The Register

Harry Potter and the Unstoppable Simpletons A misguided attempt to "seize" Edinburgh Castle yesterday evening under "Magna Carta" – a Latin royal charter signed by King John of England in 1215 – proved short-lived.…

Fascinating project but will it ever be practical? Developer Hector Martin has reported on progress with Asahi Linux, a port for Apple Silicon Macs, and said that the OS now works but with some limitations, notably a lack of accelerated graphics.…

Capita won current deal worth £325m to run public-sector networks until 2023 The Scottish government is re-tendering the deal giving public bodies access to wide-area network services in contracts that could be worth up to £350m.…

Almost any org that could expose data needs a dedicated security team with an obligation to report breaches China's government has introduced rules for protection of critical information infrastructure.…

Tune in on the first Thursday of every month to learn about algorithms, tools, and services from field experts Special series Join us for a series of practitioner-led webcasts on all things software development and machine learning, inspired by our MCubed conference series.…

Sarah Connor is safe for now Video Boston Dynamics has released its flashiest promo video yet: a one-minute clip of not one but two Atlas robots competently completing a parkour obstacle course.…

Claim members already pay plenty, and might build fewer networks if asked to pay more Telco lobby groups have argued that their members should be exempt from proposed global tax rules that aim to stop multinational companies – especially large technology outfits – legally but cynically avoiding tax by conducting online activities in low-tax jurisdictions.…

Internet standards body admits to gender issues, communications problems, pledges fix for undefined 'high priority concerns' The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the open standards organisation that defines and develops internet standards, has surveyed its membership, and found that many of its key efforts are merely "minimally acceptable" – rather than efficient or inclusive.…

Terrorists' complaint service a bridge too far for encrypted chat biz For months, Facebook's WhatsApp paid no attention to the way the Taliban used the messaging service to sell surrender to the people of Afghanistan.…

Because what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas After going entirely virtual this year, the Consumer Electronics Show has said it will hold a physical mega-event in 2022 – and you'll need proof of vaccination against the coronavirus to attend in person.…

Here's $15,000 to make that third-party inspection happen, says Florida outfit Updated Last week, Apple essentially invited security researchers to probe its forthcoming technology that's supposed to help thwart the spread of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM).…

Those other AlmaLinux offerings with 'software plans'? Not affiliated, says community leader CentOS replacement AlmaLinux will be available on Azure Marketplace at no extra software cost, and Microsoft will sponsor a global mirror network for the operating system, it was announced today.…

Also: Guidelines for gender-neutral documentation Git 2.33 has been released, including a new optional merge process called merge-ort, which the team hopes will become the default in the next version.…

Am I blue? Am I green? Government report isn't quite transparent The UK government has released its delayed hydrogen strategy which – in a strange move for a colourless gas – hedges its bets between green and blue.…

Callooh! Kalay! Outdated SDK component poses threat, says intel firm A critical vulnerability affecting tens of millions of digital video recorders powering baby monitors and CCTV systems across the world has been uncovered by Mandiant, which claims the vuln allows for unauthorised viewing of live camera footage.…

The next chapter in digital forensics: Long live cloud forensics Promo On the face of it, the cloud fundamentally changes how security teams investigate and remediate incidents.…

Takes aim at US videoconferencing software as tech world+dog calls lawyer for a quick chat The acting Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information has officially warned the city's Senate Chancellery not to use the on-demand version of Zoom's videoconferencing software.…

UK.gov shrugs at calls for national security intervention British defence tech specialist Ultra Electronics has been bought for £2.6bn by a US private equity firm, through a wholly owned UK subsidiary that was itself once a proud standalone business.…

Suit could net $750 a pop under GDPR-ish rule for complainants who allege info 'unencrypted' A judge in South Carolina has struck out a number of claims in a consolidated class-action suit alleging cloud CRM provider Blackbaud didn't do enough to prevent a 2020 ransomware attack, but allegations under California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will move forward.…

The saying is that they aren't making any more land yet here we are A new island formed by a submarine volcano was spotted off the coast of Japan this weekend.…

Internal structure extends to 60% of gas giant's radius, study shows New analysis of data from the Cassini space probe has revealed Saturn possesses a fuzzy or diffuse core without clearly defined boundaries.…

BSODs should be scary, not soothing Bork!Bork!Bork! A reminder today that the beloved Blue Screen of Death is sadly not forever as the irritating emoticon of Windows 10 puts in an appearance.…

Government's promised review hasn't emerged, but Wingtech and Companies House say the deal is done The controversial sale of the Newport Wafer Fab to Chinese smartphone assembly concern Wingtech Technologies is done and dusted.…

PC and smartphone numbers also grew in 2021, suggesting supply chains are strong China has reported dramatic increase in local production of semiconductors and other electronics.…

Ground facility to be finished this year as early trials focus on balloons just 300m away A Chinese ground-based facility for converting solar energy bounced to Earth is scheduled for completion by the end of 2021 and has already conducted energy transfer tests up to 300-meter altitudes, a key project member told state-run media China Science Daily.…

Swiss uni challenges world record after 108 days and 9 hours of divisive effort Switzerland's University of Applied Sciences Graubünden has challenged the world record for calculating Pi, claiming it has computed the mathematical constant to 62.8 trillion digits.…

Local reports suggest Microsoft Hyper-V crack was the cause, as rumours swirl of data leak Pakistan's Federal Board of Revenue – the nation's tax office – has experienced a lengthy outage after a migration project went bad, perhaps as the result of a cyber-attack.…

Nations from Indonesia to Japan to score 190 terabits per second of capacity some time in 2024 Google and Facebook will together build an underwater cable system to provide internet access to island nations stretching in an arc from Indonesia to Japan.…

Chocolate Factory mum as remaining feed fans search for alternatives Google has either turned off RSS support in Google Groups without telling anyone, or has failed to notice that RSS in Groups no longer functions.…

In Jeff's world, it's not 'you snooze, you lose', it's 'you lose, you sues' Updated Blue Origin sued NASA late on Friday, claiming the space agency unfairly awarded top rival SpaceX a $2.94bn contract to develop the next lunar lander.…

Devices from 60+ manufacturers affected, says infosec outfit Taiwanese chip designer Realtek has warned of four vulnerabilities in three SDKs accompanying its Wi-Fi modules, which are used in almost 200 products made by more than five dozen vendors.…

Plus: Signal expands auto-deleting messages, SIM-swap thief pleads guilty, and more In brief T-Mobile US is investigating claims that highly sensitive personal data of 100 million customers has been stolen and peddled via the dark web.…

New templates will use system install for frameworks like React and Vue Microsoft has reworked its JavaScript/TypeScript projects in the forthcoming Visual Studio 2022 to bring them more up to date with modern development.…

Lights, cones, illuminated arrows all involved, say investigators A US government agency has formally opened a probe into Tesla's so-called Autopilot system following a spate of well-publicised crashes over the past few years.…

Plus: Self-driving Humvees funded by US Army to the tune of millions In Brief OpenAI has released its new and improved version of Codex, its AI code-completion model, to beta testers through an API.…

Murder trial affected last week A bungled data migration of a network drive caused the deletion of 22 terabytes of information from a US police force's systems – including case files in a murder trial, according to local reports.…

Most searches were fine, but certain test cases now take 'seconds, not days' GNU grep 3.7 has been released with a fix for a bug causing "extreme performance degradation" in certain types of search.…

Microsoft's OS once again where it shouldn't be Bork!Bork!Bork! There are some things in life that are not meant to be touched – museum exhibits, the biscuit tin that you're not supposed to know about, Microsoft Windows...…

Complaints of 'retaliation and irregular termination' over whistleblowing backed by committee, admits governing body Exclusive The World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) has settled a dispute with former CIO Wei Lei whose employment was terminated under "irregular" circumstances after he blew the whistle on its former director general's alleged dodgy procurement.…

Cupertino can see things you people wouldn't believe Opinion For a company built around helping people communicate, Apple sure has problems talking to folk. It pole-vaulted itself feet first into the minefield of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), saying that it was going to be checking everybody's images whether they liked it or not.…

Desk detritus baffles even the brainiest of boffins Who, Me? Hurrah! A fresh week awaits! Who knows what delights lurk within. One thing is for sure, it all starts with a tale from the Who, Me? mailbag.…

Revisit the browser wars, we shall. Microsoft's first serious attempt at a web browser, Internet Explorer 3.0, turned 25 on August 13th. And one of the developers on the team that created it – Hadi Partovi – has revealed how the product came to be, the mad rush to get it to market, and the cost of that effort.…

COVID’s been harder on airlines than space companies Richard Branson last week offloaded 10.4 million shares of Virgin Galactic, worth US$300M, to prop up his other businesses including pandemic-damaged airline Virgin Atlantic.…

USA's Clean Networks plan appears to have scuppered Chinese participation in 108Tbit/sec CAP-1 cable Amazon Data Services Inc. and Facebook contractor Edge Cable Holdings USA have applied to operate a submarine cable linking the Philippines to California, after China Mobile (CMI) bowed out of the project.…

Less-than-literal versions of the past criticised, because somebody needs to think of the children State-run China National Radio has called for a stronger vetting of online video games and zero tolerance towards those that misrepresent historical events.…

11,294 packages added, 9,519 removed, and five years of support starting … now! The Debian project has released the eleventh version of its Linux distribution.…

Doesn't hurt that taking clunkers off the road will address India's other health emergency: foul air in Delhi India has come up with a novel way of getting its hands on some rare earths – by junking cars.…

Blockchain exchange biz says it's working to have all the purloined assets returned The mysterious miscreant who exploited a software vulnerability in Poly Network to drain $600m in crypto-assets, claims the Chinese blockchain company offered them $500,000 as a reward for discovering the weakness.…

A tour of UK tech HQs courtesy of some saucy Anglo-Saxonisms NSFW Some internet clown has satirised current UK controversy over mapping app What3words by making a version that uses four swearwords to name each 3x3 metre block of Great Britain.…

And US trade judge reckons Google ripped off Sonos's tech This week ended with two separate patent-related blows against Apple and Google in the United States.…