The Register

Ticks plenty of diplomatic and supply chain security boxes with build in State tipped to be less MAGA-happy in 2020 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's biggest chip maker, will build a $12bn chip factory in Arizona in what the company is calling a "strong partnership" with the US government.…

Outsourcer Interserve holds a number of UK defense contracts, among others Britain's Ministry of Defence contractor Interserve has been hacked, reportedly leaking the details of up to 100,000 of past and current employees, including payment information and details of their next of kin.…

As IBM becomes only cloud partner permitted to use Virtzilla's special subscription licence scrip VMware has completed the set of major hyperscale clouds running its flagship vSphere natively, after the launch of the Google Cloud VMware Engine.…

One other minimum requirement: You need to be in the southern hemisphere The venerable Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), run by NASA and ESA, has discovered a new comet visible right now with the naked eye from Earth's southern hemisphere.…

Big Blue accused of making 'promises to sales reps it never intended to keep' IBM has been dealt a setback in its effort to limit the commissions it pays salespeople following the revival of a commission-capping lawsuit that had been dismissed.…

Could have done with this years ago to stave off rise of advert blockers but fine, OK, whatever, now it's coming Google is preparing to starve resource-hungry ads that drain mobile device batteries and consume network resources.…

Plus: There are some worrying data protection implications Analysis The current wisdom states that the sole path from COVID-19 lockdown involves vigorous testing of the population to identify new cases, paired with contact-tracing to limit the spread of infections. Smartphones make that easier, and the UK's National Health Service, like many other national governments, is working on an app to make it simpler.…

Angry judgments fly as SAS and World Programming spat rolls on A $79m copyright lawsuit that spiralled into a transatlantic tug of war between UK and US judges has taken its latest step – with an appeals court preventing an American firm diverting the revenues of a British software company.…

It’s like cartography, but with infosec. Probably Webcast There’s lots of talk of the threat landscape, so one useful way to extend the metaphor is to imagine that landscape wrapped around the horizon of an actual globe.…

Please help us rewrite the TypeScript compiler in Rust Ryan Dahl, Bert Belder and Bartek Iwańczuk have slid open the doors to Deno 1.0, the first production release of a new runtime for running TypeScript and JavaScript outside a web browser.…

A desktop browser spring clean can do the soul a power of good Google is taking steps to deal with tab overload in its browser by adding the ability to group the things together.…

And you thought this was purely a NoSQL release this week? MariaDB, which counts Deutsche Bank, Nasdaq and telecoms giant Verizon among its users, has launched a DBaaS rendition of its relational database, adding options to configure and customise it.…

Plus: AWS tool for defining Kubernetes apps without having to write YAML Amazon Web Services and Red Hat have linked arms to bring managed OpenShift, a Kubernetes service, to the AWS cloud. The service is not yet available, but "currently preparing for an early access program".…

Just not very many – don't go all Bitcoin farming on this Storj Labs, which in March launched decentralized storage network Tardigrade, is releasing an app to allow users of QNAP's network-attached storage devices to generate cryptocurrency revenue from their unused hard disk space and bandwidth.…

Your guide to the A100 GTC Nvidia has lifted the lid on a fresh line of products based on its latest Ampere architecture, revealing its latest A100 GPU - which promises to be 20X more powerful than its predecessor and capable of powering AI supercomputers – as well as a smaller chip for running machine learning workloads on IoT devices.…

There ain't no party like a privacy party Microsoft enlivened an otherwise run-of-the-mill Windows Insider Fast Ring emission by quietly adding support for DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) to the operating system.…

Mandrake handlers could snoop on whatever victim did with their phone A newly uncovered strain of Android spyware lurked on the Google Play Store disguised as cryptocurrency wallet Coinbase, among other things, for up to four years, according to a new report by Bitdefender.…

Way easier than getting humans to scour petabytes of images by hand, looking for faraway systems Astrophysicists have developed AI software to help scientists automatically detect and describe galaxies snapped by telescopes surveying the distant sky.…

Million-dollar payouts zero out as hackers follow the money en masse Five years ago, Zerodium offered a $1m reward for a browser-based, untethered jailbreak in iOS 9. On Wednesday, the software exploit broker said it won't pay anything for some iOS bugs due to an oversupply.…

Virgin Media users' download speeds did dip a bit, though The surge of furloughed and remote workers caused by the recent COVID-19 lockdown had only a modest impact on UK broadband speeds, claims a new report (PDF) from Ofcom.…

No calls, no texts, no data Updated A software update issued by Vodafone for the Xiaomi Mi 9 phone has left some users unable to connect to the cellular network, preventing them from making calls, sending texts, and accessing mobile data.…

Plus: Python2 slithers away from 21st release of open source cloud infrastructure project The OpenStack Foundation has hit the green button on Ussuri, the 21st release of the open source cloud infrastructure project.…

Mass upgrades all-but ordered at all levels of government, even at unis The Philippines government has urged its public sector institutions to upgrade their IT systems to make sure they're nice and efficient as they adjust to life with COVID-19.…

It’s 64-bit or nothing for PC-makers from now on. And face it, this isn't the year of Linux on the desktop Microsoft has revealed that it’s no longer allowing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to pre-install 32-bit Windows 10.…

Police pining to drop the Lillehammer on crooks, Norfund still worth $1tn+ The Norwegian Investment Fund has been swindled out of $10m (£8.2m) by fraudsters who pulled off what's been described as "an advance data breach."…

Company sees good times ahead as pandemic spurs catch-up investment, but also warns of 'market contraction' for servers Cisco has posted results for the quarter ended April 25th that feature lower revenue than the corresponding period in 2019, but still satisfied investors it’s done well and will continue to do so.…

Update, update, update. Plus: Flash, Struts, Drupal also make appearances Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Office, and Windows Server, for which patches have been available for years, continue to be the favorite target for hackers looking to spread malware.…

Bills going unpaid by service that exists to pay bills One of Australia's largest debt-management services has gone TITSUP, leaving thousands of users in financial limbo.…

Chinese web giant also flings cash at cloud and videoconferencing to capture 'This working from home thing could really catch on' sentiment Chinese web giant Tencent has reported 26 percent growth for Q1 2020, with the novel coronavirus helping things along because customers hunkered down to play its games while in lockdown.…

If you want a flat fabric, Dell wants in and is eyeing off NSX integrations too Dell Technologies has created its own distribution of Linux-based Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) project that emerged from Microsoft, and backed it with enterprise support in a bid to bring the software down from the clouds.…

Also extends exemption on doing business with the pair – a negotiating tactic so incredible it has to keep being renewed President Donald Trump has extended his executive order banning US companies from using or buying telecoms equipment from Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE for another year.…

Thanks for nothing, Bernie Sanders An amendment that would require the FBI get a warrant before they access Americans’ web-browsing history failed to pass by a single vote in the US Senate on Wednesday.…

'Aggressive oversight' needed, Congress urged A prominent senator has called for “aggressive oversight” into the sale of the NSO Group's hacking-and-spying tools to police forces in America.…

You have been weighed, measured, you have been found wanting Oracle has tacked a suite of cloud analytics tools onto its human resources platform with the aim of helping HR teams and line-of-business leaders do some number crunching without outside help.…

And just the thing for remote work, which was so not a thing when these were designed Intel has announced the tenth generation of its Core vPro microprocessors, the silicon it aims at business desktops – and now says the chips are also just the thing for remote working.…

What was Monthly is to be Current as Insider is banished in favour of Beta Microsoft has wielded the rebrandogun once more and directed fire at the update channels of its Microsoft 365 productivity cash cow, as well as slipping in a little extra something to "reduce the burden on IT".…

Claims consent was neither informed, nor specific, nor free – but Google says it cannot identify a user from the ID Privacy pressure group Noyb has filed a legal complaint against Google on behalf of an Austrian citizen, claiming the Android Advertising ID on every Android device is "personal data" as defined by the EU's GDPR and that this data is illegally processed.…

Ooh... Aah... Just a little fix Déjà vu was in the air last night as Microsoft has made yet another final tweak to the upcoming Windows 10 May 2020 Update while encouraging developers to get coding.…

Comms regulator Ofcom yet to rubberstamp proposals Broadband plumber Openreach will discontinue sales of copper-based products in more than 100 exchange areas across the UK, starting from June 2021, it said today. The move is part of Openreach's effort to discontinue the legacy analogue network in favour of full fibre connectivity.…

Assault on TOP500-listed machine may have hit Euro HPC too, warn sysops One of Britain's most powerful academic supercomputers has fallen victim to a "security exploitation" of its login nodes, forcing the rewriting of all user passwords and SSH keys.…

Release hits the waves, beats the competition to full OCI-compliance Harbor, the open-source container image registry, has reached version 2.0, becoming the first open-source registry to fully support the Open Container Initiative (OCI) specification.…

Bombarding audiences with quick-fire telly spots won't cut the mustard Sky Broadband has been publicly punished for peddling porky pies after running telly ads that made it out to be the UK's cheapest superfast home internet connection.…

Can we have 'Shaddap You Face'* next? We've seen it countless times on the news during the lockdown coverage – Brits getting happy-clappy for our beleaguered National Health Service once a week among other forms of forced fun for the cameras.…

New Edition has those all-important Google services, but dated chippery and no 5G future-proofing Huawei has a new phone! Actually, no. That's not exactly true. The P30 Pro New Edition is almost a carbon copy of last year's flagship blower with a few minor changes.…

Gartner slashes pre-pandemic spending forecast COVID-19 and its resulting economic impact has wiped a whopping $500bn off Gartner's pre-pandemic IT spending forecasts for 2020.…

Ensuring the US lights keep burning aboard the ISS... just in case Great news, everyone (if you're Russian): NASA is hedging its bets on Commercial Crew and SpaceX by spanking a few more million dollars on another Soyuz seat this autumn.…

How about a little stimulus... for anyone-but-China research? A concerted push for the US government to fund research into open 5G technologies has gained additional momentum – with a bipartisan letter from 38 lawmakers to the leaders of the House of Representatives urging them to support the Open RAN initiative.…

I, for one, welcome our robot replacements... Wait, no I don't Businesses should revisit automation with renewed vigour as the COVID-19 crisis abates, according to Forrester.…

Isn't it cute when a coffee machine addresses you in the first person? Bork!Bork!Bork! A vending machine appears to have gained sentience and is pleading for help (or an operating system update) in today's submission for the The Register's hall of shame.…

Revenue's tumbling, but that's also typical of a move to the fluffy stuff Analysis When Oliver Ratzesberger was named as Teradata CEO and president in January last year, it seemed he was made for the job. Not only did he have a background in engineering and software, but thanks to seven years leading analytics at eBay, he was also well versed in the challenges of big data. By December, he was gone.…