The Register

Sure, you can program an autopilot but will you be defeated by a Dell? On Call Some users are less than bright, and some are just slightly dim. But few are quite as dim as this high-flying employee of the world's formerly favourite airline. Welcome to On Call.…

Cook & Co made $384M profit per day during latest quarter Apple is hauling in the cash as Mac users escape Intel x86 processors and upgrade to Cupertino's homegrown Arm-compatible M1 chips in record numbers.…

Together with Japanese space agency, now imagining optical comms terminals on sats Sony Computer Science Laboratories (CSL) and the Japanese space agency have conducted an experiment to transmit data from the stratosphere to space and declared the results promising as a complete file was delivered at 446 megabits per second.…

At last, a worm that improves security Silk could become a means of authentication and unbreakable encryption, according to South Korean boffins.…

Driver drama is done, new dev practices should prevent repeats, says Virtzilla VMware has restored availability of vSphere 7 Update, a release that it withdrew in late 2021 after driver dramas derailed deployments.…

Billions spent on weapons and boondoggles while service members battle away on cheapo PCs A US Air Force director of ops this week blasted the Pentagon for failing to overhaul its outdated computer IT infrastructure after his work machine apparently took an hour to send an email and completely froze when he tried to use Microsoft Excel.…

Cheesed-off customers have 'alleged enough facts at this stage' to allow legal battle to continue, says judge Intel will have to defend itself against claims that the semiconductor goliath knew its microprocessors were defective and failed to tell customers.…

As commissioner suggests watchdog gets ability to crack down further on China-controlled data centers Updated Citing national security concerns, America's Federal Communications Commission has barred Chinese carrier China Unicom from providing telecoms services in the United States.…

Plus: Apple patches exploited-in-the-wild bug, White House zero-trust order, and more In brief A US Department of Defense staffer with top-secret clearance stole the identities of dozens of people from a work SharePoint system to apply for loans totaling nearly a quarter of a million dollars.…

Facebook-born blockchain payment system's day well and truly seized Diem, the spurned cryptocurrency payment system spawned under the name Libra by Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook (itself now operating as Meta) will reportedly sell its assets to Silvergate Capital Corporation. …

hurdles <= hurdles - 1; Chip megadeals have become daunting, with governments looking at transactions suspiciously, though AMD can breathe a sigh of relief: the path to acquire FPGA giant Xilinx is now clearer.…

Expects more stability but warns of potential fab lockdowns on road ahead Samsung blamed disruptions in the global supply chain for failing to meet its own guidance for DRAM and NAND shipments during final three months of 2021, nevertheless racked up a record quarterly sales at group level.…

'Script was adding the cc: to msg.000 not msg.0000' A small SNAFU in Linux kernel land meant that a notification regarding the stable review cycle for the 5.16.3 release didn't reach everyone it should have.…

Nasty demands hefty Bitcoin ransom QNAP has urged NAS users to act "immediately" to install its latest updates and enable security protections after warning that product-specific ransomware called Deadbolt is targeting users' boxen.…

Customers in mid-tier band facing up to 50% higher fees... and they're delighted HP is hiking the UK price of Instant Ink monthly plans by more than 50 per cent in some cases, although the company website is still showing the cost of the soon-to-be out-of-date bands.…

While creators were stripping away annoying styling, users started to make Geminispace a bunker, says engineer Project Gemini is a new internet protocol designed to be simpler and lighter to make it easier for people to design, run, and use their own websites.…

Wait – is this the same company that gave us Windows? Microsoft has cancelled the latest release of Azure Sphere OS, its take on securing IoT devices, citing problems reported by a customer during evaluation.…

It's as if Bill McDermott's SAP tenure never happened In a reminder – if ever one were needed – of the sheer brass neck of celebrity tech CEOs, Bill McDermott, head honcho at helpdesk-cum-workflow-slinger ServiceNow, has informed investors that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are bad for tech integration and engineers hate them.…

But work at US security-linked lab falls short of true ignition. 'This is physics,' they say US scientists have succeeded in demonstrating self-heating plasma in a crucial step towards self-sustaining fusion energy.…

Bitter contract dispute revealed HLR lookup capability baked into agreement Exclusive Britain's tax collection agency asked a contractor to use the SS7 mobile phone signalling protocol that would make available location data of alleged tax defaulters, a High Court lawsuit has revealed.…

We love it when a plan comes together It seems we're a step closer to system-on-chips containing a mix of RISC-V CPU cores and a mainstream GPU powering Linux devices and the like.…

With microcode intact so it can work with an original operator's console Hardware guru Ken Shirriff is working on a simulator for the IBM S/360 Model 50 mainframe, launched in April 1964. His program runs the original machine's microcode so it can control and be controlled by an original front panel.…

Hurdle or driver for modernisation? A bit of both, apparently For highly regulated industries, compliance is seen as a hurdle to digital transformation yet it's also viewed as one of the key drivers for modernisation efforts, at least according to an IBM study.…

'This experience has taught me that it's worth trying out looking at the sky in entirely new ways' Astronomers have picked up something strange we've never seen before in space: bright bursts of low-frequency radio waves emitted three times an hour from a source within our Milky Way.…

Advises citizens to avoid 'Ponzi schemes' Another week, another big economy restricting cryptocurrency. This time Indonesia has barred financial services firms from offering bit-buck-related services to their customers.…

Ah, y'know what, maybe those rebates for not using AMD chips weren't so anti-competitive after all, eh? Intel Corporation no longer has to pay a €1.06bn ($1.2bn, £890m) fine imposed by the European Commission (EC) in 2009 for abusing its dominance of the chip market.…

Cupertino cut prices and cleaned up Huawei's share of China's smartphone market fell by 68 per cent year over year, and Apple took advantage to become the Middle Kingdom's most ubiquitous smartphone vendor in 2021's final quarter.…

Purveyors of rumours, flirty teens, dodgy infomercials, or bloody violence all told to get in the bin – yet again The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has shared its spring-cleaning plans with the world – and suggested it's time to make the Middle Kingdom's web sites sparkle with wholesome content.…

May not be the smartest move seeing as alternative OSes crater – and Google promised to spend billions in India India's minister of state for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar has revealed the nation's government intends to develop a policy that will encourage development of an "indigenous mobile operating system".…

Glad rags merchandiser denies wrongdoing, says it coughed up $4.2m to 'avoid distraction' Internet garment slinger Fashion Nova will cough up $4.2m to shut down accusations that it censored negative reviews left by customers on its website.…

Most electronics in the things you use are on old-school-gen process nodes, after all Texas Instruments is focusing its fabrication efforts on analog chips and embedded processors – and seeing growing revenue from the components – amid an insatiable demand for the electronics by automakers, industrial system manufacturers, and others.…

Relatively small number of certs issued using a verification method that doesn't comply with policy Let's Encrypt, a non-profit organization that helps people obtain free SSL/TLS certificates for websites, plans to revoke a non-trivial number of its certs on Friday because they were improperly issued.…

1.4 billion devices running Redmond's OS, Android apps coming, and more In the wake of Microsoft's latest set of financial results, Windows boss Panos Panay today gave an update on what he's dubbed a "new era of the PC."…

More than 400 orders for components cancelled by suppliers, says CEO The artist formerly know as F5 Networks – it moved to plain old F5 in November – is clipping revenue forecasts for fiscal '22 by $30m to $90m because it can't source enough specialised chips to produce systems.…

Plucky probe due to make closest pass to the Sun in March The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter followed up its whizz past Earth as 2021 drew to a close by passing through the tail of a comet. Again.…

Tech giants will voluntarily do the right thing because of course they always do US President Joe Biden has weighed into the Right to Repair furore once more as sueballs fly over some alleged monopolistic practises by a well-known farming equipment manufacturer.…

If even Captain PowerShell can't automate this, what hope is there for the rest of us? As Microsoft toasts another quarter of soaring profits, The Reg can't help but wonder if the bottom line is being ever so gently assisted by something that seems to be blighting its staff: difficulty claiming expenses.…

Move over K-pop, the K-metaverse is coming South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MIST) has earmarked ₩9 trillion ($7.5bn/ £5.55bn) for projects including AI and the development of a K-metaverse as part of its Digital New Deal programme.…

Take a hike SCC, a UK-based tech services and reselling dynasty, has won a five-year contract extension with UK tax collector HMRC worth £91m for IT software and services.…

Autonomy founder set for criminal trial on multiple counts of fraud over sale of biz to HPE Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch has lost a bid to delay his extradition to the US after a High Court judge ruled there was no reason to impose a months-long delay on the case.…

It's still early days, though There is a very preliminary FOSS Start menu replacement for Windows 11 – but it's not quite there yet.…

Anyone fancy a spherical tokamak in their backyard? Fancy a fusion power plant in your back yard? The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is looking for comments from five locations shortlisted as potential hosts for its Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme.…

See that? That's a promise of fat contracts, that is Big industry players have praised the latest cybersecurity strategy emitted by the British government, rubbing their hands with glee at its promises of lucrative public contracts for the rest of the 2020s.…

Cloud the top earner as usual but Redmond is doubling down on gaming The blockbuster quarters just keep on rolling for Microsoft after its latest set of financials surpassed analysts' forecasts, thanks to a thriving cloud and PC market in the pandemic-driven new digital age.…

What happened to loosening stranglehold of major tech firms on the public sector? UK government is on the hunt for an expert to help shape relations with the likes of AWS, Microsoft and Google, a role that includes a remit to "fulfil partnership opportunities" with the megacorps and "deliver against their needs and demands."…

Brexit, COVID-19 and tax rises all eclipsed by the omnipresent rule change, study of contractors finds The majority of contractors see the IR35 changes to the way employment status is judged as the biggest threat to their business in 2022, according to recent research.…

Now you see a harmless PNG. Now it's a malicious payload. Look into my eyes A security bod scored a $100,500 bug bounty from Apple after discovering a vulnerability in Safari on macOS that could have been exploited by a malicious website to potentially access victims' logged-in online accounts – and even their webcams.…

For FLoC's sake, people Google has given up on Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a categorization system for serving interest-based ads, and replaced it with Topics, a categorization system for serving interest-based ads.…

Don't start celebrating just yet if you own a Boeing 747-8, 747-8F, 777 Nine out of ten of America's commercial aircraft can land in low visibility using radio altimeters at US airports that have nearby 5G C-band masts, the country's aviation watchdog said this week.…

What happens when argc is zero and a SUID program doesn't care? Let's find out! Linux vendors on Tuesday issued patches for a memory corruption vulnerability in a component called polkit that allows an unprivileged logged-in user to gain full root access on a system in its default configuration.…