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AmiMoJo writes: The coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford is highly effective at stopping people developing Covid-19 symptoms, a large trial shows. Interim data suggests 70% protection, but the researchers say the figure may be as high as 90% by tweaking the dose. The results will be seen as a triumph, but come after Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed 95% protection. However, the Oxford jab is far cheaper, and is easier to store and get to every corner of the world than the o

Also: Edge to take to the M1, and TypeScript 4.1 is here In Brief  Microsoft's army of unpaid Windows Insider testers can look forward to a Windows 10 turkey without that crucial bit of juicy 64-bit Intel on Arm stuffing.…

Italy's COVID-19 death toll passes 50,000, with 630 new fatalities  Reuters

Blackrock ups U.S. equities to overweight, cuts Europe  Reuters UK

Irish COVID-19 jobless claims level off ahead of reopening  Reuters UK

Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Pre-Thanksgiving testing, Illy  Reuters

Oxford Languages's annual Word of the Year is usually a tribute to the protean creativity of English and the reality of constant linguistic change, throwing a spotlight on zeitgeisty neologisms like "selfie," "vape" and "unfriend." Sure, it isn't all lexicographic fun and frolic. 2017 saw the triumph of "toxic." Last year, the winner was "climate emergency." But then came 2020, and you-know-what. From a report: This year, Oxford Languages, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has forg

Piraeus Bank third quarter profit drops on higher loan-loss provisions  Reuters UK

Piraeus Bank profit drops on higher loan-loss provisions  Reuters UK

Princess Michael better after contracting COVID-19 - spokesman  Reuters

SANS Institute expands course lineup to help you think like a hacker Promo  When it comes to cyber attacks, it’s not enough to just sit there, hoping miscreants will pass you by. You have to think like a hacker, stress testing your own systems to ensure they are as tight as possible.…

PM Johnson sets out new measures to replace COVID lockdown  Reuters

Snapchat launches TikTok-like feature 'Spotlight'  Reuters

Republican former national security officials urge party to demand Trump concession  Reuters

Romello Goodman, a software engineer at The New York Times, writing at Increment: Like a sourdough starter passed through the hands of many bakers -- some novices, some experienced -- a codebase reflects how teammates communicate with one another. It's a snapshot of our thinking and our best attempts at codifying norms and assumptions. It's a conversation in which each person contributes and is in conversation with those who came before them. With each new feature or bug report, we understand ou

No diggity, NoSQL Open-source NoSQL in-memory database Redis is the most popular database in the world if, that is, your world is solely within Amazon Web Services.…

U.S. manufacturing, services activity expanding rapidly in November: IHS Markit  Reuters

The Solomon Islands Government has defended its decision to place a temporary ban on Facebook, a move it says is aimed at tackling cyberbullying and online defamation. From a report: The ban, which has not yet come into effect, received an angry response online after it was announced last week. Communications officials are expected to meet with internet and telecommunications providers in Solomon Islands to discuss how they will block the world's largest social media network. Prime Minister Mana

Wall Street rises on vaccine cheer, upbeat business activity data  Reuters India

And both lived to tell the tale With a breath of some much-needed good news, The Register is obliged to point out that it's nice to see Florida Man* upending the stereotype of "world's worst superhero" by actually doing something heroic.…

WHO welcomes news on AstraZeneca vaccine, awaits trial data  Reuters

Saudi Arabia to offer vaccines to all residents for free - state TV  Reuters

Smaller digital coins soar as bitcoin powers on towards record high  Reuters

Burkina Faso's Kabore ahead in early presidential election results  Reuters India

In some of the most remote and impoverished corners of the world, where respiratory illnesses abound and trained medical professionals fear to tread, diagnosis is increasingly powered by artificial intelligence and the internet. From a report: In less than a minute, a new app on a phone or a computer can scan an X-ray for signs of tuberculosis, Covid-19 and 27 other conditions. TB, the most deadly infectious disease in the world, claimed nearly 1.4 million lives last year. The app, called qXR, i

BRIEF-White House Weighs New Action Against Beijing - WSJ  Reuters India

Hungary imposes restricted shopping hours to protect elderly in pandemic  Reuters

SOFTS-NY cocoa surges to new 9-month top; sugar, coffee gain  Reuters

Bug? iFixit muses in teardown of Cupertino's top-tier mobe The iPhone 12 Pro Max represents the top end of Apple's latest smartphone lineup. This is a tier that historically has differentiated itself not just by its price, but also by its camera, which Cupertino insists can produce shots that rival those taken on professional kit.…

Fulham in a spot of bother after latest penalty fiasco  Reuters UK

Williams restructures midstream contracts with bankrupt Chesapeake  Reuters

'We've got your back' - Trump advisor vows U.S. support in South China Sea  Reuters

U.S. screens highest number of airline passengers since March  Reuters

Irish PM says he hopes to see Brexit trade deal outline by end of week  Reuters UK

Wall Street opens higher as vaccine progress fuels recovery hopes  Reuters Canada

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: It seems like it's inadvisable to sit in a movie theatre during a pandemic. Thousands of theatres still tried showing movies this weekend — but the number of open theatres is dropping, perhaps because the number of people actually buying tickets appears to be plummeting. For example, there were 2,154 movie theatres open in America this weekend, according to The Hollywood Reporter — roughly 40% of about 5,449 theatres (according to figur

Do they byte? In Brief  Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida is now guarded by robotic canines that will patrol the area before popping back to their kennels for a recharge.…

EU hires banks for new 15-year bond sale - lead manager  Reuters UK

UK watchdog fines FX broker TFS-ICAP for misleading clients  Reuters UK

Special Report: Ortega media enrich his family, entrench his hold on Nicaragua  Reuters

'Very stressful': COVID-19 surge slices U.S. demand for big Thanksgiving turkeys  Reuters

French finance minister tells Bloomberg TV: I can guarantee survival of Air France  Reuters UK

Merck adds experimental COVID-19 therapy with OncoImmune deal  Reuters

Procurement services? Not any more. Exchequer services? No thanks. IT Services? Reduced Updated  Capita, the outsourcing provider held dear to the hearts of Reg readers everywhere, is seeing million of pounds lopped off the value of its contract with a gaggle of small councils in the middle of England.…

EU's Barnier says 'fundamental differences' persist in UK trade talks  Reuters

Companies House filing for year ended 31 January 2020 shows strong growth Dell Corp UK has reported a double-digit revenue bounce on the back of purchasing a couple of organisations from elsewhere in the group and selling a healthy amount of hardware, support, and software maintenance.…

UK medicine regulator will make Pfizer vaccine decision in 'shortest time possible'  Reuters UK

Swiss report 9,751 new coronavirus cases in three days  Reuters

A PICTURE AND ITS STORY: Pictures of the Year  Reuters

Australian PM says misinterpretation of interests behind China tension  Reuters Australia

Bank of England's Haldane sees lasting scars from COVID-19 crisis  Reuters UK

Cyber House Party charity event scheduled for 17 December – just bring your dosh and (maybe) some ear plugs Locked up indoors with nothing to do as the evenings draw closer? If lighthearted chats about cyber security are your thing, followed up by some banging dance tunes, then we have just the event – all in the name of charity, of course.…

Column: Funds, index traders carrying big longs in CBOT corn and soybeans  Reuters UK

Surge in greenhouse gases sustained despite COVID lockdowns - U.N.  Reuters

A 2020 mantra for small business: 'Listen hard, change fast'  Reuters

Ukraine president tests negative for coronavirus - statement  Reuters

Polish October retail sales hit by rising COVID-19 case numbers  Reuters UK

Malaysia to shut some Top Glove factories in phases amid virus outbreak  Reuters

Sterling rallies on vaccine and Brexit deal optimism  Reuters

AstraZeneca will have enough COVID-19 vaccine for 200 million doses this year  Reuters

AstraZeneca will have 200 million COVID vaccine doses by year-end  Reuters India

In Malaysia's Sabah, pandemic rages as migrants flee testing  Reuters

Bring-your-own-key may no longer be enough for EU data protection body The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued guidance that calls into question recommendations to cloud services providers in responding to the Schrems II ruling, which struck down the Privacy Shield arrangement for moving data from the EU to the US.…

Police in Belarus detained 345 people at protests on Sunday - ministry  Reuters India

New Zealand PM offers COVID-19 help to U.S. President-elect Biden  Reuters

Indonesia hits half million virus cases as infection spike strains hospitals  Reuters

Q&A: Where are we in the COVID-19 vaccine race?  Reuters India

British pianist's velvety tones soothe Thailand's hungry monkeys  Reuters

A partner at an early-stage investment firm argues that "in the 2000s everyone was learning HTML and making a website. In the 2010s everyone was learning to develop mobile apps. In the 2020s all the developers are going to build Vision AI." Where the web had its impact was by digitizing manual paper-based processes... I believe the next big wave is Vision AI, and for the same reason: It offers the opportunity to digitize the next massive trove of information in the world, that which is not on p

Vaccine hopes drive European stocks higher  Reuters

Major markets gain on vaccine optimism; Saudi eases  Reuters

France's Credit Agricole makes $875 million buyout offer for Italy's Creval  Reuters

Remember the days when 'we made it up as we went along'? Who, Me?  DNS (or the Devil's Naming Service as we've heard it called) takes centre stage in this week's tale from the Who, Me? vaults: a warning of the terrors of the forgotten typo.…

Factbox: Brexit and the City of London - what changes and when  Reuters

Hit by cryptocurrency curbs, Chinese fund managers look elsewhere to ride bitcoin bull  Reuters

Shanghai links two of latest virus cases to cargo container from abroad  Reuters UK

Netanyahu met Saudi crown prince, Pompeo in Saudi Arabia - Israeli minister  Reuters UK

Swiss group Pictet opens Shanghai unit to tap China's fund market  Reuters UK

Back to normal after Easter: UK aims to roll out COVID vaccines next month  Reuters UK

Image Manipulation Program spawned GTK, which begat GNOME The General Image Manipulation Program, GIMP, has turned 25.…

Netanyahu met Saudi crown prince, Pompeo in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Israeli radio stations report  Reuters

Many German states favour extending COVID-19 shutdown: state PM  Reuters

Smelling blood, Huawei’s Chinese mobile rivals look to capitalise on its U.S. woes  Reuters

AstraZeneca says COVID-19 'vaccine for the world' can be 90% effective  Reuters

After strong rally, Turkish lira slides 2% as COVID curbs begin  Reuters

Plus: A new web app from Google to generate AI monsters Drones and machine learning algorithms are helping beachgoers get live updates to alert them whenever sharks are in the water.…

Danone to cut jobs, product lines in virus-led restructuring  Reuters

Pipe dreams leave U.S. energy firms caught in climate trap  Reuters

No incident response plan? We can help you there… Promo  You know the symptoms – a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, tingling in the fingers, blood thumping in the temples as time slows to a crawl. Realizing you’re facing a full-on cyber attack can feel horribly visceral, even if the attackers are virtual.…

Malaysian crypto exchange says $3 billion blockchain bond is withdrawn  Reuters

Hong Kong, Singapore bubble delay highlights hurdles to travel recovery  Reuters

German stocks - Factors to watch on November 23  Reuters UK

Long-time Slashdot reader t0qer has a question: why haven't we gone to an open source, Public Key Infrastructure-based voting system? "I'm fairly well versed in PKI technology, and quoting this site, it would take traditional computers 300 trillion years to break RSA-2048 for a single vote." SSL.com has a pretty interesting piece on using Public Key Infrastructure in voting. There's also a GitHub project that leverages PKI and IBM blockchain technology... It just seems like paper at this point

Elliott Advisors proposes to acquire Aryzta, Swiss firm looks for other options  Reuters

Ethiopia says Tigray capital encircled after surrender ultimatum  Reuters

Do you see what I TSMC? The USA and Taiwan have emerged from their first "Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue" with an agreement that co-operation around semiconductors is their top priority.…

Yemen's Houthis say they fired missile at Saudi Aramco site in Jeddah  Reuters

China Evergrande says property services unit seeks to raise up to $2 billion in IPO  Reuters

Exclusive: In latest China jab, U.S. drafts list of 89 firms with military ties  Reuters

NFL Roundup: Hill just what Saints need to top Falcons  Reuters

Alibaba CEO says China's internet policies need to evolve to help industry  Reuters

Biden expected to name Linda Thomas-Greenfield U.N. ambassador: reports  Reuters

Declaration puts a handbrake on global digital currencies, includes usual 'let's use the internet and AI to make the world a better place' stuff Chinese president Xi Jinping appears to have offered the world the QR code-powered system used to determine movement rights inside his nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

This week Purism began shipping its mass-produced Librem 5 phone to customers, according to announcement from the company: The Librem 5 is a one-of-a-kind general-purpose computer in a phone form-factor that Purism has designed and built from scratch following a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised over $2.2 million. Both the hardware and software design is focused on respecting the end user's freedom and giving them control over their privacy and security. The Librem 5 doesn't run An

Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong detained for 2019 illegal assembly  Reuters

South Korea reports 271 new COVID-19 cases as tighter curbs to take effect  Reuters

Blinken is president-elect's pick as U.S. secretary of state - Biden ally  Reuters

Asian shares rise as investors count on vaccine relief  Reuters

There's "an overwhelming body of evidence" for scientists' belief that the coronavirus originated in an animal before making the leap to humans, reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) They add that U.S. intelligence agencies also "have not found any proof" for a fringe theory it somehow leaked from a lab. Yet as recently as September, a Hong Kong researcher was appearing on Fox News "making the unsubstantiated claim to millions that the coronavirus was a bio-weapon manufactured by C

LTS release 5.10 is currently unruly and looks like colliding with the holiday season Linus Torvalds has expressed some worries about progress of version 5.10 of the Linux kernel.…

Oil prices extend gains on COVID vaccine hopes, OPEC+  Reuters

China planning new policies to take on ageing population: state media  Reuters

Klopp blasts broadcasters over hectic match schedule  Reuters UK

Global dividends forecast to inch back from coronavirus cliff edge  Reuters

CNET reports on Twitter's rocky rollout of "fleets" which disappear after 24 hours: In a blog post, Twitter said global tests of the feature indicated the tool helped people feel more comfortable joining public conversations on the service. "Those new to Twitter found Fleets to be an easier way to share what's on their mind," the company said. "Because they disappear from view after a day, Fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions and feelings."

Chile's President Pinera seeks Constitutional Court help to head off pensions bill  Reuters

Dollar pinned near major support as vaccine progress weighs  Reuters

Siemens, Deutsche Bahn launch local hydrogen trains trial  Reuters

Stop doomscrolling through Blursday and take a Workation Oxford Languages, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has made "unmute" one of its words of the year for 2020.…

An heiress, a judge and a job: France's Sarkozy goes on trial for corruption  Reuters

UK to announce self-isolation no longer required for contact with COVID-19 cases - The Telegraph  Reuters UK

Trump campaign says Sidney Powell not a member of legal team  Reuters

Trump campaign parts ways with Powell after vote-switching claim  Reuters

With hugs, kisses and a drag duo, border between Australia's two largest states reopens  Reuters Australia

Mexico president's rating at one-year high with election in sight: poll  Reuters

Ars Technica glimpsed a possible future at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory: a solar simulator "that can shine with the intensity of 20 Suns..." "They think it could be the key to interstellar exploration." "It's really easy for someone to dismiss the idea and say, 'On the back of an envelope, it looks great, but if you actually build it, you're never going to get those theoretical numbers,'" says Benkoski, a materials scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the

Long-time Slashdot reader 00_NOP is a software engineer (with a PhD in real-time computing) re-visits a historic research paper on the financial trade-offs between disk space (then costing about $20,000 per kilobyte) and (volatile) memory (costing about $5 per kilobyte): Thirty-five years ago that report for Tandem computers concluded that the cost balance between memory, disk and CPU on big iron favoured holding items in memory if they were needed every five minutes and using five bytes to sav

U.S. Navy rear admiral makes unannounced visit to Taiwan: sources  Reuters

To discard the theory of dark matter, "you'll need to replace it with something even more bizarre: a force of gravity that, at some distances, pulls massive objects together and, at other distances, pushes them apart." That's how Science magazine describes a new study, adding that "The analysis underscores how hard it is to explain away dark matter" — even though "after decades of trying, physicists haven't spotted particles of dark matter floating around." [T]o do away with dark matter,

Britain's PM expected to speak to European Commission head this week on Brexit - Telegraph  Reuters UK

"Bitcoin is now trading near $18,000, up almost 100% in six months," notes Bloomberg columnist Lionel Laurent, "and it's flirting with an all-time high reached in 2017 (which, given it was followed by an ugly crash, faithful Bitcoiners would rather forget)..." . But what exacty does that mean? He challenges the notion that Bitcoin is the new wealth-protecting investment like gold, asking "is this really being driven by people seeking protection from a more uncertain world...?" If anything, B

Netanyahu urges no return to Iran nuclear deal  Reuters

England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland aim to ease COVID rules for Christmas  Reuters UK

No data leaked, says football club Manchester United is working with infosec pros to "minimize the ongoing IT disruption" that it says was caused by an assault on its tech systems.…

Red trousers and a Porsche or respectable middle age for Windows? What do Cristiano Ronaldo, Bruno Mars and Windows have in common? They're all 35 years old. It is three and a half decades since Microsoft Windows 1.0 was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.…

Human contractors battling COVID-19 stress and psychological trauma Facebook’s AI algorithms aren’t effective enough to automatically screen for violent images or child abuse, leaving the job to human moderators who are complaining about having to come into an office to screen harmful content during the coronavirus pandemic.…

Humans live in the real world, machines don't, study finds AI-powered machines may be able to generate text that is grammatically correct and very human-like, but when it comes to common sense they’re still lagging severely behind us meatbags.…

Patch if you can: Fix available Updated  IBM Power9 processors, intended for data centers and mainframes, are potentially vulnerable to abuse of their speculative execution capability. The security shortcoming could allow a local user to access privileged information.…

Safety first, politics second Software updates alone are not enough to make the controversial Boeing 737 Max safe enough for EU-regulated skies, the political bloc’s aviation safety regulator has decreed.…

Huge performance jump from disk Dell Technologies has unveiled its first all-flash object storage appliance - as good an indication as any that flash object storage has hit the mainstream.…

RCS throws the dice Analysis  Google is rolling out end-to-end encryption in the unloved and unwanted Android Rich Communication Services, as part of a renewed hope people might use messaging services controlled by the Chocolate Factory.…

Skype? We've heard of it Microsoft has previewed some more consumer-friendly features in its Slack-for-suits platform, Teams.…

Thou shalt not devise thine own cursed metrics, we decree Reg Standards Bureau  A bizarre American website has come up with a new way of measuring pressure by referring to the weight of elephants delivered through the area of a ballet shoe. Frankly we're baffled.…

Legal saga that began with dodgy prosecution ends in vindication Updated  The Home Office cannot order Ofcom to ignore its legal duties even when a government minister wants to shut something down because of unspecified "national security" concerns, the Court of Appeal has said, ruling that ministers acted outside their legal powers when banning GSM gateways.…

Plus: Lots of dead space in the new Mac Mini The first teardowns of the MacBook Pro and Air reveal few surprises. iFixit got its hands on the inaugural Apple Silicon machines and tenderly disassembled them, with the results largely affirming what we learned during this mont

Electron celebrates a parachute party and is successfully recovered Rocket Lab has joined SpaceX in a very exclusive club of orbital booster recovery-capable companies after it parachuted an Electron first stage back to Earth.…

COVID-19 could slow customer wins, warns analyst Cloud HR and finance application biz Workday is bouncing along happily amid a global pandemic as it outstripped market expectations and posted an 18 per cent annual increase in revenue for Q3 of its fiscal 2021.…

The last time we saw one of these was in February. Things haven't gone well since then Bork!Bork!Bork!  Software licensing is the bane of IT pros. Some spend hours poring over byzantine rules and regulations while others throw in the towel and roll things themselves. Then there are those that simply ignore the pleas for a production licence.…

Tech hipsters? On our doorstep? The Silicon what? The National Cyber Security Centre picked its London HQ building not because it was the best or most cost-efficient location – but because the agency "prioritised image over cost", a Parliamentary committee has said.…

Doesn't mean it's terrible, you just have to manage your expectations Review  With a price tag of £329, OnePlus's latest 5G phone is also its cheapest. From the polished design to the solid day-to-day performance, there's some things to rave about with the Nord N10. And yet we're not going to do that. Not yet.…

The system's playing up again. Infamy! Infamy! Something for the Weekend, Sir?  No, I didn't get it wrong. I had a… er, computer glitch. There, everyone will believe that.…

In steps our hero: Have you tried turning it off and on again? On Call  It's Friday! Come board the On Call bus to a time when Program Manager was king and Windows was a mere teenager.…

Combined Ministry of Defence and GCHQ team has worked since April to 'transform cyber capabilities' The United Kingdom has announced £16.5 billion ($22bn) of new defence spending, some of which has gone towards a newly revealed National Cyber Force and some earmarked to create a Space Command and agency dedicated to AI.…

Spear-phishers love the executive suite. Here’s how to stop them getting in Webcast  If you’ve ever wondered what the CEO does all day, you’re not the only one. Cyber-attackers give the matter a lot of thought, which is why a well-crafted spear-phishing attack can be so hard to defend against.…

Driver and security guard tied up and 48 pallets stacked with Cupertino kit stolen Northamptonshire Police in the UK have warned locals to be on the lookout for suspiciously well-priced Apple products after a literal highway robbery saw 48 pallets loaded with Cupertino kit stolen.…

WebAssembly-powered sandbox promised to be safer than the notorious plugin The Internet Archive says it's found a way to preserve content created with Adobe's notoriously insecure Flash tool without risking user safety.…

And hints at new local data governance push Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on the nation's technology industry to start designing products for the world, and for youth to create new digital defences.…

ESXi, Cloud Foundation, and desktop hypervisor users should get patching VMware has revealed and repaired the flaws in its hypervisor discovered at China’s Tianfu Cup white hat hacking competition.…

Devs can make unauthorised changes, data integrity is a work in progress, security is not there yet ... and there's just nine months to go In 2016 Australia's online census crashed and burned after legitimate attempts to complete the survey were mistaken for a DDoS attack, the routers funnelling traffic failed, and disaster recovery plans did likewise.…

Developer in Turkey accused of using 30,000 accounts to nab Instagram files Facebook on Thursday sued Ensar Sahinturk, a software developer based in Istanbul, Turkey, who is alleged to have built a network of sites that scrape data from Instagram to create Insta-clones.…

Also bans devs from scraping the site for facial recognition fodder YouTube has started rolling out adverts on all videos uploaded on its content-sharing platform, and won’t give creators any ad revenue until they get popular enough.…

The aging structure is too hazardous to repair, engineers say The Arecibo Observatory, America’s largest radio telescope, is to be blown up after the National Science Foundation decided recent damage has left it too dangerous to repair.…

Proposed legislation calls for research to detect synthetic shams online On Wednesday, proposed US legislation to fund defenses against realistic computer-generated media known as deepfakes was approved by the US Senate and the bill now awaits consideration in the US House of Representatives.…

Enhanced network security for AWS virtual private cloud – while Microsoft previews Azure Firewall Premium Updated  AWS has announced Network Firewall, a new service drawing on the open-source Suricata project.…

Also: Skyrora aims for 2023 for its XL, ISS gets ready for Nauka, and HALO moves forward In Brief  British rocketeer Skyrora has been testing the third-stage engine for its Skyrora XL rocket with launch planned for 2023.…