The Register

Move over K-pop, the K-metaverse is coming South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MIST) has earmarked ₩9 trillion ($7.5bn/ £5.55bn) for projects including AI and the development of a K-metaverse as part of its Digital New Deal programme.…

Take a hike SCC, a UK-based tech services and reselling dynasty, has won a five-year contract extension with UK tax collector HMRC worth £91m for IT software and services.…

Autonomy founder set for criminal trial on multiple counts of fraud over sale of biz to HPE Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch has lost a bid to delay his extradition to the US after a High Court judge ruled there was no reason to impose a months-long delay on the case.…

It's still early days, though There is a very preliminary FOSS Start menu replacement for Windows 11 – but it's not quite there yet.…

Anyone fancy a spherical tokamak in their backyard? Fancy a fusion power plant in your back yard? The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is looking for comments from five locations shortlisted as potential hosts for its Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme.…

See that? That's a promise of fat contracts, that is Big industry players have praised the latest cybersecurity strategy emitted by the British government, rubbing their hands with glee at its promises of lucrative public contracts for the rest of the 2020s.…

Cloud the top earner as usual but Redmond is doubling down on gaming The blockbuster quarters just keep on rolling for Microsoft after its latest set of financials surpassed analysts' forecasts, thanks to a thriving cloud and PC market in the pandemic-driven new digital age.…

What happened to loosening stranglehold of major tech firms on the public sector? UK government is on the hunt for an expert to help shape relations with the likes of AWS, Microsoft and Google, a role that includes a remit to "fulfil partnership opportunities" with the megacorps and "deliver against their needs and demands."…

Brexit, COVID-19 and tax rises all eclipsed by the omnipresent rule change, study of contractors finds The majority of contractors see the IR35 changes to the way employment status is judged as the biggest threat to their business in 2022, according to recent research.…

Now you see a harmless PNG. Now it's a malicious payload. Look into my eyes A security bod scored a $100,500 bug bounty from Apple after discovering a vulnerability in Safari on macOS that could have been exploited by a malicious website to potentially access victims' logged-in online accounts – and even their webcams.…

For FLoC's sake, people Google has given up on Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a categorization system for serving interest-based ads, and replaced it with Topics, a categorization system for serving interest-based ads.…

Don't start celebrating just yet if you own a Boeing 747-8, 747-8F, 777 Nine out of ten of America's commercial aircraft can land in low visibility using radio altimeters at US airports that have nearby 5G C-band masts, the country's aviation watchdog said this week.…

What happens when argc is zero and a SUID program doesn't care? Let's find out! Linux vendors on Tuesday issued patches for a memory corruption vulnerability in a component called polkit that allows an unprivileged logged-in user to gain full root access on a system in its default configuration.…

Components fabbed using 40nm-plus process nodes hit hard Hardware manufacturers hit hardest by the global semiconductor shortage had less than five days of chips in their inventories last year – and should expect supply chain issues to continue throughout 2022 – the US Department of Commerce said this week.…

Did a computer program tell them to write this? Baidu Research's AI-centric "Top 10 Tech Trends in 2022" report has outlined the Middle Kingdom megacorp's predictions for technology over the coming year.…

Softbank, meanwhile, remains 'hopeful' it can offload Brit chip designer Nvidia is quietly preparing to give up on the purchase of Arm, according to Bloomberg, after repeatedly butting heads with competition regulators amid a wave of opposition from the tech industry.…

If you're unable to share your files, this is probably why Google last month announced plans to prevent customer files stored in Google Drive from being shared when the web giant's automated scanning system finds files that violate its abuse prevention rules.…

Accused said to have suffered mental health problems from childhood A Brit accused of taking part in a $8.5m SIM-swapping conspiracy has escaped extradition to the US after a judge agreed he was at high risk of suicide.…

82% of volunteers in England and Wales are aged 50 and above The Ministry of Justice in England and Wales has launched what it sees as the biggest recruitment drive in the magistrate system's 650-year history, to address the backlog in cases partly caused by the pandemic.…

Anti-malware biz weighs in on one of the worst security flaws of recent times Anti-malware outfit Sophos has weighed in on Log4Shell, saying that the galvanization of the IT world to avert disaster would be familiar to those who lived through the Y2K era.…

Says it'll be 'asking customers' to make sure own phones support 4G, and to check on friends, family Vodafone is to begin retirement of its 3G network next year, saying this will free up frequencies to improve 4G and 5G services.…

La la la, we're not listening For some, an MD5 checksum is the sequence of letters and numbers that shows up next to the file they want to download. For others, it's a handy pointer that the file you've downloaded is the one you were expecting.…

Erm... should we be concerned? Remember how in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 you could produce anti-ship dolphin units with some sort of sonic cannon strapped to their backs? How we laughed.…

'Most of it – if not all of it – really amounts to fear, uncertainty and doubt' A group of former Oracle executives with roles across its software compliance teams have described the close links between Big Red's auditing process and its drive to increase revenue.…

Large disparities in views from bosses vs workers on 'talent transformation initiatives,' says survey Digital transformation projects are being held back by a lack of skills, according to a new survey, which finds that while many employers believe they are doing well at training up existing staff to meet the requirements, their employees beg to differ.…

Now this looks like a job for me, 'cos we need a little, controversy... 'Cos it feels so NT, without me Former Microsoft veep Brad Silverberg has paid tribute to Bill Gates for saving Windows 95.…

Are you competent? Ethical? Welcome to UKCSC's new list Frustrated at lack of activity from the "standard setting" UK Cyber Security Council, the government wants to pass new laws making it into the statutory regulator of the UK infosec trade.…

Top request from devs? A Linux version Review Visual Studio goes back a long way. Microsoft always had its own programming languages and tools, beginning with Microsoft Basic in 1975 and Microsoft C 1.0 in 1983.…

Funnily enough, that's where we want to be right now, too The James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most complex space observatory built by NASA, has reached its final destination: L2, the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, an orbit located about a million miles away.…

Kids: empty the dishwasher! We can’t, Dad, it’s updating its OS to handle baked on grime from winter curries As the right to repair movement gathers pace, Korea’s LG has decided to make sure that its whitegoods can be upgraded.…

Hybrid cloud is Big Blue's big bet, but big iron is predicted to bring a welcome revenue boost IBM has confirmed that a new model of its Z Series mainframes will arrive “late in the first half” of 2022 and emphasised the new device’s debut as a source of improved revenue for the company’s infrastructure business.…

6.6-rated rumble joins fire, snow, plague, and trade war as source of recent semiconductor supply chain SNAFUs A 6.6 magnitude earthquake that hit southwestern Japan around 1:00 AM last Saturday has led to the closing of Toshiba’s Oita semiconductor plant.…

Could clean up dispute over who collects tax and when, but unlikely to worry outsourcing rivals Pakistan’s minister for IT and Telecom, Syed Aminul Haque, has floated the idea of a ten-year tax holiday for freelancers, suggesting the move could improve the nation’s services exports.…

Facebook owner needs 16,000 GPUs, 4,000 Epyc processors – good luck, everyone else Facebook owner Meta is building the world's largest AI supercomputer to power machine-learning research that will bring the metaverse to life in the future, it claimed on Monday.…

It's Deere hunting season in Illinois and Alabama Two lawsuits have been filed in the past two weeks against farm equipment maker Deere & Company for allegedly violating antitrust laws by unlawfully monopolizing the tractor repair market.…

Plus: Nigerian BEC gang bust, NSO woes, and more In brief Twitter's head of security and CISO both ejected from the social media biz this month.…

Position of data permission controls designed to deceive, trio of lawsuits claim The Attorneys General of Indiana, Texas, and Washington DC on Monday each filed lawsuits against Google alleging that the search giant uses deceptive user interface designs known as "dark patterns" to obtain customer location data without adequate consent.…

Top Brit judges may consider whether an American prison is just too much Julian Assange has won a technical victory in his ongoing battle against extradition from the UK to the United States, buying him a few more months in the relative safety of Her Majesty's Prison Belmarsh.…

A nice, clean community distro that works well Most distros haven't got to 5.15 yet, but openSUSE's downstream project GeckoLinux boasts 5.16 of the Linux kernel and the latest Cinnamon desktop environment.…

Winter Windows Is Coming It's coming. Microsoft is preparing to start shoveling the latest version of Windows 10 down the throats of refuseniks still clinging to older incarnations.…

*Don't do this MediaTek claims to have given the world's first live demo of Wi-Fi 7, and said that the upcoming wireless technology will be able to challenge wired Ethernet for high-bandwidth applications, once available.…

An ISO image you can burn or drop onto a USB key The latest version of an old friend of the jobbing support bod has delivered a new kernel to help with fixing Microsoft's finest.…

Hunt follows £210m government funding in small modular reactor model UK aerospace and engineering giant Rolls-Royce is on the hunt for sites for its much-touted small nuclear reactors, which received a £210m grant from the UK government last year.…

Devices of the affected seem intent on going into the light Customers of Centrica-owned Hive are reporting problems with their cameras, with many complaining the devices have packed up, some after a few years of operation and others after mere days.…

Littler circuits executing on smaller hardware and tolerating 'a lot more noise' IBM says it has found a way to solve problems using fewer qubits than before, effectively doubling the capability of a quantum system by combining both quantum and classical resources.…

Unit dragged back to work after being found under hedge a day later We're sad to report the robot vacuum cleaner that made a brave attempt to flee a Travelodge has been hauled back into service.…

As it destroys so it creates US scientists have discovered that black holes can create as well as destroy, as the observed hot gas emitted from such a void in a dwarf galaxy could have contributed to the birth of stars.…

Just like the '68 Comeback Special, Bork has returned Bork!Bork!Bork! Back by unexpectedly popular demand, Bork takes a vacation to Vegas for an Elvis Presley tribute act.…

Move from SAP to Unit4 held up by comms 'issues' between supplier and authority Problems with Surrey County Council's £30m projects to replace an ageing SAP R/3 system with a Unit4 SaaS application were known in June, but not discussed with key council committees until after September.…

Why won't you love me, sobs perennially spurned protocol Opinion In the World of Tomorrow that's always 10 years away, Linux dominates the desktop, quantum computers control the fusion reactors, and all Android phones receive regular system updates. And the internet runs on IPv6.…