Party on Semiconductor Street as worldwide 2021 revenues top record half a trillion dollars

Version 7 of the WINE compatibility tool for running Windows programs on various *nix operating systems is here, bringing notably improved 64-bit support.

WINE has come a long way. It took 18 years to get to version 1.0 and another nine years to get to version 2, but since version 3 in 2018, it’s averaged roughly one major release per year. The project is now mature, stable, and quite functional. A lot of Windows programs work fine that formerly didn’t. It’s not limited to Linux – it also supports macOS and FreeBSD, and Linux relatives ChromeOS and Android.

This may in part be due to its corporate backing. The project has had several business sponsors over the decades, including Corel, which invested substantial effort to help port WordPerfect Office, and later Google, which did the same so that the now-cancelled Picasa would work better on Linux.

Toronto-based Citizen Lab has warned that an app required by Beijing law to attend the 2022 Olympics contains vulnerabilities that can leak calls and data to malicious users, as well as the potential to subject the user to scanning for censored keywords.

“To support the successful delivery of the Games and the safety of all Games participants, Beijing 2022 has developed the ‘My 2022’ application, which includes information provided by the Organising Committee, the City of Beijing and also general information,” reads the International Olympic Committee’s Beijing 2022 playbooks.

The playbooks [PDF], which are documents that serve as info guides for Olympics-goers, instruct international visitors to download the app and use it to monitor health for 14 days prior to their departure for China.

American aviation regulators have banned the use of autoland at some of their country’s airports as the local debate about 5G phone mast emissions and airliners continues – while Japan claims to have solved the problem a year ago.

This morning Emirates, the UAE state airline, declared it was suspending flights to nine US airports as mobile network operators in the States said they were suspending their planned switch-on of 5G services. It follows Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan Airlines and Air India, according to the Daily Mail.

Yet in Japan itself the solution was straightforward, with local scientists telling the International Civil Aviation Organisation last year: “To avoid the blocking of radio altimeters, the location of the high-power 5G base station should be avoided within 200m from the approaching route of aircraft.”

The UK’s data watchdog has issued the Ministry of Justice with an Enforcement Order [PDF] after the government department broke data protection laws by failing to process thousands of subject access requests (SARs) without undue delay.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it was made aware of the backlog by the MoJ – the data controller – in January 2019 and spoke to the ministry over the course of the year, mulling potential action. Then the pandemic hit, leading to a change in the ICO’s approach to regulatory action, and it paused the probe.

By October 2020, the ICO asked for an update on the number of outstanding SARs, but the MoJ said it too was struggling under the COVID-19 outbreak and had sought to prioritise requests that were “urgent” due to legal proceedings like immigration hearings or police investigations.

Microsoft has bragged about how its HoloLens 2 is being used by doctors to assess care home residents in a COVID-safe way.

One might wonder if the elderly haven’t suffered enough during the pandemic without throwing Microsoft’s Augmented Reality technology into the mix. However, with rules and guidance making in-person appointments a little tricky, having a staffer don the goggles while a doctor looks on remotely is not a terrible option.

Microsoft unveiled the follow-up to its clunkier predecessor in 2019. At the time there was much rejoicing concerning 3D models and collaboration. Recent events have made that remote collaboration pitch seem somewhat prescient.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has collected samples of rock from the surface of Mars that are rich in a type of carbon associated with biological processes on Earth.

Is it a sign of ancient life? Well… maybe. It could be the result of methane having been released into the atmosphere of Mars by bacteria. That methane was then maybe converted into “larger, more complex molecules” by ultraviolet light, which rained down to the surface and were preserved (replete with distinctive carbon signature) in the rocks.

At least that’s how it works on Earth. The explanation could also be non-biological. It could be down to the interaction of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere with ultraviolet light, or perhaps millions of years ago the solar system passed through a giant molecular cloud rich in the type of carbon detected.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DoJ) Antitrust Division are launching a joint public inquiry as a first step to modernising merger guidelines and preventing anticompetitive deals.

“Times have changed because the advent of the digital economy has transformed industry,” said the DoJ’s assistant attorney general, Jonathan Kanter, in a press conference on Tuesday. “The digital revolution has not only impacted new markets like tech, but markets across our economy, many of which have been rebuilt from the inside out.”

FTC chair Lina Khan said it was time for a merger review because the number of global deals reached in 2021 was the highest ever recorded – at a whopping $5.8 trillion –  with the DoJ receiving twice the number of merger filings as in 2020.

The UK government is backing away from proposals to remove individuals’ rights to challenge decisions made about them by artificial intelligence following an early analysis of its consultation process.

In its response to the consultation “Data: A new direction”, which set out proposals for changing UK data protection law following the nation’s departure from the European Union, the government would look to the “efficacy of safeguards” with respect to automated decision-making about people, rather than the removal of safeguards, Harry Lee, deputy director, data protection and data rights, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport told a conference yesterday.

In September 2021, the government published a consultation that suggested it could water down individuals’ rights to challenge decisions made about them by AI.

A man who claims he’s the creator of Bitcoin says his private keys to £14m of Bitcoin SV were deleted by hackers in 2020 – and now he’s suing developers to forcibly give him access to internet coins he “owns but cannot access.”

Craig Wright (yes, him again) is suing 15 people and one Swiss company in the hope of forcing them to “re-write or amend the underlying software code” so Wright can get his hands on a large amount of Bitcoin SV.*

The High Court of England and Wales recently ordered Wright to pay the court security for costs in case he loses, with the resulting judgment shedding light on yet more English litigation involving Wright and Bitcoin.

Sent home to wait out the Omicron wave of the seemingly never-ending COVID-19 pandemic, office workers throughout much of the world naturally will be wondering what comes next.

The frequently changing circumstances of the last 24 months appear to have permanently altered the character of work – but scratching the surface reveals the same old patterns dressed up in new buzzwords.

Working from home asked firms to find a new flexibility in all of their operations. So how is it that nearly every firm has found exactly the same answer? We’ve gone from five days in the office to three – yet those work-from-home days always seem to be Mondays and Fridays. Everyone still has to be in the office from Tuesday to Thursday, so that “teams” can stay “aligned” with the “direction” and “goals” of the organisation.