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Another terrible launch, but DICE is already working on improvements The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. Since the last edition on New World, we hit level cap and the "endgame". Around this time, item duping exploits became rife and every attempt Amazon Games made to fix it just broke something else. The post-level 60 "watermark" system for gear drops is also infuriating and tedious, but not something we were able to address in the column. So bear these things in mind if you were ever tempted. On that note, it's time to look at another newly released shit show – Battlefield 2042.…

Reuters claims nine State Department employees outside the US had their devices hacked The Apple iPhones of at least nine US State Department officials were compromised by an unidentified entity using NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, according to a report published Friday by Reuters.…

All together now - R, A, N, S, O... A US utility company based in Colorado was hit by a ransomware attack in November that wiped out two decades' worth of records and knocked out billing systems that won't be restored until next week at the earliest.…

Alleged scheme said to have netted $20m since 2017 The US Attorney's Office of Arizona on Wednesday announced the indictment of two men on charges that they defrauded musicians and associated companies by claiming more than $20m in royalty payments for songs played on YouTube.…

Your four-legged open-source friend? CIMON says 'Maybe' Linux fans rejoice: the smarts running behind Xiaomi's Not-Spot, CyberDog, emanate from none other than Ubuntu 18.04.…

The end is coming, and nobody wants a homeless 'naut NASA has splashed the cash on design contracts for space stations and a multibillion-dollar job for more Artemis boosters.…

Q&A with the developer of BetterDummy: from macOS secrets to his motivations Interview Folks who use Apple Silicon-powered Macs with some third-party monitors are disappointed with the results: text and icons can appear too tiny or blurry, or the available resolutions are lower than what the displays are capable of.…

A truly rare groove Discerning writers and programmers know that keyboards matter. It's mostly the feel, but the best feel tends to come from mechanical key switches and they make a noise as they activate.…

Don't just install the patch, change your router passwords too Two arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities affecting a number of Netgear routers aimed at small businesses have been patched following research by Immersive Labs.…

Questions remain over data warehouse dependencies and redundancies The UK's Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has gone live on Workday finance and HR systems around three months later than planned, drawing questions over an interdependent data warehouse project.…

Plus: Why company foresees growth of Rust, already widely used internally Re:invent AWS previewed new developer resources at its Re:invent conference, including new SDKs for Rust, Swift, and Kotlin, as well as Amplify Studio for rapid web applications, integrated with the Figma design tool.…

Neutron updated, but the Spectre of SpaceX looms Rocket Lab showed off progress on its Neutron rocket yesterday, with a "Hungry Hippo" fairing design more reminiscent of a '60s spy flick than a'70s table-top kid amuser.…

Is hardware by subscription bad for customers? Readers have their say Register Debate There's a reason why it's called a personal computer, and boy did this week's debate remind us all of the fact. We'd thrown open the motion that Renting Hardware on a Subscription Basis is Bad for Customers.…

Did it during work time and got paid for it, affirms Court of Appeal A Briton has lost an appeal bid to claim copyright over software he wrote for his employer while being handsomely paid for doing so – despite saying he wrote parts of it in his spare time.…

Just being practical here, but maybe they can share a cab? Two Chinese tech companies, China Telecom and DiDi Global, are packing their bags and moving out of the US, one under the ruling of Washington, the other under the thumb of Beijing.…

As with packaging systems, lightweight efficient approaches look set to lose out Analysis A new version of Linux distro NixOS has been released, just one day after a contentious blogpost that asked "Will Nix overtake Docker?"…

Take your breath awayyyyyyyy Something for the Weekend, Sir? "Breathe into the tube, sir." Oh yes, dear reader, I am being breathalysed.…

Angel of the North asteroid story upsets us mightily A local rag in Britain has gone wildly off-piste by measuring the size of an asteroid swinging by the Earth using units of measure derived from a rusting statue.…

Fix the printer, fix the phones On Call A story with a difference from the On Call vaults today. Who do you call when the phones stop working? A Register reader reveals all.…

Updates bare metal Macs-a-service and claims up to 60 per cent better price performance vs cloudy x86 Macs Amazon Web Services has added Apple’s Arm-powered M1 CPU to its range of cloudy desktop offerings.…

Version 4.16 adds first look at TPM 2.0 and better big.LITTLE support The Xen Project has delivered an upgrade to its hypervisor.…

Shares fell over 20 per cent in its first day on NASDAQ Singaporean superapp Grab has signaled an intention to further its digital banking segment and beef up its mapping tech to improve its ride-hailing services, after an underwhelming debut on the NASDAQ stock exchange.…

Carriers covet fast, reliable modems, and when they're baked into SoCs it's hard to ignore 'em Qualcomm this week made clear it wasn't interested in offering smartphone makers heavy customisation of its off-the-shelf Snapdragon chips – even though some of its customers are developing their own custom silicon.…

Volcano Engine also offers all the IaaS and SaaS you'd expect from a hyperscaler TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, has launched a public cloud it's excitingly dubbed Volcano Engine.…

Manager was fired, now wants his reputation restored with post on a prominent website An Alibaba exec accused of sexually assaulting an employee has now sued the plaintiff for damage to his reputation and sought an apology, according to Chinese media reports.…

Recent change to cloud services suspected as cause, any real messes will be advised in email only for now Updated Admins in charge of Microsoft 365 subscriptions are complaining that the software giant is spamming them with a stream of bulk and bogus notifications sent to the admin app for iOS.…

FTC sues to block deal because it would be bad for competition The US Federal Trade Commission, having previously expressed unease about Nvidia's plan to acquire UK chip design firm Arm, acted on its concern Thursday by suing to prevent the deal.…

Badger, badger, badger, coin theft, coin theft! BadgerDAO, maker of a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, said on Wednesday that it is investigating reports that millions in user funds have been stolen.…

Enforcing rules on content is in everybody's interest, court decides A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Texas legislation banning large social media companies from moderating content, one day before the law was due to come into effect.…

How to coordinate 16 Arms Keen on Kubernetes? It has been a long wait, but the Turing Pi 2 is finally close to shipping.…

Prosecutors claim Nickolas Sharp even posed as a whistleblower to press A Ubiquiti developer has been charged with stealing data from the company and extortion attempts totalling $2m in what prosecutors claim was a vicious campaign to harm the firm's share price – including allegedly planting fake press stories about the breaches.…

If it's not broke, don't f- ... never mind Microsoft's long-suffering unpaid testers are to start seeing some improvements in the Windows 11 User Interface.…

We're all ears The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed that its Mars Express orbiter has heard from China's Zhurong rover.…

Keeping one's privates private "I don't think we have any business with collecting information about what people are doing," Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner told The Register as its eponymous browser pushed out a major version update today.…

Services ops for mortgages to go back in-house, says High Street lender, can't say how many to TUPE across Co-Operative Bank is terminating its outsourcing contract with Capita years ahead of schedule and is planning to TUPE across staff to provision services in-house again, ending what at times was a fractious relationship.…

New IT systems set up incorrectly, published CSV files which included names, addresses The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined the Cabinet Office because it failed to put appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of recipients of New Year's honours.…

Hypervisor extension implemented in P650 processor engine that's stalking Arm's Cortex family SiFive's latest flagship RISC-V CPU will be revealed today – and we're told it will sport proper virtualization support in hardware.…

Police still trying to piece everything together Christmas was (probably not) ruined for several German children yesterday after thieves bust through a toyshop wall in Lippstadt and escaped with dozens of Lego sets said to be worth a total of €35,000.…

'You're on the go, you take it with you, it's always contextually relevant, you don't have to take it out of your pocket' Snapdragon Tech Summit What's the next hot thing after mobile? Qualcomm and Meta execs believe it's the metaverse, and some type of headgear providing context so you don't have to pull a device out of your pocket.…

And that's bad for your customers – who else is gonna ultimately pay for it? 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.…

It's the browser wars all over again – but this time it's cloud storage Interview It is a fine balancing act when a small business very publicly criticises a much larger one upon whose products it relies – yet that is the David-versus-Goliath standoff happening in a corner of the cloud industry.…

El Reg asks about phoenixing – but will answer convince world+dog? Britain's plans to force internet-connected device vendors to declare legally binding product lifespans won't be easily evaded by shell companies, the government has told The Register.…

Poised to reveal similar haul to 2020's €40M loss prevention total The European Cybercrime Centre has again acted against credit card fraud and is poised to reveal success on a similar scale to its 2020 campaign that prevented €40 million of losses.…

Communist China (belatedly) recognises that drivers are people who need food, sleep, bathrooms, and unions China's Ministry of Transport, along with eight other agencies, has issued an edict that demands working conditions ride share operators provide for drivers must improve.…

Running the latest version of Android? Appstore apps no longer work Shortly after Android 12 launched in October, users updating to the latest version of Google's mobile operating system found that the Amazon Appstore – and apps downloaded from it – no longer worked.…

Underground industry grows in complexity and sophistication, says Santander Group researcher October 18, 2021, was a tricky day for the ransomware industry. First, the gang that ran the REvil ransomware had its servers compromised, and then three individuals with key roles changed jobs.…

The Artist Formerly Known as Facebook and the cloud colossus become best cloudy buds – especially around PyTorch Mark Zuckerberg's recently rebadged Meta and Amazon Web Services have announced they're going to be cloud BFFs, with the emphasis on the second F.…

Now they can get back to arguing about computers and clouds Nutanix and VMware have ended a legal fight sparked when the hyperconverged upstart lured Rajiv Ramaswami away from Virtzilla and into its CEO seat.…

Also: Custom SQL Server service, free SageMaker ML, and experts on hand to label data RE:INVENT AWS has introduced a flurry of new database and ML services at its Re:invent conference, including a migration service targeting every database in an organization,…

iGiant warned developers it could still charge fees for third-party financial transactions anyway Apple has appealed a judge's decision forcing the company to allow developers to add external third-party payment systems in their iOS apps by December 9.…