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In Microsoft Edge 84, Microsoft introduced “quiet notification requests” by default to tame spammy alerts from websites that want permission to issue notifications to users. Instead of a full flyout asking the user to accept or dismiss a notification request, these requests were hidden behind a bell icon labelled “Notifications blocked”. But apparently that control was a bit blunt. While it helped tame spammy notifications, it also stopped Edge users from accepting notifications from well-liked sites....

According to Microsoft, attacks from state-sponsored Iranian hackers on IT services firms were virtually non-existent in 2020, but this year exceeded 1,500 potential attacks. “Microsoft has observed multiple Iranian threat actors targeting the IT services sector in attacks that aim to steal sign-in credentials belonging to downstream customer networks to enable further attacks,” it said. See also: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report). Most of the targeting is focused on IT services companies based in India, as well as several companies based in Israel and the United Arab Emirates....

MLCommons released the inaugural MLPerf HPC results last year, measuring how quickly different systems could train a neural network. The initial benchmark suite has been used to measure systems that generally use somewhere between 500 to 4,000 processors or accelerators – quite a bit smaller than the leading supercomputers. But while the initial version worked well for many scientifically-oriented workloads, it didn’t really scale up to full supercomputing capabilities. For instance, at scale, interconnect begins to matter a lot more....

Automation is getting us there. John Roese, global chief technology officer at Dell Technologies, states that transformative digital technologies are now a necessity, but there simply aren’t enough people to keep an enterprise competitive in the 2020s. “It’s a scale issue,” he explained in a recent interview published by MIT Technology Review. “Without autonomous operations, it becomes impossible to keep up with the growing opportunity to become a more digital business using human effort alone....

On November 15, Check Point Research (CPR) said the group began targeting organizations in Israel during September this year, joining campaigns launched by Pay2Key and BlackShadow. The focus of these operations was to deploy ransomware on their victim’s systems, cause damage, and steal valuable information destined for future public leaks. Ransomware operators, including Maze, Conti, and LockBit, to name but a few, have adopted double-extortion tactics through the launch of dedicated data leak websites on the Dark Web....

“We took the decision to end this service based on a decrease in customer use and an uptake of other payment services supported by NAB,” the company said. NAB Pay was introduced by the bank in 2016 to enable customers with a Visa debit or credit account to use their NAB mobile banking app to make contactless payments for purchases under AU$100. NAB Pay was only available for Android users, and it was also the first instance of Visa tokenisation in Australia....

Your online accounts tend to be linked to your username and password, with an added layer of SMS verification to provide two-factor authentication. However, these types of accounts can be compromised by phishing or social engineering to gain access to your accounts. To solve this issue, New York-based ID authentication company Nametag has launched “Sign in with ID” to access online accounts using its multifactor authentication technology combined with biometric identity verification....

So what does a skills gap look like at NASA? Meza says his team is still taking a “deep dive” into the organisation’s data science talent demands – but clear patterns are emerging, particularly in terms of identifying capability that already exists within the organisation. “One of the biggest challenges has been to identify where our data science skills are within NASA. It’s not a terminology or an occupation that’s been labelled data science within the government....

“Before InSight, the interior of Mars was a giant question mark,” Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said to reporters on Tuesday. “We just had this really fuzzy picture of what was going on inside Mars. Now we can actually draw a quantitatively precise picture.” And while InSight will slowly wind down this year as it loses power, it’s still collecting valuable data. On May 4, InSight detected a magnitude 5 marsquake – the largest quake it’s recorded by a factor of 10....

The CAPSTONE mission is a key step in advancing NASA’s Artemis program, which will culminate with NASA landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. The mission is also another successful milestone for NASA in its efforts to support a commercial space economy. The aim of CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) is to test different technologies in a lunar orbit called a “near rectilinear halo orbit” (NRHO)....

The acquisition also is NCS’ largest, to date, and will triple its local headcount to 1,300, said NCS in a statement Tuesday. Australia’s largest privately-owned IT services company, Dialog has presence across seven cities in the country, including Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, and Brisbane. Its portfolio spans managed application services, IT consulting, and application development. NCS CEO Ng Kuo Pin said the size of the acquisition demonstrated the company’s commitment to grow its business outside of Singapore, in particular, Australia, where parent company Singtel already had a strong presence....

Large swings in economic factors directly impact small businesses’ daily operations, making it more challenging for them to absorb the impact, plan for the future, and continue to show growth. Small business owners are worried. This sentiment, confirmed in the new State of Small Business report by Veem, found that 49% of small business owners anticipate the US will face a recession by the end of this year. “There is high anxiety at the moment about the amount of uncertainty coming in the second half of the year,” Veem CEO, Marwan Forzley, told ZDNet....

In a blog post, vice president of Content Delivery Architecture at Netflix David Fullagar shared his utopic vision of a platform where all of Netflix’s content is globally available, saying that if this were the case, there would not be a reason for members to use proxies or unblockers. “In coming weeks, those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to access the service in the country where they currently are,” Fullagar said....

In a recent “What’s new in Chrome OS” press release, Google shared a slew of upcoming features that include improvements to photo syncing, Wi-Fi sharing, and fast-pairing via Android. Here’s a summary of the new software additions that will make Chromebook and Android users a little less envious of Apple’s product line. Easy access to recent photos Remember when old sci-fi movies predicted that we’d have flying cars in 2020?...

Research by consultant McKinsey suggests 46% of senior management appointments are regarded as failures or disappointments after two years. So, how can you succeed in a new role? Five business leaders give us their top tips. 1. Set out your objectives clearly Lisa Heneghan, global chief digital officer (CDO) at consultancy firm KPMG, says anyone taking on a new position should get clarity on scope as soon as possible. “When you start in a new role, you need to create some structure and you need to understand what you’ve got, but you also need to very clearly work out what you’re going to do,” she says....

Terms of the merger were not disclosed but the two companies spent months negotiating before making the announcement. The two companies will operate as separate entities “relying on separate infrastructures and different product development plans.” In a statement, Surfshark founder and CEO Vytautas Kaziukonis defended the VPN market’s worrisome consolidation, arguing that it indicated “the industry’s maturity.” “Consolidations in the global consumer cybersecurity market indicate the industry’s maturity,” Kaziukonis said....

Previously, only hospitality businesses and hairdressers were required to integrate the state’s QR check-in system into their operations. From July 12, retail businesses, supermarkets, individual shops within shopping centres, entry points at shopping centres, gyms, offices, call centres, manufacturing and warehousing businesses, universities and TAFE, and schools including teachers and visitors – such as parents and contractors – will be required to use the state’s check-in system. Students will not be required to check in with the Service NSW app....

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said at the company’s Q3 results call on Wednesday evening that the FTC was reviewing the deal, and that the company has been in talks with the US regulator about how it can alleviate concerns around the deal. She added that some Arm licensees have expressed concerns or objected to the deal. Nvidia’s update about the FTC review comes a day after the UK government launched an in-depth antitrust investigation into the deal....

Richard Kerris, who runs a team of a hundred people at chip giant Nvidia who work on building technology for the metaverse, known as Omniverse (more here), is not at all skeptical about that future world. He is skeptical about one thing, though. “The only thing I’m skeptical about is how people tend to talk about it,” Kerris told ZDNet, on a recent trip through New York City to meet with developers....

On Thursday, Check Point Research (CPR) said that the bugs were found in the software solutions provider’s online domains, used by thousands of enterprise clients worldwide. The Australian vendor is the provider of tools including Jira, a project management system, and Confluence, a document collaboration platform for remote teams. The vulnerabilities in question were found in a number of Atlassian-maintained websites, rather than on-prem or cloud-based Atlassian products. Subdomains under atlassian....