The Register

Decades-old theory may require a rethink thanks to Japanese probe The Moon is believed to have formed from the leftovers of a proto-Earth smashing into a Mars-sized Theia nearly 4.5 billion years ago.…

Australia bit barn outfit NEXTDC adds classic film reference to usual mix of resilience, connectivity and security Australian serial entrepreneur Bevan Slattery has revealed that he told the architects of a data centre he funded to make it resemble the sets used in classic submarine flick The Hunt for Red October.…

Microsoft, Cisco, Google etc gang up to form Open RAN Policy Coalition Some of America’s super-corps have remembered how the US became the dominant global technology force it is, and have vowed to use innovation over threats to counter Chinese dominance in 5G markets.…

OK, a third agreed with Thales when it asked the question About a third of firms and organisations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa still believe the humble password is a good enough security measure, according to a survey carried out by French firm Thales.…

ML eggheads, devs get more bang for their buck, say OpenAI duo Machine-learning algorithms are improving in performance at a rate faster than that of the underlying computer chips, we're told.…

Politicos watered down earlier efforts, so data defenders will fight to the end The small group of policy wonks that forced California’s legislature to rush through privacy legislation two years ago are back – and this time they want a ballot.…

Very '90s kit was everywhere – and it saved Apple's ass too On this day in 1998, Steve Jobs took to the stage of the Moscone Center in San Francisco for a product launch that would indelibly change the face of computing and arguably save the firm he founded almost 22 years earlier.…

It's a long, long buildup to CEO's soliloquy, it's a long way to go Knowledge 2020 With the long flights, late nights and early starts, IT conferences might seem endless. But with the shift to the online format becoming standard, for now at least, participants might be spared the trial of endurance.…

No, you still can't edit tweets Although editing published tweets still remains strictly verboten on Twitter, the microblogging anger echo chamber intends to prompt English-speaking iPhone-wielding users to double-check content before posting a reply that they might regret.…

'Seriously sometimes seems Google's moderators are only optimized to respond to social media outrage' Three weeks after Google removed 49 Chrome extensions from its browser's software store for stealing crypto-wallet credentials, 11 more password-swiping add-ons have been spotted – and some are still available to download.…

£399 for entry-level lappy, £1,599 for high-end pro kit Lockdown hasn't stopped Microsoft from releasing some of its new kit at least – the Washington-based tech giant today announced the Surface Go 2 and the Surface Book 3.…

Cisco's switch-slinging nemesis warns of business slipping back to 2018 levels Lead times for some of Arista's most popular network kit has doubled due to disruption to the supply chain caused by the novel coronavirus, and won't improve any time soon, CEO Jayshree Ullal is warning.…

Rub-a-dub-dub, give your buggy code a scrub GitHub has made its automated code-scanning tools available to all open-source projects free of charge.…

Last chance to have your say and share your experiences Reader survey With the IT world turned upside-down for many organisations, it’s a good time to talk network security. Or at least, it ought to be. Because while it’s something we all need more than ever, there’s almost always a gap between demand and budget, or between need and the ability to service that need.…

Bit lacking in the playback stamina stakes, however Huawei's wireless earbud lineup just got a new addition in the form of the Freebuds 3i, which packs active noise cancellation and a sub-£100 price tag.…

Developer biz bets virtualized environments will make it easier to engage with repos A year and a half after being acquired by Microsoft, GitHub has integrated the company's popular source code editor, Visual Studio Code (VSC), and plans to make it available to users through a hosted service called Codespaces.…

Solidarity with their US counterparts in COVID-19 cost cutting measures Hyperconverger Nutanix has asked staff in EMEA and elsewhere "outside of the US" to take two weeks of unpaid leave as it continues to contain costs during the COVID-29 pandemic.…

Material improvements in strategic framework for mobile, web and, tentatively, desktop apps Google's first 2020 update of its cross-platform development toolkit has brought Flutter up to version 1.17 and the associated Dart language to 2.8.…

Happy 1.0 to the fruits of volunteer labour Open-source, cross-platform vector drawing package Inkscape has reached its version 1.0 milestone after many years of development.…

Clock speed? 1Ghz. 5G radio baked in? Nope. Supports display resolutions of 60Hz Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek has officially launched its latest G85 chipset, days after it appeared in the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9. The platform stays faithful to the company's playbook, and is a solid mid-range SoC, with an emphasis on graphics performance.…

Mozilla's finest shores up security features among other tweaks Third-placed browser Firefox has sought to arrest its slide in the rankings with the arrival of version 76, replete with beefed-up password features and tweaks to Picture-in-Picture functionality.…

Disclaimer: Black hole not visible, southern hemisphere required Astronomers have stumbled across the nearest black hole to us yet. The void lies at the heart of a stellar system just 1,000 light years away, and indications to its location are visible to the naked eye.…

Buddying up with wing man Elon NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has confirmed that sofa-jumping Top Gun star Tom Cruise is working with the agency on a film aboard the International Space Station (ISS).…

Oh mother! Broken compute board? Just slot a new one in Review Intel's Next Unit of Compute PCs debuted a few years back as a small form box that could hang on the back of a monitor using a VESA mount and screws. The machines were supposed to be easy to work on and fix, but were limited in terms of expansion capabilities and for some users, more power was needed.…

And we suppose he has a fantastic alternative too, right? One that has elements in common with VS Code? Mike Milinkovich, exec director of the Eclipse Foundation, has taken another swing at Microsoft-sponsored Visual Studio Code, claiming: "Anyone who relies on VS Code is then dependent on the future investment of Microsoft to continue supporting ongoing development of the product."…

'A new company will emerge from this pandemic' says CEO Nutanix has decided some of its previous financial targets no longer apply and tipped off investors that its Q3 results won't be far off its previous predictions.…

Capsule tested atop Long March 5B can also get China to the Moon China has successfully launched a prototype of its next-generation spacecraft.…

But its language has changed from 'clear a space under the tree' to 'our goal remains late 2020 delivery' Microsoft appears to be softening up gamers for the prospect of no new Xbox for Christmas 2020.…

Also: Arianespace gets ready for a return to action while Rocket Lab shows off its US launchpad Roundup Signs of life were detected back on Earth last week as space launch industry looked to resume operations.…

Naughty posters on hijacked subdomain show up in search results A forgotten subdomain on PricewaterhouseCoopers' dot-com has been hijacked to host ads for porno websites and apps, neatly demonstrating why you should not neglect your corporate DNS records.…

Add low latency to the list of things on offer to billionaires building civillisation-fail boltholes in South Pacific Microsoft has announced an Azure region in New Zealand.…

Other fun places also get to let people in again, just don't read the economic data before you go because that's no fun at all Hong Kong will reopen video game arcades as the city begins to ease its pandemic precautions and attempts to kick its economy into a higher gear.…

Which is just dandy seeing as deliveries are just a wee bit important right now Transport company Toll Group has been slugged by ransomware for the second time in three months.…

Late-night notifications come as opposition labels app ‘surveillance system with no oversight’ The Indian government has acknowledged “potential security issues” in the Aarogya Setyu contact-tracing app which its opposition labels as a ‘surveillance system with no oversight,’ but says the code issues are not that big a deal.…

Supremes go live on video If you know anything about law it is probably that you can’t trademark a generic name. But this week the US Supreme Court heard a case that introduces a fascinating wrinkle in that long-standing rule, courtesy of the internet.…

Judge calls for settlement conference as fourth amended complaint filed A former Apple engineer who claims the iTitan screwed him out of proper credit for his work has added an additional eight patents to his lawsuit against Cook & Co.…

Hey, finally an Apple event The Reg can attend, sorta, right? Apple says it will host its annual Worldwide Developer Conference on June 22 within the confines of an iOS app. Users of macOS can view the event on the Apple Developer website.…

Plus: Airbnb lays off 25% of workforce amid coronavirus pandemic lockdowns Ride-sharing app makers Uber and Lyft have been hit with a massive lawsuit from the US state of California for failing to recognize their drivers as employees.…

Big Blue hopes solution in search of a problem might have finally found one Since it burst onto the scene as a Jeopardy-winning AI in 2011, IBM's Watson has been top of the league for interesting solutions in search of a problem.…

Just ask us if you need help, urge NCSC and CISA Foreign state hackers are trying to brute-force their way into pharmaceutical and medical research agencies hunting for a COVID-19 vaccine, British and American infosec agencies are warning.…

Other countries have it. Why can't we? The UK must introduce a framework to prevent asset stripping of homegrown tech businesses by foreign powers, former Imagination Technologies CEO Sir Hossein Yassaie has told the British Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.…

Now might be a good time to change your passwords, folks Hosting biz GoDaddy has admitted a hacker tampered with an SSH file on its servers, leading to the theft of 28,000 users' SSH credentials.…

'Only for evaluation environments' say release notes, and they mean it VMware has opened its Tanzu Application Service for Kubernetes to public beta.…

Hybrid IT and sales bigwig enfolded by cloudy arm of Amazon Phil Davis, the former global sales chief and president of Hybrid IT at HPE who exited the business suddenly last week, has landed at AWS, where he will head up operations in Asia Pacific and Japan.…

And how the privacy risk that Redmond said would not be used for tracking was used for tracking Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's former Office and Windows chief, has recalled the impact of early viruses like WM/Concept.A, Melissa and ILOVEYOU, as well as early privacy debates centered on hidden GUIDs (globally unique identifiers) in Word documents.…

Play The Register's naming game for the kid who will definitely be getting an electric go-kart Smoke was seen beneath Elon Musk's mighty Starship prototype overnight as he and his partner, musician Claire Boucher, celebrated the birth of their first child together. Naturally, El Reg is pondering a name for the offspring.…

Survey finds 66% of lazy gits don't change between sites Two-thirds of people recycle the same password or use variations on the same basic one, according to LogMeIn.…

Small Business Administration website sinks after being battered by RPA tech There are times when more automation is not necessarily a good thing. Just ask the US Treasury or the country's Small Business Administration (SBA), which banned a few software bots last week.…

The division, which arrived via Sybase, was valued at $400m in 2006 Swedish cloud comms firm Sinch has snapped up SAP Digital Interconnect for around €225 million ($250m).…

Hahaha, we were pretty gullible Twenty years have passed since cybercrooks demonstrated the role exploiting human psychology could play in spreading malware. Remember "ILOVEYOU"?…