The Register

Also: Guidelines for gender-neutral documentation Git 2.33 has been released, including a new optional merge process called merge-ort, which the team hopes will become the default in the next version.…

Am I blue? Am I green? Government report isn't quite transparent The UK government has released its delayed hydrogen strategy which – in a strange move for a colourless gas – hedges its bets between green and blue.…

Callooh! Kalay! Outdated SDK component poses threat, says intel firm A critical vulnerability affecting tens of millions of digital video recorders powering baby monitors and CCTV systems across the world has been uncovered by Mandiant, which claims the vuln allows for unauthorised viewing of live camera footage.…

The next chapter in digital forensics: Long live cloud forensics Promo On the face of it, the cloud fundamentally changes how security teams investigate and remediate incidents.…

Takes aim at US videoconferencing software as tech world+dog calls lawyer for a quick chat The acting Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information has officially warned the city's Senate Chancellery not to use the on-demand version of Zoom's videoconferencing software.…

UK.gov shrugs at calls for national security intervention British defence tech specialist Ultra Electronics has been bought for £2.6bn by a US private equity firm, through a wholly owned UK subsidiary that was itself once a proud standalone business.…

Suit could net $750 a pop under GDPR-ish rule for complainants who allege info 'unencrypted' A judge in South Carolina has struck out a number of claims in a consolidated class-action suit alleging cloud CRM provider Blackbaud didn't do enough to prevent a 2020 ransomware attack, but allegations under California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will move forward.…

The saying is that they aren't making any more land yet here we are A new island formed by a submarine volcano was spotted off the coast of Japan this weekend.…

Internal structure extends to 60% of gas giant's radius, study shows New analysis of data from the Cassini space probe has revealed Saturn possesses a fuzzy or diffuse core without clearly defined boundaries.…

BSODs should be scary, not soothing Bork!Bork!Bork! A reminder today that the beloved Blue Screen of Death is sadly not forever as the irritating emoticon of Windows 10 puts in an appearance.…

Government's promised review hasn't emerged, but Wingtech and Companies House say the deal is done The controversial sale of the Newport Wafer Fab to Chinese smartphone assembly concern Wingtech Technologies is done and dusted.…

PC and smartphone numbers also grew in 2021, suggesting supply chains are strong China has reported dramatic increase in local production of semiconductors and other electronics.…

Ground facility to be finished this year as early trials focus on balloons just 300m away A Chinese ground-based facility for converting solar energy bounced to Earth is scheduled for completion by the end of 2021 and has already conducted energy transfer tests up to 300-meter altitudes, a key project member told state-run media China Science Daily.…

Swiss uni challenges world record after 108 days and 9 hours of divisive effort Switzerland's University of Applied Sciences Graubünden has challenged the world record for calculating Pi, claiming it has computed the mathematical constant to 62.8 trillion digits.…

Local reports suggest Microsoft Hyper-V crack was the cause, as rumours swirl of data leak Pakistan's Federal Board of Revenue – the nation's tax office – has experienced a lengthy outage after a migration project went bad, perhaps as the result of a cyber-attack.…

Nations from Indonesia to Japan to score 190 terabits per second of capacity some time in 2024 Google and Facebook will together build an underwater cable system to provide internet access to island nations stretching in an arc from Indonesia to Japan.…

Chocolate Factory mum as remaining feed fans search for alternatives Google has either turned off RSS support in Google Groups without telling anyone, or has failed to notice that RSS in Groups no longer functions.…

In Jeff's world, it's not 'you snooze, you lose', it's 'you lose, you sues' Updated Blue Origin sued NASA late on Friday, claiming the space agency unfairly awarded top rival SpaceX a $2.94bn contract to develop the next lunar lander.…

Devices from 60+ manufacturers affected, says infosec outfit Taiwanese chip designer Realtek has warned of four vulnerabilities in three SDKs accompanying its Wi-Fi modules, which are used in almost 200 products made by more than five dozen vendors.…

Plus: Signal expands auto-deleting messages, SIM-swap thief pleads guilty, and more In brief T-Mobile US is investigating claims that highly sensitive personal data of 100 million customers has been stolen and peddled via the dark web.…

New templates will use system install for frameworks like React and Vue Microsoft has reworked its JavaScript/TypeScript projects in the forthcoming Visual Studio 2022 to bring them more up to date with modern development.…

Lights, cones, illuminated arrows all involved, say investigators A US government agency has formally opened a probe into Tesla's so-called Autopilot system following a spate of well-publicised crashes over the past few years.…

Plus: Self-driving Humvees funded by US Army to the tune of millions In Brief OpenAI has released its new and improved version of Codex, its AI code-completion model, to beta testers through an API.…

Murder trial affected last week A bungled data migration of a network drive caused the deletion of 22 terabytes of information from a US police force's systems – including case files in a murder trial, according to local reports.…

Most searches were fine, but certain test cases now take 'seconds, not days' GNU grep 3.7 has been released with a fix for a bug causing "extreme performance degradation" in certain types of search.…

Microsoft's OS once again where it shouldn't be Bork!Bork!Bork! There are some things in life that are not meant to be touched – museum exhibits, the biscuit tin that you're not supposed to know about, Microsoft Windows...…

Complaints of 'retaliation and irregular termination' over whistleblowing backed by committee, admits governing body Exclusive The World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) has settled a dispute with former CIO Wei Lei whose employment was terminated under "irregular" circumstances after he blew the whistle on its former director general's alleged dodgy procurement.…

Cupertino can see things you people wouldn't believe Opinion For a company built around helping people communicate, Apple sure has problems talking to folk. It pole-vaulted itself feet first into the minefield of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), saying that it was going to be checking everybody's images whether they liked it or not.…

Desk detritus baffles even the brainiest of boffins Who, Me? Hurrah! A fresh week awaits! Who knows what delights lurk within. One thing is for sure, it all starts with a tale from the Who, Me? mailbag.…

Revisit the browser wars, we shall. Microsoft's first serious attempt at a web browser, Internet Explorer 3.0, turned 25 on August 13th. And one of the developers on the team that created it – Hadi Partovi – has revealed how the product came to be, the mad rush to get it to market, and the cost of that effort.…

COVID’s been harder on airlines than space companies Richard Branson last week offloaded 10.4 million shares of Virgin Galactic, worth US$300M, to prop up his other businesses including pandemic-damaged airline Virgin Atlantic.…

USA's Clean Networks plan appears to have scuppered Chinese participation in 108Tbit/sec CAP-1 cable Amazon Data Services Inc. and Facebook contractor Edge Cable Holdings USA have applied to operate a submarine cable linking the Philippines to California, after China Mobile (CMI) bowed out of the project.…

Less-than-literal versions of the past criticised, because somebody needs to think of the children State-run China National Radio has called for a stronger vetting of online video games and zero tolerance towards those that misrepresent historical events.…

11,294 packages added, 9,519 removed, and five years of support starting … now! The Debian project has released the eleventh version of its Linux distribution.…

Doesn't hurt that taking clunkers off the road will address India's other health emergency: foul air in Delhi India has come up with a novel way of getting its hands on some rare earths – by junking cars.…

Blockchain exchange biz says it's working to have all the purloined assets returned The mysterious miscreant who exploited a software vulnerability in Poly Network to drain $600m in crypto-assets, claims the Chinese blockchain company offered them $500,000 as a reward for discovering the weakness.…

A tour of UK tech HQs courtesy of some saucy Anglo-Saxonisms NSFW Some internet clown has satirised current UK controversy over mapping app What3words by making a version that uses four swearwords to name each 3x3 metre block of Great Britain.…

And US trade judge reckons Google ripped off Sonos's tech This week ended with two separate patent-related blows against Apple and Google in the United States.…

AlgorithmWatch ends newsfeed study after 'thinly veiled threat' AlgorithmWatch, a non-profit group based in Germany, said it has been forced to end its efforts to monitor Instagram's newsfeed after parent company Facebook intervened.…

E-goliath's subsidiary drops 'draconian' contract terms that absorbed personal work, demanded license rights Analysis Amazon Game Studios has reportedly dropped terms in its employment contract that gave the internet giant a license to the intellectual property created by employees, even to games they develop on their own time.…

This isn't Boeing very well, is it? Boeing's troubled CST-100 Starliner capsule, once expected to ferry astronauts to and from space, is heading back to the workshop after suffering mechanical failures.…

Borked module and fingerpointing puts space relationship with US under strain Opinion NASA's relationship with its Russian International Space Station (ISS) partner is under a similar strain to, say, an orbiting outpost that has been given a surprise spin by a malfunctioning module.…

Brit tax collection agency's IT estate contains 'significant risk' Britain's tax collection agency has handed £150m in contracts to integrator and consultant Cognizant, including work to assist with the implementation of Pega low-code and automation systems.…

Join us online before you start your migration Webcast If you’ve been self-managing your JSON workloads, it’s probably time for a little self-care – or to put it another way, drop the problems of patching, upgrading, licensing, and more, into someone else’s lap.…

COO also talks of recruiting and irradiating the next David Banners of the tech world For an AI biz associated with the CIA and the much-criticised US immigration agency ICE, whose founder helped finance impeached ex-president and alleged insurrectionist Donald Trump, it might be fair to assume Palantir would endevour to avoid giving the wrong impression.…

Hey MoD, nice to hear from you. What? Not secret any more, you say? A job ad blunder by the UK's Ministry of Defence has accidentally revealed the existence of a secret SAS mobile hacker squad.…

New Windows 11 toys, fresh new CVE pops out Microsoft has released a number of Windows 11 updates even as it acknowledges yet more holes found in its flagship operating systems by researchers.…

'Ethical insight and competitive advantage' in the pipes if project goes to plan UK water company United Utilities is in the market for control, monitoring and analytics platforms in a deals that could be worth up to £270m.…

People just won't quit quitting The bloodletting within the Perl community has continued in the wake of Community Affairs Team chair Samantha McVey's resignation.…

Lighter lockdowns meant more effective manufacturing and logistics India PC and smartphones shipments grew significantly in Q2 2021 as the world carried on with COVID, a little less rattled by lockdowns and adapting to work and learn-from-home policies.…