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Plus: Tech contracts dished out reportedly worth £108m The UK government will abandon its centralised COVID-19 contact-tracing smartphone app in favour of the distributed system proposed by Apple and Google more than two months ago.…

Galcomm retorts: 'The report is at least irresponsible, if not worse' Researchers at Awake Security have published a report on malicious extensions in the Chrome web store, making both specific claims of over 32 million downloads of one malware family, and general claims of weak security in both domain registration and Google's store.…

Also: Kernel updating and benchmarking the beast After months of moribund emissions, Microsoft's loyal cadre of Fast Ring (or Dev Channel) Insiders were rewarded with toys aplenty last night as Windows 10 crested the build 20,000 mark.…

It's remote business as usual though, insists firm The chief exec of Hewlett Packard Enterprise has tested positive for coronavirus, he revealed today – adding to the firm's recent list of woes.…

'Focus' now on call centre-based system run by outsourcers, it seems Once described as a key part of England's COVID-19 test-and-trace system, the smartphone app being trialled on the Isle of Wight is no longer a priority for the UK government and won't be ready until winter.…

There's also a Stratix FPGA designed with AI tasks in mind Intel plans to debut its third-generation "Cooper Lake" Xeon Scalable processors today, alongside revised Optane memory, 3D NAND SSDs, and an FPGA tuned for AI workloads.…

Mars2020 mission will scout for interesting rocks to bring back to Earth NASA is gearing up to launch its Perseverance rover and Ingenuity drone helicopter to hunt for signs of microbial life on Mars next month.…

Britain's Military Court Service mixes ancient and modern in the most jarring way A bizarre new court protocol for sentencing military criminals over Zoom includes instructions for the ceremonial carrying of a laptop and webcam in and out of the courtroom.…

Shipments up 12%, says Canalys The first quarter of 2020 proved challenging for the consumer tech sector as lockdowns prompted many to defer their luxury purchases. Except, it seems, in the smartwatch segment, where shipments actually rose year-on-year by double digits.…

Are you happy with staff picking and choosing what they want, when they want it? We'd love to hear your views, please Reader survey Ask a bunch of people – users, developers, applications teams – why they went around central IT and just grabbed whatever they needed from the cloud, and they’ll give you all kinds of "justifications."…

That's a lot of... Netflix. Yes, that's it Virgin Media has published post-lockdown broadband usage figures that, unsurprisingly, point towards massive spikes in data consumption as Brits work from home or look for something to do online.…

Biz model isn't good for consumers or the environment, but Google holds all the cards for Android Comment Fairphone is a tiny player in the smartphone space. Unusually, it competes on the basis of its environmental credentials, touting an ethical supply chain and modular components designed to be easily replaced by end users. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the Fairphone 2 – first released in 2015 – still receives software updates*.…

The spectre of bork returns to Newcastle Bork!Bork!Bork! Sometimes we all need a reminder of just how borked the world is at the moment, and what better way to discourage people from using public transport than a Blue Screen of Death hanging over the entrance?…

Oh OK, so NOW the social network cares about getting people's permission before using their data to train computer systems Special report Five engineers missed out on sharing a top prize of $500,000 in a Facebook-backed AI competition – after they were disqualified for using images scraped from Flickr and YouTube to train their deepfake-detecting system.…

Given the scoundrels in the world of software, could Uber be worse? If you need software to arrange on-demand transport, there’s a new vendor you might consider for your shopping list: Uber.…

Shoebox-sized server is water-resistant and runs EC2 instances and Greengrass AWS has added a new and very small member to its Snow family of temporarily-on-premises devices.…

Choose between five options Ubuntu has launched its Appliance Portfolio, an initiative designed to enable secure smart devices linked to cloud services. All Ubuntu appliances are "free to download and install" but may include an up-sell to paid-for services.…

The yellow markings on the floor aren't enough for real neural networks Vid Amazon has tapped up artificial intelligence to help its warehouse employees keep six feet apart to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.…

On grounds that it favoured online chemists in a nation that forbids online drug sales The Indian government has suspend the sales of medicine through the companion website of its COVID-19 tracing app in response to a petition signed by 850,000 bricks-and-mortar chemists.…

Worries that wearable and web combo makes for unbeatable diagnostics duo Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission has flagged “preliminary competition concerns” with Google’s acquisition of wearables-for-fitness-tracking business Fitbit.…

Soon it'll be known as Section 230 because there are 230 suggested solutions to overhaul it Analysis The simmering debate over legal immunity given to online platforms like Facebook and Google in America has grown hotter with a new report from the Department of Justice outlining changes it hopes to make to the rules.…

Yup, the old 'leased fiber line broke' excuse T-Mobile US is attempting to pin the blame for a massive network outage on Monday on a third-party leased fiber network, though the head of America's communications watchdog has demanded a full investigation into the "unacceptable" blunder.…

Woman tracked down, accused of torching patrol vehicles amid protests A woman accused of setting fire to two Philadelphia police cars during a May 30 protest was tracked down by her online buying-habits and reviews, a social media sweep, and a poor username choice, the FBI has claimed.…

IRS willing to settle for a seventh of what it asked for - it's nice to be rich Yahoo! is still causing problems beyond the grave.…

Just in case the Feds take an interest in your calls Zoom today said it will make end-to-end (E2E) encryption available to all of its users, regardless of whether they pay for it or not.…

We can't say 'You have to upgrade or nothing' because people will say: 'Well in that case it is nothing' SAP CEO Christian Klein has admitted the vendor is launching industry-specific applications partly in the hope of luring more customers onto its core ERP platform.…

Next version to ship with quality improvements and New Edge Hot on the heels of the switch from rings to channels, Microsoft has emitted the first "official" preview of the next Windows 10 and warned laggards that the 2004 auto-updater is on its way.…

Triton may be a satellite now, but it was probably once a dwarf planet in its past NASA is considering sending a spacecraft to fly by Neptune's largest moon, Triton, in a bid to study its random spurts of ice and strange atmosphere filled with charged particles.…

Alas, Storage Spaces still a bit poorly Microsoft has addressed the printer issues introduced in Windows 10 with the recent Patch Tuesday updates while admitting that some Storage Spaces had also been borked by the May 2020 update.…

Think like your enemies to defeat them Webcast You know your attack surface don’t you? You mapped all of it? Are you sure?…

Funny, that Updated Amazon Web Services' EMEA shindig is under way and, in a masterstroke of irony, viewers found the initial experience a little wobbly.…

Software rollout confirmed, with new voice assistant Celia along for the ride Huawei has confirmed the rollout map for its EMUI 10.1 software, which introduces several new features including the firm's in-house Siri alternative, Celia.…

Plus, a new Detonation Service and other explosive revelations about easing capacity constraints in lockdown Microsoft's CTO for Azure has opened up on both the company's response to scaling issues with Teams during the COVID-19 pandemic and future plans to switch to "container-based deployments using Azure Kubernetes Service".…

Only if they'd already pwned your box, mind. Still: get patching! Cisco Webex suffered from a vuln that could have allowed an attacker to access any account by simply copy-pasting a unique session token into a browser string.…

Getting to them is, however, quite another kettle of fish There may be more than five billion Earth-like planets that are rocky, potentially habitable and orbit main-sequence stars like our Sun scattered across the Milky Way, according to the latest estimates.…

Downside of requiring a dedicated app rather than a standard email client? A new email service called Hey aims to solve issues with one of the internet's oldest standards – but Apple will not allow the iOS client into its app store unless the maker pays Cupertino "15-30 per cent of our revenue."…

North Korea's Lazarus Group at it again: Watch out for .rar files coming and going from your networks Threat intel researchers have uncovered a phishing and malware campaign that targeted "a large European aerospace company" and which was run by the same North Koreans behind the hack of Sony Pictures.…

Try to wrap your head around this fault Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork comes in all shapes and sizes. Rectangular, square or blue. Sometimes it comes in a cylinder, as shown in these snaps taken earlier this month by a Register reader in Auckland, New Zealand.…

Too complex? Owned by Google? Myth of portability? Interview Red Hat architect and Kubernetes contributor Clayton Coleman, who leads development of OpenShift, reckons Kubernetes is "mostly done" – it needs tidying up and bugs fixed but not major new features.…

How units derive from first principles enshrined in Great British law As much of the world's capitals erupt in protests and millions look fearfully at news of job losses and economic contraction, Great Britain has taken the legal step of redefining the metre and kilogram in law.…

Software company wins over Northern Ireland and Manchester NHS trust Epic Bristol, a specialist healthcare software company, has won a brace of UK public sector contracts worth a total £454m.…

Hey kids, fancy migrating to something a bit more 'paid subscription'? The clock is ticking for students that require Adobe software for their courses as campuses remain shut and the vendor's "at-home" access deal nears its end.…

And then derides them as legacy apps you’ll put up with while you ascend to cloud Google has teamed with Parallels to bring Windows apps to Chromebooks under the Chrome Enterprise program.…

What's a flailing investor to do? SoftBank has begun preparations to offload the bulk of its stake in US mobile carrier T-Mobile as part of the Japanese conglomerate's plan $42bn debt reduction plan.…

Then again, cloud providers aren't exactly playing the smart game either Infosec pros and hackers regularly abuse cloud service providers to conduct reconnaissance and attacks, despite efforts by cloud providers to limit such activity.…

Portugal event is on, say organisers, even though events with more than 20 are currently barred Web Summit, Europe's largest web-centric conference by attendees, will go ahead in November as planned, according to the event's organiser.…

Tencent and Baidu sign for optical data center interconnect kit Nokia has scored data centre interconnect wins with Chinese web giants Tencent and Baidu.…

Collection of bugs, dubbed Ripple20, sink widely used TCP/IP stack A bunch of flaws in a commonly used TCP/IP software stack have put potentially tens of millions of Internet-of-Things devices, healthcare equipment, industrial control systems, and other network-connected gear at risk of remote attack, it is claimed.…

Contract awarded for 300,000 units and another tender has been issued The island nation announced the wearable, known as the “TraceTogether Token”, on June 9th and quickly defended the device’s privacy features on grounds that it lacks GPS features and is intended to make contact-tracing possible for those who either don’t use a smartphone or lack a suitable model. Authorities also did not rule out making the device compulsory.…

Worry about user privacy also results in Norway pulling its virus tracker The Attorney General of New York has warned Apple and Google she expects the tech giants to keep an eye on an upcoming crop of coronavirus contact-tracing apps, particularly when it comes to the accumulation of personal data.…