UK communications regulator Ofcom has announced plans to protect phone boxes in areas with bad mobile reception or high accident rates — the occasions when people need to contact emergency services. Public phone boxes in the UK aren’t exactly popular for communications (or in many cases very pleasant), but there’s still a need for them, according to Ofcom. SEE: The IoT is getting a lot bigger, but security is still getting left behind The move to protect public phones comes as the UK and incumbent operator BT rips out old copper and replaces it with fibre to deliver internet telephony or VoIP....

Also: This $10 gadget is my favorite repair tool of all time But, shockingly, finding the perfect headlamp is no easy feat. They’re often too bulky or heavy, equipped with absurdly intricate controls, use some specialized proprietary charger that I’m going to lose within a month, or boast a beam so bright it could compete with the sun. And don’t get me started on the tactical, high-intensity strobe feature designed to disorient ninjas....

HDDs are cheaper than faster, more compact solid state drives (SSDs), which have the advantage of no moving parts, and are which now ubiquitous on smartphones, and used in many of the latest laptops. But researchers at the University of Cambridge Graphene Centre hope to breathe new life into the old HDD by using graphene to create ultra-high density HDDs. SEE: Hiring Kit: Computer Hardware Engineer (TechRepublic Premium) In a new paper published in Nature, the Cambridge researchers detail how they’ve used graphene to make HDDs that can store 10 times more data than today’s HDDs....

A global study with 1,104 respondents from 49 countries found that more than nine in 10 organizations continue to view COBOL as a strategic priority. It also found that 83% of organizations believe their COBOL-based applications will see out another 10 or more years. COBOL – or Common Business Oriented Language – has been around since 1959 and is largely credited for helping to build the computer software industry as we know it today....

We’re doomed because we’re good at dooming ourselves, and we’re really good at not anticipating the consequences of our actions. We’re already benignly accepting that robots will put us out of work, but do we really, really have to do the same to our dearest, most beloved friend – the dog? I’m only asking because I’ve nuzzled up to a YouTube video that made me fear for the better beings of this Earth....

One of the main reasons for this is the fact that most Chromebooks, to this point, have been built with relatively modest processors, no discrete GPUs (graphics cards), and few features, if any, that lent themselves to gaming. But, all of that is about to change. With a combination of some of the most impressive hardware ever to grace a Chromebook and ground-up integration of some of the most popular cloud-based gaming services, this first wave of gaming portables is poised to define an entirely new category or products designed to let you play your favorite games on the road....

NIST will later this year publish the “lightweight cryptography” standard after picking the Ascon family for the task. Also: What is the IoT? Everything you need to know about the Internet of Things right now It selected the algorithms to protect a vast array of devices, sensors, and actuators. The algorithms are also designed for implanted medical devices, stress detectors inside roads and bridges, and keyless entry fobs for vehicles....

In its report on systemic investigations into fraud enabled through phone and internet accounts, the TIO pointed out that fraudsters have exploited slow responses from telcos to create security breaches. This included a customer being kept on hold when trying to report fraud, failure of customers being able to contact telcos outside of business hours, staff not blocking fraudulent activity, staff not knowing how to deal with fraud, and attackers maintaining access to accounts after telcos were notified....

Javascript still rules in RedMonk’s Q3 2021 language popularity rankings, which have been updated twice a year since 2010. Python overtook Java for the second spot in RedMonk’s Q2 2020 ranking, and it has remained there in Python’s shadow ever since, but now it has jumped one spot to second – a place it once again shares with Python. See: Programming languages: Developers reveal the ones they love and the ones they dread As RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady notes, Java’s consistent third placing over the past year was “prompting questions from observers as to whether it was fated to a gradual drift down these rankings”....

The company’s CEO, CC Wei, provided the chip supply update during the company’s second-quarter results presentation, where he added that output for micro-controlling units should be close to 60% higher than 2020 levels and 30% higher than the 2018 pre-pandemic levels, respectively, by the end of the year. “By taking such actions, we expect the shortage to be greatly reduced for TSMC customers starting this quarter,” Wei told investors. Two months ago, the company announced plans to spend $100 billion over three years to boost capacity....

On Tuesday, Cisco Talos said that the advanced persistent threat (APT) group, Russian in origin, has developed a new backdoor for persistence and stealth. Dubbed TinyTurla, the previously unknown backdoor is simple in design but suitable for particular purposes: dropping payloads and staying under the radar if Turla’s primary malware is wiped from a compromised machine. Active since at least 2004, Turla, also known as Snake and Uroburos, is a sophisticated operation with a long list of high-profile victims in its portfolio....

Now, Twitter has announced that the notes created by members of its Birdwatch pilot program will be visible to additional users across the US. The notes will appear “directly on some tweets,” where these new participants will be able to rate those notes and provide feedback on their efficacy to the Birdwatch program. The actual group writing these notes will not be expanded, however. For a note to appear to users within the expanded program, it must first be rated as “helpful” by “enough Birdwatch contributors from different perspectives....

Real-time processing is when a program or operating system is fast enough that it can guarantee a reaction to data within a tight, real-world deadline. Typically, real-time computing delivers results from microseconds (one millionth of a second) to milliseconds (one thousandth of a second). Real-time applications that take things down to microsecond latency are stock market’s high-frequency trading (HFT) applications. The much more common millisecond real-time processing is used in banking and telecom applications, digital ad networks, and self-driving cars....

On Tuesday, Digital and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries ordered the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to undertake the investigation in response to findings that the deal could create “real problems” to competition. Those findings were made as part of an initial investigation conducted by the CMA, which concluded there was a possibility the deal would result in a substantial lessening of competition across the data centres, IoT, automotive sector, and gaming applications markets....

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by cyberattacks targeting the country’s services and infrastructure, including DDoS attacks and destructive wiper malware campaigns – leading to the Ukrainian government calling for volunteers to aid with cybersecurity. But it has also asked for support in conducting offensive cyber operations back at Russia. “We are creating an IT army,” Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine said in a tweet at the weekend....

According to the DoJ, RSOCKS was operating as a proxy service, but instead of offering customers IP addresses legitimately leased from internet service providers (ISPs), the firm was offering IP addresses that had been assigned to hacked devices. The DoJ said that together with law enforcement partners in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK it has “dismantled” the infrastructure of RSOCKS, “which hacked millions of computers and other electronic devices around the world”....

UWB makes use of super-fast signal pulses (anything up to over a billion a second) broadcast across a wide swathe of the radio spectrum (from 500MHz to several gigahertz). This allows it to avoid the interference issues that plague other technologies, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Also: How to track an AirTag Up until recently, UWB has been limited to mostly military and medical applications. But that’s changing. While there was a point when it looked like UWB could replace Wi-Fi (that didn’t happen), and that Apple might be planning to use it to replace Bluetooth for communicating with AirPods, the feature of UWB that’s made it mainstream is precision finding....

The updates should help IT teams that have to manage virtual desktops and apps while remote work policies remain in flux. According to VMware, over a six-week period in early 2020, when companies quickly shifted to remote work, the total number of cloud-deployed Horizon desktops grew by 82%. First, VMware is expanding multiple Horizon Control Plane services to additional cloud providers, including the following: Universal Brokering is now available for VMware Horizon on Azure VMware Solution (AVS) environments....

In this Q&A, Meerah Rajavel, chief information officer for Citrix at the time of this interview (now CIO for Palo Alto Networks), shares her observations on what it takes to keep up with everything and flourish in this industry. To be and remain relevant, technical professionals need to focus on three areas: cloud, security and programming and scripting languages. Certification with cloud platforms like Azure, AWS, and GCP are extremely relevant and in-demand today, and as hybrid work has become the new norm, certifications in digital workspace companies are also critically important, along with security-focused credentials like CISM, CCISP, and CISA....

In a statement, ProtonMail CEO and founder Andy Yen said the addition of Berners-Lee to the company’s advisory board was aligned with its goal to “create an internet where people are in control of their information at all times”. “Our vision is to build an internet where privacy is the default by creating an ecosystem of services accessible to everyone, everywhere, every day,” Yen said. Yen said the company already had a past relationship with Berners-Lee, explaining that the idea of ProtonMail was initially conceived at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where the World Wide Web was created....