The Register

Cash-burning biz sees itself following in the footsteps of GitHub Sponsors NPM, Inc., the overseer of the widely used npm JavaScript package registry, hasn't been particularly supportive of worker complaints, but the would-be enterprise biz wants to lend a hand to open source contributors.…

MCubed kicks off at the end of Sept: Join us for tip-top in-depth practical deep dives into machine learning Event In uncertain times, it’s helpful to turn to wise heads who can dispense proven wisdom and practical advice – and we’ve got 40 of these lined up in Westminster at the end of this month.…

Surpising no one, software will keep vids of your face forever Chinese mobile app Zao has taken the internet by storm due to its uncanny AI-based face-swapping technology, automagically and quickly painting netizens' fizogs over famous actors in movie and TV clips – but there's a hidden kicker in the code.…

Don't drive hungry, folks – or take your hands off the wheel even when Elon's super cruise-control is active The Tesla driver who crashed into a stationary fire truck may have had his hands off the wheel, and Autopilot engaged, as he ate a bagel and drank coffee, according the US National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday.…

Postmortem report: Power outage knackered instances, volumes for unlucky punters A power outage fried hardware within one of Amazon Web Services' data centers during America's Labor Day weekend, causing some customer data to be lost.…

Bug seller Zerodium boosts payouts for 'droid, slashes iOS prices in half Bug-broker Zerodium says it will cough up as much as $2.5m in exchange for techniques to silently and remotely hijack Android devices via critical vulnerabilities, signaling a major change in the pricing of security holes.…

Extensions still free to use uber-powerful webRequest API to filter crap out of webpages On Tuesday, Mozilla said it is not planning to change the ad-and-content blocking capabilities of Firefox to match what Google is doing in Chrome.…

Redmond suggests nuking 'profanity, geopolitical, diversity' terms from browser source Microsoft's adoption of the Google-developed Chromium browser engine for Edge has resulted in a proposal to cleanse the open-source code of "potentially offensive terms."…

Comms giant says camera patent claims are a front for government intrusion Huawei claims, albeit without evidence, the US government has tried to break into its internal computer networks.…

Remember when people didn't use browsers from the one of world's biggest adtech giants? Mozilla has declared that its latest Firefox browser will no longer allow third-party tracking cookies by default, pushing an existing limited-audience feature to all users.…

1903 patch turns Redmond's virtual assistant into a very power hungry bot Updated Some Windows 10 users are experiencing alarming CPU spikes following last week's optional cumulative update.…

We don't actually need them, says Lynch's camp Autonomy Trial Two key witnesses in the Autonomy trial have "refused" to testify, Hewlett-Packard's barrister sensationally claimed to London's High Court.…

The Register goes to Cambridge Interview The Register popped into the Raspberry Pi Foundation's retail outlet in Cambridge to chat with founder Eben Upton about power, sales and occupying the family television.…

Cops seek muck-maker Ah, another fine morning in sunny Torquay. The crisp, invigorating sea air and – oh God, what is that smell? And what on Earth is that on the roof of our car? Someone... took a dump... on our car!…

Study to decode the universe's first seconds, but crashing out of bloc may be a problem A University of Portsmouth researcher has won a €1.3m grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to continue his investigation into dark matter and its role in the universe's first seconds of existence.…

Serverless Computing London early bird offer extended Event If flight delays or the back to school rush means you missed our early bird ticket offer for Serverless Computing London, don’t despair - we’ve extended it for a week.…

Virtual USB hub allows attackers to get into BMCs Tens of thousands of servers around the world are believed to be hosting a vulnerability that would allow an attacker to remotely commandeer them.…

Hey, ex-Soviet state-backed threat actors, you watching? Fresh from secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg’s repeated promises to hack back at cyber-attackers, NATO is now preparing to run a large-scale cyber exercise to test its infosec defences.…

Axe to still fall at the end of 2020 as planned Hey Flash fans! Microsoft has fiddled with its plans to join the platoon of vendors aiming to make Adobe's Swiss-Cheese-alike plug-in just a horrid memory by 2020.…

Spoiler: Yes, it was SpaceX's Starlink The European Space Agency (ESA) accomplished a first today: moving one of its satellites away from a potential collision with a "mega constellation".…

Get your grandparents to book with someone else Teletext Holidays managed to leave more than 200,000 customer phone call recordings exposed on an unsecured AWS server, according to reports.…

Also: Second time lucky for Russia and onward to Mars for ESA (via Toulouse) Roundup As NASA nervously eyed Hurricane Dorian, Roscosmos finally persuaded Soyuz MS-14 to dock with the ISS and India's Chandrayaan-2 enjoyed an amicable separation above the Moon.…

S'OK though, network promises to fix 'as quickly as possible' Virgin Mobile customers are struggling to get new SIM cards to work or be recognised by the network, leaving them unable to make or receive calls or use data services.…

Walled-garden Android platform security easily copied Facebook has insisted that losing control of the private key used to sign its Facebook Basics app is no biggie despite totally unrelated apps from other vendors, signed with the same key, popping up in unofficial repositories.…

Got a Series 2 or 3 in aluminium with a borked screen? Things might be looking up for you Good news for owners of certain Apple Watches – the vendor has initiated a free-of-charge repair service for those afflicted with a design defect that can cause the screen to crack.…

Job sharing, part-time work rights for contractors too The UK's Trades Union Congress (TUC) is backing a campaign to extend flexible working rights to everyone from their first day in the job regardless of the type of contract they sign.…

Also: Hololens 2 peekaboo and the not-so-mysterious decline of 1803 Roundup Feeling a little befuddled and out of sorts as your summer holiday comes to an end? That's nothing compared to confusion spilling from the Windows Insider team in this week's roundup of Microsoft news.…

What will $165m buy? Brands, ops, workers, IP, channel stocks and OEM deals Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation (TMHC) is buying LITE-ON's SSD business for $165m.…

Apple unlocks NFC chip just in time for Brexit EU citizens living in the UK will finally be able to use the settled status app on iPhones from October - the same month the UK is due to leave the European Union.…

Always check the roof – you never know what might (not) be lurking there Who, Me? August is now just a memory, but hey – console yourself that Christmas is just around the corner. Or simply grab a caffeinated Monday beverage and take delight in another's pain courtesy of The Register's regular Who, Me? column.…

It's all the AI news you might have missed Roundup Hello, here's a quick roundup of news from the world of machine learning.…

Plus a Cisco bug, dentists bitten by malware, and France takes down a worm Roundup This week ended with a bang, thanks to some Twitter hackers.…

Cryptocurrency crooks look to siphon cycles from enterprise kit Exclusive A coin-mining malware infection previously only seen on Arm-powered IoT devices has made the jump to Intel systems.…

Effort to help fund open source projects proves too much Software developer Feross Aboukhadijeh has decided to discontinue a funding experiment that brought text ads to the command line and criticism from detractors.…

First world problems, with a big scoop of utter stupidity Shock, horror: Young men, who are either drunk, high or both are more likely to get into electric scooter accidents, according to a new study.…

We love our employees, sorry, contractors, so much we’ll spend a small fortune stopping them from getting overtime, workers’ comp etc Gig-economy giants Uber, Lyft and Doordash have put $30m apiece into a new fund to push a new California ballot measure that would prevent their workers get ordinary benefits like a minimum wage, overtime, workers’ compensation and so on.…

And another $262,000 to figure out who he was A former Tesla employee who leaked information about its production problems cost the electric car biz $167m, Musk's crew claims.…

Channel partners flying customers for holidays in Russia and China, that's fine! Juniper Networks has agreed to pay $11.7m in penalties to the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle charges that its subsidiaries violated bribery laws by paying for trips taken by customers and foreign officials in Russia and China.…

Project Zero dissects years-long surveillance campaign Updated Google's Project Zero says more than a dozen iOS flaws that Apple patched back in February had been under attack for years.…

And they're imposing a 20-character limit on new ones Users of software house Foxit's free and paid-for products, including its popular PhantomPDF editor, may have fallen victim to a data breach – with stolen data including users' website passwords.…

Computers bring home the bacon for US biz in Q2 Good old fashioned sales of business PCs is keeping growth at Dell Technologies chugging along, more than compensating for crappy sales of server and networking gear.…

Tunnels, bridges, lights and other route constipation hardness to be eased by laxative of software goodness Transport for London (TfL) has signed a £6.5m deal for a new control system with outsourcer Sopra Steria.…

Ransomware strain was top customer call-out title in 2018 Kaspersky Lab reckons the number one reason its customers call them for emergency help is because of ransomware – with Wannacry still playing a large part in detections picked up by the Russian company.…

Not one, not two, but three Save dialogs in updated Office 365 desktop applications In an effort to help users "save files to the cloud more easily," Microsoft has added an additional save dialog to desktop Office 365 applications, including Word, Excel and Powerpoint.…

And it's probably better for it The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. Since the last one, not only did we play and complete Bioshock for the first time, but also Batman: Arkham Knight. And a lot of Kenshi.…

Roles to be outsourced to HCL Exclusive Energy and broadband provider SSE is set to shed 115 roles within its IT infrastructure division in Britain, and will instead outsource some functions to Indian software supplier HCL.…

You can't patch stupid Despite years of corporate awareness training, warning articles in The Reg and regular bollockings by frustrated IT admins, human error is still behind most personal data leaks, a newly released study says.…

As resilient as a bullet-riddled piece of, er, video game artwork An intensely dreary Little Red Book of media quotes from Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei uses photos to boast of the company's grit and resilience to damage – illustrating the concept with what looks remarkably like a screenshot from computer game Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad.…

You shall not PaaS? An Ask Me Anything reveals common gripes Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), an Azure-hosted VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), plugs an obvious gap in the company's cloud offerings, but comes with its fair share of annoyances too, many of which came up in a recent Ask Me Anything laid on by the team.…

How's that Boris Johnson impression working out for you? On Call Welcome to On Call, The Register's weekly dive into the mailbag of woe from those faced with recalcitrant users or, occasionally, an overly helpful operator.…