The Register

Have we been smoking something? Queen Maxima of the Netherlands enlisted the help of a small robot to open a 12m (40ft) 3D-printed steel bridge across a canal in Amsterdam's red-light district earlier this week.…

PrintNightmare? More like Groundhog Day for admins Microsoft has shared guidance revealing yet another vulnerability connected to its Windows Print Spooler service, saying it is "developing a security update."…

Cops and dobbers: Uncle Sam dangles cash incentive for tattletales The US is offering a $10m reward to anyone who dobs in digital outlaws responsible for foreign government-backed cyberattacks on critical national infrastructure such as pipelines, power grids, and communication networks.…

Back to an era when 'cloud' meant 'it's probably going to rain' Microsoft got back to its roots this week with another go – this time cloud-enabled – at an Altair 8800 running on Azure Sphere hardware.…

British competition watchdog publishes details of why it approved AMD/Xilinx merger The UK’s competition regulator has finally published its reasons why it has decided not to stand in the way of the $35bn merger between AMD and Xilinx.…

Find out how enterprises save millions with cloud tiering done right Promo Learn how pharma giant Pfizer saved millions with the right storage tiering plan.…

Devs across the world reveal their tools, language choices, and more A survey of nearly 32,000 developers has confirmed the dominance of JavaScript, showing a remarkable 91 per cent using GitHub, and growth in use of AWS despite the efforts of Microsoft and Google.…

Surplus stock specialist finds out the hard way how that kind of thing can happen A UK businessman hoping to create merchandise to sell to fans of singer Britney Spears has found himself instead lumbered with 10,000 misspelled T-shirts advertising a nationalist breakaway for a region of northern France.…

Scale would need to be cranked way up to have an impact, however Google has demonstrated a significant step forward in the error correction in quantum computing – although the method described in a paper this week remains some way off a practical application.…

Software claimed it was 97% sure A Black teenager in the US was barred from entering a roller rink after a facial-recognition system wrongly identified her as a person who had been previously banned for starting a fight there.…

They're not self-driving cars, did you know that? Comment The UK government said in April that "the first types of self-driving cars could be on UK roads this year" but this is not entirely accurate.…

It might be because technicians maintain an open-door policy Something for the Weekend, Sir? Bzzz. The number of the incoming call is "Unknown". I reject it, obviously. While I am intrigued by the idea of receiving mystery calls from The Unknown, they are disappointing to answer.…

CEO predicts ‘many vicious and fierce battles coming, bulks R&D budget by 30 percent and hires 5,000 engineers to chase top slot Analyst firm Canalys has, for the first time, found Chinese firm Xiaomi the world’s second-ranked smartphone vendor, as measured by unit shipments.…

Actually, no. Don't do this On Call The week is over once again. Celebrate with a watery On Call tale involving a cathode ray tube, a pot plant, and an absent-minded user.…

Bezos and his bro on rocket jaunt A Dutch 18-year-old is set to be the youngest person to go into space after securing at the last minute a seat on Blue Origin’s first commercial spaceflight.…

Steam just announced one for gamers on the go, but it can also behave like any other PC Gaming house Steam has just revealed a rather intriguing portable PC.…

Does charging for Ping pong? Maybe not in this case, as Microsoft's plan covers 'Standard Ping tests' that are quite advanced Microsoft has done two very characteristic things: create a new type of Ping and signalled it will charge to use it.…

Meanwhile Intel reportedly eyes off buying Global Foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) has posted typically robust results, and revealed how it hopes to cope with the twin challenges of COVID-19 and simmering geopolitical tensions.…

Prepares to enact its anti-doxxing laws – without amendments requested by Big Tech Hong Kong’s Customs and Excise Department yesterday arrested four men over alleged money-laundering using cryptocurrency.…

100+ dissidents, politicians, journos targeted by Israeli espionage toolkit Analysis Software patches from Microsoft this week closed two vulnerabilities exploited by spyware said to have been sold to governments by Israeli developer Candiru.…

Buckle up, the great switchover starts today Good news, Hubble fans – NASA reckons it may have worked out what has upset the orbiting observatory: an iffy Power Control Unit (PCU).…

Machines will function more as colleagues than tools, and we're spending $1.5bn to get there The world is entering a new stage of AI and the race to get there is between China and the United States, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin has said.…

Fancy a spot of weekend tinkering? Amid the puffery over Windows 365, Microsoft also released the second preview of Visual Studio 2022 with some intriguing features for Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 users.…

24-page complaint lists thousands of products deemed to be unsafe Amazon is facing legal action in the US from a consumer protection group over the sale of allegedly faulty goods including carbon monoxide detectors and hairdryers.…

Rostec throws rubles on the table for a possible 60,000 units a year Russia's Yadro and subsidiary Syntacore have announced an effort to develop homegrown processors based on the free and open RISC-V architecture.…

'It's only for building rockets, what's it got to do with you?' pouts stroppy interplanetary aspirant biz The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has warned SpaceX it has not completed an environmental review of a new tower currently under construction at its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, indicating the tower might have to be demolished.…

ICO raids homes, seizes computers after UK Department of Health leak Two homes in South England have been searched by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) today after pictures of former health secretary Matt Hancock kissing a colleague appeared in a Brit newspaper.…

Linux wrangler's post-$500m Rancher acquisition numbers otherwise 'in line with expectations' Veteran Linux wrangler SUSE has swung into the red largely due to shares-based payments related to its lacklustre IPO in May.…

House Committee on the Judiciary told until there is a proper regime, there will be 'misuse, and mistrust' of the tech The role of facial-recognition technology (FRT) was put under the microscope earlier this week after the US House Committee on the Judiciary heard evidence about how it's used by law enforcement agencies.…

Also: New built-in UNO inspector. What's UNO? Read on... The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 7.2 RC1, including a large number of fixes intended to improve import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office.…

Stroke victim 'talks' for first time in 16 years, but The Social Network can't see a route to market Updated Facebook is abandoning a project to develop a brain-computer interface (BCI), even as the researchers it funded have showcased the device helping someone with severe speech loss communicate with nothing more than thought.…

After a troubled birth, infamous but effective code becomes an inconvience UK government has admitted it is in the dark about how many citizens have downloaded the NHS Test and Trace App or switched off their Bluetooth that renders it obselete.…

What's another £33.6m when entire programme projected to cost £132bn? The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has awarded a £33.6m contract to London Stock Exchange-listed reseller Softcat for Microsoft software licences and Azure cloud services.…

Sorry, how much do you charge?! America's United Airlines and regional carrier Mesa Airlines have together ordered 200 electric aircraft from an aerospace startup for short-distance passenger flights.…

Company now has 28 days to make up its mind NortonLifeLock, the somewhat clunky moniker adopted by the former consumer business arm of the Symantec Corporation, has announced "advanced discussions" with rival Avast over a possible merger.…

Palo Alto's Unit 42 rejects claims group has shifted to ransomware-as-a-service Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 has probed the methods and tactics of the Mespinoza ransomware group, finding its messaging "cocky" and its tools blessed with "creative names" – but turned up no evidence to suggest the group has shifted to ransomware-as-a-service.…

Opting out of data monetisation is neither easy nor cheap Column A colleague was recently required to spend 10 days in a public-health-mandated quarantine after authorities used credit card receipts to determine he'd visited a location that had also hosted a known coronavirus case.…

'Are they fearful of coming inside museums? There's a lot to consider, and I don't think we can offer any more' Feature The National Museum of Computing and Centre for Computing History have finally reopened with the relaxing of coronavirus restrictions so The Register paid both a visit to see what had and had not changed.…

Cos 4G and 5G will be all hunky-dory by then, yeah? BT is going to wind down 3G connectivity by 2023 as it looks to increase its 4G and 5G coverage across most of the UK by 2028.…

Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for Enterprise Networking labels network observability and SDN vendor jargon IPv6 is still five to ten years away from ascending to analyst firm Gartner’s plateau of productivity, and remains a technology employed by only “early mainstream” users.…

750 cases among workers sees labour force asked to stay on-site Saigon Hi-Tech Park, a Vietnamese electronics factory complex, has been forced to shut down and require workers to live on-site after more than 750 employees tested positive for COVID-19.…

This may explain why Redmond recently updated a trademark to cover Clippy-as-a-service Microsoft has turned to the “wisdom” of the Instagram crowd and Twitter to seek permission to restore its much-reviled Office Assistant “Clippy” to a place of prominence.…

Free if you move ’em to Azure, but on-prem costs will exceed licence fees in third and final year of new offer Microsoft has announced Extended Security Updates for Windows Server 2008 and 2012, and for SQL Server 2012 – and made it free if you run them in its Azure cloud.…

Redeploy in circular filing cabinet if you cannot patch SonicWall has warned that its older Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) gateways are being attacked in the wild by crooks to spread ransomware – and as some of those devices are end-of-life, don't expect any patches to protect them.…

Alleges it blew a deadline to secure data – by almost three years India’s Reserve Bank yesterday barred credit card giant Mastercard from signing up any new customers in the nation.…

We sum up Middle Kingdom's massive crackdown on bug reports Chinese makers of network software and hardware must alert Beijing within two days of learning of a security vulnerability in their products under rules coming into force in China this year.…

There's a time and place for wireless tech, but it still can't compete Feature IEEE 802.11ax-2021 (more commonly known as IEEE 802.11ax or, more familiarly "Wi-Fi 6") was approved on 9 February 2021, with a top speed of 1.2Gbit/sec per single stream (think "stream" as synonymous with "channel"). As seems to happen each time a new Wi-Fi technology comes out, people are yet again asking whether this is the one that will finally tip us over the edge and entice us away from cables and onto wireless.…

What's wrong with plugging it in? Brainiacs at UC San Diego say they have created a wearable designed to turn your horrid sweaty hands into a charge for your electronic devices – while you barely have to lift a finger.…

US retailers accused of privacy invasion Civil rights campaigners in the US have called on retailers to stop using facial-recognition technology amid worrying privacy concerns and fears that it could lead to people being wrongly arrested.…

Operating system now more flexible in how you get online Privacy and security-focused Linux distribution Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, has announced a major new release completely overhauling how it connects users to the Tor network.…