The Register

US Government Audit Office upholds Redmond's protest The US Government Accountability Office has agreed Microsoft was right to contest the award of the National Security Agency's $10bn cloud computing contact, saying it found parts of NSA's evaluation to be "unreasonable".…

Now exec talk turns to defence against corporate takeovers and where next for efficiency gains BT is said to be mulling whether to widen the multibillion-pound cost savings initiative that began in 2018 after meeting financial goals well ahead of the deadline.…

Also SMB3 server in the kernel, and new DAMON memory monitor Linus Torvalds released version 5.15 of the Linux kernel yesterday with a new NTFS driver, an SMB3 server and an advanced memory monitor among the features. 5.15 is likely to be an LTS release unless 5.16 squeezes in before year end.…

When we say 'way easier,' you better have a steady hand and nerves of steel The fearless iFixit website has taken its tools to the M1-powered 2021 MacBook Pro and come away with a repairability score that will be of no surprise to followers of Apple's pricey hardware.…

Plus Microsoft funding community security to fill US skills gap In Brief A new and dangerous form of malware for rooting Android phones has been spotted in 19 apps on Google's Play store, as well as in several in the Amazon Appstore, the Samsung Galaxy Store, and other third-party sites.…

From Tatooine to Earth Star Wars-style moisture farming could provide safe drinking water for approximately 1 billion people here on Earth, according to research from a Google-owned research lab.…

Two months late is better than never in a supply chain challenged-world, and means it is out in time for Diwali After an approximate two-month delay but in time for India's biggest holiday, Diwali*, Google and giant Indian telco Jio are finally making good on their promise to offer an India-exclusive budget 4G Android.…

This (still) applies to British businesses too... for now Lightning does not strike twice – except, it would seem, in the land of data privacy. Having struck down Safe Harbor – the agreement governing EU-US data transfers – in 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) went on to condemn its replacement, the beleaguered EU-US Privacy Shield, to a similar fate just over a year ago.…

Yes, the tech dept was elevated in these trying times – we just need to keep reminding everyone why 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.…

Creates category to control what we call a superapp for antitrust behavior and more China's antitrust watchdog, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has issued new draft rules for internet platforms the organization considers "super-large" – including vague directives forbidding anticompetitive behavior and more.…

I've read this stuff, says one dev. 'Either Google is screwed, or society is screwed' Opinion Ten days ago, a New York judge revealed the full prosecution filings in a multi-state antitrust lawsuit against Google – one of many against the company, and of many more against the ad tech giants.…

Look on my works and despair. After you've emptied the trash Who, Me? Sometimes, IT professionals can appear as gods to users. Sometimes their mere presence can cause problems to miraculously disappear. In today's Java-based tale, a reader recalls the all-too-brief moment when he became a database deity. Welcome to Who, Me?…

Still loves Ceph. Now also loved by government buyers, which are funding its factories so they can access more secure servers UK server-maker SoftIron has stumbled into a fast-growing niche for servers that include verifiably secure firmware and components with known provenance.…

Plus: Microsoft acquires an AI content moderation startup to prevent hate speech on the Xbox and more In brief Twitter’s algorithms are more likely to amplify right-wing politicians than left-wing ones because their tweets generate more outrage, according to a trio of researchers from New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics.…

Goddamn it, Jeff Bezos' lot can make a passable MMORPG after all The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our (sometimes) monthly gaming column. At long last, New World is out and we've been diligently grinding our faces off to answer the question: Can Jeff "mountains of cash" Bezos make a decent MMO?…

NYU boffins find the crowd is not all that wise when it comes to spotting misinformation Social media companies have proposed enlisting their respective audiences to catch the misinformation they distribute, or are already doing so.…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a warning of a geomagnetic storm An aurora may light up the dark skies over the US Northeast, upper Midwest, and could even stretch as far as the state of Washington, potentially giving skywatchers a rare treat this Halloween weekend.…

iBiz sunk by scarce chips and Microsoft's Azure cloud cash faucet Microsoft on Friday surpassed Apple as the world's most valuable publicly traded company in the world after the iPhone maker reported underwhelming earnings on Thursday.…

The data must flow Intel is diversifying its GPUs to work with architectures other than x86 chips, which could be a step toward making the chip maker a manufacturing-first company.…

Flaw could have let miscreants slide rootkits onto your iDesktop A vulnerability in MacOS that could let a malicious person install rootkits on Apple Macs has been patched, following its discovery and disclosure by Microsoft.…

Double-decker database raises $188m from hungry VCs Distributed relational database vendor Yugabyte has raised $188m in a Series C funding round which values the firm at around $1.3bn.…

Now it's Quest for Business. Don't all rush at once Facebook – sorry, "Meta" – has used the week of its much-derided rebranding exercise to quietly retire Oculus for Business.…

Viscount still helms new firm – while since-deleted posts on firm's Facebook page enrage users A British firearms sales website's owner has called in the liquidators as his company faces data breach lawsuits – while continuing to trade from a newly incorporated business.…

Then backtracks and tells El Reg: 'It's not a formal opinion' Britain's new Information Commissioner has called for video conferencing companies to enable end-to-end encryption on their products – even as police managers and politicians condemn the technology and demand its removal.…

Boffins release treasure trove of findings from NASA probe, including weird cyclones around the poles Revelations that Jupiter's Great Red Spot is much deeper than believed and details on the planet's famous banded structures below its cloud layer were among the atmospheric insights collected by NASA's Juno probe and published in science journals today.…

CFO warns of $4bn in extra costs in the Christmas quarter Amazon says inflationary pressures caused by labour shortages and the pandemic-struck supply chain will add $4bn in overheads to its business in the Christmas quarter.…

Constrained supply of parts like USB-C among reasons for price hikes Inflation is hitting the PC market, with prices jumping amid chip shortages and market uncertainty.…

No, things were NOT better in the past, so leave them there Something for the Weekend, Sir? Video games make you healthy. Of course they do. Why would you think otherwise?…

Project Astoria – which evolved into Windows Subsystem for Linux – returns with its original intent Hands on Microsoft has previewed the Subsystem for Android on Windows 11, and The Register took it for a spin.…

The SSID 'AllYouCanEatBuffetOfPr0n' might not help either On Call Remember those halcyon days when grabbing some free Wi-Fi meant wandering down the street in search of an access point rather than making up a variant on bobuser@nospam.com for yet another interminable registration screen? Welcome to On Call.…

No need to panic, Cupertino still pulling in a $1bn a day in revenue Apple's lost $6bn in revenue during its last financial quarter of 2021 due to chip shortages and supply constraints, and the impact will be even more severe in the coming months.…

Indictment reveals org behind banking trojan even had nifty jobs titles like 'Malware Manager' The US Department of Justice claims it's arrested a member of a gang that deployed the Trickbot ransomware.…

It's better to work for the Man than the Machine Applying AI and automation to jobs can have both positive and negative impacts on workers, according to a new study.…

Government offered to investigate itself – Court politely declined that kind suggestion India's Supreme Court has taken the unusual step of commissioning a Technical Committee to investigate whether the national government used the NSO Group's "Pegasus" spyware on its citizens.…

Use it, contribute to it, respect its licences – and plan for security emergencies it creates China has told its finance sector to embrace free and open source software (FOSS).…

His social network has Meta-stasized Comment Facebook the company is being renamed to Meta, and the social network will be a brand within that entity, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday.…

Game console fixes are limited – and there's no allowance for exploit tools In its latest interpretation of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the US Copyright Office has relaxed the legal restrictions that deter security researchers and enthusiasts from analyzing and tinkering with protected content on digital devices.…

Even though 5G Advanced isn't even here yet With 5G adoption on the upswing, Samsung provided a detailed glimpse as to what a 6G world would look like.…

Bobby Kotick vows zero tolerance on discrimination, will waive forced arbitration, and more Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is cutting his salary to $62,500 and promised to turn down bonuses and equity packages as the gaming giant continues to be investigated for sexual harassment.…

Third time's the unlucky charm for loan outfit Decentralized finance biz Cream Finance became further decentralized on Wednesday with the theft of $130m worth of crypto assets from its Ethereum lending protocol.…

Single-use tokens and reusable workflows explained at Universe event GitHub Universe GitHub Actions have new security based on OpenID, along with the ability to create reusable workflows, while usage has nearly doubled year on year, according to presentations at the Universe event.…

Die Zeit: He's got a Beemer, a Bitcoin watch and a swimming pool German news outlets claim to have identified a member of the infamous REvil ransomware gang – who reportedly lives the life of Riley off his ill-gotten gains.…

Next version of Windows 10 looms around the corner Microsoft's Windows 11 OS has notched up a respectable near 5 per cent of PCs surveyed by AdDuplex, as another Dev Channel build was unleashed with new features for the favoured few.…

Bzz. Bzz. This digital bingo BS game won't stop buzzing, can someone mute Bill McDermott? ServiceNow chief Bill McDermott has won this week's game of buzzword bingo for his address to financial analysts during last night's Q3 earnings conference call.…

Didn't make clear he was their dad... Why? In case CIA harmed them, suggests his barrister Julian Assange's psychiatrist misled a judge when he delivered a report stating the WikiLeaks founder would be suicidal if extradited to the US for trial, lawyers for the US government have said.…

Microsoft is involved. What could possibly go wrong? It's been a busy week for the Eclipse Foundation, as the group unveiled a new operating system for distributed devices and cracked open the invitation list for an open-source software-defined vehicle project.…

All thanks to Touchpad funding and a new maintainer – but X vs Wayland still a dilemma for community Version 21.1.0 of the X.Org Server has been fully rolled out, with just one fix since the release candidate, but it is still notable as the first major version for three and a half years for a project that was thought to be near-abandoned.…

Between US sanctions on baddies and NRA claiming bankruptcy, what are the chances anyone’s getting paid? Grief ransomware gang took to a dark portal website where it typically publishes the data of victims that haven't paid up, to identify its latest target: the National Rifle Association (NRA).…

Hopefully not another half century before the next... although launchpads are pricey Today marks the 50th anniversary of the UK joining an elite club of one: nations that gained the ability to launch satellites into orbit and then discarded the skill. The one – and only – successful orbital launch of the Black Arrow took place in 1971.…

Yuan 1.0 said to pass Turing test, and require many fewer GPUs than the GPT-3 Microsoft licensed from OpenAI Inspur has turned its hand to AI, and claims it has produced a text-and-code-generating machine-learning model superior to GPT-3 produced by OpenAI. And did so using significantly fewer GPUs.…