The Register

Oi, kea! Video An endangered parrot native to New Zealand's alpine region went full David Attenborough on a family enjoying Fiordland National Park by swooping off with their GoPro camera as they tried to film it.…

£1.5m fine is 0.005% of social network's profits British competition regulators have again fined Facebook, this time 0.005 per cent of its annual profits, for ignoring them – a move that's bound to have CEO Mark Zuckerberg sobbing for mercy.…

Swiss, German and Indian companies ready the blockchain for Self-Sovereign Identity The Gaia-X project has awarded work to a consortium including Vereign and DAASI International that takes it one step closer to realising Self Sovereign Identity technology.…

Craft Helm chart, receive secrets A zero-day vulnerability in open-source Kubernetes development tool Argo lets malicious people steal passwords from git-crypt and other sensitive information by simply uploading a crafted Helm chart.…

Most lucrative quarter ever for compute sellers, say analysts Global spending on cloud infrastructure services exceeded $50bn for the first time in the Q4 of 2021, according to figures from research outfit Canalys.…

Put your nodes to the grindstone Analysis Amid the semiconductor crunch, there's an interesting cliff forming at 28nm.…

If you don't already feel enough of an under-achiever, read on There are some interesting developments to keep an eye on in the world of Ubuntu: a new client for the community software repo, a tool to help Ubuntu gamers – and Rudra Saraswat, the 12-year-old brains behind them.…

Toyota benefits from 2011 tsunami lessons, according to reports Jaguar Land Rover, the custodian of those iconic British car brands owned by India's Tata Motors, this week announced lost £9m in the final quarter of 2021 in part down to the global semiconductor shortage which followed the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Or maybe we could take a quick look at our servers Something for the Weekend? Go away. I've had enough of you. We no longer connect like we used to. After all this time together, it's as you don't even know who I am.…

We've got to get our flying kicks somewhere Friday FOSS Fest The Reg FOSS desk is, as you might expect, mostly Linux-based, but your correspondent does keep Windows around for things like rooting smartphones and reflashing BIOSes. There are a few things I miss switching from Linux, and the handy functions of the middle mouse button are high on the list. This is where Taekwindow scores.…

Dialog? What dialog? On Call Friday is upon us, bringing with it the promise of the weekend and the jolly times it entails. Start the end of your week with a visit to the On Call archives and the delight of taking a support call from users of software you wrote.…

Cloud colossus accounts for lion's share of Amazonian profits Amazon will run its servers and networking kit for an extra year – for both its own operations and for Amazon Web Services – and expects to save a billion dollars next quarter as a result.…

RV family of routers is in trouble, and fixed software is yet to arrive for some models Cisco has revealed five critical bugs, three of them rated 10/10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, that impact four of its router families aimed at small businesses. And it only has patches available for two of the affected ranges.…

Contracts fit automakers and other manufacturers with 'very sticky products, very long life cycles' – CEO Chip shortages are so bad that customers are willing to sign multiyear non-cancellable, non-returnable (NCNR) contracts to secure supplies, according to semiconductor supplier NXP.…

This is news to the rest of the world Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has offered some more details about the nation’s newly revealed plan to introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the next year.…

Google's take on cross-platform development arrives on Microsoft's desktop Google's cross-platform app framework Flutter has hit version 2.1 and added production support for apps on Windows.…

Failure to validate input in DeFi code let attacker mint money Wormhole, a protocol for connecting different blockchains, lost about $320m worth of Ether (ETH), thanks to poorly crafted code.…

Billions in profits at stake for Apple and Google's money-making machines The US Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to pass the Open App Markets Act, despite intense lobbying from Apple and Google.…

Are we nearly there yet? Officials from the EU and US are nearing a solution in long-running negotiations over transatlantic data sharing.…

Spoof site looks real because it is... but you're not talking to who you think In the beginning we had passwords. Their hackability made a lot of people very angry and passwords were widely regarded as a bad move. Then we had two-factor authentication – and now Proofpoint reckons criminals online are able to start bypassing them with transparent reverse proxies.…

Now you just need a compatible device... The Raspberry Pi Foundation has officially released the 64-bit version of the Linux-based OS Formerly Known As Raspbian.…

Linux and mobile coming soon Cloud directory specialist JumpCloud is moving into the crowded patch management market with an extension to its platform to automate patch updates.…

Firm doesn't know when it'll restart salty goodness deliveries Some of Britain's favourite pub munch could end up in short supply after KP Snacks, makers of nuts and crisps, suffered a ransomware attack.…

One-time head of Hampshire Police IT gets six years A pro-outsourcing CIO whose first act at a new employer was to set up a £475,000 backhander scheme has been jailed for six years.…

Open-source, full-stack edge and industrial IoT software moves to Linux kernel 5.10 StarlingX, an open-source platform for edge computing based on OpenStack, has hit release 6.0 with a Linux Kernel upgrade plus security and deployment enhancements to make it easier to manage systems.…

Distributed in-memory system more efficient than other cloud data warehouses, vendor claims Distributed in-memory analytics specialist Exasol has launched a database-as-a-service claiming its approach to parallel processing could help reduce nasty shocks in cloud fees.…

Rotterdam can't get over it When buying a 40m-tall, three-mast luxury yacht is like you or I popping to the corner shop for a Freddo, what does it matter if a 144-year-old bridge has to be dismantled to get the thing out of the shipyard?…

Oh what a problem to have Fresh from years of complaining about underfunding and not having enough staff to deal with problems, infosec bods are now complaining that corporate execs merely firehose cash at them without getting their own hands dirty or engaging with the problem.…

Redmond's quality control shines once more Updated Microsoft's legendary approach to quality was demonstrated this morning as the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal fell over.…

ICO says Home2Sense showed 'complete disregard for people's privacy' Home2Sense Ltd, a home improvement biz, is nursing a £200,000 financial penalty from the UK's data watchdog for making well over half a million marketing calls to people that registered to opt out of such botheration.…

But some staffers fared better than others Arm has agreed a pay increase for employees following the scrapping of a wellbeing allowance last year, yet it appears that while engineers were offered an 8 per cent jump, other types of worker fared less well.…

Blame it on the metaverse, Apple, TikTok, inflation, and higher data charges in India For the first time in its history, Facebook has reported a decline in user numbers. Investors hammered the share price of Meta – Facebook's parent company – after the market closed, with scrip slumping from around $323 to $249.…

Currently investigating over 2,000 attacks on US targets – new file every 12 hours US Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray has named China as the source of more cyber-attacks on the USA than all other nations combined.…

Gulp! Code that codes displays some critical thinking capabilities Alphabet-owned AI outfit DeepMind claims it has created an AI that can write programming code, find novel solutions to interesting problems, and do it at the level of the mid-ranking human entrants in coding contests.…

Oh, yeah, and Windows on Arm. Who could forget that? No Apple as a modem customer for much longer? Not too much of a problem for Qualcomm, which is now relying more than ever on Android and China, and to some extent, Windows, to make up for the lost revenue.…

WhiteSource says it spotted 1,300 malicious JavaScript packages in 2021 alone Malware gets spotted in GitHub's npm registry every few months, elevating concerns about the software supply chain until attention gets diverted and worries recede until the next fire drill.…

America focuses on AI and emerging tech, China on the gaps left by US sanctions Chip startups raked in a record $19.4bn in funding last year in a boom market driven by semiconductor shortages and trade wars.…

Bills seek to legalize digital lock breaking when mending stuff, ensure farmers can fix their machines American farmers may soon be able to repair their agricultural equipment without paying the maker of their machinery for the privilege. And owners of other products may also see fewer repair barriers, depending upon how two new pieces of federal legislation are received.…

Patented plastic-free tech from Choose Packaging Paragon of packetry HP has acquired Choose Packaging, inventor of a zero-plastic paper bottle.…

Semiconductor giant sees growth across the board AMD has hailed 2021 as an "outstanding" year with each of its business units growing significantly, thanks to strong sales of its Epyc server chips and data centre GPUs. The firm is hoping to continue this with its Genoa chips this year and Bergamo in 2023.…

Patch now An exploit in Samba 4 allowed remote code as root due to a bug in its support for Mac clients. It's fixed in 4.13.17, 4.14.12 and 4.15.5, and in case you can't update, there are patches.…

Big Blue wants to 'bring edge and 5G to life for enterprises' IBM has acquired Sentaca, a telecoms consulting services and solutions provider, with the aim of boosting its own hybrid cloud consulting business in the communications service provider space.…

Terror watchdog is a bad model to follow, though Even think tanks with close links to the UK's Conservative government are now criticising the Online Safety Bill, with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) describing it today as "a significant threat to freedom of speech, privacy and innovation."…

Decision to affect Google's, Amazon's and Microsoft's online ads biz All data collected through the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) must now be deleted by the 1,000+ firms that pay international digital marketing and advertising association IAB Europe to use it. This includes Google's, Amazon's and Microsoft's online advertising businesses.…

Solved today's in two? Now try and exit Vim We are delighted to note that a version of the word game the New York Times bought for seven figures can now be played via a 50-line Bash script.…

Plumber's right did not lapse 'but carried over and accumulated until termination of the contract' A former worker for Pimlico Plumbers has won a case in the Court of Appeal over the right for backdated holiday pay in a case set to help employees of umbrella companies in all sectors, including information technology.…

But what of the domestic launchers? Updated The UK government is to spend an extra £1.4bn on space defence on top of the £5bn allocated to upgrade the Skynet satellite communication system.…

'Global benefit' chief: Broadcom buyout means pay your own way Brocade sacked a former Sales Manager of the Year who was suffering from cancer when the company was bought by Broadcom – a decision that led to the man's health insurance being cancelled.…

And better compatibility with some more proprietary word processors Six months after LibreOffice 7.2, version 7.3 is out with faster and more accurate file importing and rendering for improved compatibility with Microsoft Office.…

Researcher tells world after being stonewalled There is a live cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in takedowns website DMCA-dot-com's user interface. It's existed for more than a year and the site's operators don't appear to be interested in fixing it.…