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Also tasked with 'resolving system failures', and that's engineers, biz bods, devs, infoseccers and more UK electricity and gas market watchdog Ofgem has put £30m on the table as it seeks vendors with project management, developer, infrastructure and data skills that can whip out a hard hat - or a soft swivelly chair, we suppose - and respond to "urgent" calls.…

Respectfully, I say to thee... I'm aware that you're borking Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to another instalment in The Register's ongoing coverage of unhappy digital signage. Today, the world has been turned upside down by the curse of Bork.…

Apple also in sights of inquiry that could spark more new laws Australia, already embroiled in a nasty fight with Google and Facebook over its plan to make them pay for news links, has opened an inquiry into whether Apple and Google’s app stores offer transparent pricing and see consumers’ data used in worrying ways.…

State-sponsored infrastructure hacking, backdoors-by-fiat and even lock-in all out of bounds in draft code China has proposed a “Global Initiative on Data Security” that it hopes the world will adopt to govern the collection and use of data by governments and the private sector alike.…

K8s may even make it hard to use the cloud’s best bits Do not make application portability your primary driver for adopting Kubernetes, say Gartner analysts Marco Meinardi, Richard Watson and Alan Waite, because while the tool theoretically improves portability in practice it also locks you in while potentially denying you access to the best bits of the cloud.…

Someone appears to have ignited the Great Firewall with Hong-Kong-related post China appears to have blocked access to the website of coding-for-kids tool Scratch.…

Covered 40kms in that short time and quadrupled previous efforts India claims it flew a perfect scramjet test at Mach 6 on Monday.…

Also: More Starlink and hopping fun for SpaceX and Northrop Grumman lights the blue touchpaper for SLS In brief Those pondering what else Rocket Lab got up to on Flight 14 following the successful deployment of the satellite payload for Capella Space got their answer last week in the form of "First Light", a jumped-up version of the existing Electron Kick Stage.…

'Best approximation of C++ ideals so far,' says Stroustrup - but is it too big and complex? C++ 20, the latest version of the venerable object-oriented programming language, has been unanimously endorsed in ISO's final technical approval ballot.…

Is AI just a rebrand of yesterday's dumb algorithms? We present the argument against this motion – and don't forget to vote Register Debate Welcome to the inaugural Register Debate in which we pitch our writers against each other on contentious topics in IT and enterprise tech, and you – the reader – decide the winning side. The format is simple: a motion is proposed, for and against arguments are published today, then another round of arguments on Wednesday, and a concluding piece on Friday summarizing the brouhaha and the best reader comments.…

Yo Poco! Latest cheap-o blower has no 5G frills or long-lens skills. But it retails at £199 Formaldehyde-free matress, knicker and mobile phone maker Xiaomi has emerged from the bargian basement clutching its latest blower - the Poco X3 (NFC).…

Also: Organisational tools everywhere and mobile commenting in OneDrive In Brief Good news for anyone who has ever tried to use the pure white tile and theoretical quiet of the bathroom as a meeting backdrop without realising their brother was in there: a PowerToys feature that mutes the mic and injects a stream of black instead of video via a virtual driver.…

Seized assets system is 15 years old, counts cash of fraud dept, tax bods, courts, cops and more The UK Home Office is seeking out software vendors to replace a vital but ageing database that helps keep a track of criminals' assets accrued through illegal activity in the UK.…

AWS claims 'blatant political interference' AWS has come out with guns blazing after the US Department of Defense's (DoD) reaffirmed Microsoft's JEDI contract win on Friday, with the cloud vendor alleging the award was a “flawed, biased, and politically corrupted decision,” that had been directly and improperly influenced by US President Donald Trump.…

You have until 17 February 2021 to shift off - or it all gets deleted, says Microsoft Microsoft has bitten the bullet and is to drop Visual Studio Codespaces in favour of GitHub Codespaces.…

'Still no clear sense of what we'll be transitioning to' warns Fed of Small Biz SMEs in Britain are urging the government to provide ‘transition vouchers” to be spent on tech, expertise and training as a way to help smooth the waves when the country exits the European Union.…

Today we launch our Register Debates in which we spar over hot topics and YOU decide which side is right – by reader vote Register Debate Welcome to the inaugural Register Debate in which we pitch our writers against each other on contentious topics in IT and enterprise tech, and you – the reader – decide the winning side. The format is simple: a motion is proposed, for and against arguments are published today, then another round of arguments on Wednesday, and we publish a concluding piece on Friday summarizing the brouhaha and the best reader comments.…

An English keyboard maybe Review With its lucrative mobile business being decimated outside of Mainland China, Huawei's youth-focused sub-brand Honor has shifted towards laptops and other personal tech kit. Its latest machine is the MagicBook Pro, which touts a 16.1-inch display and a brisk Ryzen 5 processor.…

WoOoO! Log me iiiin... Press CTRL-ALT-DELEeEeTE Bork!Bork!Bork! It is said that we can never truly escape our past. And there are few companies where this is truer than Clippyzilla itself, Microsoft. Behold a relic of Windows supposedly gone still hanging on in the fine Yorkshire town of Selby.…

Remember how established carrier vendors were going to clean up after Huawei bans? Not so much, maybe ... Samsung Electronics has won a $6.6bn contract to supply 5G infrastructure to Verizon in the US, beating out more established and traditional telco suppliers Nokia and Ericsson.…

Idle hands are SETI's workshop Who, Me? Monday is upon us and International Bacon Day is but a fleeting memory. Join us, pork lovers and swervers alike, in welcoming the week with another entry in The Register's Who, Me? feature.…

And it might just have been a spaceplane to rival the USA’s X-37 China’s space program has launched and landed an experimental and re-usable spacecraft and by doing so may have signalled it can match the capabilities of a secretive US strategic asset.…

Sealed with an XSS: Flaw in Go lang library could cause app issues In Brief A Colorado man will spend more than a decade behind bars for trying to settle a few arguments, albeit on an online souk selling highly illegal stuff.…

Retro-Mario brought to life for a few short months Nintendo has revived its first mobile device, the crap-tacular Game & Watch.…

SUSE chap wants Linux and classic AmigaOS to coexist peacefully The Amiga Fast File System (AFFS) is making a minor comeback in the new version of the Linux kernel.…

Company reacts with 'complete shock and perplexity' and says it's a law-abiding citizen The United States is contemplating a Huawei-style ban on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China's largest chipmaker.…

We'll help you retrain data protection teams for IaaS and SaaS life Webcast Remote working really does look like it’s going to be the new normal, either by the average worker continuing to stay away from the office in the mid-term or, perhaps more interestingly, because many organisations have now switched to understanding the benefits of dispersed and remote workers as a viable option for the corporate toolset.…

Plus: Man incorrectly identified as a suspect by a facial recognition software is suing, and more In brief A developer granted free access to OpenAI’s API has revealed how much the AI lab plans to charge its customers to use its largest language model.…

Hardware tinkerer makes odd finds, including an unusual on/off switch A hacker has peered into a fancy digital pregnancy stick and found it is just a glorified analogue paper test strip with a screen added, a novel form of activation, and a larger price tag.…

Tiny tilt from the probe's seisometer could map Phobos' orbit and help boffins predict when it'll crash into Mars The seismometer and magnetometer on NASA’s Martian InSight probe specifically designed to detect marsquakes have proved unexpectedly sensitive enough to respond to Martian eclipses too, scientists report.…

Disabled by default at the end of 2020, but it will linger on like a bad smell Microsoft confirmed that it plans to end support for Adobe Flash Player in its three browser variants at the end of the year, but the company intends to allow corporate customers to keep the outdated tech on life support beyond that date.…

Ripping and replacing Chinese-made gear won't be cheap The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says that performing a full replacement of all Huawei and ZTE hardware on American wireless networks will cost $1.837bn in total.…

*Offer void where banned by local law Apple has posted a Human Rights Policy in an attempt to placate shareholders and quell criticism of its handling of censorship requests.…

Data mining of code commits and chat gives hackers a cunning edge Boffins affiliated with BMW, Siemens, and two German universities have found that they can detect Linux kernel security fixes before they get released, insight that could allow miscreants to develop and deploy exploit code for which there's no defense.…

If you received Oracle founder's support, tough. There's a pandemic on Larry Ellison's generous philanthropy is as famous as his bulging $78.2bn net worth and mahogany complexion. Well, almost.…

Everyone's looking to cash in on the race to next-gen network With 5G increasingly touted as an alternative to existing fixed-line broadband connections, Taiwanese semiconductor biz MediaTek has pushed out its latest chipset for next-generation routers.…

Animated Friday fun Microsoft has dropped a beta of Expressive Pixels, a delightfully retro editor aimed at flinging animated visuals at LED displays.…

New supply chains, brand new system, and ... oh dear, it's still not ready yet As the year-end Brexit transition deadline looms, the government risks having to introduce software designed to help keep 10,000 trucks crossing the English Channel each day without testing it first, according to industry associations.…

But CEO foresees 'significant upturn' as Jesus mobe release shifts to October Broadcom is factoring in a later "significant uplift" in wireless chip sales than is seasonal due to a certain phone vendor delaying the launch of their next-gen blower – ie Apple's new iPhone isn't being released in September like it usually is.…

Handing out ThinkAgile in Microsoft, VMware and Nutanix flavours Lenovo has whipped the covers from a range of server hardware and services that targets businesses finding themselves suddenly at the sharp end of a march to remote working.…

'Most developers are highly intelligent, but also highly stupid' Hard-working but naive developers are a little known but highly dangerous soft spot in an organisation that attackers can exploit.…

Startup idea: Depressed barbershop for depressed people Depending on your personality, a trip to the hairdresser or barber can be harrowing. Like any customer-facing role, it's expected of staff to take to the job with a wink and a smile – but then comes the dreaded "small talk".…

Reassuring... Fortunately, customers will be subject to ethical review Google has teased new bot technology aimed mainly at contact centres as part of its Cloud AI week in the seemingly unending Cloud Next OnAir videofest.…

TABMAX wants to be for productivity AND family, TABMID is smaller China's TCL, in the process of reinventing itself from white-goods producer to consumer tech contender, has emitted its first two tablet computers – the TCL 10 TABMAX and TABMID.…

Vega returns to service after 2019 failure and brings AI to spaaaaace The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully demonstrated its Small Spacecraft Mission Service dispenser by slinging 53 satellites from a single rocket.…

Eudora checking for emails how often? On Windows 3.1? On Call Remember when you wanted to be contactable at all times? No, neither do we. The subject of today's OnCall, however, was the kind of aspiring departmental head who was hellbent on impressing the bosses, no matter what he broke in the process.…

And reveals half a dozen WhatsApp bugs into the bargain Facebook has published its first Vulnerability Disclosure Policy and given itself grounds to blab the existence of bugs to the world if it thinks that’s the right thing to do.…

Just not very well Video Engineers have overhauled the classic handheld 8-bit Game Boy to include solar panels on the front and an internal electromagnetic coil to generate electrical energy from button presses. Not so much batteries not included as batteries not needed.…

Will vet even outbound investments under new rules Taiwan will screen proposals by local tech companies that plan to transfer technology to China or invest in mainland businesses.…

Anyone can make infosec mistakes, but Cisco isn't anyone Comment Cisco this week launched a version of WebEx Classrooms, a version of its online collaboration suite tweaked for educational purposes and promised to enable “secure hybrid learning”.…