Xpertfeed

  The platforms would be forced to inform news media businesses of algorithm changes that are likely to materially affect referral traffic to news, the ranking of news behind paywalls, and any substantial changes to the display and presentation of news and advertising directly associated with news. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has developed a draft code for how media organisations can bargain with Facebook and Google to secure "fair" payment for news content shown on their respective platforms. The draft code of practice [PDF] adopts a model based on negotiation, mediation, and arbitration to "best facilitate genuine commercial bargaining between parties, allowing commercially negotiated outcomes suited to different business models used by Australian news media businesses". Each media business is expected to come to an agreement with the digital platform, with no one-size-fits-all model intended. But the code, as it stands, would allow g...

  Garmin’s fitness wearables remain disconnected after almost a day Garmin fitness devices have been left disconnected for nearly a day after the company suffered a major outage, possibly caused by a ransomware attack. The outage first reported by Garmin over 20 hours ago, as of this writing, affects Garmin wearables and apps, as well as Garmin call centers. “We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats,” wrote the company  on Twitter  and its Garmin Connect website. Garmin Connect is the service that allows owners of Garmin devices like Forerunner smartwatches to obsessively track their running performance, for example.  Tech News reports  that flyGarmin, the navigation service that supports Garmin’s aviation devices, has also been down affecting some pilots. Garmin was forced to shut down a number of cr...

  "Contrast ratio, response speed, high brightness" are all superior to OLED and micro LEDs Samsung Display has begun developing quantum dot nano-light emitting diodes (QNED) as a next-generation display that surpasses organic light emitting diodes, and is expected to begin full-fledged investment in 2021. QNED refers to a self-emitting display utilizing a nanometer (1nm = 1 billionth of a meter) semiconductor particles quantum dot (QD) and gallium nitrogen light emitting diode (GaN LED). This is theoretically evaluated as having a long life and high brightness compared to the organic light emitting diode (OLED), low power consumption, burn-in removal, etc. strengths. "QNED is the highest-end display with both contrast ratio, high response speed, and high brightness characteristics of micro-LED, which is the biggest advantage of QD technology and OLED TVs being used in LCD (LCD) TVs," said Yim Seong-seong, Managing Director of Ubiresearch, at the Next Generation Dis...

  Microsoft also is creating a new standalone Microsoft Consulting org as part of its new structure. As it often does at the start of a new fiscal year, Microsoft is making some changes in its sales and support organizations. During the past few days, word began trickling out regarding some of the shifts that will affect those working with its "Customer Success" unit, its technical account managers, and other support staff. Microsoft's goal with its latest shifts is to try to improve customer use and engagement of various Microsoft products and services, my contacts say. Microsoft officials are shooting for more support-role clarity and improved "right-sizing" of customer support plans with these latest moves. I'm not hearing that Microsoft will be doing any big layoffs as part of the changes. (There could be some separate, smaller layoffs, but these are due to the usual churn, not the dismissal of a large number of individuals associated with any given team...

  The hacker has attempted to ransom nearly 47% of all MongoDB databases left exposed online. A hacker has uploaded ransom notes on 22,900 MongoDB databases left exposed online without a password, a number that accounts for roughly 47% of all MongoDB databases accessible online The hacker is using an automated script to scan for misconfigured MongoDB databases, wiping their content, and leaving a ransom note behind asking for a 0.015 bitcoin (~$140) payment. The attacker is giving companies two days to pay, and threatens to leak their data and then contact the victim's local General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcement authority to report their data leak. Attacks planting this ransom note (READ_ME_TO_RECOVER_YOUR_DATA) have been seen as early as April 2020. In a phone call,  Victor Gevers , a security researcher with the GDI Foundation, said initial attacks didn't include the data wiping step. The attacker kept connecting to the same database, leaving the ransom note,...

  It also says it is 'not healthy nor sustainable' to expect two private companies to be solely responsible for solving the challenges faced by the Australian media industry. The federal government is hoping to make tech giants such as Facebook and Google pay for Australian content if it is a source of profit, and the country's consumer watchdog is leading the charge on a mandatory code of conduct to address "bargaining power imbalances" between news media businesses and digital platforms. While Facebook doesn't agree that it possesses unequal bargaining power compared to some of the largest media companies in Australia, it said there is a level of merit in setting regulatory frameworks to provide confidence that it is contributing "appropriately" in the Australian news ecosystem. The social media giant used its submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC)  Mandatory news media bargaining code Concepts paper  to say i...

  The previous record for the largest DDoS attack ever recorded was of 1.7 Tbps, recorded in March 2018. Amazon said its AWS Shield service mitigated the largest DDoS attack ever recorded, stopping a 2.3 Tbps attack in mid-February this year. The incident was disclosed in the company's  AWS Shield Threat Landscape [PDF] , a report detailing web attacks mitigated by Amazon's AWS Shield protection service. The report didn't identify the targeted AWS customer but said the attack was carried out using hijacked CLDAP web servers and caused three days of "elevated threat" for its AWS Shield staff. CLDAP (Connection-less Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an alternative to the older LDAP protocol and is used to connect, search, and modify Internet-shared directories. The protocol has been abused for DDoS attacks  since late 2016 , and CLDAP servers are known to amplify DDoS traffic  by 56 to 70 times  its initial size, making it a highly sought-after protocol an...

  Memory-safe systems programming language Rust is finally capturing the attention of lots of developers. Programming language Rust has entered the top 20 of the Tiobe popularity index for the first time, but it's still five spots behind systems programming rival Go.   There's growing interest in the use of memory-safe Rust for systems programming to build major platforms, in particular at Microsoft, which is exploring it for Windows and Azure with the goal of wiping out memory bugs in code written in C and C++. Amazon Web Services is also using Rust for performance-sensitive components in Lambda, EC2, and S3.   Rust has seen its ranking rise considerably on Tiobe, from 38 last year to 20 today. Tiobe's index is based on searches for a language on major search engines, so it doesn't mean more people are using Rust, but it shows that more developers are searching for information about the language.  Rust was voted for the fifth year straight the most-lo...

  SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which flew NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station, is powered by liquid oxygen, rocket-grade kerosene, and Linux. In a terrible year, it was a great moment. On May 30, SpaceX's  Crew Dragon , the first private-manned spacecraft ever and the first US-manned spaceflight in nine years, successfully delivered NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into orbit. Taking them was SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9, powered by rocket fuel and Linux. Like supercomputers, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and many mission-critical devices, the Falcon 9 flies with Linux. SpaceX's software engineers explained several years ago how the  Falcon 9 programming works .  At the time, the developers said: "The Flight Software team is about 35 people. We write all the code for Falcon 9, Grasshopper [The Falcon 9 test rocket], and Dragon applications; and do the core platform work, also on those vehicles; ...

  Microsoft will adopt Workday Adaptive Planning, which will run on Azure. Separately, Workday reported better-than-expected first quarter results and outlined plans to integrate with Salesforce's Work.com. Microsoft and Workday have forged a broad partnership that combines Workday Adaptive Planning and Microsoft Azure as well as Workday integrations with Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Teams.  Key points on the partnership include: Workday customers will be able to run Workday Adaptive Planning on Microsoft Azure's cloud. Microsoft will adopt Workday Adaptive Planning for its global finance teams for planning, budgeting and forecasting. The partnership includes integrations between Workday applications and Microsoft Teams and Azure Active Directory. Tom Bogan, Workday vice chairman, said the company has had a close working relationship with Microsoft for years as Adaptive Planning has been landing more large enterprise customers. "Midsized is still are largest custom...