The Register

SQL Object Explorer, SQLCMD and more IntelliCode arrive for VS Code Microsoft's determination to foist on the world ever more ways of connecting to SQL Server has continued unabated with a major update of the mssql extension for the ubiquitous Visual Studio Code.…

Ofcom: Ahem. Just check our website The tossing away of user-generated content on Yahoo!'s long-running Groups site on Wednesday was not just bad news for all the hardcore users who are about to lose all their precious things stored there. Many were quick to point at telcos, who were using Yahoo! Groups to manage phone number assignments.…

Serverless Computing London takes you deep into Lambda, Azure, and more Event If you’re looking for a thorough grounding in serverless computing, or just want to kick your existing experiments into a higher gear, why not join our workshop day at Serverless Computing London next month.…

Yes, you read that right. Plus they spent £2.2m on failed AV policy The UK government could use facial recognition to verify age "so long as there is an appropriate concern for privacy," junior minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Matt Warman has said.…

That's 'Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions' University of Cambridge researchers and UK industry bods have been tossed £36m from the UK government to support their work with Arm to strengthen security by improving memory protection.…

Briefly had screen recording feature too Sextortion is bad. Malware is bad. Spam is bad. Unhappily for a French ISP's users, online crooks combined all three in a hideous attempt to extort cash with custom malware that records their on-screen doings, according to infosec researchers.…

Used by the elderly in M2M connections and eCall services In the dash to move everything to next-generation services, mobile operators mustn't be too hasty to switch off 2G, a report by industry bodies has warned.…

Chipzilla's keeping mum ... Canalys Channels Forum There's still no light at the end of the tunnel for PC makers as Intel's CPU constraint – a problem that showed up in anger 13 months ago – is on course to continue for another couple of quarters.…

Up to £1,700 for something that won't outperform its cheaper Pro 7 stablemate Hands On The Register dropped into Microsoft's flagship London store to rake a talon over the company's latest Surface gizmos and cop an eyeful of hardware head honcho Panos Panay fondling the Neo and Duo.…

It's cool to be retro Something for the Weekend, Sir? I wish to be recycled.…

Ever been tempted to administer a jolly good thrashing to Windows? On Call Join us in celebrating another week on Earth with a dive into the bulging bag of Register reader tales of user misadventures, misunderstandings and mindless violence in our regular On Call feature.…

Tune in online, join us with a panel of experts Webcast Finding and retaining the best developers is always a tall order. It’s no surprise that smart organisations strive to make the most of their workers’ valuable time, as barrages of projects compete for their attention.…

Ignore the overhead, enjoy Site Isolation – a defense against side-channel attacks Last year, Google deployed Site Isolation in desktop versions of its Chrome browser as a defense against CPU side-channel attacks like Spectre. The technique renders websites in separate processes to prevent one from interfering with or snooping on another, augmenting browser sandboxing defenses.…

You could say the US has... stiffened its defenses. Get it? Sti – OK, you got it The US Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS) has reportedly replaced the ancient eight-inch floppy disks it uses to store data on the US nuclear arsenal.…

There's a line somewhere and we may just draw it, says code-hosting biz GitLab today had a change of heart after facing withering criticism for directing employees not to talk politics at work and declaring it would do business with any customer not banned by law regardless of moral considerations.…

Whoever implemented this wasn't a star pupil. Smartphone is an eye-groan. Face off with tech. And so on and so forth Pixel 4 owners can unlock their smartphones with their faces even if they have their eyes closed. That's not good.…

Any Reg readers have a solution? The web payment giant doesn't care Updated A Register reader says that for months he has been dealing with unwanted emails and alerts because a domain he purchased is connected to someone else's PayPal account, and PayPal doesn't seem to care.…

Building blocks for devs. Because you can't be all Waity K8-y when Google's all-in Ahead of Microsoft's Ignite conference next month, the company has announced Dapr, now available as an Alpha preview, a runtime to simplify developing microservices.…

Mass-mailing your customers today? Read this first Thames Water found itself in warm, er, water this week after a clunky migration effort left customers receiving emails that looked like a particularly sophisticated spear-phishing attack.…

Note 10 has same ultrasonic tech for 'vault-like security' Samsung is investigating a critical issue with its Galaxy S10 and Note 10 smartphones after reports that it fails to discriminate between different fingerprints if a screen protector is fitted.…

Researchers reckon they've cracked a Washington embassy and more The hacker crew behind the US Democratic National Committee breach are still at it and have infiltrated an EU country's embassy in Washington DC, according to infosec biz ESET.…

Ordnance Survey map app update left some users lost, but they're really sorry, m'kay? All is not well in the corridors of respected Blighty institution the Ordnance Survey as a borked app update left users, in a very real sense, flailing in the wilderness.…

Nuggets from Nicky Morgan's grilling by select committee Culture secretary Nicky Morgan has hinted that the TV licence fee could be replaced with a Netflix-style subscription, defended Boris Johnson's involvement with Hacker House, and toed the government line on halting end-to-end encryption.…

Out today: Experimental ZFS on root, diminished compatibility with 32-bit applications Canonical has released Ubuntu 19.10, codenamed Eoan Ermine for some reason.…

Phone, wallet, keys... and foldy PC Canalys Channels Forum Life for ThinkPad fanatics looks to be getting a lot more flexible in the near future with a premium Windows-based foldable PC set to start shipping from next summer.…

Once they find out how much data their devices devour Feature The Glass Room, a conceptual art and educational exhibit that opened Wednesday in a storefront on Market Street in San Francisco, provides visitors with a glimpse of how technology companies use personal data in the hope of prompting questions about the consequences of information technology.…

First 123-Reg, now prominent Brit telco. Who's next? Updated Three UK has suffered a nine-hour outage and counting, affecting 3G and 4G calls across the entire British Isles.…

Staying safe in Musk's brave new world Space – the final frontier, a place for pioneers to carve out their destiny and their fortunes, free from pencil-neck officials telling them what they can't do. Right? Wrong.…

Get a proper closeup look at an underground rail tunnel? Yes please Feature Descending down the entry ramp and stepping over the Mail Rail tracks for the first time, you start to see London's underground heritage from – quite literally – a whole new angle.…

Build a full-stack solution that makes the best of all available resources Webcast As equipment manufacturers in industries from healthcare and transportation to security and communications well know, the future is going to be software-defined and maybe a little bit cloudy.…

The Open Application Model isn't a standard, but it could be On Wednesday, Microsoft and Alibaba Cloud revealed "an open standard for developing and operating applications on Kubernetes and other platforms," that isn't yet a standard and looks rather redundant in light of similar projects.…

Everyone knows the Ramans do everything in threes Pic Astroboffins have released images taken by the Hubble telescope of the second-ever interstellar object and the first-ever verified comet to enter our Solar System from the depths of the universe.…

Fantastic quarter: Sales, down. Profit, down. Business as usual IBM is talking up the success of its Red Hat as Big Blue continues its efforts to ax losing businesses.…

Or cyber-hell depending on your point of view Google has quietly removed Google Clips, an unsettling AI camera, from its Play Store, along with some other kit.…

23 kids saved, alleged scumbag-in-chief already in jail US prosecutors say a South Korean man was behind the largest child-abuse image-swapping operation yet found on the internet.…

App-quiesced saves fail, workaround is to shrug it off A compatibility issue between VMware's ESXi hypervisor and Windows Server 2019 will leave some customers unable to safely snapshot their virtual machines.…

Domain-name slinger keeps mum amid hours-long multi-service outage Updated 123-Reg, which promotes its “award-winning 24/7 UK support,” as a selling point for its service, is suffering a sustained and ongoing email service outage – with Reg readers claiming the company has shut off its online support channels.…

There's gold in them thar 5G networks for comms slinger Huawei has continued to rake in the big bucks in spite of continued dark mutterings over what may or may not be lurking within its code.…

Breeding ground for fraud, smuggling and other criminal activity, say auditors Two key programmes related to the UK border's preparedness for Brexit pose "significant risks", the National Audit Office has said.…

Includes setting to turn ads off – stop hissing at the back, Google Alternative search engine DuckDuckGo has announced improvements to its search options and an enhanced dark theme, but its tiny market share shows that most people are content to stick with Google, despite privacy issues.…

Thought of the children, but not privacy, tech, legal implications Controversial plans for mandatory age verification controls for pornographic websites have been scrapped, UK culture secretary Nicky Morgan announced today.…

Sierra Nevada Corporation eagerly awaits other bits to come in the post Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has wheeled out the first production version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft ahead of a 2021 mission to the International Space Station.…

One of the world's largest tech disties courted by Apollo Global Private equity monster Apollo Global Management has reportedly made an approach to buy Tech Data, one of the world's largest tech distributors, with a bid believed to be almost $5bn.…

Compo pledged to women's rights charities A former TalkTalk programme director is crowdfunding the legal costs of an equal pay claim against the budget ISP.…

No Big Red now in use other than by third-party apps, firm claims Amazon has turned off its final Oracle database, completing a migration effort that has involved "more than 100 teams" in the consumer biz.…

You wouldn't want to make workers anxious by cutting them off, wouldya? – study Bosses worldwide will be rejoicing after a British academic declared that banning work email use out of hours could negatively effect underlings' mental health.…

Bigwigs on containers, consulting and the path ahead Puppetize PDX 2019 Despite standing squarely in the path of the GitLab juggernaut, DevOps automation outfit Puppet is betting that a one-size-fits-all approach will end up fitting nobody particularly well.…

Hope you look good in orange NASA has unveiled two new space suit designs for future astronauts on its Artemis program, a mission to send “the first woman and the next man" to the surface of the Moon by 2024.…

Catch up with the fast-moving digital world at the IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference Promo As the world gravitates towards cloud, edge computing, the internet of things, DevOps, and AIOps, the ground is shifting for infrastructure and operations teams. Their organisations must stay agile to keep up with the changing digital landscape.…

Code-hosting biz also bans staff from talking politics at work GitLab, a San Francisco-based provider of hosted git software, recently changed its company handbook to declare it won't ban potential customers on "moral/value grounds," and that employees should not discuss politics at work.…