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Who could possibly want readers in Hong Kong not to access independent opinions about the rule of law? The website of UK-registered charity Hong Kong Watch – an organisation dedicated to researching and monitoring threats to the territory's promised freedom and autonomy – has suddenly become impossible to reach from Hong Kong.…

Government says it’s just collecting tax, United Nations points to data harvesting and chilling effects on free speech Cambodia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has issued a clarification about the role of the "National Internet Gateway" that will commence operations tomorrow, stating that descriptions of it as an instrument of pervasive surveillance are "unfounded."…

z/OS VMs coming sometime in the second half of 2022 As IBM tries to address allegations it discriminated against older staff, the IT giant has for the first time brought its oldest computing platform – the mainframe – into the age of infrastructure-as-a-service.…

GPU titan retains significant influence over CPU core house given it is a major customer America's Federal Trade Commission has taken a victory lap of sorts, welcoming Nvidia's termination of its proposed $66bn acquisition of chip design house Arm.…

When they started out, these engineers had just two things in their possession: A dream ... and $10m AlphaICs says it has put its first AI chip from design to production on a shoestring budget of $10m in venture-capital funding.…

If you need to skip meetings, here's an excuse: You installed version 1.5.00.2164 Updated Microsoft Teams was updated last week to version 1.5.00.2164 and its most notable feature, for at least some users, is not being able to send or receive calls.…

Memo responds to lawsuit brought by wife of exec who killed himself after layoff Analysis IBM's Chief Human Resources Officer Nickle LaMoreaux on Sunday rejected what she described as "false claims of age discrimination at the company."…

Taiwanese giant teams up with Vedanta for fab project Taiwanese tech manufacturer to the stars Hon Hai Technology Group, aka Foxconn, has announced it has formed a joint venture to build semiconductors in India under the nation's electronics manufacturing subsidy scheme.…

US football team bitten by BlackByte gang the FBI just warned us about American football team the San Francisco 49ers have been hit by ransomware, with the criminals responsible claiming to have stolen corporate data and threatened to publish it.…

The effect of Ryzen share prices AMD has officially taken over FPGA maker Xilinx in what is, thanks to rising share prices, the biggest acquisition in the history of the chip industry.…

If you've wanted to create your own specialized Xeon, now's your chance Analysis Intel is making it easier for customers to create silicon in which x86, Arm and RISC-V cores will work together in a single processor.…

Saviour of the premium Android smartphone? Canalys has peered into the channel crystal ball once again and forecast that foldable smartphone shipments will surpass 30 million by 2024.…

Key tech advances dovetail with availability of new spectrum Momentum is gathering behind Wi-Fi 7 with Qualcomm adding its support to the new wireless standard.…

Big Red must wait to gets its teeth into health records giant The US Department of Justice is set to get more time to examine the planned $28.5bn merger between Oracle and health records specialist Cerner after the global software giant agreed to delay the closure of the deal.…

Court told he'd acted from 'spite and revenge' due to grudge over sacking A former school IT technician who wiped his ex-employer's network but also the devices of children connected to it at the time has been sentenced – after telling a judge he was seeking a new career in cybersecurity.…

One option might nuke code from orbit, another puts fate in hands of programmers Do you Abort, Retry or, Ignore or Fail? We've all been there, hesitating above the keyboard and wondering just what demons will be unleashed by hitting "I". But what is actually happening behind the scenes?…

I'm gaming like a wrecking ball Despite Facebook – sorry, "Meta" – throwing its weight behind the "metaverse", figures from Brit insurance giant Aviva suggest a virtual-reality headset is far from a necessary purchase if you like having nice things.…

Plus new breach disclosure rules for US investment firms In brief The bug hunters at Google's Project Zero team have released their latest time-to-fix data and Linux is smashing the opposition.…

Authorities claimed it was 'terrorist training' for the 14-year-old and his friends A Russian court has sentenced three teens for terrorism, with one jailed for five years in a Siberian penal colony, after they allegedly plotted to blow up a building… in a video game.…

Enjoy the boom, prepare for the bust The semiconductor world's continuing roaring sales growth could hit a wall in 2024, an industry research firm has predicted.…

Use the best tools at your disposal – and expect the worst Register Debate Welcome to the latest Register Debate in which writers discuss technology topics, and you the reader choose the winning argument. The format is simple: we propose a motion, the arguments for the motion will run this Monday and Wednesday, and the arguments against on Tuesday and Thursday. During the week you can cast your vote on which side you support using the poll embedded below, choosing whether you're in favour or against the motion. The final score will be announced on Friday, revealing whether the for or against argument was most popular.…

Bye, bye, free American bytes. I took the GDrive to be levied as .EDU sighs Opinion In 2014, Google made a remarkable offer: anyone with a Google Apps for Education account in the US got unlimited storage for free. The logic was sound at the time.…

Thoughts and purrs for our furry-faced friend The Microsoft Windows Insider programme is preparing to bid farewell to the Ninjacat imagery, replacing the headband-wearing feline with something more akin to a corporate healthcare plan.…

Trust me, we're going to need a bigger maintenance window Who, Me? Cables can be unkind, especially when one has the confidence of youth but not the dark cynicism of experience. Welcome to an edition of Who, Me? to tug at, if not the heart strings, then certainly the RJ45s.…

SMIC not enjoying its place on the USA's Entity List Despite record breaking growth and a shift towards supplying chips domestically, execs at China's top chipmaker – Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) – believe its production capacity can meet less than ten per cent of domestic semiconductor demand in the Middle Kingdom.…

Court docs reveal older IBMers were labeled 'dinobabies', plus plan to make them 'extinct' Newly released documents in a lawsuit alleging IBM discriminated against older workers reveal that Big Blue wanted to "correct" its "seniority mix" by weeding out older workers it labelled "dinobabies."…

Locals fear sharing their views on new National Internet Gateway Cambodia’s National Internet Gateway comes online this Wednesday, exposing all traffic within the country to pervasive government surveillance.…

So risky that new guidelines are needed to ensure engagements don't go pear-shaped The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has warned the nation's finance sector that outsourcing information technology jobs could "expose them to significant financial, operational and reputational risks."…

Silicon giant still not saying what it will mean in the real world Intel has revealed it plans to have its mysterious plans for software-defined silicon delivered in the next version of the Linux kernel.…

Ban of Chrome extension by Brave reveals risk of potential API abuse at Meta Updated Brave this week said it is blocking the installation of a popular Chrome extension called L.O.C. because it exposes users' Facebook data to potential theft.…

Flaw imperils Safari – and every iOS browser because of Cupertino's T&Cs Apple on Thursday patched a zero-day security vulnerability in its WebKit browser engine, issuing updates for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.…

Showers of work for admins Microsoft has dropped a gentle reminder that the clock is ticking for older versions of Visual Studio.…

Best plug HiveNightmare if you haven't already, unless you like new admins The US government has added 15 vulns under active attack to a little-known but very useful public database: its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue.…

Don't fancy paying for a Google sub after cutoff date? Pay Microsoft instead Microsoft has responded to Google's plan to shift users of G Suite's "legacy free edition" to paid subscriptions with the offer of a 60 per cent discount on a year of Microsoft 365.…

Silicon giant thinks there's real money to be made in the web metaverse 3.0 chain hype Later this year Intel will start selling a chip designed to mine Bitcoin as it rushes into the digital transactions market.…

Not very 'world-beating' Optical-fibre internet now makes up 32 per cent of fixed broadband subscriptions across the OECD countries, and is the fastest growing broadband technology. However, there is a mixed picture with cable still dominant in the Americas and the UK still predominantly DSL.…

ICO and CMA say they will oversee cookie-free adtech product British competition regulators have accepted promises by Google that its cookie-killing Privacy Sandbox project won't shut other adtech companies out of the market.…

Pedestrian warning systems in 578,607 cars affected, including model S, X and Y An external speaker function in 578,607 Teslas will be disabled by the electric vehicle manufacturer this month after the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it interfered with safety standards.…

Don't get too excited, filesystem fans – there are limits ZFS has been around for 16 years and has a solid reputation, but it does have limitations compared to its rivals. One of these is in the process of being lifted: soon it will be possible to add space to an existing ZFS array. As long as you're using FreeBSD, anyway.…

NAO says £263m in IR35 tax mistakes is just the start... UK IT contractors have been given no guidance on how to claw back tax erroneously taken by employers under IR35 rules, which already cost central government bodies £263m when they failed to correctly adhere to the guidelines.…

Suggests accounting'n'umbrella firm didn't pay ransom What appears to be stolen data belonging to customers of accounting conglomerate Optionis Group has surfaced on the dark web weeks after the firm confirmed intruders had broken into its systems.…

Ex-IBMer leaves behind no clear plan for sprawling legacy estate Former IBM and Home Office tech supremo Joanna Davinson is set to stand down as the UK government's chief digital officer, leaving the Cabinet Office with no one to wrangle its unmanaged legacy estate.…

It’s amazing [thud] I don’t even [thud] have to watch the road [thud] Something for the Weekend? Er… a lamppost, some clouds and… whoah, another car! Screeeeeee.…

For those times when being On Call means more than just cycling the power On Call Sometimes some systems just have to work, and there is always a Register reader to save the day. Welcome to On Call.…

Neither party is willing to talk about the operating model Singapore is getting its first sovereign cloud, thanks to a partnership between the Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) and Microsoft that was signed into existence on Thursday.…

We're shocked, shocked to find unjustified collection and access is going on in here Two US senators have gone public with evidence of what they assert is a previously secret bulk data collection effort by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), conducted outside the law and without oversight.…

Amid much droning on about self-sufficiency, components will still be able to cross the border India wants to promote locally-made drones, so has banned almost all imports of the aircraft, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry announced on Wednesday.…

Lithography titan ASML names DongFang JingYuan Electron as a worry The world's top manufacturer of lithography equipment, Dutch company Advanced Semiconductor Materials International (ASML), has warned that it believes a Chinese company may be selling chipmaking equipment that infringes its intellectual property rights.…

Coming out party for Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Indonesian telco Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and independent cable builder and operator Inligo Networks have signed a memorandum of understanding to construct an 18,000km submarine cable linking Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and the US.…

The slogan 'Privacy is built in' was more an aspiration until now Apple on Thursday said it is modifying its AirTag tracking devices to prevent them from being used for the wrong sort of tracking.…