The Register

What do 20 pizzas and five hours of face time with your most boring mate have in common? Cravings for social interactions affect the same area of the brain hit by hunger pangs after a long absence of nosh, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found.…

2027 ban prelude will be new Ofcom micromanagement powers Not content with its planned ban on Huawei equipment in the UK's 5G phone networks, the British government now wants to threaten Huawei-using telcos with fines of £100,000 a day unless they follow binding new rules on how existing kit can be used.…

Leaky data systems fixed now, but the issue affected millions Feature Two separate internet affiliate networks have closed vulnerabilities that exposed potentially millions of records in one of the most sensitive areas: payday loans.…

Lower back roasting on an open fire, carpal tunnel nipping at your... too early? Review The modern workplace isn't just hopelessly dreary – it may also be ruining your health. Repetitive motions from keyboard and mouse usage can conspire to smite your wrists with carpal tunnel syndrome, for which surgery is often the only cure. And that's before we get into the osteopathic wreckage caused by a career spent plonked on a cheap office chair, glaring into a monitor.…

Check out this OutSystems Tech Talk Promo Today’s dev teams want to collaborate quickly to build great apps but are held back by a variety of challenges, such as limited resources.…

Group claims adtech 'has nothing to do with privacy' but is rather an attempt 'to take control of the web' Google's Privacy Sandbox took another knock today as Marketers for an Open Web (MOW) wrote to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) requesting a block on the technology's launch.…

Nice tweak, but nothing epic enough to erode monopoly money Apple has made another tweak to its rules for in-app purchases.…

And it’s working: metrics measuring contract value grew in Q1 2021 as customers signed for subscriptions When listed companies report their quarterly numbers most start with their revenue figure and then explore other numbers that tell the story they want investors to understand. But Nutanix is now going straight for other numbers related to annual contract value (AVC) that reflect its plan to win one sale and then sell more stuff to the same customer – a practice known as “land and expand.”…

2.45 TeraFLOPS number-munching PCIe card to be bolted into x86 servers NEC will soon sell as a standalone item the PCIe accelerator cards it uses to power modest supercomputers.…

Is it possible to pull the RUG from under these numbers? Comment Intel has taken fresh aim at arch-rival AMD, this month briefing tech journos on benchmarks showing Ryzen-powered laptops not only slowing down when unplugged from mains power but also losing to Intel's latest Core microprocessors whether on battery supply or not.…

As Beijing brings in another that regulates internet infomercials and stops teens buying their tat Imagine if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google supremo Sundar Pichai or Like-seeker-in-chief Mark Zuckerberg gave a major speech that heartily endorsed new government regulations - even though they make business harder - and argued they’re necessary, timely, and just.…

Web traffic, email redirected, personal info exposed in DNS hijacking Miscreants were able to hijack traffic and email destined for various cryptocurrency-related websites this month – by hoodwinking GoDaddy employees.…

Exec, two officers, one other charged Apple's head of global security tried to bung cops hundreds of free iPads in exchange for special gun permits, it is claimed.…

'In his own way, he was trying to fulfil the letter of the law' says cop A Frenchman has been fined after police in Brittany discovered him breaking the country's harsh lockdown laws with a written note saying he'd left home to "smash a guy's face in."…

If all goes as planned China's ambitious Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission kicks off tonight with a launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province.…

Also: Edge to take to the M1, and TypeScript 4.1 is here In Brief Microsoft's army of unpaid Windows Insider testers can look forward to a Windows 10 turkey without that crucial bit of juicy 64-bit Intel on Arm stuffing.…

SANS Institute expands course lineup to help you think like a hacker Promo When it comes to cyber attacks, it’s not enough to just sit there, hoping miscreants will pass you by. You have to think like a hacker, stress testing your own systems to ensure they are as tight as possible.…

No diggity, NoSQL Open-source NoSQL in-memory database Redis is the most popular database in the world if, that is, your world is solely within Amazon Web Services.…

And both lived to tell the tale With a breath of some much-needed good news, The Register is obliged to point out that it's nice to see Florida Man* upending the stereotype of "world's worst superhero" by actually doing something heroic.…

Bug? iFixit muses in teardown of Cupertino's top-tier mobe The iPhone 12 Pro Max represents the top end of Apple's latest smartphone lineup. This is a tier that historically has differentiated itself not just by its price, but also by its camera, which Cupertino insists can produce shots that rival those taken on professional kit.…

Do they byte? In Brief Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida is now guarded by robotic canines that will patrol the area before popping back to their kennels for a recharge.…

Procurement services? Not any more. Exchequer services? No thanks. IT Services? Reduced Updated Capita, the outsourcing provider held dear to the hearts of Reg readers everywhere, is seeing million of pounds lopped off the value of its contract with a gaggle of small councils in the middle of England.…

Companies House filing for year ended 31 January 2020 shows strong growth Dell Corp UK has reported a double-digit revenue bounce on the back of purchasing a couple of organisations from elsewhere in the group and selling a healthy amount of hardware, support, and software maintenance.…

Cyber House Party charity event scheduled for 17 December – just bring your dosh and (maybe) some ear plugs Locked up indoors with nothing to do as the evenings draw closer? If lighthearted chats about cyber security are your thing, followed up by some banging dance tunes, then we have just the event – all in the name of charity, of course.…

Bring-your-own-key may no longer be enough for EU data protection body The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued guidance that calls into question recommendations to cloud services providers in responding to the Schrems II ruling, which struck down the Privacy Shield arrangement for moving data from the EU to the US.…

Remember the days when 'we made it up as we went along'? Who, Me? DNS (or the Devil's Naming Service as we've heard it called) takes centre stage in this week's tale from the Who, Me? vaults: a warning of the terrors of the forgotten typo.…

Image Manipulation Program spawned GTK, which begat GNOME The General Image Manipulation Program, GIMP, has turned 25.…

Plus: A new web app from Google to generate AI monsters Drones and machine learning algorithms are helping beachgoers get live updates to alert them whenever sharks are in the water.…

No incident response plan? We can help you there… Promo You know the symptoms – a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, tingling in the fingers, blood thumping in the temples as time slows to a crawl. Realizing you’re facing a full-on cyber attack can feel horribly visceral, even if the attackers are virtual.…

Do you see what I TSMC? The USA and Taiwan have emerged from their first "Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue" with an agreement that co-operation around semiconductors is their top priority.…

Declaration puts a handbrake on global digital currencies, includes usual 'let's use the internet and AI to make the world a better place' stuff Chinese president Xi Jinping appears to have offered the world the QR code-powered system used to determine movement rights inside his nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

LTS release 5.10 is currently unruly and looks like colliding with the holiday season Linus Torvalds has expressed some worries about progress of version 5.10 of the Linux kernel.…

Stop doomscrolling through Blursday and take a Workation Oxford Languages, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has made “unmute” one of its words of the year for 2020.…

No data leaked, says football club Manchester United is working with infosec pros to “minimize the ongoing IT disruption” that it says was caused by an assault on its tech systems.…

Red trousers and a Porsche or respectable middle age for Windows? What do Cristiano Ronaldo, Bruno Mars and Windows have in common? They're all 35 years old. It is three and a half decades since Microsoft Windows 1.0 was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.…

Human contractors battling COVID-19 stress and psychological trauma Facebook’s AI algorithms aren’t effective enough to automatically screen for violent images or child abuse, leaving the job to human moderators who are complaining about having to come into an office to screen harmful content during the coronavirus pandemic.…

Humans live in the real world, machines don't, study finds AI-powered machines may be able to generate text that is grammatically correct and very human-like, but when it comes to common sense they’re still lagging severely behind us meatbags.…

Patch if you can: Fix available Updated IBM Power9 processors, intended for data centers and mainframes, are potentially vulnerable to abuse of their speculative execution capability. The security shortcoming could allow a local user to access privileged information.…

Safety first, politics second Software updates alone are not enough to make the controversial Boeing 737 Max safe enough for EU-regulated skies, the political bloc’s aviation safety regulator has decreed.…

Huge performance jump from disk Dell Technologies has unveiled its first all-flash object storage appliance - as good an indication as any that flash object storage has hit the mainstream.…

RCS throws the dice Analysis Google is rolling out end-to-end encryption in the unloved and unwanted Android Rich Communication Services, as part of a renewed hope people might use messaging services controlled by the Chocolate Factory.…

Skype? We've heard of it Microsoft has previewed some more consumer-friendly features in its Slack-for-suits platform, Teams.…

Thou shalt not devise thine own cursed metrics, we decree Reg Standards Bureau A bizarre American website has come up with a new way of measuring pressure by referring to the weight of elephants delivered through the area of a ballet shoe. Frankly we're baffled.…

Legal saga that began with dodgy prosecution ends in vindication Updated The Home Office cannot order Ofcom to ignore its legal duties even when a government minister wants to shut something down because of unspecified "national security" concerns, the Court of Appeal has said, ruling that ministers acted outside their legal powers when banning GSM gateways.…

Plus: Lots of dead space in the new Mac Mini The first teardowns of the MacBook Pro and Air reveal few surprises. iFixit got its hands on the inaugural Apple Silicon machines and tenderly disassembled them, with the results largely affirming what we learned during this month's keynote.…

Electron celebrates a parachute party and is successfully recovered Rocket Lab has joined SpaceX in a very exclusive club of orbital booster recovery-capable companies after it parachuted an Electron first stage back to Earth.…

COVID-19 could slow customer wins, warns analyst Cloud HR and finance application biz Workday is bouncing along happily amid a global pandemic as it outstripped market expectations and posted an 18 per cent annual increase in revenue for Q3 of its fiscal 2021.…

The last time we saw one of these was in February. Things haven't gone well since then Bork!Bork!Bork! Software licensing is the bane of IT pros. Some spend hours poring over byzantine rules and regulations while others throw in the towel and roll things themselves. Then there are those that simply ignore the pleas for a production licence.…

Tech hipsters? On our doorstep? The Silicon what? The National Cyber Security Centre picked its London HQ building not because it was the best or most cost-efficient location – but because the agency "prioritised image over cost", a Parliamentary committee has said.…

Doesn't mean it's terrible, you just have to manage your expectations Review With a price tag of £329, OnePlus's latest 5G phone is also its cheapest. From the polished design to the solid day-to-day performance, there's some things to rave about with the Nord N10. And yet we're not going to do that. Not yet.…