The Register

Come for the bork, stay for the burger Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork goes back to its roots today, with a screen of purest blue showing its unwanted face outside a US Burger King branch.…

Tells market not to worry - insurers will pay $58m to 'cover the consequences of the fire' OVH Groupe SAS is edging closer to a potential initial public offering (IPO) expected to value the European hosting and cloud biz at around $4.7bn – months after a fire engulfed part of its data centre real estate.…

IPO was expected last year but then we had a pandemic DevOps darling GitLab has finally filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) as revenues continue to grow and losses widen.…

Most users better off with rolling release, but quarterly build has more quality testing Kali Linux version 2021.3 has been released with new tools, though its makers explain that some features which make it good for penetration testing also make it bad for general use.…

4 stars - did not warn us about 'digitalisation of the economy'* Britain's tow-headed Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been granted an audience with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, during which he will discuss the “challenges” of taxing giant tech corporations in a digital economy.…

Plus: US lawmakers get 'in touch with Facebook whistleblower' Facebook has hit back at a series of reports in the Wall Street Journal as it tries to counter a week of damaging headlines which lifted the lid on the inner workings of the social media biz.…

Licensing, integration and security remain challenges, says DSAG survey Less than a third of German-speaking SAP users think the global application vendor is doing a good job of getting its software to work in the cloud.…

The environmental impact, not the smoking crater made by an impact SpaceX took another step towards launching the orbital version of its Starship last week with the release of a Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (DPEA) from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).…

The Register dips another toe in the Flow While browser-makers squabble over standards, privacy and exactly what their User-Agent string should say, Ekioh's clean-room browser, Flow, has continued to quietly advance.…

According to a filing with Brit competition watchdog Any attempt to block Cellnex's takeover of Hutchison UK's tower network could see consumers "significantly worse off" and hamper the progress of Three UK's planned £3bn investment in 5G.…

Honour thy ancestors, and move on Column The death of Sir Clive Sinclair at the end of last week has seen an outburst of nostalgia. Understandably so.…

Flatpak-only app store, two-finger swiping for screen-fondlers... but it's not for the fiddlers Review The elementary OS team recently released its first major update in nearly three years, elementary OS 6, or "Odin" as this release is known. Odin is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and as you would imagine for an update three years in the making, brings a slew of changes.…

When a server crash became a motorway dash Who, Me? The best laid plans of mice or Register readers can founder on the rocks of iffy connectors and wobbly cables, as this week's entrant in the Who, Me? archives discovered.…

Shortages in today's supply chains persist and capacity is all but booked. But the future looks bright Analyst firm IDC says the global semiconductor industry is showing signs of "potential for overcapacity in 2023 as larger scale capacity expansions begin to come online towards the end of 2022".…

Connect with experts of all stripes at the Graph+AI Summit PROMO You can have all the data in the world, but without teasing out the connections hidden within, it’s still just a pile of random information.…

Plenty more launches planned to attach another couple of modules The first crewed mission to China's space station has ended successfully.…

And celebrates Linux's 'true anniversary' – 30 years since upload of version .001 Linus Torvalds has revealed that winding back the decision to default to -Werror – and therefore make all warnings into errors – has made for another messy week of work on the Linux kernel.…

And added a bug bounty program to detect any holes in its 'youth mode' Douyin, the Chinese app known as TikTok outside the Middle Kingdom, has imposed limits on usage time for kids.…

Former staff, kids who got their first taste of tech, a Reg hack, and even Linus Torvalds share what the electronics pioneer meant to them Sir Clive Sinclair's contributions to computing and business are well known, and we've done our best to celebrate his life in our obituary of the electronics pioneer, who passed last week aged 81.…

Some sightseeing, music, gambling, chatting to folks back home – just like a regular roadtrip The space tourist crew who spent three days orbiting Earth in a SpaceX Dragon capsule has returned to our planet in one piece.…

Oh, sorry, we thought you wanted us to obey the law?! – Silicon Valley A tactical-voting app built by allies of Vladimir Putin’s jailed political opponent Alexei Navalny is now unavailable in Russian Apple and Google app stores following threats from the Kremlin.…

Software unused after a few months will lose access to sensitive features unless exempted In December, Google plans to have app runtime permissions expire on older versions of Android for apps that haven't been opened for several months, extending the availability of a privacy protection feature introduced in Android 11.…

Once dismissed proof-of-concept attack on Microsoft OS through WSL detected in the wild Linux binaries have been found trying to take over Windows systems in what appears to be the first publicly identified malware to utilize Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to install unwelcome payloads.…

Either way, it's bad news for VirtualBox – it's stopped working Microsoft emitted a fresh build of Windows 11 last night, and piled on the woe for some customers hoping that virtual machines might be their way out of the hardware compatibility hole.…

Redmond doesn't do things by half – unless it's Long Term Support Microsoft has grudgingly admitted that not everyone will want to ascend to its cloud with the Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) version of its Office cash cow.…

Lifelong cost focus was his namesake company's corporate downfall Obituary Sir Clive Sinclair, the visionary pioneer of computing for the British masses and creator of the legendary ZX Spectrum, has died at the age of 81. His legacy is the British tech scene as we know it today.…

'If you don't get your timing right you get whacked round the back of the head' admits scrappy octogenarian An 80-year-old Lancashire grandfather has gone viral on TikTok and Instagram in a video featuring him squaring off with a sparring aid for boxers.…

Tells clients it is tackling the issue An IT recruitment agency says a "phishing scam" is behind a fake email sent to its customers with details on how to apply for a "Coronavirus Digital Passport."…

Phonebox upgrade dishes out internet and more in Kensington and Chelsea BT was joined by local dignitaries including the Mayor of Kensington to cut the silk sash on its 21st-century phone box that gives people access to free Gigabit Wi-Fi, rapid mobile phone charging, and free calls if needed.…

On-prem systems hold advantages in terms of known costs, say insiders Cloud-based data warehouse darling Snowflake has launched its latest venture into financial services, while Teradata, something of a stalwart in data warehousing for banks and insurers, is attempting to broaden its appeal with machine learning implementations.…

Phrase is catnip for software market UK government has tempted the ravenous software and consultancy supply market with £4bn in the name of "large-scale digital transformation programmes."…

Not always, but Swiss team says you can manage the risks There's a fine line between getting hold of data that may be in the public interest and downright stealing data just because you can. And simply because the data is out there – having been stolen by online intruders and then leaked – does not mean it is right to use it.…

Jeff Bezos founded biz at the 'apex of the Big Tech tax avoiders' Amazon says turnover from business "activities" in Britain went up by more than 50 per cent year-on-year during 2020, but the profit the organisation generated locally is again typically unclear.…

Forget productivity, find a way to unplug and recover Software developers and IT workers can improve their sense of well-being and their perception of themselves if they partake in mindful breathing, a trio of boffins have found.…

Can we close the education divide? Maybe, but not by stuffing it with computers and smart boards Register Debate This week's Register Debate tussled over the motion Technology widens the education divide. The results are in, and as you can see, we have a clear winner.…

So many stuck trains, so many cancellations. Giant blue screen of Nope, we salute you. Bork!Bork!Bork! Microsoft Windows sums up the spirit of many readers today, in a railway-infused bork from Manchester.…

J’appuie sur le starter et voici que je quitte la terre Something for the Weekend, Sir? Mute the mic. Hide the webcam. Freeze the shared screen. Enable Delivery Mode!…

Remember when a games developer could be one guy with a ZX Spectrum? We like a bit of digital archaeology at Vulture Central so we were delighted to learn that retro-computing enthusiasts at Swindon's Museum of Computing have found games by Dymond Software that were once thought lost.…

Shake, rattle and roll is incompatible with your PABX On Call There are some things they don't teach you in college, as a Register reader explains in this week's instalment of tales from the On Call coalface.…

Alibaba is number two in much of the region, but is a bit on the nose right now Korean web giant NAVER has outlined its ambition to bring its cloud to the world, and to become the third-largest cloud provider in the Asia-Pacific region.…

No robot killers 'in my lifetime' says admiral DSEI 2021 The British armed forces will be using robots as part of future warfare – but mostly for the "dull, dangerous and dirty" parts of military life, senior officers have said.…

Clouds usually fix this sort of thing before bugs go public. This time it's best to assume you need to do this yourself Microsoft Azure users running Linux VMs in the IT giant's Azure cloud need to take action to protect themselves against the four "OMIGOD" bugs in the Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) framework, because Microsoft hasn't raced to do it for them.…

The lure of shiny new tech isn't a motivator, although in the USA bots are used to cut costs Researchers have found that business adoption of robots and other forms of automation is largely driven by labor shortages.…

Jumps from single-server tests to four hosts – but only for vSphere and RHV The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) has released its first new virtualisation benchmark in eight years.…

42.4 per cent increase in chip sales, and smartphone shipments did even better Exports of South Korean ICT products reached an all-time high in August, thanks to global demand for silicon chips, reported the country's Ministry of Science and ICT on Tuesday.…

Up to 20Gbps link sustained over the Congo in comms experiment Engineers at Google’s technology moonshot lab X say they used lasers to beam 700TB of internet traffic between two cities separated by the Congo River.…

Latest laptops prone to cracking, distortions, owners complain Aggrieved MacBook owners in two separate lawsuits claim Apple's latest laptops with its M1 chips have defective screens that break easily and malfunction.…

General availability of Azure AD-joined VMs Microsoft has declared general availability for Azure Virtual Desktop with the VMs joined to Azure AD rather than Active Directory, but the initial release has many limitations.…

But that's what UN group has done The protection of human rights should be front and centre of any decision to implement AI-based systems regardless of whether they're used as corporate tools such as recruitment or in areas such as law enforcement.…

Not all promises of international flight itineraries are real, warns Cisco Talos A phishing campaign that mostly targeted the global aviation industry may be connected to Nigeria, according to Cisco Talos.…