows machines as component shortages linger

Chromebook shipments collapsed in calendar Q4 as the channel – with an eye on market saturation – ordered in lower volumes and PC makers moved available components to higher-margin builds running on Windows.

Unit sales into distributors and retailers plunged 63.6 per cent globally to 4.8 million Chromebooks, says IDC. This is the second quarter in a row that sales of the skinny portables have shrunk.

“Much of the initial demand for Chromebooks has been satiated in primary markets like the US and Europe and this has led to a slowdown in overall shipments,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC.

Workday gets £9.8m deal for second chunk of UK’s Student Loans Company project

Oracle replacement project continues as SLC opts for SaaS model

Workday has pocketed a £9.8m contract for the second phase in an ERP project intended to improve efficiency in finance and HR management at the UK’s Student Loans Company (SLC).

According to a contract award notice, the US SaaS application vendor has won the deal for “provision of Workday ERP software licences and associated services.”

In its annual report published earlier this month, SLC – an executive non-departmental public body – said it was working on the second stage of its Workday implementation.

Citrix acquired by private equity, will be paired with Tibco in $16.5bn deal

Go-private deal with gang it previously bought Wrike from

Citrix is to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital in a deal worth $16.5bn. The move will see Citrix taken into private ownership and combined with Tibco, another firm already in Vista’s portfolio.

Under the terms of the agreement announced today, Citrix shareholders will receive $104 per share, a price which represents a premium of 24 per cent over the over the closing price on December 20, the last trading day before rumours began to leak regarding a potential takeover.

Citrix also put out its financial results for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2021 today, reporting revenue of $851m compared to $810m for the same quarter in 2020, representing 5 per cent growth.

UK’s new Brexit Freedom Bill promises already-slated GDPR reform, easier gene editing rules

Claims it will make it easier to amend ‘retained EU law’

The UK government is having a second pass at flogging the benefits of Brexit, as much as they exist, in a new bill that promises to accelerate work on AI and gene editing.

The so-called Brexit Freedoms Bill — its actual title will be decided by Parliamentary clerks — will also offer a “more agile way to regulate new digital markets and AI and [create] a more proportionate and less burdensome data rights regime compared to the EU’s General Data Protection Directive.”

The bill promises to make it easier to amend or remove “retained EU law” which was left in place following the UK’s departure from the political and trading bloc.

Waymo sues California’s DMV to block autonomous car crash data from publication

Plus: Non-profit suicide hotline criticised for sharing mental health crisis texts with AI startup, and more

In brief Waymo is suing California’s Department of Motor Vehicles in an attempt to keep information about its autonomous car crashes and other operational details private, arguing that the data is a trade secret.

California’s DMV is strict about giving permits to companies testing self-driving cars on real roads. Companies have to disclose operational and safety data before they’re approved to drive in the state. But Waymo doesn’t want that kind of information getting out.

The DMV received a request for public record of Waymo’s self-driving car test permit application filed last year. Waymo sent the department a redacted version to give, but the person requesting the information challenged the redactions. The DMV then notified Waymo it was going to hand over the unredacted report unless the company “sought an injunction prohibiting disclosure of the material in unredacted form” by January 31, 2022, according to the lawsuit [PDF].

Sure, the James Webb Space Telescope is cool and all. But try making one out of Lego

Next: How to throw it a million miles without anything falling off

A double helping of plastic playtime this Monday as we honour the achievements of the James Webb Space Telescope by building one out of Lego and an ESA astronaut takes some Playmobil on a tour of the ISS.

Having constructed many examples of spacecraft and their infrastructure, the unfolding of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and its successful insertion into L2 orbit seemed as good an excuse as any to raid the boxes of plastic bricks once more in tribute to the observatory and the brains behind it.

Ever-growing volumes of data mean computational storage is becoming crucial for HPC, say boffins at Dell’s tech chinwag

Data at rest should remain at rest

Dell believes that technologies such as computational storage will soon play a part in high-performance computing (HPC) in response to ever-growing volumes of data. It doesn’t see the general-purpose CPU disappearing any time soon, but says it will be complemented with specialised processors for specific tasks, with composability seen as both an opportunity and a problem.

Dell Technologies holds regular online sessions for its HPC Community, and the latest saw experts from the company discussing how HPC and mainstream enterprise IT feed off each other and where this may lead to, with advances in one sector often being picked up by the other.

Most modern HPC systems are now built from clusters of commodity servers, for example, while the use of GPUs for accelerating complex workloads started in HPC research labs and is now filtering into enterprise data centres.

Machine learning the hard way: IBM Watson’s fatal misdiagnosis

The doctor won’t see you now

Opinion It started in Jeopardy and ended in loss. IBM’s flagship AI Watson Health has been sold to venture capitalists for an undisclosed sum thought to be around a billion dollars, or a quarter of what the division cost IBM in acquisitions alone since it was spun off in 2015.

Not the first nor the last massively expensive tech biz cock-up, but isn’t AI supposed to be the future? Isn’t IBM supposed to be good at this?

It all started so well. One of Watson’s early set pieces was taking a complex set of symptoms and finding the most probable diagnosis out of an encyclopaedic knowledge of rare diseases. A different challenge marked its demise. Like a corpse with a broken neck, 15 bullet holes and a strong smell of cyanide, it raised the question: which massive failure actually finished it off?

Idea of downloading memories far-fetched say experts after Musk claim resurfaces in latest Neuralink development

‘Save and replay memories’? Not quite, say boffins…

Publicity-shy self-proclaimed technoking Elon Musk reluctantly hit the headlines last week as his brain wiring startup Neuralink launched recruitment for clinical trials.

An online ad (screenshots here and here) was looking for someone to “lead and help build the team responsible for enabling Neuralink’s clinical research activities and developing the regulatory interactions that come with a fast-paced and ever-evolving environment.”

The Musk-backed startup claims to be building the “future of brain interfaces… that will help people with paralysis and inventing new technologies that will expand our abilities, our community, and our world.”

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

A tale of command line booby traps and bored engineers

Who, Me? Take a trip back to when mainframes and terminals were all the rage and The Cloud was the smoke produced by the mainframe when a washing-machine-sized disk was about to let go. Welcome to another Who, Me? confession.

Today’s plea for forgiveness comes from a reader Regomised as “Doug” and is a warning to careless administrators.

“Back in the days when terminals were still fairly common,” said Doug, “the company I worked for provided ‘local’ data based on the result of a search run on the client’s main dataset held on their server.”

Crypto outfit Qubit appeals to the honour of thieves who lifted $80M of its digi-dollars

Offers $2 million bug bounty and hopes perps see that record payout, and a clean conscience, as reasons to sacrifice $78m

Another week, another crypto upstart admitting its lax security has been exploited and parties unknown have made off with millions. But this time there’s a twist: the crypto upstart has appealed for the return of its assets by appealing to the thieves’ consciences.

The crypto concern is Qubit Finance – an outfit that offers decentralized lending and borrowing and operates under the motto “Lend to ascend – Borrow for tomorrow.”

Last Friday Qubit admitted one of its protocols had been exploited in unintended ways, with the result that attackers made off with $80 million of crypto assets.

Chromebook sales in recession: Market saturation blamed as shipments collapse more than 63% in Q4

PC makers ditch Google OS portables for higher-margin Windows machines as component shortages linger

Chromebook shipments collapsed in calendar Q4 as the channel – with an eye on market saturation – ordered in lower volumes and PC makers moved available components to higher-margin builds running on Windows.

Unit sales into distributors and retailers plunged 63.6 per cent globally to 4.8 million Chromebooks, says IDC. This is the second quarter in a row that sales of the skinny portables have shrunk.

“Much of the initial demand for Chromebooks has been satiated in primary markets like the US and Europe and this has led to a slowdown in overall shipments,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC.

Workday gets £9.8m deal for second chunk of UK’s Student Loans Company project

Oracle replacement project continues as SLC opts for SaaS model

Workday has pocketed a £9.8m contract for the second phase in an ERP project intended to improve efficiency in finance and HR management at the UK’s Student Loans Company (SLC).

According to a contract award notice, the US SaaS application vendor has won the deal for “provision of Workday ERP software licences and associated services.”

In its annual report published earlier this month, SLC – an executive non-departmental public body – said it was working on the second stage of its Workday implementation.

Citrix acquired by private equity, will be paired with Tibco in $16.5bn deal

Go-private deal with gang it previously bought Wrike from

Citrix is to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital in a deal worth $16.5bn. The move will see Citrix taken into private ownership and combined with Tibco, another firm already in Vista’s portfolio.

Under the terms of the agreement announced today, Citrix shareholders will receive $104 per share, a price which represents a premium of 24 per cent over the over the closing price on December 20, the last trading day before rumours began to leak regarding a potential takeover.

Citrix also put out its financial results for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2021 today, reporting revenue of $851m compared to $810m for the same quarter in 2020, representing 5 per cent growth.

UK’s new Brexit Freedom Bill promises already-slated GDPR reform, easier gene editing rules

Claims it will make it easier to amend ‘retained EU law’

The UK government is having a second pass at flogging the benefits of Brexit, as much as they exist, in a new bill that promises to accelerate work on AI and gene editing.

The so-called Brexit Freedoms Bill — its actual title will be decided by Parliamentary clerks — will also offer a “more agile way to regulate new digital markets and AI and [create] a more proportionate and less burdensome data rights regime compared to the EU’s General Data Protection Directive.”

The bill promises to make it easier to amend or remove “retained EU law” which was left in place following the UK’s departure from the political and trading bloc.

Waymo sues California’s DMV to block autonomous car crash data from publication

Plus: Non-profit suicide hotline criticised for sharing mental health crisis texts with AI startup, and more

In brief Waymo is suing California’s Department of Motor Vehicles in an attempt to keep information about its autonomous car crashes and other operational details private, arguing that the data is a trade secret.

California’s DMV is strict about giving permits to companies testing self-driving cars on real roads. Companies have to disclose operational and safety data before they’re approved to drive in the state. But Waymo doesn’t want that kind of information getting out.

The DMV received a request for public record of Waymo’s self-driving car test permit application filed last year. Waymo sent the department a redacted version to give, but the person requesting the information challenged the redactions. The DMV then notified Waymo it was going to hand over the unredacted report unless the company “sought an injunction prohibiting disclosure of the material in unredacted form” by January 31, 2022, according to the lawsuit [PDF].

Sure, the James Webb Space Telescope is cool and all. But try making one out of Lego

Next: How to throw it a million miles without anything falling off

A double helping of plastic playtime this Monday as we honour the achievements of the James Webb Space Telescope by building one out of Lego and an ESA astronaut takes some Playmobil on a tour of the ISS.

Having constructed many examples of spacecraft and their infrastructure, the unfolding of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and its successful insertion into L2 orbit seemed as good an excuse as any to raid the boxes of plastic bricks once more in tribute to the observatory and the brains behind it.

Ever-growing volumes of data mean computational storage is becoming crucial for HPC, say boffins at Dell’s tech chinwag

Data at rest should remain at rest

Dell believes that technologies such as computational storage will soon play a part in high-performance computing (HPC) in response to ever-growing volumes of data. It doesn’t see the general-purpose CPU disappearing any time soon, but says it will be complemented with specialised processors for specific tasks, with composability seen as both an opportunity and a problem.

Dell Technologies holds regular online sessions for its HPC Community, and the latest saw experts from the company discussing how HPC and mainstream enterprise IT feed off each other and where this may lead to, with advances in one sector often being picked up by the other.

Most modern HPC systems are now built from clusters of commodity servers, for example, while the use of GPUs for accelerating complex workloads started in HPC research labs and is now filtering into enterprise data centres.

Machine learning the hard way: IBM Watson’s fatal misdiagnosis

The doctor won’t see you now

Opinion It started in Jeopardy and ended in loss. IBM’s flagship AI Watson Health has been sold to venture capitalists for an undisclosed sum thought to be around a billion dollars, or a quarter of what the division cost IBM in acquisitions alone since it was spun off in 2015.

Not the first nor the last massively expensive tech biz cock-up, but isn’t AI supposed to be the future? Isn’t IBM supposed to be good at this?

It all started so well. One of Watson’s early set pieces was taking a complex set of symptoms and finding the most probable diagnosis out of an encyclopaedic knowledge of rare diseases. A different challenge marked its demise. Like a corpse with a broken neck, 15 bullet holes and a strong smell of cyanide, it raised the question: which massive failure actually finished it off?

Idea of downloading memories far-fetched say experts after Musk claim resurfaces in latest Neuralink development

‘Save and replay memories’? Not quite, say boffins…

Publicity-shy self-proclaimed technoking Elon Musk reluctantly hit the headlines last week as his brain wiring startup Neuralink launched recruitment for clinical trials.

An online ad (screenshots here and here) was looking for someone to “lead and help build the team responsible for enabling Neuralink’s clinical research activities and developing the regulatory interactions that come with a fast-paced and ever-evolving environment.”

The Musk-backed startup claims to be building the “future of brain interfaces… that will help people with paralysis and inventing new technologies that will expand our abilities, our community, and our world.”

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

A tale of command line booby traps and bored engineers

Who, Me? Take a trip back to when mainframes and terminals were all the rage and The Cloud was the smoke produced by the mainframe when a washing-machine-sized disk was about to let go. Welcome to another Who, Me? confession.

Today’s plea for forgiveness comes from a reader Regomised as “Doug” and is a warning to careless administrators.

“Back in the days when terminals were still fairly common,” said Doug, “the company I worked for provided ‘local’ data based on the result of a search run on the client’s main dataset held on their server.”

Crypto outfit Qubit appeals to the honour of thieves who lifted $80M of its digi-dollars

Offers $2 million bug bounty and hopes perps see that record payout, and a clean conscience, as reasons to sacrifice $78m

Another week, another crypto upstart admitting its lax security has been exploited and parties unknown have made off with millions. But this time there’s a twist: the crypto upstart has appealed for the return of its assets by appealing to the thieves’ consciences.

The crypto concern is Qubit Finance – an outfit that offers decentralized lending and borrowing and operates under the motto “Lend to ascend – Borrow for tomorrow.”

Last Friday Qubit admitted one of its protocols had been exploited in unintended ways, with the result that attackers made off with $80 million of crypto assets.