The Register

Framework deal to cut across software, services and systems integration Universities across Scotland are clubbing together to soften up the market in preparation for an enterprise software procurement estimated to be worth £42m.…

You need to switch on E2EE in group meetings, watch out for US Cloud Act, warns impact assessment A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) has been published by a Dutch ministry, noting that Microsoft still has work to do if the country's institutions are to use the company's products without all manner of mitigations.…

DOS ain't dead... and it's more fun than ever Nearly six years after its last release, FreeDOS 1.3 came out at the weekend… in case you're feeling nostalgic for a 1980s enterprise-grade OS.…

Anticipates 'increased pressure on input costs' on raw materials, labour, and freight Schneider Electric is the latest tech biz to blame supply chain constraints for holding back its trading output, despite claiming record revenues of €28.9bn ($32.78bn) in its full year results for 2021 [PDF].…

Firewalls are supposed to update so they block new threats – miss this deadline and they might not Cisco has warned users of its Firepower firewalls – physical and virtual – that they may need to upgrade their kit within a four-day window or miss out on security intelligence updates.…

Black ink has proven elusive since 2014 acquisition of IBM's x86 server business Lenovo's data center and infrastructure business has turned a profit for the first time.…

Operation Cache Panda went after software used by majority of industry players China's state-sponsored snoops conducted a two-month campaign against Taiwanese financial services firms, according to CyCraft, a security consultancy from the island nation.…

But hey, new rules on deleting your selfies America's Internal Revenue Service has confirmed taxpayers will not be forced to use facial recognition to verify their identity. The agency also set out rules for which images will be deleted.…

Plus: Rogue CEO's outfit could derail public listing Allen Wu, chairman and CEO of Arm's Chinese joint-venture Arm China, thinks the collapse of Nvidia’s attempt to buy Arm will be better for the worldwide technology industry – and for China.…

Academics found TrustZone-level code could not be trusted to keep secrets Academics at Tel Aviv University in Israel have found that recent Android-based Samsung phones shipped with design flaws that allow the extraction of secret cryptographic keys.…

America may block chip exports if Moscow steps up aggression The US government has imposed further sanctions on Russia after the Kremlin sent tanks into Ukraine’s breakaway regions today. Uncle Sam also left the door open to block chip exports to Russia.…

Get ready for robot lobbyists to persuade robot lawmakers to pass robot-friendly laws? AI algorithms cannot copyright the digital artwork they generate, the US Copyright Office has insisted.…

Checks checks your privilege privileges Google's in-house incubator Area 120 has introduced a service called Checks to help mobile app developers understand how their applications handle data and automate privacy compliance.…

25,000 GitHub stars since its introduction in 2017 Hasura, which provides tools for the GraphQL data language, has pulled in $100m funding that gives it a nominal valuation of $1bn.…

Affected users: Is this a not-so-subtle hint from the boss? Slack has fallen over for a subset of users, as the messaging platform admitted that "something's not quite right" with a number of its critical services.…

What do we want? Static typing! The State of JavaScript 2021 survey has arrived, a little later than planned (no jokes about language performance, please) and in the wake of a somewhat embarrassing data leak.…

HPE and Qualcomm did likewise last week, because vanilla x86 isn’t going to cut it on the edge Dell and Marvell have linked arms to create an accelerator card for servers used in 5G networks.…

Challenges to blanket bans on PSCs could face long road to redemption IT contractors who have faced blanket bans on employment via their personal services companies (PSCs) could face years trying to challenge the decision, according to officials from the UK's tax collector.…

Open source + public key generation = no alerts, says infosec startup An infosec startup says it has built an Apple Airtag clone that bypasses anti-stalking protection features while running on Apple's Find My protocol.…

Good luck finding public support for that one Lawyers for EncroChat encrypted phone users have begged the EU to halt court cases using evidence from the compromised mobile network, saying evidence disclosure breaches the political bloc's laws.…

Something for the school holidays? A group of The Register's writers (only just) escaped The National Museum of Computing's Escape Room Experience after learning a bit about cryptography and testing the patience of the museum's volunteers.…

But local services remain spotty after volcanic eruption The Kingdom of Tonga's sole submarine cable connection to the world has been restored.…

Shifting to measuring results of its trademark workflows, not just building 'em. And it comes with a 'bat-phone' ServiceNow will soon release mobile apps that allow real-time tracking of metrics, so business leaders can see the progress of digital transformation initiatives.…

'Singularity' uses novel scheduling to wring more work out of infrastructure Microsoft has revealed it operates a planet-scale distributed scheduling service for AI workloads that it has modestly dubbed "Singularity".…

Wants latency-tolerant apps moved to new datacenters in remote western regions, other workloads out of big cities China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has outlined plans for a massive migration of computing resources to more efficient facilities.…

Business demand creates double whammy on recruitment pressure Skills-related issues have hit a quarter of SAP users, in some cases putting projects on hold, according to a survey of companies in the Americas.…

Windows giant promises 20 more years on 20th anniversary of the tech Microsoft says the first preview of .NET 7 is on its way.…

Data centre workloads going up, so US govt agency gives $$ for better thermal architecture With ever more compute power needed all over the world, Bell Labs has been tasked by the US Department of Energy (DoE) to develop ways of making data centres more energy efficient.…

Feisty indies that do too well don't stay indie for long Opinion The one thing AWS can't offer is not being AWS. Google and Microsoft can, but then you're stuck with Google and Microsoft. Each of these cloud infrastructure options – AWS, GCP and Azure – are big, centralised components of bigger organisations with other things on their minds, and a deep aversion to sharing customers.…

Redundancy may not be a bad idea after damage to sister links Construction has begun on a 19,200km submarine cable running from Singapore to France, Singaporean telco Singtel said on Monday.…

Back online after a week, but users not impressed with tech refresh Users have complained of missing data and trouble logging in after the UK government updated its old probate search service.…

Plus advice for Cisco admins from the NSA and blurring's not the best In brief If you're using the UpdraftPlus WordPress plugin to back up your systems, you'll need it patched – or else risk sharing your backups with strangers.…

'If it works already, why pay' says the boss... because of course he does Who, Me? Time bombs and shareware feature in today's edition of Who, Me? as a boss's big spendy vehicle leaves a coder out of pocket.…

Alleges Middle Kingdom's courts make it impossible to chase manufacturers who won't respect IP rights The European Union has signaled its intention to file a dispute with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over China's treatment of intellectual property used in mobile phones.…

The uncanny valley has become shallow and short Humans can no longer reliably tell the difference between a real human face and an image of a face generated by artificial intelligence, according to a pair of researchers.…

DoJ also creates two teams to prevent abuse of cryptocurrency – who knew that happens? The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has revealed new policies that may see it undertake pre-emptive action against cyber threats.…

Maybe they've been spooked by new government scheme to expose VPN users' IP addresses? India has revealed the identities of companies that have applied to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities on its soil under a $10 billion subsidy scheme – and none are substantial chipmakers.…

Try it in your browser Almost exactly a year after we last covered it, an experimental version of LibreOffice compiled to WebAssembly (nicknamed LOWA) has appeared.…

Or you could think of them as a superuser password reset function The snap-confine tool in the Linux world's Snap software packaging system can be potentially exploited by ordinary users to gain root powers, says Qualys.…

Agency quiet on the selection criteria but at least the price is right The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) has published a web catalog of free cybersecurity resources in the hope that those overseeing critical infrastructure can use the tools to better secure their systems.…

As sanctioned Russian infosec firm says it has working exploit code Adobe has put out a warning about another critical security bug affecting its Magento/Adobe Commerce product – and IT pros need to install a second patch after an initial update earlier this week failed to fully plug the first one.…

Signs that interest in the market is ramping up Quantum computing startup Classiq has raised $33m in a Series B funding round from investors including HPE and Samsung, a sign that interest in the emerging market may be stirring.…

RIP. You brought hardware-accelerated 3D to many Linux programs The GNOME Project has announced that it's retiring the Clutter library, the tool that bought OpenGL-based hardware rendering to Linux in 2006.…

Sanctions already in place, blockade set to be rolled into telecoms law Updated The British government has started a consultation to find ways to legally remove the equipment of telecoms giant Huawei from its 5G networks by the end of 2027.…

Reg writers and readers wrangle over rights and realities Register Debate Can you have a debate on privacy without mentioning Orwell and 1984 or Bentham's Panopticon?…

Pair aim to deliver the industry's first fully optimised vDU HPE continues edge into telecoms, and is now working with Qualcomm to on hardware for 5G networks, specifically a next generation of 5G distributed units based on HPE servers and Qualcomm's 5G RAN (radio access network) accelerator cards to support high capacity and low-latency workloads.…

It shouldn't affect costs, but it will, says software asset management intel org Analysis Both the UK and the US have recorded the highest inflation figures for decades. With inflation in the Eurozone hitting similar levels, the news is set to mark the end of more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates in the West.…

No more local accounts on bleeding-edge build, and you need a Microsoft account too Microsoft has slapped an internet connectivity requirement on the Dev Channel version of Windows 11 Pro setup and warned that a Microsoft account will be required for future builds in the Insider programme.…

Pandemic-induced supply chain imbalance did it PC OEMs are holding 10 weeks or more of DRAM inventory thanks to hesitancy of procurement departments to stock memory chips, says market intelligence firm TrendForce.…

All right stop, collaborate and listen, 'soft is back with some theft protection Microsoft has some advice on how to defend against "ice phishing" and other novel attacks that aim to empty cryptocurrency wallets, for those not already abstaining.…