The Register

Crims slope off with a slice of dabatase including emails and encrypted passwords but no credit card deets Independent record label Burning Shed has informed musos of a digital burglary involving the partial theft of its customer database, though no payment records were accessed.…

Let's stow the snark a mo and acknowledge this helpful tech Roundup In a departure from our usual snark, The Register presents a trio of tales of tech companies doing some good in the current pandemic.…

Survey shows preference for Linux, some aversion to Microsoft Azure The Go team's latest developer survey shows that most "Gophers" like the language but highlight poor debugging tools and lack of generic support as top issues for improvement.…

The world's crappest superheroes Huawei has posted its lowest revenue growth in years – the result of a once-in-a-century global pandemic, as well as a campaign by President Trump to sow seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the Chinese biz.…

Redmond reckons you've probably got enough on your plate right now Microsoft is pausing automatic upgrades for its Azure Service Fabric "until further notice" as the Windows giant reacts to the current COVID-19 situation.…

National Cyber Security Centre publishes scam-busting address The National Cyber Security Centre has launched the Suspicious Email Reporting Service: a new email address for reporting scam mails to a government department that might actually do something about it.…

Also: Asteroid landing dress rehearsal, 'new' Russian module for the ISS, another Starlink volley ready to go Roundup Astronauts said goodbye to the ISS as a lander said hello to the asteroid Bennu in another Register rundown of all things rocket-related for the week.…

No wonder it came all the way over to our Solar System Astronomers have for the first time measured the chemical composition of an interstellar comet: 2I/Borisov, which strayed into our Solar System last year.…

Domain names, astroturfing, gun rights, FB groups... and lots and lots of shouting Opinion If there was any hope that the coronavirus crisis would put a stop to the culture wars that ravage American society, it has long since died.…

'Seemingly no transactions were made' but problem highlights risks of software supply chain A researcher has uncovered malicious packages in the RubyGems repository, one of which was downloaded more than 2,000 times.…

The apocalypse may have started, but we'll always have artisanal bread... and BSODs Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to another in The Register's occasional series on blue screens and broken dreams.…

Cisco shows off how you can brick it on a Catalyst 9300 Cisco has published a guide to running Minecraft on its switches.…

Who wants to know about their biz plans? Someone determined As American crude oil crashed on Monday, leading to the bizarre situation of a negative futures contract price, our attention was drawn to a spear-phishing campaign against organizations involved in global oil production.…

Zero-trust access to web applications with very fine-grained access controls Google has productised a remote-access tool it uses internally, because it thinks the world might be quite keen on this sort of thing right now.…

Outsourcing deal with Sopra Steria ending, and good times ahead for in-sourced tech crew propping up crumbly software Cleveland Police force in north east England has set aside £2.5m of taxpayer's cash for a managed services provider that can drag its 8-year-old HR software into the cloud, without a significant upgrade.…

Cloud colossus has gone very niche with video-shifter AWS has announced a very niche piece of on-prem tech and a related new cloud storage tier.…

Follow a step-by-step guide to the Cloud Infraspace suite Promo In these competitive times, a growing number of businesses are tempted by cloud computing, due to its much-touted ability to help them respond quickly to market changes and grab opportunities thrown up by new technologies.…

Another one bites the dust A massive exoplanet some 25 light years away may be nothing of the sort, astroboffins now believe – which isn't surprising seeing as it just vanished.…

So why not just buy new servers? That’s where this gets curly One of the few clouds to offer 64-bit Arm-compatible servers is dropping the architecture.…

Although it did kick a hole in product sales and put a rocket under TXT China Mobile has issued un-audited Q1 results that reveal the impact of the novel coronavirus on the world’s largest mobile carrier, and perhaps on China itself.…

Christian Klein to fly solo just six months after dual-driver approach was hailed as perfect combination SAP has reversed its plan to have two joint CEOs, so one of them will go: Jennifer Morgan will step down as co-CEO of SAP after just six months, leaving Christian Klein in charge.…

IT services biz warns customers could be at risk of infection, too New Jersey IT services provider Cognizant has confirmed it is the latest victim of the Maze ransomware.…

Plus sales down, guidance scrapped. What else is new? Well OK, apart from the 'unprecedented business climate' IBM on Monday reported revenue of $17.6bn for its Q1 2020 earnings, a 3.4 per cent year-on-year decline attributed to "an unprecedented business climate," as CFO James Kavanaugh put it.…

And it's all thanks to a stripper and a corrupt cop. No, seriously The US Supreme Court has indicated it will finally address an issue that has been causing legal problems for nearly two decades: what exactly is “authorized use” of a computer?…

Web disruption delayed due to coronavirus lockdown challenges Google's Chrome team has delayed its User-Agent Client Hints (UA-CH) makeover until at least 2021 due to the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus on the web development ecosystem.…

What are the options, and who can we learn from? Comment Most health experts agree stopping the coronavirus lockdown requires two things – testing and tracking – and you cannot have one without another. First, you need to know who is infected with COVID-19. Then you need to figure out who they've had contact with so they can be isolated.…

Chinese retail-'n'-cloud giant to splash $28bn as coronavirus pushes the online markets up In a world so disrupted by COVID-19 that many are wondering where their next pay packet will come from, the biggest sellers of cloud tech are trying to prove who has the deepest pockets.…

The Civil Aviation Authority giveth the CAA and taketh away British police drone pilots have had their wings slightly clipped – after the Civil Aviation Authority issued new rules tweaking previously reduced safety limits for the airborne surveillance gadgets.…

Also: naming the next PowerToys toy and a look at the latest Visual Studio preview Roundup As Microsoft finally named the date for the next version of its flagship operating system, the person in charge of its Windows Insider programme took a peep above the parapet in this week's roundup of the Microsoft stories you might have missed.…

Decentralise over Bluetooth, say 300 scholars Hundreds of academics have warned governments around the world not to commission coronavirus contact-tracing apps that collect and store personal data on entire countries' populations.…

Official survey reveals barriers to adoption: Challenging learning curve and limited IDE support "The overriding problem hindering use of Rust is adoption," according to the language's official survey, with some developers struggling to be productive and hampered by limited IDE support.…

Giving military time to look at aspects of decision US federal judge Patricia Campbell-Smith has slapped a hold [PDF] on Amazon's legal challenge to the $10bn Pentagon Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract to give the military time to "reconsider... aspects of the procurement" in the mega-contract.…

Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yes! TalkTalk broadband users are complaining they can't opt out of its Error Replacement Service, which swaps NXDomain DNS results with an IP address. And if that sounds familiar, it should. Users of the budget ISP complained about the very same issue back in 2014.…

At a cost of £14.5bn and counting Analytics house GlobalData has calculated that British retailers have shut 382 million sq ft of floor space since the UK's coronavirus lockdown on 23 March, causing a £14.5bn drop in sales – though it claims that equates to roughly £200 of delayed or cancelled spending per each local.…

Also, Zoom assembles security dream team to fix its ongoing woes Roundup This week in The Reg's security roundup of the notable bits beyond what we've already covered, the Tor Project has cut back to its core team, Zoom has called in the big security guns, US tech firms are taking on its Congress – and more.…

Find out how to build a WFH security policy without resorting to wielding an iron fist Webcast You’ve finally worked out how to make a latte at least almost on par with the coffee shop opposite the office. However, no matter how in control you’re starting to feel during this pandemic lockdown, your 9am is still a mess of access rights conflicts, broken connections, and emails fired into the void of an overworked, remote IT help desk.…

No competitive tenders for northern pipeline company, and here's why In a classic tale of vendor lock-in, Northern Gas Networks (NGN) has invested so heavily in SAP that it make little sense to purchasing heads to do anything other than sign off on a new £6m software license.…

Growing extra instruments, reducing fuel spend and those clever, clever hacks Space Extenders ESA's Cluster mission is heading into its third decade of operations. The Register spoke to some of the people behind the four spacecraft about how the team turned a five-year nominal lifetime into 20 years and beyond.…

Can't get assessors on-site to check SMEs' antivirus updates Security standards for defence contractors have been lowered thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, the Ministry of Defence has told its suppliers.…

Debate seems to centre over where data needs to reside to get the job done European efforts to define a contact-tracing protocol aimed at making it easier for authorities to detect cases of COVID-19 appear to be having a rather vivid disagreement.…

It looks like you need some pepperoni and cheese. Do you want some help with that? Who, Me? Monday has shuffled into view once more and brought with it another Register reader confession in the form of our regular Who, Me? column.…

Now incubated as part of Xen project and has plenty of plans for hyperconverged and storage fun XCP-ng, the crowdfunded effort to deliver an open-source version of XenServer, has passed the 100,000-download mark.…

And Zoox setlles with Elon's Musketeers over purloined IP Roundup OpenAI Microscope: Neural networks, often described as “black boxes”, are complicated; it’s difficult to understand how all the neurons in the different layers interact with one another. As a result, machine learning engineers have a hard time trying to interpret their models.…

Borrowers can score between £500k and £5m if they have a track record, co-investors, and can afford eight percent interest The UK government will throw £1.25bn at startups and R&D firms that are struggling to survive in the coronavirus lockdown and are willing to pay well-above-market interest rates and give away equity in exchange for a fiscal lifeline.…

CEO says ‘pandemic completely reversed the positive momentum’ but at least its healthcare biz is strong Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has posted slow growth and warned that it will be doing well to match that performance in its new financial year.…

Months of negotiation on voluntary code of conduct didn’t make progress Australia will force social media companies to pay for content shared on their networks and disclose details of the algorithms that determine what their users see.…

Bet you thought the rural internet gap wouldn't cause this kind of disruption Former darts world champion Gary Anderson says he cannot compete in upcoming remote tournaments due to his slow home internet connection.…

Plus some interesting new side-channel attack possibilities for crims to play with With Silicon Valley under lockdown Chrome 82 has been abandoned by Google, but the Chocolate Factory boffins haven't been slacking and on Thursday released the beta build of Chrome 83 ahead of schedule.…

No fuel, no problem! Older space kit to gets new lease of life with extentions The first mission that flew a spacecraft out to save an old telecoms satellite running low on fuel has been successful.…

Amazon, the government, economics? Startup schtum on sudden closure Pulse.io is advising its customers to withdraw all digital funds from the site "as soon as possible," after announcing it'll shut down completely on June 26.…