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'Putting rocket boosters the size of Saturn V's F1 under Brit space biz.' Yikes. But where's the money, Boris? UK government has published its National Space Strategy [PDF], a document full of big ideas but according to some, no new funding.…

Industrial elegance on the Usk Geek's Guide to Britain Transporter bridges enjoyed only a rather brief period of popularity as the preferred way to get people and stuff across rivers. The first to be built was the Vizcaya Bridge over the River Nervion between Las Arenas and Portugalete in Spain, in 1893. The last one, crossing the River Mersey at Warrington, was built just 22 years later in 1915.…

Shut up and take my money Something for the Weekend, Sir? "Buy me a beer?" Sure, I buy beers for perfect strangers all the time. But you will have to wait your turn. There is a queue, and the other strangers are more reluctant to accept my hospitality.…

The answer won't surprise you On Call It's Friday mystery time as a Register reader finds himself embroiled in The Adventure Of The Haunted Computer. Welcome to On Call.…

Intros Model 4 smartphone with five-year warranty, six years of software updates Fairphone, an outfit that uses only ethically sourced materials and regulated labour to make smartphones, has revealed a new model of its flagship handset and started selling wireless earbuds too.…

Orders annual data reviews to ensure compliance with rules on how to handle data that's terrifying to lose, or merely scary China has ordered local organisations to conduct annual reviews of the data they hold, so they can apply proper protections as defined on a new three-tier classification scale.…

Also plans remote-controlled robots with fingers and jar-opening capabilities, to help run a moon base Japanese auto-maker Honda has set its sights on developing its own rockets and running a satellite launch business.…

Assuming tech works as promised, overhaul needed in policy and supplies, panel says Let's say, for the sake of argument, that quantum computers will exist in some useful fashion in the not too distant future.…

Before you call it dumb, take a look at its biological counterparts on this planet Robots with Intel Inside brains? That's what Chipzilla has in mind with its Loihi 2 neuromorphic chip, which tries to mimics the human brain.…

At Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, billionaire egos create fear of flying A group of 21 current and former employees of Blue Origin, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’s rocketry side hobby, have penned an open letter that describes the company as fostering a sexist culture, intolerant of internal dissent, and sanguine about safety.…

Boffins devise tricks to dupe stolen or nearby iPhones into paying out when in transit mode and using Visa Apple's digital wallet Apple Pay will pay whatever amount is demanded of it, without authorization, if configured for transit mode with a Visa card, and exposed to a hostile contactless reader.…

Plus 'widespread potential violations of US, EU, UK privacy law' as an added bonus Apple says, "Privacy is a fundamental human right." Google says, "We build privacy that works for everyone." But neither mega-corp manages to provide much privacy on their mobile devices, according to a study conducted by boffins at the University of Oxford in England and an independent researcher.…

'The internet is a complex system' Updated Websites and apps are suffering or have suffered outages around the world for at least some netizens today due to connectivity issues.…

Claimed REvil contractor badmouths West from anonymous pulpit Someone claiming to be a former contractor for the REvil ransomware gang has given an interview to a security firm, saying he struggles to sleep at night but isn't ashamed of what he does.…

Technology, security, competitiveness also on agenda. *Cough* Privacy Shield *cough* The EU and the United States of America plan to work together to build a common approach to data governance and policies around technology platforms, according to a joint statement.…

Royal Free Hospital saga continues as representative action brought A UK law firm is bringing legal action on behalf of patients it says had their confidential medical records obtained by Google and DeepMind Technologies in breach of data protection laws.…

On the other hand, sweeten the deal with a couple of quid and they'll be a lot more happy to share Consumer guardian Which? has attempted to put a price on people's personal information as it ramps up pressure for tougher rules around data-ravenous tech giants such as Google and Facebook.…

Infrastructure to support lower-emission aircraft, is the hope More than a dozen projects that might someday provide the infrastructure at airports to sustain zero-emission aviation are on the receiving end of grant money to continue their research.…

All eyes on Priti Patel as High Court case recedes into insignificance Autonomy Trial Home Secretary Priti Patel has granted Autonomy founder Mike Lynch a two month grace period on the decision to extradite him, according to reports.…

30 million Windows devices in 60k orgs studied Fallout from the notorious hardware requirements of Windows 11 continued this week, as IT management outfit Lansweeper published research showing well over half of surveyed workstations didn't make the cut.…

Could one of the longest and dirtiest cases in tech history finally be over? The Supreme Court of California has thrown out Oracle's appeal against a decision to award $3bn damages to HPE in a case which dates back a decade and relates to Big Red's commitment to develop on Itanium hardware.…

More airspace and a hotline to the authority fixed up for the next flight Virgin Galactic has received clearance by US flight regulators to resume spaceflights.…

From a document supposedly about better use of existing silos. Eh? The Ministry of Defence has published a data strategy that calls on the British armed forces to make better use of its "enduring strategic asset" – by spying on social media and dobbing in dissenters to local councils.…

Security firm points to a 'stalkerware' epidemic, new Nobelium group activity Security specialist ESET's latest Threat Report warns of a massive increase in attacks on Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) endpoints – and new activity from the Nobelium gang against European government organisations.…

Accenture poised to get contracts for hardware, software and IT advice as mega-pie sliced UK government has dished out spots on a £3.6bn framework to secure management consultancy services for IT strategy, software spending and hardware investments, among a flood of other advisory categories.…

Cloudy concern allows Graviton2 Arm CPUs to handle your functions Amazon Web Services has made it possible to use its home-baked, Arm-powered Graviton2 CPUs with its Lambda serverless functions.…

Met Office, DeepMind, uni team hope their work will make a splash Computer scientists at DeepMind and the University of Exeter in England teamed up with meteorologists from the Met Office to build an AI model capable of predicting whether it will rain up to 90 minutes beforehand.…

Beijing will oversee their efforts and how their algos work, to stop code messing up society China's authorities have called for internet companies to create a governance system for their algorithms.…

Chill out, OK? Google says it's still up for making Intel's latest Ice Lake data-center processors available in its public cloud service.…

Latest data dump also apparently contains 'a wide range of passwords and API tokens' Entities using the name and iconography of Anonymous (EUTNAIOA) claim to have leaked server disk images extracted from Epik – the controversial US outfit that has provided services to far-right orgs such as the Oath Keepers and Gab, provided a home to social-network-for-internet-outcasts Parler, and hosted hate-hole 8chan.…

Computer vision tool mildly helps doctors identify potentially cancerous cells The US Food and Drug Administration this month authorized the first AI-powered tool designed to help healthcare physicians diagnose prostate cancer.…

Public health experts wonder what took so long YouTube says it will remove anti-vaccine videos from its service and has already blocked the channels operated by several widely viewed anti-vaccine advocates.…

Thanks, science Scientists studying Mars now reckon flooding from lakes contributed to around a quarter of the planet's land erosion and not just continuous flows of water that had been assumed to be the cause.…

Pushy code pressured people to sign up for premium services, netted 'millions of euros' You may be advised not to look a gift horse in the mouth, lest you appear ungrateful for questioning its health. But you probably want to examine your Android phone for GriftHorse, or rather for any of the 200 or so apps with different names that incorporate the malicious code.…

Will someone make the redundancies stop? Kyndryl, the IT infrastructure services division IBM is getting shot of this year, has named its first board of directors in an effort to convert a shrinking sales entity into something more sustainable.…

XSS vulnerability allows miscreants to hijack phone number field on website Apple has been accused of ignoring a vulnerability in the Lost Mode functionality of its AirTags location-tracking accessories which would allow an attacker to seed "weaponised AirTags" for harvesting the iCloud credentials of anyone who find them.…

Don't claim 'no mid-contract price rises if that was not the case' says ASA TalkTalk – the Salford-based telco which has more than four million broadband customers – has been ticked off by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) following nine separate complaints about misleading ads.…

PA, MA bring in National Guard to plug gaps, while Boston teacher tells of stripper bus hired for school trip Education administrators in a number of US states are struggling to get children to school as they claim their bus drivers are being poached by online shopping monolith Amazon.…

$600m buys a lot of microsegmentation Content delivery network Akamai is set to crack open the piggy bank with the purchase of Israel-based Guardicore.…

Oh, and boasts over record-breaking return from IoT segment, too Memory maker Micron has some words of encouragement for those who are still struggling to find the parts they need for a PC build at less than usurious pricing: Supply shortages are likely to be "largely resolved" over the next few months.…

2.4m living and non-living Britons could score a payout, reckons lawsuit starter BT is to be sued by the dead as part of a lawsuit alleging that millions of customers were unfairly overcharged as a result of the one-time state monopoly abusing its market dominance.…

Typical: you wait months for new nasties then two come along at once Security outfit Kaspersky has presented research on what appears to be the second new tool of the Nobelium advanced persistent threat group outed so far this week – a piece of malware dubbed Tomiris.…

Rush of subscribers trying to sort it brings network's online portal down iD mobile – the Dixons Carphone-owned mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) which piggybacks on Three UK's network – has apologised after a billing snafu warned 24,000 customers they needed to cough up or else.…

Co-founder takes over after Ilya Sachkov reportedly nabbed Threat intelligence firm Group-IB has said it is "confident in the innocence of the company's CEO and his business integrity" after he was arrested on suspicion of treason – two weeks after the company's homepage was defaced by vandals.…

Retailers not enthused Calls for a hike in the Digital Services Tax (DST) have received a lukewarm response from British business – even among retailers that have been squeezed the most by online giants like Amazon.…

I'll show you 'highly targeted' Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork goes NSFM (Not Safe For Mealtimes) today with a snapshot of Android going places where Windows fears to tread: the gentleman's facilities of a German motorway service station.…

'Minimal' tweaks shared for all to see Development platform outfit Gitpod has taken the covers off an open-source project aimed at running the latest Visual Studio Code remotely via a browser in the form of OpenVSCode Server.…

Nice ideas, if anyone adopts them Interview As the UK infosec industry prepares for government initiatives intended to expand the sector, how should existing companies keep skilled professionals from jumping ship? Amanda Finch, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Information Security, tells us a thing or two about what she thinks works.…

Southeast England authority goes big – despite £100m black hole in finances Kent County Council – which looks after most of the southeastern England county – has named eight vendors on a framework to supply education management systems in deals that could be worth up to £500m.…

Openreach out and touch a rival Interview The news that so-called alternative network CityFibre has just received a £1.1bn cash injection isn't just a story for the pink pages of the Financial Times – it could mean a shift in the UK's communications landscape.…