The Register

CWA, employees file lawsuit on same day HR head ejects Activision Blizzard intimidated its workers and illegally obstructed their attempts to form a union, a US watchdog was told today.…

First try had a habit of melting its mirrors, apparently DSEI 2021 The UK has awarded contracts for laser cannons to be fitted to tanks and warships, a mere five years after first bounding into the field of directed energy weapons.…

Come for superlatives and executive enthusiasm, stay for the photographic enhancements Apple on Tuesday announced iPhone 13, a "new iPad" and iPad mini, and Watch Series 7 at its "California streaming" event, held virtually again this year to avoid going viral in the wrong way.…

Artists advised to delete emails asking them to download 'media bundle' Krita, an open-source cross-platform digital painting application, has become the latest victim of ransomware – but rather than being attacked directly, its name is being used to spread malware among users via emails offering advertising revenue.…

Maybe it's just feature-complete The open-source Jekyll project, used by GitHub for its Pages feature, was declared frozen and "in permanent hiatus" earlier this year by one of its core maintainers.…

In terms of building materials, Mars has nothing to offer but blood, soil, sweat and tears. And urine. Lots of urine A group of boffins from the University of Manchester have proposed an innovative if unexpected way of creating structures for any future Mars colony: mixing the bodily fluids of the first colonists with Martian soil to create super-strength concrete.…

'The first complete infrastructure to enable general-purpose hardware security experiments on the Apple iPhone SoCs,' they claim A trio of researchers at North Carolina State University (NC State) have released what they describe as a "novel research toolkit" for Apple's iDevices - and to prove its functionality, have disclosed side-channel attacks against the company's A10 Fusion system-on-chip.…

Pulls Mothra, Mecha Rodan, King Ghidorah, Kumonga, and even King Kong along for the $150m ride The United States Airforce (USAF) has unveiled Project Kaiju, a $150m (£108m) effort to build "cognitive electronic warfare" systems capable of operating entirely autonomously – to be run under Godzilla's watchful eye.…

Impersonation scams and smishing rocket, say UK Finance and Which? Brits are too polite to tell phone scammers to "get stuffed", "take a hike" or "sling yer 'ook" when they impersonate so-called "trusted organisations" such as banks.…

Text blocks, sealed classes, switch expressions, records, and more JDK (Java Development Kit) 17 was released today, the first long-term support release since JDK 11 three years ago.…

In case you were wondering why vendors are so excited about it Revenue growth of 4 per cent was not enough for Oracle to appease market watchers as the omnipresent software vendor's shares slumped following the release of its latest quarterly financials.…

Ofcom: You know, superfast broadband is available if you'd care to take it up The UK is second worst in the G7 league of industrial nations – only pipping Italy (61st) in terms of broadband speed, according to a report published today by Cable.co.uk.…

Part of a planned assault on the 'small business mid-market' Financial software specialist Intuit has splashed the cash to branch out into the world of email newsletters, throwing $12bn (around £8.7bn) at Mailchimp as part of its effort to "become an AI-driven expert platform."…

Put your data on someone else's computer to keep it safe, urges Imperva After spending five years poring over port scan results, infosec firm Imperva reckons there's about 12,000 vulnerability-containing databases accessible through the internet.…

Quieter kids can speak up in chat, students can record lessons to watch again, and more, says professor Register Debate Welcome to the latest Register Debate in which writers discuss technology topics, and you – the reader – choose the winning argument. The format is simple: we propose a motion, the arguments for the motion will run this Monday and Wednesday, and the arguments against on Tuesday and Thursday. During the week you can cast your vote on which side you support using the poll embedded below, choosing whether you're in favour or against the motion. The final score will be announced on Friday, revealing whether the for or against argument was most popular.…

Critics say the post-Huawei world of telco networking increases complexity but it has legs Analysts are upping sales projections for Open RAN tech despite the recent kerfuffle that saw Nokia step out of an industry alliance intended to heighten competition in telco networking.…

Commissar Yarrick's bale eye focuses on company's web retail presence as 'long and complex' saga continues Games Workshop, the UK's fantasy model maker and table-top wargames retailer, has been forced to stall the development of a new online shopping system because of delays to its ERP project.…

Video connected – check. Plugged into the mains? Er... Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork is apparently going live, as a segment in UK breakfast show Good Morning Britain neglects to consider Microsoft's thirst for power – of the electrical variety, of course.…

Already shrinks The Social Network’s™ Android apps by 20 per cent compared to rivals, has uses beyond that Facebook has developed promising asymmetric compression technology and aspires to share it with the world.…

'Kape has moved on from those times' UK-headquartered Kape Technologies announced on Monday it has acquired ExpressVPN in a $936m (£675m) cash and stocks deal, a move it claims will double its customer base to at least six million.…

LG and Samsung probably aren't smiling – and not only because that sum translates to a tolerable US$177M South Korea's Fair Trade Commission has fined Google ₩207 billion (US$177M) for abusing its market dominance in mobile operating systems by prohibiting forks of Android.…

Soon, authorities intend to flush out CSAM and the creeps who share it. After that … privacy types are worried Australia's Federal Police force on Sunday announced it intends to start using new powers designed to help combat criminal use of encryption by taking over the accounts of some social media users, then deleting or modifying content they've posted.…

South Korea wants to play, too, and has just the model it thinks will do the trick The ASEAN economic and free trade bloc has agreed to develop a digital trade pact, and South Korea wants to play.…

Play nice or else, Chinese government tells app, web giants in meeting without coffee Beijing has yet again slapped regulations on Big Tech in China. This time, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has told app makers and web sites to stop blocking links to their rivals, or face the consequences.…

Too early to confirm ancient alien life, but a 'potentially habitable sustained environment,' though... NASA scientists can breathe a sigh of relief now that Perseverance has successfully collected not one but two Martian rock specimens, after its first attempt to obtain and store a sample failed.…

Separate flaw in WebKit also under attack squashed, too – and two zero-days in Chrome, as well Updated Apple on Monday issued security patches for its mobile and desktop operating systems, and for its WebKit browser engine, to address two security flaws, at least one of which was, it is said, used by autocratic governments to spy on human rights advocates.…

Minimum Margin Agreement policy is anticompetitive, it is claimed Amazon has been accused of pressuring wholesalers into selling goods at inflated prices on rival marketplaces through anticompetitve agreements, thus unfairly cementing its market dominance.…

Forget Agent Smith, we want to see Neo fighting implementation bugs The Matrix.org Foundation, which oversees the Matrix decentralized communication protocol, said on Monday multiple Matrix clients and libraries contain a vulnerability that can potentially be abused to expose encrypted messages.…

OK, so you're halfway there. Now have you tried switching the network back on again? An outage that knocked out half of New York's subway system and left hundreds of passengers stuck in tunnels was likely caused by someone in a control center pressing the wrong button and turning off part of the network, according to New York Governor Kathy Hochul.…

'There is already too much time gone' researcher tells The Reg Interview A new EU study of the economic impact of open source has mixed news. The economic benefits are huge, it said, but the EU is "on the back foot" when it comes to implementation.…

This time it's... quite a bit faster Good news for earthbound Pi-tinkerers hoping to get their code into orbit: a follow-up to 2015's Astro Pi is due to head to the International Space Station (ISS) this year.…

Telco claims to have run Quantum Key Distribution over 6km of cable BT is claiming bragging rights after completing trials of hollow-core fibre (HCF) cable at its labs at Adastral Park in Suffolk, England.…

Homes4Wiltshire, aka Homes4Spammers An open redirect on a UK council-backed property website allowed low-level miscreants to evade filters.…

Department says it's prepared to run ailing Police National Computer out of support if it has to A critical report by the UK's public sector spending watchdog has blamed the Home Office for delays to a new crime-fighting IT platform designed to replace two systems on the verge of obsolescence.…

Legal questions still remain over whether this judgment applies to all bananas or just that one US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers late last week handed down a judgment [PDF] in the Epic Games vs Apple antitrust trial, which is likely to have significant consequences for developers and the corporations that control the ecosystems in which they operate.…

Indian outsourcer bags another utility National Grid has signed up to spend up to $44.5m (approx. £32.2m) with Wipro, which will take on the energy infrastructure company's data centres and mainframes with a view to introducing a hybrid cloud infrastructure.…

Plus: Smart software ugrade means Roomba can recognise dog poo In Brief Microsoft and AWS reportedly [PDF] scored subcontracts totalling $50m with the US Department of Defense to develop algorithms capable of recognizing objects from military drone footage after Google pulled out from the controversial Project Maven.…

A potentially iffy component in the flight actuation system this time Virgin Galactic's schedule woes worsened last last week as the company pushed its next flight to mid-October thanks to a potentially defective flight control component.…

Teaching online is like talking to a brick wall Register Debate Welcome to the latest Register Debate in which writers discuss technology topics, and you – the reader – choose the winning argument. The format is simple: we propose a motion, the arguments for the motion will run this Monday and Wednesday, and the arguments against on Tuesday and Thursday. During the week you can cast your vote on which side you support using the poll embedded below, choosing whether you're in favour or against the motion. The final score will be announced on Friday, revealing whether the for or against argument was most popular.…

(And, also worryingly, its increasing financial cost) Feature The next time you ask Alexa to turn off your bedroom lights or make a computer write dodgy code, spare a thought for the planet. The back-end mechanics that make it all possible take up a lot of power, and these systems are getting hungrier.…

Tells committee: I know I said Facebook was 'morally bankrupt' but... The incoming head of the UK's data watchdog has "gone on the record" to say he will be fair and impartial in his dealings with tech companies despite once describing Facebook as "morally bankrupt pathological liars."…

Who wants to live forever? It could be the offer you can't refuse Opinion Tech rarely touches the soul. It enrages when social media pours petrol on hotheads. It inspires when Hubble comes back to life and delivers more cosmic awe. It pays our bills when we work in it, and it empties our pockets when we drunk-eBay that vintage console game collection. But when it brings back a dead lover?…

How does $100k per character sound? And that's just for labour Who, Me? Wave a cheery goodbye to the weekend, and start the week with a hot beverage, a pastry or two and a freshly unearthed tale from the Who, Me? catacombs.…

Claims they're 'designed for durability' but users report kit dies in months – even on mountain bikes Apple has advised motorcycle-riding iPhone owners that their metal steeds might damage their smartphones after prolonged exposure to engine vibration – but users report total dysfunction after even less frenetic vibrations.…

Alleges IBM China staff had access to confidential info and took it with them to new Inspur operation IBM has been sued for trade secret misappropriation by a Chinese company called Beijing Neu Cloud Oriental System Technology Co., Ltd, over "fraudulent and unfair business practices" that allegedly saw Big Blue encourage use of Neu Cloud's customer information by staffers at server-maker Inspur.…

NZ, Singapore, and Chile are other - and smaller - current signatories to pact that's hoped to set regional agendas, so this is a fillip South Korea has initiated the process of joining the Digital Economic Partnership Agreement (DEPA), an expanding regional bloc of nations that seek to establish key rules and strengthen cooperation for digital trade.…

'One of the messier merge windows' means the new stuff might sneak in next week Linus Torvalds has loosed the first release candidate for version 5.15 of the Linux kernel, with but isn't sure if it's a big 'un or nothing to get excited about.…

Another weekly digest of strangeness from around the world that you may have missed Roundup Welcome to our weekly conclave of chaos and confusion as we collate another bunch of odd and unusual tales from the past seven days and present them to you in the manner of a small and grubby child handing a bunch of crumpled, hand-picked flowers to a slightly intoxicated aunt.…

Funny how 'privacy-focused' Apple and Google haven't managed that Facebook's WhatsApp on Friday said users will soon be able to store end-to-end (E2E) encrypted backups of their chat history on Google Drive in Android or Apple iCloud in iOS, with an option to self-manage the encryption key.…

We'll just hike the prices for customers, otherwise. Happy now? Three of biggest US food delivery outfits – DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub – have sued New York City to stop it enforcing a limit on the fees they can extract from restaurants.…