The Register

That's the way uh-huh uh-huh, I hype it Column Gartner is an odd fish. A very big odd fish, making some $4bn a year out of its 16,000 souls beavering away in its shiny belly. It acts as soothsayer to the troubled monarchs of industry and whichever of their courtiers can afford a subscription to its reports.…

Salesmen suffer after suspicious surfing Who, Me? Start your week with a trip back to the early days of the World Wide Web with a tale of imaging peril and malware malarky from the files of Who, Me?…

Three-way crash harms no humans but shutters fulfilment centre and sees orders galore cancelled The Ocado Group, an operator and purveyor of automated warehouse tech for e-tailers, has admitted that three of its robots collided and caused a fire last Friday at its Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) in Erith, south-east London.…

The Social Network fires back after President Biden accuses it of 'killing people' US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy publicly doubled down on criticism of Facebook for spreading vaccine misinformation, after The Social Network™ rejected his previous criticism and President Joe Biden's assertion it is "killing people".…

Hong Kong authorities 'alarmed by unsubstantiated remarks' Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam has slammed a US government advisory that warns business of warrantless surveillance and the potential for forced surrender of corporate and customer data in the Special Administrative Region (SAR).…

Heads of State, academics, diplomats, journalists, and others targeted, iPhones vulnerable Amnesty International and French journalism advocacy organisation Forbidden Stories say they've acquired a leaked list of individuals targeted by users of Israeli spyware-for-law-enforcement operator NSO Group, and that Heads of State, academics, diplomats, human rights advocates, and media figures are among those targeted.…

Because in Miri District, that's how they roll Police in the Malaysian district of Miri have used a steamroller to crush 1069 computers allegedly used to mine Bitcoin.…

Plus: People creeped out that TV chef Bourdain's voice has been faked In brief OpenAI has disbanded its AI robotics team and is no longer trying to apply machine learning to physical machines.…

Hardware gremlins plagued orbiting observatory for over a month NASA’s beloved Hubble Space Telescope is able to snap the heavens again after overcoming a hardware issue that had plagued it for more than a month.…

Lots of time for legacy users Reminding the world that there's more to life than Windows 11, Microsoft has promised a feature update for Windows 10 in the form of 21H2.…

Microsoft reins in some of its excesses with a visual tidy-up Microsoft's much-trumpeted "visual refresh" for its suite of Office applications has begun making its way out to users enrolled in the Insider programme, last night slithering onto both the Windows 11 Intel and ARM test setups at Vulture Central.…

Have we been smoking something? Queen Maxima of the Netherlands enlisted the help of a small robot to open a 12m (40ft) 3D-printed steel bridge across a canal in Amsterdam's red-light district earlier this week.…

PrintNightmare? More like Groundhog Day for admins Microsoft has shared guidance revealing yet another vulnerability connected to its Windows Print Spooler service, saying it is "developing a security update."…

Cops and dobbers: Uncle Sam dangles cash incentive for tattletales The US is offering a $10m reward to anyone who dobs in digital outlaws responsible for foreign government-backed cyberattacks on critical national infrastructure such as pipelines, power grids, and communication networks.…

Back to an era when 'cloud' meant 'it's probably going to rain' Microsoft got back to its roots this week with another go – this time cloud-enabled – at an Altair 8800 running on Azure Sphere hardware.…

British competition watchdog publishes details of why it approved AMD/Xilinx merger The UK’s competition regulator has finally published its reasons why it has decided not to stand in the way of the $35bn merger between AMD and Xilinx.…

Find out how enterprises save millions with cloud tiering done right Promo Learn how pharma giant Pfizer saved millions with the right storage tiering plan.…

Devs across the world reveal their tools, language choices, and more A survey of nearly 32,000 developers has confirmed the dominance of JavaScript, showing a remarkable 91 per cent using GitHub, and growth in use of AWS despite the efforts of Microsoft and Google.…

Surplus stock specialist finds out the hard way how that kind of thing can happen A UK businessman hoping to create merchandise to sell to fans of singer Britney Spears has found himself instead lumbered with 10,000 misspelled T-shirts advertising a nationalist breakaway for a region of northern France.…

Scale would need to be cranked way up to have an impact, however Google has demonstrated a significant step forward in the error correction in quantum computing – although the method described in a paper this week remains some way off a practical application.…

Software claimed it was 97% sure A Black teenager in the US was barred from entering a roller rink after a facial-recognition system wrongly identified her as a person who had been previously banned for starting a fight there.…

They're not self-driving cars, did you know that? Comment The UK government said in April that "the first types of self-driving cars could be on UK roads this year" but this is not entirely accurate.…

It might be because technicians maintain an open-door policy Something for the Weekend, Sir? Bzzz. The number of the incoming call is "Unknown". I reject it, obviously. While I am intrigued by the idea of receiving mystery calls from The Unknown, they are disappointing to answer.…

CEO predicts ‘many vicious and fierce battles coming, bulks R&D budget by 30 percent and hires 5,000 engineers to chase top slot Analyst firm Canalys has, for the first time, found Chinese firm Xiaomi the world’s second-ranked smartphone vendor, as measured by unit shipments.…

Actually, no. Don't do this On Call The week is over once again. Celebrate with a watery On Call tale involving a cathode ray tube, a pot plant, and an absent-minded user.…

Bezos and his bro on rocket jaunt A Dutch 18-year-old is set to be the youngest person to go into space after securing at the last minute a seat on Blue Origin’s first commercial spaceflight.…

Steam just announced one for gamers on the go, but it can also behave like any other PC Gaming house Steam has just revealed a rather intriguing portable PC.…

Does charging for Ping pong? Maybe not in this case, as Microsoft's plan covers 'Standard Ping tests' that are quite advanced Microsoft has done two very characteristic things: create a new type of Ping and signalled it will charge to use it.…

Meanwhile Intel reportedly eyes off buying Global Foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) has posted typically robust results, and revealed how it hopes to cope with the twin challenges of COVID-19 and simmering geopolitical tensions.…

Prepares to enact its anti-doxxing laws – without amendments requested by Big Tech Hong Kong’s Customs and Excise Department yesterday arrested four men over alleged money-laundering using cryptocurrency.…

100+ dissidents, politicians, journos targeted by Israeli espionage toolkit Analysis Software patches from Microsoft this week closed two vulnerabilities exploited by spyware said to have been sold to governments by Israeli developer Candiru.…

Buckle up, the great switchover starts today Good news, Hubble fans – NASA reckons it may have worked out what has upset the orbiting observatory: an iffy Power Control Unit (PCU).…

Machines will function more as colleagues than tools, and we're spending $1.5bn to get there The world is entering a new stage of AI and the race to get there is between China and the United States, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin has said.…

Fancy a spot of weekend tinkering? Amid the puffery over Windows 365, Microsoft also released the second preview of Visual Studio 2022 with some intriguing features for Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 users.…

24-page complaint lists thousands of products deemed to be unsafe Amazon is facing legal action in the US from a consumer protection group over the sale of allegedly faulty goods including carbon monoxide detectors and hairdryers.…

Rostec throws rubles on the table for a possible 60,000 units a year Russia's Yadro and subsidiary Syntacore have announced an effort to develop homegrown processors based on the free and open RISC-V architecture.…

'It's only for building rockets, what's it got to do with you?' pouts stroppy interplanetary aspirant biz The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has warned SpaceX it has not completed an environmental review of a new tower currently under construction at its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, indicating the tower might have to be demolished.…

ICO raids homes, seizes computers after UK Department of Health leak Two homes in South England have been searched by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) today after pictures of former health secretary Matt Hancock kissing a colleague appeared in a Brit newspaper.…

Linux wrangler's post-$500m Rancher acquisition numbers otherwise 'in line with expectations' Veteran Linux wrangler SUSE has swung into the red largely due to shares-based payments related to its lacklustre IPO in May.…

House Committee on the Judiciary told until there is a proper regime, there will be 'misuse, and mistrust' of the tech The role of facial-recognition technology (FRT) was put under the microscope earlier this week after the US House Committee on the Judiciary heard evidence about how it's used by law enforcement agencies.…

Also: New built-in UNO inspector. What's UNO? Read on... The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 7.2 RC1, including a large number of fixes intended to improve import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office.…

Stroke victim 'talks' for first time in 16 years, but The Social Network can't see a route to market Updated Facebook is abandoning a project to develop a brain-computer interface (BCI), even as the researchers it funded have showcased the device helping someone with severe speech loss communicate with nothing more than thought.…

After a troubled birth, infamous but effective code becomes an inconvience UK government has admitted it is in the dark about how many citizens have downloaded the NHS Test and Trace App or switched off their Bluetooth that renders it obselete.…

What's another £33.6m when entire programme projected to cost £132bn? The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has awarded a £33.6m contract to London Stock Exchange-listed reseller Softcat for Microsoft software licences and Azure cloud services.…

Sorry, how much do you charge?! America's United Airlines and regional carrier Mesa Airlines have together ordered 200 electric aircraft from an aerospace startup for short-distance passenger flights.…

Company now has 28 days to make up its mind NortonLifeLock, the somewhat clunky moniker adopted by the former consumer business arm of the Symantec Corporation, has announced "advanced discussions" with rival Avast over a possible merger.…

Palo Alto's Unit 42 rejects claims group has shifted to ransomware-as-a-service Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 has probed the methods and tactics of the Mespinoza ransomware group, finding its messaging "cocky" and its tools blessed with "creative names" – but turned up no evidence to suggest the group has shifted to ransomware-as-a-service.…

Opting out of data monetisation is neither easy nor cheap Column A colleague was recently required to spend 10 days in a public-health-mandated quarantine after authorities used credit card receipts to determine he'd visited a location that had also hosted a known coronavirus case.…

'Are they fearful of coming inside museums? There's a lot to consider, and I don't think we can offer any more' Feature The National Museum of Computing and Centre for Computing History have finally reopened with the relaxing of coronavirus restrictions so The Register paid both a visit to see what had and had not changed.…

Cos 4G and 5G will be all hunky-dory by then, yeah? BT is going to wind down 3G connectivity by 2023 as it looks to increase its 4G and 5G coverage across most of the UK by 2028.…