The Register

This might be the bug that deserves the website, logo and book deal Miscreants are wasting no time in using the widespread Log4j vulnerability to compromise systems, with waves and waves of live exploit attempts focused mainly – for now – on turning infected devices into cryptocurrency-mining botnet drones.…

More than eighty feared dead across multiple US states hit by super storms Six people were killed on Friday night when a severe storm struck an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, and dozens more lost their lives in nearby Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee.…

OK, it wasn't DNS, but it was hanging around the scene looking shifty Amazon has published some additional information for last week's US-East-1 outage that revealed its staffers had to pick their way through log files when the web giant's own monitoring tools were hit.…

You can still get a badge if you go now The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is ending its Commercial Space Astronaut Wings programme, citing waning exclusivity.…

Plus: bugs found on Mars! Of the software kind, of course In Brief The vice-president of the United States, Kamala Harris, was mocked by commentators this week for her aversion to Bluetooth on security grounds. Security professionals think she has a point – given her position.…

Police National Computer, customs rig and more fingered in PAC report UK government has "no clear plan" to set out how it will replace ageing legacy systems vital for the operation of the public sector, despite some systems dating back to the 1970s, according to a committee of MPs.…

Big implications for millions of staffers' Christmas pay packets Kronos Private Cloud has been hit by a ransomware attack. The company, also known as Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG), provides timekeeping services to companies employing millions across worldwide.…

A space thing running late? Who would have thought it? Delays are a way of life for the space community, and the European Space Agency (ESA) has flown past its latest deadline for replying to astronaut applicants.…

You have until 10 January to make your feelings felt The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is to take a closer look at Microsoft's buy of talkative AI specialist Nuance.…

Symptom tracker suffers Monday morning borkage The ZOE COVID study app is still reportedly wobbly for some users after being entirely down and out for several hours this morning.…

New tool for security, insights, and fixing "gender and racially insensitive language rampant in code" The Linux Foundation (LF) will spend over $180m in 2021, 20 per cent up on last year, and highlights the role of its new LFX platform in its just-published annual report.…

A little bit more QWERTY never hurty Review The mechanical keyboard space is teeming with competition. If you're a gamer, a coder, or simply type a lot, there's something for you. But asterisk, dear reader: that's only true if you're wedded to the PC.…

Open source is no place for secrets Opinion This is a critical time for the Good Chip Intel. After the vessel driftied through the Straits of Lateness towards the Rocks of Irrelevance, Captain Pat parachuted into the bridge to grab the helm and bark "Full steam ahead!"…

Patching the patch Who, Me? Welcome to another Who, Me? confession from the Register readership, and a reminder of the unexpected side effects of software updates.…

Amazon's latest Kindle Paperwhite sees Reg hack's fondleslab get a rest Review Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite e-book reader has solved several problems for me and overcome a shortcoming of the iPad. If only it didn't also make me guilty about adding another device to my already computer-infested life.…

E-commerce giant's #metoo moment takes sinister turn Chinese state-owned media has run an interview with a woman – identified only by her last name Zhou – who alleged she was fired after claiming one of the firm's execs raped her while on a business trip, according to an interview between Zhou and Dahe Daily.…

Plus: DeepMind's latest language model research and more Clearview’s controversial facial recognition technology is getting closer to being patented by the US Patent and Trademark Office.…

'We will eventually learn' PCs with 5G connectivity could face issues that include international roaming support, but T-Mobile is working through those issues, in addition to figuring out what data plans may look like.…

El Reg maps the tributaries Red Hat has released CentOS Stream 9, the first major version since the company badly shook its community by announcing it was ending traditional CentOS a year ago.…

The boss isn't too busy to be named Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang continues inventing, as if his role in the rise of GPUs wasn't enough.…

Introducing Ventoy Friday FOSS Fest Ventoy is a free tool that turns any USB key into a multi-boot wonder.…

PWC report shows long list of missed opportunities to shut out extortion crims Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) was almost paralysed by ransomware after a single user opened a malicious file attached to a phishing email, a consultancy's damning report has revealed.…

CFO now ruling the roost as mortgage biz reportedly delays SPAC sale Better CEO Vishal Garg, best-known for firing 900 employees over one giant Zoom call, is taking time off work while the company hires a third-party to perform a “leadership and cultural assessment.”…

Not great, not terrible Cloud software biz Hashicorp hit the markets this week with an initial public offering priced at $80 per share after which its stock enjoyed a modest rise as investors cracked open their wallets.…

Thank goodness he didn't make a diversion for Coco Pops A German employer has been left on the hook after a worker slipped and broke his back on the "commute" from his bed to the home office.…

El Reg, as ever, helps you to get back in the game Debian is having problems with a current version of Firefox that leaves users with a dangerously outdated browser.…

Prepare to have a very busy weekend of mitigating and patching An unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Apache's Log4j Java-based logging tool is being actively exploited, researchers have warned after it was used to execute code on Minecraft servers.…

Forget software-as-a-hostage! Customers have more choice when it comes to servers, networking, storage Hewlett Packard Enterprise's multi-year efforts to remain relevant against the onslaught of cloud giants hinges on convincing resellers to back its as-a-service (aaS) sales model, and yet progress continues to be painfully slow.…

That time Rootkitting for Dummies might as well have been in Microsoft's Plus! Pack Retired Microsoft engineer, Dave Plummer, offered a blast from the past last week with a look back at the infamous Sony Windows "rootkit" scandal.…

Payment over Mark Hurd dispute hits figures as Ellison bigs up cloud ERP Oracle sales increased nearly 6 per cent to hit $10.4bn in its Q2 results for fiscal 2022, but the company made a loss due in part to a dispute relating to a former CEO.…

Brace yourself, now come years of appeals Julian Assange will be sent stateside for trial on criminal charges after the US government won an appeal against an earlier court order that released him from the threat of extradition.…

Microsoft merch of Christmas Past up for grabs FREE STUFF With the season of giving upon us, the cupboards of Vulture Central are being cleared out and long-forgotten items found that might be of use to our readership. Just think of us as tech tat peddling Gumtree.…

Readers have their say Register debate It is entirely human and in some senses desirable to eliminate as much of the complexity out of the IT stack as makes sense. And it is also entirely human to be accepting of the need for choice and to acknowledge the necessary frustration of complexity.…

Pat McGovern knew his way around a trash can Something for the Weekend, Sir? Spies in space are watching me as I take a shower.…

Taming the multi-tentacled IT beast with spoofing, shell scripts, and a bit of C On Call It's another tale from the world of telephony where everything goes wrong in this week's On Call.…

Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer's two year mission will check out polarization of black holes, neutrons and other celestial objects In the wee hours of Thursday morning, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission into orbit from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.…

Wants comprehensive, consistent, and coordinated regulation to avoid instability The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called for global, comprehensive, consistent, and coordinated regulation to protect the stability of the world's financial systems.…

'Use our logistics service or don't. It'll cost you either way.' Amazon was slapped with a whopping €1.13bn (£963.7m or $1.3bn) fine by Italy’s antitrust regulator on Thursday for “abusing its dominant position” and handicapping sellers that aren’t using its logistics service.…

Frontier Software admitted attack three weeks ago, said data was safe … now it's on the dark web Personal information describing names, addresses, bank account details, and taxation IDs of 38,000 Australian government employees has been leaked to the dark web after a ransomware attack.…

Re-orgs bureaucracy to deliver 'stronger alignment and synchronization' The USA's Department of Defense has created a post of Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAIO) that is expected to encompass three existing leadership offices and develop advanced fighting capabilities.…

Basically a slice of public cloud with better isolation and governance – just like our cloud, says Google Google has given us all a new variety of cloud to consider: a "software-defined community cloud".…

Also China: This one guy sent feedback to the government online, it was adopted, that shows we’re a democracy China has again banned a batch of apps, but this time it's taken action against a service – Douban – that's hosting opinions Beijing finds displeasing.…

Power for the people, and AI The activity around creating a legit graphics processor for RISC-V chip designs, an emerging competitor to x86 and ARM, is gaining steam.…

Woman tells El Reg she discovered the bug during a granny emergency A bizarre bug prevented a woman from calling 911 on her Pixel smartphone when she thought her grandma was having a stroke.…

The RISC-V Summit is over - here's what you need to know China's been scammed for billions by rogues in its chase to become a chip powerhouse, though ironically, a free, open-source CPU architecture is emerging as its best bet to create a powerful homegrown chip.…

And it's really bad news for EV cert vendors in Top 1 Million report Almost a third of the world wide web's top million sites are still not using HTTPS by default, according to infosec researcher Scott Helme's analysis.…

Orbit roughly 100 times wider than that of similar planets in our solar system Scientists have discovered a gas giant planet 10 times the size of Jupiter orbiting the binary system of b Centauri A and B.…

Rough edges, but ground-up design makes sense First look Our first look at Fleet, the new JetBrains core editor and IDE, shows the promise of a minimalist design and an architecture that has collaboration and remote development in mind – but there are plenty of rough edges in the preview.…

Company ousts British Council in running Erasmus replacement Everyone's favourite outsourcing badass Capita is taking control of the £110m Turing student exchange programme formerly run by The British Council, a public corporation.…

Most bizarre names chosen by UK drivers included ZZ Top and The Beast Britain’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has said one in six UK motorists name their car, with those aged 35 to 53 most likely to do so. The results have been disappointing, to say the least.…