The Register

Would you like to pay with a poke? Thales has announced what it claims is the "world's first" payment card to include an onboard fingerprint sensor, promising improved security and usability – and an end to contactless payment limits.…

Commercial exploitation of a person's inner thoughts 'particularly worrisome' Researchers at Imperial College London have sounded the alarm over a "bleak panorama" surrounding brain-computer interfaces (BCI), warning of a potential future in which BCI-equipped cyborgs divide the world – or have their inner thoughts harvested for commercial exploitation.…

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson says 53 per cent of cyber attacks on China come from the US China has very firmly pushed back against the accusation it paid contractors to attack Microsoft's Exchange Server.…

Won't someone please think of the ch, er, money laundering The European Commission has put forward legislation requiring cryptocurrency exchanges and other companies to ensure crypto-asset transfers include the personal details of the customers involved.…

Perseverance prepares to snaffle first sample for eventual retrieval NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has started the process of acquiring its first sample of Martian rock.…

Creator of QWK format suffered fatal heart attack as cops surrounded home A teenager in the US has been jailed for five years for his role in the harassment and swatting of the owner of a desirable Twitter handle – a swoop that led to the netizen's death.…

Denies everything, as governments open probes into the company and its wares The NSO Group, a purveyor of spyware it hopes governments and law enforcement bodies will use to fight terrorism, has announced it will not answer any further questions about allegations raised by Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories that its products have been widely misused.…

Meanwhile, Tokyo games ticket holder data leaks, and those affected can't even use their seats Three US senators have written to their nation's Olympic Committee with a request that it "forbid American athletes from receiving or using Digital Yuan during the Beijing Olympics" – a reference to the Winter Games scheduled to commence on February 4th, 2022.…

Password-stealing package outed by security firm evokes sense of déjà vu Another malicious library has been spotted in the JavaScript-oriented NPM registry, underscoring the continued fragility of today's software supply chain.…

Another year, and Chinese tech bogeyman is still on the blocklist Huawei says it is looking to facilitate a "deeper, mutual understanding" with the US government despite remaining on the security naughty step, and is continuing to spend millions lobbying American officials in areas such as broadband and mobile technology.…

SubT Challenge pits high-tech rescue drones against one another in upsettingly non-violent combat Legendarily loopy US military (and now also non-military) ideas factory DARPA has launched a $1m competition for underground robots.…

'PlugWalkJoe' also said to have meddled with TikTok, SnapChat The Spanish National Police have, at the request of America, arrested UK citizen Joseph O’Connor in Estepona, Spain, in connection with the July 2020 takeover of more than 130 Twitter accounts.…

'Maybe that's what you do, but that's not what everybody does' Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has addressed a question that has occurred to most Windows users one time or another: why does Windows have a "New" menu?…

Ransomware efforts will inevitably lead to threats to life as attacks on OT go OTT Rise of The Machines Rampaging cyber hoods will be using compromised machinery and systems to kill humans by 2025, according to cheerfully optimistic new predictions from research company Gartner.…

Want to dust off that flash luggage set? We Concur, says German giant Business travel is back – kinda – said SAP as it filed results showing total calendar Q2 revenue down 1 per cent year-on-year to €6.67bn.…

Fancy new system shown off at online summit Google has introduced a new Intrusion Detection Service together with "Adaptive Protection" for its cloud firewall, but such services make security a costly feature.…

Olly Joshi talks environmental issues, fundraising, and whether he'd hire '70s Jobs himself A former ad exec is trying to make some cash history by pitting two copies of a job application penned by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1973 against each other at auction – one the original physical copy, and the other a cryptocurrency-backed non-fungible token (NFT).…

Plastic-backed TFT part positioned as perfect for the Internet of Things Researchers at chip designer Arm have shown off a prototype microprocessor - dubbed PlasticARM - built on flexible plastic, letting it curve around surfaces and even flex backwards and forwards.…

Talks of increased interest in EUV, nations' desire to take tech production native Lithography specialist ASML, one of the companies that sells chipmakers the things they need to actually make chips, has announced a barnstorming Q2 with its highest order intake ever - as customers scramble to fill a depleted supply chain eager for parts.…

Ah shucks, industry and investors will have to wait a little bit longer The UK government looks set to delay the publication of its much-anticipated Hydrogen Strategy, Kwasi Kwarteng, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), told MPs this morning.…

There is no escaping Microsoft's messaging platform There are few constants in life, though death and taxes spring to mind, as does Microsoft forcing its Teams collab platform down the throat of any passing users.…

Remembering the second American in space Somewhat lost in the hubbub over Jeff Bezos' jaunt into space is the 60th anniversary of Virgil "Gus" Grissom's suborbital flight aboard Liberty Bell 7.…

'Campaign of engagement and communication' might not include letter, but junior minister doesn't rule it out The UK government has refused to commit to sending a letter to 55 million patients in England informing them about its plans to extract their medical data from GP IT systems.…

Company can't seem to help running its mouth, despite ASA's ruling last year The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has warned mobile network Three not to repeat claims that it is "building the UK's fastest 5G network" and that its network represents "real 5G" – after pulling the company up on the same claims a year ago.…

Gather 'round, kids, and I'll tell you stories of rotary dial phones, modems, and FTP Mozilla has finally expunged File Transfer Protocol (FTP) from the Firefox browser – an action already taken by other major browsers like Chrome and Edge, making Firefox 89.0 the last bastion of the protocol.…

Yet they lose anonymity bid before High Court Hundreds of Westminster political staffers are suing the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) after it allegedly published their salaries, holiday entitlements, and number of hours worked.…

What really happens after you disappear into Bezos' talent hoover? Feature Do you ever get the feeling that there's a party going on and you're not invited? Is that how you feel when you fire up LinkedIn and see yet another long-standing connection has been rewired into Amazon or AWS?…

Academics, senior officers sat at uncomfortable table and asked 'what's going on 'ere, then?' Members of the House of Lords are looking at the role technologies such as AI and facial recognition have in modern policing methods and law enforcement.…

According to simulations, anyway The gravitational field of neutron stars is so strong that so-called mountains poking out from their surfaces only grow to a fraction of a millimetre in height in simulations.…

No rudeness. No cute kids spruiking tat. No violence. No fan frenzies. And no smutty emoticons The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) today announced a "Summer Youth Network Environment Improvement" – a massive cleanse of the Chinese internet to make it safe for kids aged 16 and under.…

How do you feel about your cloud now? Comment Amnesty International's allegations this week that NSO Group's spyware products have been widely abused have rightly sparked a debate about the ethics of digital surveillance.…

Previous bans were imposed for nasty content, then lifted after promises of proper moderation. And here we are again Pakistan has banned made-in-China social network TikTok for the fourth time, and there's no sign this one will prove any stickier than previous efforts.…

Short influencer-fronted infomercials may seep into YouTube YouTube announced yesterday it signed a definitive agreement to acquire India's two-year-old social e-commerce platform, Simsim. The transaction is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.…

Perhaps coincidentally, Google extended deadline of enforced Play-to-Pay on the very same day South Korea will attempt to pass a law that gives app developers the right to use in-app payment services other than those offered by app stores.…

Patches available for priv-esc bug in the open-source software, at least Move over, PrintNightmare. Microsoft has another privilege-escalation hole in Windows that can be potentially exploited by rogue users and malware to gain admin-level powers.…

Deletion of employer's YouTube account deemed violation of release Former journalist Matthew Keys, who served two years in prison for posting his Tribune Company content management system credentials online a decade ago in violation of America's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, has been ordered back to prison for violating the terms of his supervised release.…

Twitter, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft have reopened, kind of Apple has pushed back the reopening of its offices to October, allowing staff to work from home for an extra month as coronavirus cases increase across the US.…

'Who knows how he may be received...' Audacity's new owner Muse Group has been accused of threatening to land a developer in legal hot water, a move that could result in the programmer being forced to return to China to face a government of which he has been a vocal critic.…

HCSEC board's 2020 report filled with pats on back for Chinese biz Huawei has made "no overall improvement" in software engineering processes for its UK telecoms equipment's firmware, its GCHQ overseers have warned.…

A crunchy compendium of strangeness from around the globe Roundup We at The Register are constantly on the lookout for important technology and science news to bring you, our smart, funny and data-hungry readers, because we know you need to be kept up to date.…

Head this way to find out Promo IT directors face two major headaches with historic data. They know that they could free up valuable, on-prem, high-performance storage by migrating cold data into the cloud. But they also worry this could cause access problems should some of it could become “hot” again in the future.…

Baldly going where beardy has gone before, except a bit higher Wally Funk has finally gone to space, accompanied by the Bezos bros and Oliver Daemen aboard Blue Origin's sub-orbital New Shepard.…

Cure worse than the disease for anyone with the 'fgfmsd' daemon activated Security appliance slinger Fortinet has warned of a critical vulnerability in its software that can be exploited to grant unauthenticated attackers full control over a targeted system, providing a particular daemon is enabled.…

Improving the Google-free mobile OS has proven to be an uphill struggle UBports, which took on the task of maintaining the Ubuntu Touch mobile OS after Canonical abandoned it, has released OTA-18 with lots of improvements, but still based on the ancient Ubuntu 16.04.…

Better get a wiggle on because the work is stacking up, those potentially massive fines won't write themselves Tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google face fines of up to 10 per cent of turnover if they're found to be in serious breach of new regulations being considered by the UK government.…

£17m on shiny new Flowbird touchscreen kiosks well spent, apparently Publicly owned rail operator Northern Trains has an excuse somewhat more technical than "leaves on the line" for its latest service disruption: a ransomware attack that has left its self-service ticketing booths out for the count.…

Because Verify was roaring success and cos digi ID will 'reduce cases of online fraud'. Ahem The UK government is launching proposals to boost the legal status of digital identities, something it claims will ensure they are trusted as much as physical documents such as passports.…

Doctors wrote to UK government saying they would refuse to hand over data NHS Digital has again delayed plans for what has been called the biggest data grab in NHS history, introducing new caveats to the extraction of personal medical information. No new implementation date as been set.…

Those affected get free protection services – but only if their Social Security numbers were exposed Law firm Campbell Conroy & O'Neil has warned of a breach from late February which may have exposed data from the company's lengthy client list of big-name corporations including Apple and IBM.…

The Register rakes a talon over next year's battery-powered jalopies As traditional car makers seek to make electric vehicles that won't scare off the buyers, others are taking a slightly different path. Enter Triggo and Microlino.…