The Register

It worked on Jolly Roger, it can work on ProudWhiteGuy66373 Opinion Three things on the morning news reliably ruin breakfast for socially aware technogeeks.…

Cheaper, better than running it yourself? Maybe Feature Outsourcing generally has a bad reputation, scarred by countless failed projects in the public and private sectors and with cost cutting, rather than improved sevice delivery, seeming to drive business decisions.…

Apparently The Social Network is the only one allowed to do nasty things with users' data Facebook has sued a Ukrainian national for allegedly harvesting and selling personal data describing 178 million of the Social Network's users – actions it says violates the service's terms of service.…

Some of those punch cards may still be lying at the bottom of a lift shaft Who, Me? Punch cards are the order of the day in a reader confession that takes us back to an unfortunate incident with a trolley. Welcome to Who, Me?…

China backed the concept of tools users perceive as an extension of the OS, not just an app Catch a ride, pay your utility bills, order your dinner, top up your insurance, chat with friends – how many apps did you need to get that lot done? In much of the world North America and Europe your answer could involve a fistful of apps, but in Asia you could do it all in one, thanks to rise of the "superapp".…

He's free of governance duties now, but still an emeritus member Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) co-founder John Gilmore has been removed from any active role on the digital rights organisation's board but will continue to serve as emeritus member.…

With an average 1.27 million orders a week, many customers left hacked off Updated The UK's largest retailer, supermarket titan Tesco, has restored its online operations after an attack left its customers unable to order, amend, or cancel deliveries for two days.…

Common network services are less important when we've moved to apps hosted at the edge What will the internet look like in the year 2071? Geoff Huston, chief scientist the regional internet registry the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), thinks there may not be an internet – or at least not as we know it today.…

First Artemis mission is stacked on a rocket – now for five punishing sets of tests before liftoff NASA has set a date for the test of the technologies it hopes will see it return to the Moon and explore Mars: February 2022.…

Plus: Explore the limits of language models in bizarre research experiment, and more In brief A man was detained in Japan for selling uncensored pornographic content that he had, in a way, depixelated using machine-learning tools.…

Golf enthusiast given 30 days to cough up code A Florida man has been accused of breaking the copyleft license of Mastodon by running an online instance of the software without providing its source code as required.…

Amended Texas complaint alleges backroom efforts to maintain ad dominance and more Several years ago, to deal with the competitive threat of header bidding – a way for multiple ad exchanges to get a fair shot at winning an automated auction for ad space – Google allegedly hatched a plan called "Jedi" to ensure that its ad exchange always won.…

Windows giant has a funny way of 'loving' Free software Updated Microsoft has enraged the open-source .NET community by removing flagship functionality from open-source .NET to bolster the appeal of Visual Studio, not least against its cross-platform cousin Visual Studio Code.…

Watchdog finds dubious data gathering, illusory solicitations for consent The US Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said many internet service providers are sharing data about their customers, in defiance of expectations, and are failing to give subscribers adequate choices about whether or how their data is shared.…

Component swaps still a thing – for now Apple's seventh-gen Watch has managed to maintain its iFixit repairability rating on a par with the last model – unlike its smartphone sibling.…

Learn how to take the broad view by tuning into this webcast early next month Sponsored We’re used to talking about the disruption AI will inevitably cause. But that disruption is predicated on AI moving into production, and that requires integration into the broader corporate infrastructure.…

Only for one-to-one voice and video, mind Microsoft has finally kicked off the rollout of end-to-end-encryption (E2EE) in its Teams collaboration platform with a public preview of E2EE for one-to-one calls.…

Researcher spots RSA tell-tale lurking in plain sight on VirusTotal Around 1,500 Cobalt Strike beacons uploaded to VirusTotal were reusing the same RSA keys from a cracked version of the software, according to a security researcher who pored through the malware repository.…

More transparency and reporting needed, says Arunja Capital Updated Accusations of harassment and concerns over pay gaps continue to dog Microsoft as shareholders were urged by investor Arunja Capital to vote for the software giant to release transparency reports.…

15% tax minimum to hit tech firms The US government and administrations in Europe have come to an agreement that will drop the threat of tariffs in response to policies on digital services taxes (DSTs).…

Britain's anti Amazon and Google war gets a second front The UK may require smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home devices to broadcast UK DAB radio stations, over government fears that Brits aren't consuming enough of the unloved radio tech.…

Exodus, movement of the people... to the Middle East or elsewhere More than a third (35 per cent) of contractors in the UK have become permanent employees, retired, shifted to work overseas or are "simply not working" since IR35 tax legislation was revised earlier this year.…

'I can debug production from the IDE,' said CS boss Peter Pezaris Observability company New Relic has acquired CodeStream, specialists in developer collaboration, with the aim being to connect observability data with code in the development environment.…

Remember the R Tape Loading Error? The glory days of audio-cassette loading are set to return in the coming weeks, with retro fans to be treated to a broadcast for them to hit Play and Record to.…

The second vanishing of the cybergang... for now As we noted a few days back, notorious ransomware gang REvil "disappeared" again this week. Recent reports have now shed light on why that may be.…

WebKit engine is well behind the competition Feature The legacy of Internet Explorer 6 haunts web developer nightmares to this day. Microsoft's browser of yore made their lives miserable and it's only slightly hyperbolic to say it very nearly destroyed the entire internet. It really was that bad, kids. It made us walk to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways. You wouldn't understand.…

A message for you, (on your) rudie Something for the Weekend, Sir? "You've got mail!" announces a voice on the tram.…

Look what you found! Aren't you clever! On Call Let us take a little trip back to the days before the PC, when terminals ruled supreme, to find that the more things change the more they stay the same. Welcome to On Call.…

Chipzilla braces for a China-gaming-ban-shaped hole in future results, predicts more product delays Intel has blamed Apple's switch to its own M1 silicon in Macs for a dip in sales at its client computing group, and foreshadowed future unpleasantness caused by supply chain issues and China's recent internet crackdowns.…

Unique fingerprints lurk in radio signals more often than not, it seems Over the past few years, mobile devices have become increasingly chatty over the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol and this turns out to be a somewhat significant privacy risk.…

Vid-slingers had been asking how this happened for years, even while their channels were spruiking dodgy crypto After years of complaints from YouTubers, Google has pinpointed the root cause of a series of account hijackings: software sponsorship deals that delivered malware.…

Claims shared memory speed breakthrough in new server, plans to enter South Korea and Thailand, and more Announcements were coming thick and fast at Alibaba Cloud's annual APSARA conference, where the Middle Kingdom's biggest cloud unleashed an all-in-one client device, plenty of upgrades to its cloud services, and an uncanny weather predictor.…

Names November as the month for Win 10 H2 update – then reveals major new feature won’t arrive on time Microsoft has released a build of Windows 11 that it claims addresses performance problems the new OS imposed on some systems.…

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal, Square under investigation America's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said on Thursday it is probing some of the biggest names in the electronic payments industry, requesting detailed information from them on how they collect and use people's spending data.…

As it appears Intel's attempt to gobble the upstart collapses SiFive reckons its fastest RISC-V processor core yet is closing the gap on being a mainstream computing alternative to x86 and Arm.…

Tell us you've been jabbed or... Apple will require unvaccinated workers to get tested for COVID-19 every time they come into the office for work, starting from November 1.…

But with 97 per cent of Android devs offering free software, web giant's share of mobile ad spend matters more Google is cutting the fee it charges Play Store app developers for digital subscriptions from 30 per cent during the first 12 months to 15 per cent at all times.…

Former CTO leaves for car tech biz Another key executive who was part of Intel's RealSense group – which is winding down operations – left the company this month.…

What? No. Noooooooooooooooooo At first glance, Microsoft appears to have torn up the infamous Windows 11 hardware compatibility list by inflicting the code on its latest games console.…

Update to v6.02 – or don't, but on your head be it A remote code execution vulnerability existed in an old and free trial version of WinRAR, according to infosec firm Positive Technologies.…

Keeping up with technology changes 'taking a toll on development' GIMP 2.99.8, a development version with many new features, has been released, but 3.0 is taking its time due to system changes that break things.…

Nation playing catch-up following release from 1979 ban South Korea today came close to joining the small club of nations that can build and launch their own orbital-class rockets, with its maiden attempt blasting off successfully then failing to deploy its payload.…

Looking at code here, there and (almost) everywhere Microsoft has whipped the covers off yet another take on code-in-the-browser with a lightweight version of Visual Studio Code, while unveiling the version 1.0 release of support for Red Hat Java in the freebie source wrangler.…

Automate everything – but while human moderation is hard, robot moderation tends not to work AWS has introduced channel flows to its Chime messaging and videoconferencing API, the idea being to enable automatic moderation of profanity or content that "does not fit" the corporate brand.…

I dream of wires, say Whitehall’s big buyers The UK's central government procurement agency is chumming the waters around the market's swimmers, hoping to tempt suppliers into providing a range of computer network services and kit with a £5bn tender.…

Underling took customer on bucket list trip - and VP signed it off without checking Informatica's former UK & Ireland vice president was correctly sacked after letting a salesman take Highways England's executive IT director on a $5,000 golfing jaunt, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled.…

Meanwhile Elon's running orbital tourist trips and ISS crew missions Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule, designed to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, will not fly until the first half of next year at the earliest, as the manufacturing giant continues to tackle an issue with the spacecraft’s valves.…

Considering the slack security of such kit, it's a perfect storm Increasing numbers of "non-business" Internet of Things devices are showing up inside corporate networks, Palo Alto Networks has warned, saying that smart lightbulbs and internet-connected pet feeders may not feature in organisations' threat models.…

Never mind the performance, man, think of the planet MBB Forum 2021 The "G" in 5G stands for Green, if the hours of keynotes at the Mobile Broadband Forum in Dubai are to be believed.…

Big Blue promises mid-single-digit growth is coming, but CEO struggles to explain how. IBM has blamed another quarter of tepid performance on its servers.…