The Register

Boffins in Vienna devise way to make software prove how it behaves Folks at Technische Universität Wien in Austria have devised a formal security framework called WebSpec to analyze browser security.…

And also an import ban America's International Trade Commission has said Google infringed five of Sonos’s patents – and has banned Google from importing into the US products that rip off Sonos’ home speaker intellectual property.…

Want fatuous stuff that treats you with contempt? Look no further Six right-to-repair advocates assembled on Friday morning to present Repair.org's second annual Worst in Show Awards, a selection of the "the least private, least secure, least repairable, and least sustainable gadgets at CES."…

OTA-21 of mobile OS arrives While some smartphone users are pondering when their next Android or iOS update will hit, the UBports foundation has released one for the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system in the form of OTA-21.…

How to type foreign languages without looking stuff up or memorising half of Unicode Friday FOSS Fest In these globally-connected-from-the-spare-bedroom times, sometimes we all need to deal with folks from far-off lands, whose names or addresses contain exotic symbols that Anglophones rarely encounter: from François to František or maybe even ffoulkes.…

Study hopes to take the elitism out media consumption Those attempting a digital detox might settle down with a paper book in the assumption they are nurturing their well-being. But the benefits of traditional versus new media are not as clear as received wisdom leads us to believe.…

Sure, there was a collision detection bug. Turns out somebody then quietly fixed it Veteran Microsoft developer Raymond Chen has revealed a bit more about what went wrong with the 64-bit version of Space Cadet Pinball.…

You know, the browser used by 0.34% of netizens nowadays A key British border IT system used by plant and seed exporters is so ancient that it will only work with Internet Explorer – which was deprecated by Microsoft last year and is used by relatively few people.…

NGO claims staffers who resign are forced to return advance variable pay Pune-based IT labor rights nonprofit Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has filed an official government complaint against HCL Technologies, India's third largest IT company, alleging the business has instituted a policy to claw back bonuses from resigning employees.…

Move fast and break things – with help from machine-learning algorithms Adoption of AIOps in IT departments is set to go mainstream, or so says a survey of medium and large enterprises which found 93 per cent of respondents are either already using the tech, or plan to adopt it in the near future.…

If you can't find a Pi on Earth, you could run your code on orbit instead A new batch of AstroPi computers are up and running on board the International Space Station (ISS), set-up by ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer.…

How about 'idiot goggles'? Snap has filed a complaint taking the US Patent Office (USPO) to task as it seeks to trademark the word "Spectacles."…

Investigation finds royalty and licensing fees excluded from transaction values India's Ministry of Finance has ordered Xiaomi to pay ₹6.53bn ($88m) in import taxes after discovering the local arm of the Chinese electronics company was undervaluing its transactions.…

Plan is to use the arm to finish putting the outpost together The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) says it has completed load-bearing tests on its space station's 10m robotic arm.…

Deepin shows that good things come out of Wuhan, too The newest and quite possibly shiniest Ubuntu remix has kicked a new version out the door. Yes, yet another new desktop, but it's a sign of bigger things to come.…

Recent report on IT-led change must be acted on by NHS leaders to address pandemic fallout A group of MPs in the UK Parliament have called on NHS leadership to end an approach to health service IT that allows a fifth of NHS trust to remain largely paper-based.…

Any colour you like as long as it's black. Or white Something for the Weekend, Sir? Isn't 2022 great? What do you mean, "no"? Jeez, you lot are hard to please. If you're reading this, it means you're still alive. What did you want instead?…

Yes, but are you sure? Really sure? On Call The customer is always right. Except when they're not. Here we have a story from the On Call archives concerning connectors, telephones, and a user blessed with a little too much confidence.…

Will these figures wash? The year 2021 proved to be a tough one for anyone affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, though it was awesome for crime involving cryptocurrencies.…

Neither cough nor sneeze nor gloom of coronavirus stays these chip makers from their appointed rounds Micron expects to resume normal operations at its Chinese DRAM facility in Xi'an later this month despite it being under lock down following a COVID-19 outbreak about two weeks ago.…

Jeff Wilcox led efforts to build M1 and T2 processors Apple’s top silicon lead Jeff Wilcox, who led the iGiant's push to develop homegrown chips, has left his role to start a new job at Intel.…

Maybe the days of entering lotteries for graphics cards will be over Buyers may not have to resort to treasure hunting for elusive GPUs in the second half of this year as semiconductor companies expect supply and prices to start normalizing.…

Honda probes issue, has yet to identify the cause of the problem Owners of older Acura and Honda vehicles marked the new year by revisiting 2002, a consequence of a bug affecting the cars' clock software.…

South Korea thinks they just went ballistic North Korean state media announced Wednesday that the country has completed its second reported hypersonic weapons test.…

Homespun database trackers also see PostgreSQL and MongoDB as hotshots for 2021 Snowflake, that cloud-only data warehouse much loved by investors, has been named DBMS of the Year for 2021 by tracker site DB-Engines.…

It avoided Aero. Missed Modern. Now the update edges ever closer to release It is with a heavy heart we report that Microsoft's redesigned Notepad has begun to make its way to the Windows Insider Beta channel, taking one step closer to end users already reeling from the Windows 11 experience.…

COPA load of that A man who claims to be the secret inventor of Bitcoin has failed in a legal bid to throw out a High Court lawsuit saying he's talking tosh – and will be accused of forging proof he is Satoshi Nakamoto.…

Christmas is gone and so, it seems, was a chunk of Big Blue's services this morning IBM is having a torrid start to 2022, including a lengthy period of "provisioning issues" in IBM Cloud around the world this morning.…

Here in my car, I feel safest of all... The global chip shortage is likely to have an impact throughout this year and into 2023, affecting some sectors worse than others, with UK car sales likely to be one of those hit.…

But creator runs server from home – we can forgive him A young man who would have been around 10 when the plug was pulled on Ceefax has recreated the BBC's teletext information service online, replete with a digital remote control to punch in the number of your choice.…

They'll have to cough €100,000 a day if they don't fix it within 3 months... Google and Facebook have come a little unstuck in the cookie department as French watchdog Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) slapped the pair with a €150m and €60m fine respectively.…

Not going to get stuck in first gear again with supply-chain crises The battle between chip giants in the autonomous vehicle space isn't a two-horse race like it was for desktop PCs. Car makers have a somewhat wider choice of silicon vendors.…

Telco won't be gone until 2026 as Land and Property Services plans epic project timeline Northern Ireland's Land and Property Services, part of the Department of Finance, is planning an IT procurement worth up to £125m to replace an ageing BT system running since 1999.…

We all make mistakes, but we just need to solder on Still waiting for your Spectrum Next to arrive? Yeah, us too. But it's not the only modern Sinclair clone – and a quick way to get your hands on one is to build your own.…

Specialist software providers in education, health, and policing can look forward to fireside chat The UK government's procurement wing is looking to have a chat with specialist software suppliers before it readies to launch a competition for contracts which could be worth a total of £1.8bn.…

Wanted killer cuffed in Spain after more evidence from Facebook One of Italy’s most wanted gangsters was finally tracked down after being on the run for 20 years, thanks to a chance sighting on Google Street View.…

* And a passerby who happened to be a doctor An autonomous drone carrying a defibrillator helped save a 71-year-old man having a heart attack, a first in medical history, a Swedish search-and-rescue tech company has claimed.…

New keyboard API will let online Office apps handle shortcut keys better Google Chrome 97 arrived on Tuesday, bringing with it a Microsoft-backed keyboard API rejected by Apple and Mozilla on privacy grounds.…

But is the telco backing itself into a corner? Analysis Microsoft has given more info on its efforts to draw telcos to its Azure cloud platform, building on intellectual property and skills gained from last year's partnership with AT&T, under which the telco opted to move its core 5G network operations to Azure.…

Apply fixes responsibly in a timely manner or face the wrath of Lina Khan The US Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday warned companies that vulnerable Log4j software needs to be patched … or else.…

You're spitting fire, fox A few days ago, Mozilla Foundation invited netizens on Twitter to send in cryptocurrency donations via a new payment service provider.…

Patching over the cracks in partner relations and pressurised modules for a few extra years While scientists celebrated the successful launch and ongoing deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA had another thing to bring cheer in the new year – the extension of the International Space Station (ISS) from 2025 through 2030.…

No more chip factories would surely change Beijing's mind about unification A top US Army War College paper suggests Taiwan should credibly threaten to eradicate its semiconductor industry if threatened by China so that Beijing would no longer be interested in unification.…

How far's the Moon now? ... Here's 'How Soon Is Now?' from your Spotify playlist As if NASA's troubled Artemis program didn't have enough to worry about, tech utilising Amazon's Alexa and Cisco's Webex is set to be on board for the first mission around the Moon and back to Earth.…

They really want that display ad and user tracking service Facebook has filed its legal challenge to the UK's ban on its Giphy merger, saying officials ignored "plainly relevant information" in their November decision.…

Disable anti-tamper features first and you'll be all right Norton antivirus's inbuilt cryptominer has re-entered the public consciousness after a random Twitter bod expressed annoyance at how difficult it is to uninstall.…

Originally launched as 'minimum viable product', GVMS has the necessary upgrades, UK taxman says Glitches in IT systems designed to manage the movement of goods from the EU to the UK are holding up shipments.…

They're guiding kids through museums, moving food in mega-kitchens – and cleaning where you can't see them Feature Robots largely remain the stuff of trepidation and speculation – but in Singapore they've suddenly become very easy to find.…

Elon Musk's satellite internet company 'remains excited to serve' the country The Indian government has reportedly told Elon Musk's internet satellite company, Starlink, to refund pre-orders it could not yet fulfil because it didn't have the licences.…

Yes, you're going to have to get a new CPU (again) It's been a while coming, but it looks like PCs with Microsoft's Pluton security processor are just around the corner. So long as your silicon of choice comes from AMD, for the time being at least.…