The Register

Google promises it won't override your choice of DNS provider Only days after Mozilla said it plans to make DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) available by default gradually for Firefox users in the US, Google announced its intention to test DoH in Chrome 78, due for beta release in the next two weeks.…

Super-harvester of private info forced to confront new iOS, Android safeguards Analysis Facebook has been caught bending the truth again – only this time it has been forced to out itself.…

Pre-approved services list aims to make choice easier for public sector orgs NHS Shared Business Services - the UK health service's back-office IT provider - has launched a list of pre-approved cloud services suppliers for public sector orgs.…

Cunning data-snooping side-channel technique is tough to exploit, Chipzilla warns Video It is possible to discern someone's SSH password as they type it into a terminal over the network by exploiting an interesting side-channel vulnerability in Intel's networking technology, say infosec gurus.…

Dataproc service will run Apache Spark on K8s, now in alpha Google Cloud Platform will soon emit the alpha release of its Dataproc service, specifically for Apache Spark jobs, running on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters.…

Not to worry, UK.gov has put a few pennies into faster 'leccy car chargers The UK Treasury is making £70m available to fund an additional 3,000 rapid charging points for electric vehicles, doubling the UK total to 5,000.…

Now you too can re-enact the diving scenes from Das Boot As the world's arms sales folk and protestors alike gather in London's Docklands for the Defence and Security Expo International, one small business has what appears to be the perfect accessory for your Bond-villainesque lair: namely, a mini submarine.…

Also: A billion lucky smartphone owners can make use of Galileo Roundup It was a busy last week for space fans as drill-wielding humanoid robot Fedor returned from space, India's Vikram lunar lander failed to return signals from the Moon and the Vega launcher inched closer to a return to flight.…

It's a performance upgrade Dell EMC has injected FC-NVMe and Optane storage-class memory (SCM) into its high-end PowerMax arrays with the aim of ramping performance.…

Guess we'll drop that lawsuit now then Huawei has dropped a lawsuit against the US government after the Department of Commerce returned hardware it seized from the company back in September 2017.…

Oops, hope we haven't blown Java EE 8's cover Enterprise Java, known as Java Enterprise Edition 8 (Java EE 8) under Oracle's implementation of the platform specification, has finally packed up and moved out of Big Red's basement under a new name, so it won't bear the burden of its heritage.…

A farewell to merchant services arm? Shape-shifting accounting software outfit Sage has confirmed it is seeking to offload the Sage Pay division.…

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy At 55 years old, Jack Ma, boss of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, is stepping down from day-to-day management of the company he founded – with a $38.6bn fortune in his pocket.…

We chat to Genting UK and Scale Computing on next-gen infrastructure Webcast It feels as though everyone's talking about edge computing, and yet, once you've torn through all the hype and bluster, what are you left with? What actually is it?…

The Lexus of speakers does it again. This time, no audio at all Hoity-toity hi-fi purveyor Bose has inadvertently silenced a bunch of its own soundbars with a recent firmware update.…

Still, Chipzilla's almost everywhere when it comes to Microsoft devices IFA2019 Is Windows on Arm a thing? Yes, both Samsung and Lenovo had models on display at IFA in Berlin. But it has yet to take off with the great majority of laptops running Intel or AMD chipsets.…

Sounds like normal life in the Shetland Islands Geologists believe they have found rocks that filled the impact crater of the gigantic asteroid that pummeled Earth and killed off the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.…

Content management giant invites Register readers to hobnob in the capital Promo Attendees at the annual Sibos financial services exhibition are invited to relax and rest their weary feet at an afternoon reception hosted by Box at the end of the first day of the event, in London, on 23 September.…

Talk about tit for tat We've all seen some wild bugs, but this one is just baffling.…

Downloading data / from your public-facing site / ain't hacking, says court A US appeals court has upheld the 2017 ruling allowing netizens to scrape public profile data from social networking sites, including LinkedIn.…

And pretty much everyone else except California, weirdly enough (and Alabama) The attorneys general of 50 US states and territories are teaming up to probe Google for possible antitrust violations, Ken Paxton, the AG for Texas, announced on Monday.…

To protect query privacy, browser maker will run everything through Cloudflare On Friday, Mozilla said it plans to implement the DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocol by default in its Firefox browser, with a slow rollout starting in late September.…

Howls from sold-out millionaire, Nadella is unlikely to listen The former CEO of popular to-do app Wunderlist has publicly pleaded with Microsoft to sell him back his company in despair over what the software giant has done with it.…

Millions likely to get kicked into credit monitoring deal It’s been a year since hapless credit-monitoring company Equifax admitted hackers gained access to the personal details of some 175 million people on its servers – and it has marked the anniversary with an extra legal hurdle for those seeking compensation.…

Infosec bod bags reward for spotting image privacy bug VIdeo Telegram has fixed a bug that broke one of its chat app's key privacy features: the ability to fully delete your sensitive messages on recipients' phones.…

And prices are falling Tesla's Autopilot might get all the attention, but semi-autonomous cars are starting to gain market share across Europe as mainstream brands get involved and prices fall, according to Canalys.…

Your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition, er, we mean Redmond pals up with SES, Intelsat and Viasat Microsoft has buddied up with a trio of satellite operators to hook up its Azure cloud to locations lacking connectivity.…

'Let's not play games,' says lang dad Guido van Rossum Python 2 will sunset on January 1st 2020 – however, many applications have not yet upgraded to version 3, causing the coding lingo's team to mount a communications campaign to persuade devs to port their code.…

Lights go out across Europe Wikimedia has fingered a massive distributed-denial-of-service attack for outages at Wikipedia across Europe over the weekend.…

UK Services turns over £2bn+, profits up, and taxes... Well, what do you think? It is that time of the year again when Amazon's bean counters put into words a tale of intrigue and daring: the latest set Profit & Loss accounts for the UK Services subsidary. Spoiler: tax remains an issue.…

Fruity firm denies abuses uncovered by undercover staff An investigation by China Labor Watch has found Foxconn's Apple 11 factory is "routinely" and "repeatedly" breaking Chinese labour laws which limit employment of temporary staff.…

$16bn slapped on table by Permira and Advent – reports Symantec shares have jumped almost 5 per cent following reports that it is close to offloading its consumer business to a pair of private equity investors.…

While browbeaten oldies try to focus on Windows 10, .NET Core, Visual Studio Roundup While trying not to let themselves be too distracted by the 30-odd interns doing Glee Club in the courtyards of Redmond, Microsoft workers kicked off September with a flurry of releases for Windows 10, .NET Core, Visual Studio and more.…

It's time for an intervention Column Here we go again. Google, that universal vacuum of all data created by humanity, can't seem to swim within the lane carefully laid out for it by regulators.…

Did someone say idiot tax? 26% of operating profit in FY'19 estimated to come from richer storage configs Apple is on course to make $18bn in sales in its current financial year by upselling customers to higher NAND configurations on iPhones, iPads and Macs.…

Desktop browser fans – and Vulture Central – get an Android client to play with Hands On The independent Chromium-based browser outfit Vivaldi has finally emitted a mobile client.…

Friends don't let friends click Publish Who, Me? Welcome to Who, Me?, The Register's weekly forage through the hedgerows of reader's misdeeds and tumbles into the ditch of IT despair.…

Also, XKCD forums hacked and Monster monstered Roundup Here's a look back at some of the latest security bits and bobbles besides the stuff we already covered over the past week.…

Also cunning crimes use machine learning to steal cash Roundup Hello, here's a list of all this week's AI and machine learning related news beyond what we've already covered. Facebook has turned off automatic facial recognition for its users and the US Department of Defense wants to hire an ethicist to, you know, develop AI for good, of course.…

Come join us at our Serverless Computing London conference this November Event Serverless Computing London hits Westminster again this November, and if you’re a charity or similar non-profit, we’d love for you to join us.…

Cyber-assistant taught to duck sensitive topics Apple has programmed its Siri voice assistant to avoid politically charged subjects, and deflect or duck questions that require its AI to take a stand on issues, it emerged this week.…

400k+ volunteer computer crack tough three-cubes problem Mathematicians have finally cracked the sum-of-three-cubes problem for the geek-friendly number 42.…

Nation braces for bad news after last-minute comms blackout India's mission to the Lunar South Pole, known as Chandrayaan 2, suffered a setback early Saturday morning Bengaluru (Bangalore) time, when the spacecraft's Vikram Lander stopped communicating during its descent to the Moon's surface.…

Brits gobsmacked and Microsoft launches probe after cyber-bazaar's avatar switched to X-rated snap NSFW (ish) eBay UK customers got an unexpected eyeful this week – after a busty topless model bafflingly appeared in some of the online tat souk's emails.…

Integration may lead to more smartphones with faster cellular broadband (networks permitting) IFA 2019 Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung were at the IFA consumer tech marketing fest in Germany this week to publicly tear the wraps off their upcoming mobile system-on-chips with built-in 5G modems. This integration means a load of forthcoming phones and gadgets using these processors will come with 5G support as standard, in theory.…

They paid us before we paid them, said Gary Szukalski Autonomy trial A former Filetek sales and marketing man has told London's High Court that the firm received money from Autonomy before paying it back as part of reciprocal deals.…

Some Insiders are more equal than others (sorry, Release Preview) Microsoft has attempted to clear the murky waters of its Windows Insider programme by stowing its virtual coin toss for those on the Slow Ring.…

Hey nurses, it's not like you've got anything else to do The NHS is seeking nurses and health care professionals to become social media "influencers" to promote its app.…

MoD tech accelerator asks industry, is this idea possible? The Royal Navy's (RN) tech innovation tentacle wants clever folk to come up with entirely autonomous ways of dropping new missiles into its warships' hungry silos.…

Desktop layout suite granted 2019 reboot With a nostalgic twinkle in its corporate eye, Microsoft has emitted a Windows 10 version of its venerable PowerToys suite.…