The Register

Pro: Gboard Bar can 'double development speed' for pair programmers. Con: No one wants this Google's Japan business appears to have ignored its semi-official "Don't be Evil" motto by publishing blueprints for the Gboard Bar, a 1.65m (5.4 feet) QWERTY keyboard.…

Attempts to dismiss suit denied as former staffer alleges she was expressly told to swerve over-50s A US judge has rejected IT outsourcer Infosys's motions to dismiss claims of a former recruiter that the company discriminated and retaliated against her.…

Mass production, too – and if it happens, timing will be crucial as semiconductor market recovers Samsung expects to have 2nm chips in mass production by 2025 and plans to deliver mass production using a 1.4nm process by 2027, aiming to expand the capacity of such advanced process nodes "by more than 3X."…

Vatican City sovereign still not keen on seeing cellphones in the basilica It was only a matter of time before the maker of divine products met the maker's representative on Earth. And so it came to pass yesterday that the Pope granted a special audience to Apple CEO Tim Cook.…

Totally not for data collection Analysis Meta's Facebook has been testing its own custom-browser engine within its Android app and plans to distribute the code more widely, ostensibly for the sake of better security and an improved user experience.…

Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy yet to rule on sale of Brit biz to Chinese-owned Nexperia The fate of Newport Wafer Fab remains undecided as yet another deadline for the final UK government decision on its sale to China-owned Nexperia passed without any confirmation for the staff or customers involved.…

Isn't software something worth paying for? Well, frankly, no At the heart of the computer industry are some very big lies, and some of them are especially iniquitous. One is about commercial software.…

Annexed Donetsk? No more consultants for you then Fresh export sanctions were leveled at Russia by the UK last week, with IT consultancy among other professional services that are banned.…

Welsh, on the other hand, there's no tech that can help with that Boffins at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the US are working with the usual internet super-corps to, ideally, improve AI voice recognition for people with disabilities.…

They’re on track for a whopping three percent in 2026 – well out of the mainstream, but growing faster Cross “optimise site and/or app for folding smartphones” off your to-do list: analyst firm IDC says they’re not going to be mainstream devices by the year 2026.…

Data theft stinks, says victim. Alleged perp claims he's getting a raw deal The president of casual Japanese chain restaurant Kappa Sushi resigned yesterday in the wake of a data-theft scandal that has rocked the world of sushi trains.…

Mangalyaan orbiter launched for just $74m, lasted a magnificent 16 times longer than expected India’s Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Mission has ended.…

Other business units also made full members of Group, perhaps hinting and spin-outs The deal to merge Citrix and Tibco has closed, and the two companies are now business units of a new entity called “Cloud Software Group” – as is NetScaler, the application delivery controller brand that Citrix acquired way back in 2005 but recently re-branded as “Citrix ADC”.…

PLUS: Toshiba considers offers, clams up; India's HFCL claims Wi-Fi 7 first; Vietnam may censor SocMed; and more Asia In Brief Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s Indian subsidiary has expressed disappointment with a decision by nation’s government to freeze $683 million of its assets, claiming the disputed funds were payments to US chip giant Qualcomm.…

Superstar is still exclusively a meat popsicle Bruce Willis' agent has denied the Die Hard superstar fully sold his image rights to an AI startup specializing in deepfake technology.…

Some days, security just feels like a total illusion. OK, most days... A recently disclosed critical vulnerability in Atlassian's Bitbucket is actively being exploited, according to the US government.…

Hello, love, I need $32k to fix my oil rig A man in the US has been jailed for 25 years after using dating websites, email scams, and other online swindles to steal more than $9.5 million from companies and individuals.…

Commercial 'apocalypse' now – and worse is yet to come, apparently The surge in remote work, and a decline in demand for office space, during the COVID-19 pandemic has apparently wiped an estimated $453 billion off commercial real-estate value. That's not good news for investors and pension funds relying on the value of these buildings.…

Don't have a TT account? Doesn't matter! Updated Google and Meta may be the first names that come to mind when thinking of silent online tracking of users, but another business is getting into the game in a very similar manner: TikTok.…

Cops and Feds get easier info sharing, Britain benefits most The Data Access Agreement (DAA), by which the US and UK have agreed how one country can respond to lawful data demands from police and investigators in the other, took effect on Monday.…

Assuming this Kyber TLS stuff works as expected Cloudflare is the first major internet infrastructure provider to support post-quantum cryptography for all customers, which, in theory, should protect data if quantum computing ever manages to break today's encryption technologies.…

Technology is addressing many of the cyberthreats, but the human element will always be a factor If you've ever found yourself in an interminable meeting listening to the CISO ramble on about the important role you play in protecting yourself and the company from cyberthreats, you could probably point an accusatory finger in large part at the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) program.…

Infosec systems designer alleged to have chatted with undercover agent A 30-year-old ex-NSA employee was accused by the FBI of trying to sell classified US information to a foreign government – after the Feds said they linked him to the printing of secret documents.…

Vote result good news for new users, but might be bad for remixes The next major release of Debian will ship installation images that are not 100 percent free open source software.…

MERGE means more code can be copied from earlier installation, because let's be real – that's how it's happening PostgreSQL, the popular open source relational database, is getting support for MERGE statements, a move which is intended to make migration from SQL Server and Oracle-based systems easier.…

But how will you know when your vehicle's extended warranty has expired? The FCC has opened proceedings to fight scam text messages that have become an increasing part of daily life for US consumers (and techies who have to talk grandma out of clicking that FedEx package delivery link).…

Finally 'unlocking value' for the 2017 $15b acquisition, just not via the imagined route Intel has filed for an IPO for its Mobileye automotive biz following earlier delays, but it is not clear what value the chip giant expects to get from the flotation of the vehicle tech outfit it acquired in 2017.…

Colorful data techie seeks to fend off rivals Interview Despite industry efforts to get both data exploration and business analysis workloads onto a single "lakehouse" system, separate data lakes and warehouses are still required for effective enterprise analytics and BI systems, Teradata's CTO tells The Register.…

We won't get there by simply funding Intel and TSMC into building fabs here, says NXP CEO EU funding to boost the region's semiconductor industry under the European Chips Act is nowhere near enough investment to meet the targets set for 2030, according to the head of one of its largest chip companies.…

Regulators might have thing or two to say. And analysts warn of post consolidation price rises Vodafone has confirmed it is locked in negotiations with CK Hutchison Holding Ltd – the owner of Three UK – over merging the two businesses' operations in Great Britain, creating what would be the largest local telco.…

Optimus Sub-Prime? For something meant to revolutionize production lines, reveal wasn't quite there yet Tesla headlined its AI Day 2022 event on Friday with the reveal of its "Optimus" robot prototype, showing just how much work was left to do on the project.…

Search engine was banned so no surprise no one was using it Google has discontinued its China-based Google Translate app and site, translate.google.cn, allegedly because no one was using it.…

It is the exponential changes in the course of human history that worry Serg Bell Acronis founder Serg Bell is afraid of his own vacuum cleaner, he told The Register in Singapore last week.…

Here's what 1,100 incident responders say about their jobs, just in time for NSCAM Remember the good old days of cyber-incident response, when the job involved digital forensics and lots of stolen credit cards, as opposed to power-grid-breaking malware and multi-million-dollar ransom demands?…

Data more essential than ever, says analytics chief as Liz Truss U-turns on tax, and world+dog remembers Bank's there to manage risk The Bank of England had a busy end to September. On Wednesday last week, it said it would buy £65 billion (c $72 billion) of government bonds after the pound tumbled to historic lows and pensions funds went into meltdown, all seemingly the result of the government's mini-budget days earlier.…

It’ll take an army of billions to hold them back. Let’s make one Opinion China and Russia have been colluding to try to get a Chinese Internet protocol, New IP, adopted as a global standard. It's needed, they say, to improve quality of service guarantees. (Oh, and by the way, it also lets countries take complete control of their national networks, adding user registration requirements and shutting off interoperability.)…

Sure, I’ll sit here all day taking notes because you’re too cheap to print them out Who, Me? Welcome once again to Who, Me?, in which The Register celebrates the working week stretching out ahead of us all with readers' tales of messes they made, and escaped.…

$22 trillion of global rated debt has 'high' or 'very high' cyber-risk exposure About $22 trillion of global debt rated by Moody's Investors Service has "high," or "very high" cyber-risk exposure, with electric, gas and water utilities, as well as hospitals, among the sectors facing the highest risk of cyberattacks.…

Barely adequate as a desktop alternative, but delightful as a dual purpose monitor Desktop Tourism Samsung's vision for a smart monitor tantalizes: the company suggests you park your PC and instead use Bluetooth input devices to work with a monitor that bakes in a browser and Office 365. If you really need a PC, the device can remote into a PC or Mac.…

Linux boss' launch message is more ‘6.0 is overrated’ than ‘The joy of 6.0’ Linus Torvalds has released a stable cut of version 6.0 of the Linux kernel.…

Now that's sticker shock Internet snoops have been caught concealing spyware in an old Windows logo in an attack on governments in the Middle East.…

Also, Amazon's Ring footage TV shows draws criticism, US v Soviet spying docs found, and more In Brief The BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, has allegedly broken into IT firm NJVC, a provider of services to civilian US government agencies and the Department of Defense.…

Plus: Bruce Willis sells his image rights to AI biz creating deepfakes, and more In brief AI progresses rapidly. Just months after the release of the most advanced text-to-image models, developers are showing off text-to-video systems. …

300 red teamers walk into a bar… Once they've broken into an IT environment, most intruders need less than five hours to collect and steal sensitive data, according to a SANS Institute survey of more than 300 ethical hackers. …

Wait, wait, hear us out Prosthetic teeth turn out to be effective carriers of vibrations, making them suitable as potential hearing aids.…

Busineses get a little longer with Manifest v2, everyone else... it depends Google has delayed its browser extension platform transition for enterprise customers, giving those using managed versions of Chrome with the deprecated Manifest v2 (MV2) extensions an extra six months of support.…

You will or won't do it voluntarily? Doesn't matter, we'll mandate it The Federal Communications Commission today issued rules codifying a voluntary 2016 agreement between cellular networks that they cover for their competitors knocked offline during a natural or cyber disaster.…

Unless your app really needs AVX 512, AMD and Ampere's cores may be a cheaper, better bet Google Cloud really, really wants enterprises to keep using its Intel-powered virtual machines. This week it unveiled a “white-glove” service to convince customers the silicon is worth paying extra for.…

IARPA unleashes TEI-REX to better track nuclear sources The research arm of US intelligence has begun investigating methods for spotting low doses of ionizing radiation to better protect American service personnel and provide evidence of nuclear technology use.…

World's largest VRFB was built with inadvertent help from the Department of Energy The world's largest vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) has been connected to the grid in Dalian, China, where it was built using technology patented in the United States.…