The Register

Case study in 'how not to collaborate with upstream'? A core member of the GNOME team has accused System76 of being "a case study on how not to collaborate with upstream" following confirmation that the Linux PC vendor is working on a new desktop built with Rust.…

Proof of concept produces tiny volume of hydrocarbons, but makes a big point Scientists in Switzerland claim to have proved it is possible to create fuel from air and sunlight in the first field experiment of its kind.…

New research says it's Clop's favourite attack method du jour Stor-a-File, a British data capture and storage company, suffered a ransomware attack in August that exploited an unpatched instance of SolarWinds' Serv-U FTP software.…

BT is getting axe-happy but regulator's scheme could save 5,000 kiosks Grotty, soaked in urine, and plastered with escort ads if the windows haven't already been kicked in – the public phone box is a British institution on its last legs. And yet comms regulator Ofcom has a plan in place to protect the endangered species.…

Campaigners' case had 'no real prospect of success' Google has successfully fought off a £3bn lawsuit brought in London over ad tracking cookies, beating the Google You Owe Us campaign in the Supreme Court of England and Wales.…

How can you get to net zero without knowing what's generating the nasties? BCS – the Chartered Institute for IT – is the latest to weigh in on the Net Zero debate, with a call for better data on what is generating C0 emissions in the office, at home and in transit.…

It's another string to your bow Opinion To become a Linux developer, you used to need C as your passport. Now Rust can let you be an OS programmer as well.…

The space agency wants you to know they are still committed to the project NASA has delayed the first Artemis crewed mission to the moon until 2025, rather than the previously planned 2024.…

Nvidia pushes 30-year-old description language for the internet of the future An open-source file format adopted by Apple, and the origins of which can be traced back 30 years, is getting a fresh look as hype grows around the building of a metaverse without borders.…

Smartphone-derived LPDDR5X said to be faster and more miserly than predecessors Samsung has revealed a new variety of DRAM, and probably won buzzword bingo for the year 2021 too.…

We're guessing it wasn't Fiber Channel, but it would be weirdly cool if it was A federal grand jury has charged a former Broadcom engineer with stealing trade secrets and using them while working at a new employer – a Chinese chip start-up.…

Flags any effort to create central bank digital currency as major national infrastructure project The Bank of England and HM Treasury have announced a consultation process that will inform a decision about whether the UK should proceed to design and create a central bank digital currency (CBDC).…

Promises to keep Inmarsat's commitments to build more stuff in Blighty Satellite broadband providers Inmarsat and Viasat will combine forces.…

Dems, Repubs in House, Senate unite for Filter Bubble Transparency Act A proposed bipartisan law that would force tech companies to let netizens view posts and search results free of meddling by mysterious algorithms has gained further support in Congress.…

Infrastructure bill brings $65bn to freshen up American internet US broadband is about to get a major cash injection through the $1.2tr bipartisan infrastructure bill approved by the House of Representatives on Friday.…

Oh OK, so the kids get a repairable Surface laptop but not us, huh? Microsoft has prepared a version of Windows 11, dubbed Windows 11 SE, primarily for schools and their students, and has crafted a $250 Surface SE laptop to go along with it.…

iFixit welcomes 'tactical achievement' after iGiant offers vague software fix to Face ID block Apple has said it will stop making life difficult for anyone replacing a broken iPhone 13 screen with a third-party display and wishing to retain Face ID support.…

Light load has infosec bods wondering what awaits next month Patch Tuesday As the US season of giving thanks and turkey carnage approaches, let us reflect upon Microsoft's November Patch Tuesday, which has bestowed 55 CVEs and the promise of continued employment for the IT admins who have to clean up the recurring mess of software.…

And more badness going for Linux and virtualization, too Future malware and ransomware infections will consist of "shotgun attacks with pinpoint targeting", according to Sophos' 2022 threat report.…

TDE releases 14.0.11 and LXQt hits 1.0 There are loads of Linux desktops to choose from, but the majority use some version of GNOME's Gtk. Only a handful favour the Qt toolkit, and two of them just released new versions.…

Where were you during the Great Comcast Outage? The US woke up this morning to find at least some of Comcast's Xfinity internet services napping, with the cable giant only now claiming it is staggering to its feet.…

Telemetry from CDNs and data centres presented alongside a thousand promos to irritate your eyes Updated Cisco has decided the world needs its take on an outage map.…

.NET works in mysterious ways Microsoft has pushed out another preview of Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, stating that it provides a "truly native macOS experience."…

Move over 'dog ate my homework', there's a new excuse in town Google has come up with a cast-iron excuse for why the fingerprint sensor on its latest Pixel 6 series of smartphones appears to be so unreliable – and you're going to love it.…

Command line fun on Apple silicon with Canonical's lightweight VM manager An Apple Silicon version of Canonical's Multipass has arrived, adding another way of firing up Linux on an M1-powered Mac.…

Firm still manages to lose $48m while Italian Air Force waits to board Branson's space jalopy Rocket plane company Virgin Galactic is boasting that it has sold an additional 100 seats since sales kicked off again in September.…

Private-sector investment could unlock additional government cash British engineering and aerospace giant Rolls-Royce has secured funding to build nuclear power stations based on small modular reactor (SMR) technology.…

Double-digit declines in Germany, UK, France and 15 other countries Server sales across the European channel fell to their lowest level in four years over the third quarter of 2021, as the long-awaited recovery in infrastructure spending failed to show up – with shrinking volumes reported for 18 countries.…

Where Mark leads, Jensen follows Nvidia sees itself as a hardware overlord of the "metaverse" and dropped some hints about the operation of a parallel 3D universe in which our cartoon selves can work, play and interact.…

Market for related services driving an M&A feeding frenzy Analysis As Microsoft takes down the virtual bunting from its online Ignite jamboree, it's time to reflect that, whatever the tech news from the Redmond software factory, it is only one piece of the puzzle for users in need of a successful project.…

Plus further step toward a full desktop on Apple M1 Arm Macs While folks straddling the worlds of both Windows and Linux will appreciate the shiny NTFS support in version 5.15 of the open-source kernel, Arm device users may find more to appreciate in the following release.…

Expect to shell out around $500k to take it home Anyone interested in an Apple I hand built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak circa 1976 has until 11:30 am PST today to make a bid as the rare computer goes up for auction at John Moran Auctioneers outside Los Angeles, California.…

Puts a whole new spin on 'To boldly go where no one has gone before' Four astronauts departed the International Space Station on Monday, and made their way safely back to Earth wearing diapers after their SpaceX capsule's toilet broke down.…

'Homtruck' also packs a tea maker, washing machine, the feel of a bamboo forest – and a roadmap to autonomous ops Chinese auto maker Geely, which owns Volvo, Lotus and other car brands, has unveiled a hybrid electric truck it says will go on sale in 2024 offering all the comforts of home.…

Didn't act until CERT stepped in and pointed out problems Indian infosec consultancy CyberX9 claims it twice found records of 43.9 million shareholders exposed by systems operated by Central Depository Services Limited (CDSL) – and that the depository company responded slowly to its alerts of significant vulnerabilities.…

Big Red's 33rd region to mitigate Southeast Asia demand Oracle has flicked the switch on another cloud region in Singapore.…

Robinhood, Robinhood, had a data leak. Robinhood, Robinhood, infosec was weak Investment app Robinhood has revealed an extortionist accessed its internal systems and siphoned off customer data after tricking a support desk worker.…

US appeals court allows legal battle to resume, says it will be an 'easy case' Spyware maker NSO Group cannot use its government clients to shield itself from litigation, a US appeals court ruled on Monday, a decision that allows WhatsApp's lawsuit against the Israel-based firm to resume.…

Microsoft cloud first to privately preview Milan-X parts AMD teased a bunch of enterprise-class developments today, from claiming the AI and HPC accelerator crown to word of 3D-stacked cache, all perhaps to spoil rival Nvidia's forthcoming GPU conference.…

'Understanding the meaning of such expressions relies on shared cultural and commonsense cues' ... which machines lack, new study details Unlike most humans, AI chatbots struggle to respond appropriately in text-based conversations when faced with idioms, metaphors, rhetorical questions, and sarcasm.…

American, European officials announce raft of arrests, indictments, sanctions, rewards In a major ransomware bust US and European authorities on Monday announced separate but related indictments and arrests linked to extortionware attacks on IT service provider Kaseya and other firms.…

Plus: Uncle Sam gets tough on patching, NIST needs you, and more In brief A consortium of private equity types have stumped up $12bn in cash to acquire what's left of McAfee the company plus another couple of billion to pay off its debts.…

Both released with new features and better performance Microsoft has released .NET 6.0 with long-term support, and Visual Studio 2022, its all-purpose Windows IDE.…

Finding the hardware hard to come by? The software is just a download away It's been a while, but the Raspberry Pi OS has had a major version bump, taking this flavour of Linux for the diminutive computer to Debian Bullseye.…

Webshells and backdoors come with Chinese instructions Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 research team has said criminals using tools accompanied by Chinese instructions gained access to high-interest networks and stole passwords after exploiting at least 370 password management services in the US.…

Real-time bidding advertising tested by European authorities Belgian's data protection authorities are set to make a ruling which could have far-reaching implications for the multibillion-euro online advertising market in Europe.…

'There are things we'd like to do that we can't simply achieve through extensions in GNOME' System76, makers of Linux PCs and laptops running Pop!_OS, has spoken about its plans to create a new desktop written in Rust as an evolution of its current GNOME-based product.…

We've signed everyone up for PornHub Premium, crow immature attackers Miscreants have hijacked the systems of Angling Direct, diverting traffic from its websites to Pornhub and threatening to wipe its internal data.…