The Register

Creator suspects his app's ad identifier was copied but Google keeping quiet On the last day of March, DroidScript, a popular Android app for writing JavaScript code, had its Google advertising account suspended and a week later was removed from the Google Play Store for alleged ad fraud.…

Empire State plant pledges to alleviate semiconductor shortage US chip maker GlobalFoundries will move its headquarters from Santa Clara, California, to Malta, New York, to be closer to its most advanced plant, Fab 8.…

Picking intellectual property fights with internet backbone biz seldom ends well Cloudflare today offered $100,000 for evidence of prior art to kill off a bunch of patents it is accused of infringing.…

Network advertisement of military addresses by obscure corporation not so exciting after all The unexplained awakening over the past four months of more than 100 million previously dormant US Department of Defense (DoD) IPv4 addresses now has an explanation.…

Among the first of many? Software tools biz reports internal use of credential-stealing script HashiCorp, an open-source company whose Terraform product is widely used for automated cloud deployments, has revealed a private code-signing key was exposed thanks to the compromised Codecov script discovered earlier this month.…

Bug that let malicious files slip past defenses now fixed in Big Sur 11.3 Apple has released macOS 11.3, fixing a serious flaw that allowed an attacker to sneak malicious files past the operating system's Gatekeeper security mechanism.…

Then made a house out of it The Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge – population 2,000 – had its internet-bearing cable chewed through in the early hours of Saturday.…

Say goodbye data silos, hello Yellowbrick Summit Promo Compute doesn’t live in one place anymore, and neither does your data.…

Thoma Bravo follows Sophos purchase with further infosec landgrab Proofpoint has become the latest sizable tech vendor to succumb to private equity after Thoma Bravo succeeded in its $12.3bn grasp for the infosec giant.…

Retailers prep for what could be the biggest sales year on record Notebook, desktop and workstation shipments in Europe, Middle East and Africa swelled to almost 24 million units in Q1 as distributors and retailers gear up for potentially the biggest sales year on record for the humble personal computer.…

Filing says most users' devices 'may experience limited water contact' Apple is facing a prospective class-action lawsuit in New York over allegations it misrepresented the levels of water resistance of its iPhones.…

Consumer watchdog blasts platforms for onerous reporting mechanisms UK consumer watchdog Which? has found that ad giants Google and Facebook are failing to remove online scam ads even after victims report them.…

Myriad major regions affected in latest wobble A fresh week and a new crop of cloud woes confronted IBM clients this morning in a bunch of major cities across the planet.…

Pandemic making permanent changes to developer remote working The world has more developers than ever, a new SlashData survey has reported - with 1.4 million more JavaScript developers than six months ago - and developer work patterns have been permanently altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Yes that was a Betteridge headline (badoom, tish) Long-running US skit show Saturday Night Live has once again courted controversy by inviting Technoking Elon Musk on to host.…

You win some, then you lose some A Veritas salesman had £275,000 in "windfall" commission withheld after helping land "the largest ever deal in Veritas's history" – and a judge found a clause in his employment contract which made it lawful to do that.…

Never want to return to daily 9-5 regime? Use psychology to baffle higher-ups With some company bosses hellbent on forcing staff to return to the office once the pandemic is over, research has arrived that warns of the productivity pitfalls of expecting minions to re-embrace the daily commute.…

We are all human beings, we live in a community, and everything we do affects others Column The trouble with good ideas is that, taken together, they can be very bad. It's a good idea to worry about supply chain malware injection – ask SolarWinds – and a good idea to come up with ways to stop it. It's even a good idea to look at major open-source software projects, such as the Linux kernel, with their very open supply chain, and ask – is this particularly vulnerable? After all, a poisoned Linux kernel would be bad enough to make people forget SolarWinds.…

'Everything in this industry always goes to schedule and to plan,' he says Interview Rocket Lab is on a roll, notching up multiple launches and unveiling plans for something considerably grander than its workhorse Electron.…

Ingenuity's third flight goes further, faster, as Perseverance snaps pics 'n' vid of 'copter zipping past VIDEO NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has flown flying faster and further than ever before - even when it was on Earth - and we even have video of Sunday's 80-second flight because the Perseverance Rover’s Mastcam-Z had its eye on the drone's third flight.…

You don't get me, I'm part of the union Who, Me? Bid farewell to the weekend with a tale of surfing snoopage and automation rejected in another story from The Register's Who, Me? files.…

Brit spymaster calls for renewed attention to UK tech capabilities – and expanded role for his agency The director of the UK's signals intelligence agency has delivered a speech in which he contemplated power in the digital age, observing that "China's size and technological weight means that it has the potential to control the global operating system," and hinting at an expanded role for the agency he leads as one way to fight back.…

Here’s a flight plan to map your journey Promo Whatever unit of measurement you use, it’s clear that more and more enterprise computing is happening in the cloud - which also means the cloud is an ever-growing target for cyber attackers.…

Many banned posts were made by opposition politicians and appear to be criticism of the government As India battles a surging second wave of COVID-19 cases and severe shortages of medical supplies to fight it, the nation's government has told Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to remove social media posts it says may panic its populace with misinformation.…

Uninstall code, distributed from backend servers seized in January, fired on Sunday Notorious Windows malware Emotet was automatically wiped from computers yesterday by European law enforcement using a customized DLL.…

Plus: America creates task force to tackle ransomware crims In Brief The Homebrew package manager for macOS and Linux has fixed an issue that could have been exploited by miscreants to run malicious code on people's computers.…

Proper customer protections now required, local authorities urged to make new rules stick China has issued a new code governing “livestreaming” – an emerging marketing practice that has gone big, fast, in China and will be familiar to The Register readers around the world as infomercials for the digital age.…

Dot-org has been offline for a month, says ‘people who have ill intentions’ behind crack A “scanlation” website for Manga has admitted that its members credentials have been stolen and are now being shared online.…

New version adds Hyper-V fun, more support for ACRN IoT hypervisor, support for PlayStation controllers and ‘novelty port’ to ancient Nintendo Linus Torvalds has emitted version 5.12 of the Linux kernel, and warned the next version looks like a whopper.…

Guidelines, privacy, security all a smokescreen for monopoly abuse, lawmakers told Special report Apple and Google were blasted by app developers this week during a US Senate hearing over the tech giant's software souks. Here we summarize that meeting – and take a closer look at why a proposed law in Arizona to tackle the duo's behavior failed to pass.…

DEF CON hails 'an icon in all the positive ways' Obit Celebrated information security researcher Dan Kaminsky, known not just for his technical ability but also for his compassion and support for those in his industry, has died. He was 42.…

Plus: Enormo AI chip gets an upgrade, and more In brief Banks in America are reportedly rolling out cameras with machine-learning software to surveil people, claiming it’ll help reduce fraud, provide a better service to reduce wait times, and monitor homeless people sleeping near ATMs.…

Oops, watchdog doesn't actually have the power to do so, panel unanimously point out The US government's consumer watchdog cannot force scammers to return the money they cheated out of their victims, the Supreme Court declared unanimously this week.…

Watchdog deemed Richard Glenn's conduct 'unacceptable' An IT teacher at an English private school has been banned from teaching for 36 months for "unacceptable professional conduct" that included getting drunk and visiting a strip club with one or more pupils.…

Our plan is better than President Biden's, they claim, with few details A cadre of Republican senators have proposed allocating $65bn to developing broadband infrastructure in America as part of a $568bn five-year spending plan.…

Killer IoT app finally arrives: Keg-tracking tech to tackle light-fingered miscreants Forget all those interminable IoT gadgets gathering dust in the drawers of the world. Brewers may soon be able to breathe easier after signing up to what we're going to call the Internet of Beer.…

US Copyright Office asked to add DMCA amendment Repairs specialist iFixit has urged the US Copyright Office to add exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would allow individuals to legally circumvent digital restrictions in the process of repairing hardware.…

Come for the 'ohana', stay for the massive piles of cash Salesforce has topped a survey of UK executive salaries with median earnings of around £100,000 per annum, beating investment bank Man Group and consultancy Kearney to the top spot.…

Japanese firm has a reckoning to face Post Office employees were wrongly prosecuted by the company as a direct result of it covering up software bugs in its Horizon IT system, the Court of Appeal in England has said as it quashed 39 convictions this morning.…

Also, Dell and HP miss out on expanded board positions Indian IT trade association and advocacy group National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has appointed Rehka Menon of Accenture as chairperson – the first woman to take the position in the organisation's history.…

Second jaunt to the International Space Station for Endeavour SpaceX has launched the second operational Crew Dragon mission, sending another four astronauts to the International Space Station.…

A treat for returning workers as meeting cancelled due to roomful of bork Updated Bork!Bork!Bork! Microsoft is famed for eating its own dogfood and this week chowed down on a bowl of fresh bork as its consulting boss encountered what we can only assume is the company's latest attempt to deal with Meeting Culture.…

Microsoft's own distro lurks under the covers and applications magically appear in the Start menu Hands on Microsoft has released the first public preview of Linux GUI applications on Windows 10 – so we wasted no time in taking it for a spin around the block.…

Get with the disruptive app design, granddad: meaningless errors are cool Something for the Weekend, Sir? An error has occurred… Of course it did – I'm in a hurry and the login is sensing my urgency. Big mistake. Let's try again, more casually. An error has occurred……

As long as the technical nous is there If you've ever worked in a commercial kitchen, you probably know what a "bump bar" is. These plank-like computerised boards are the organisational force behind every restaurant, enabling sweat-drenched chefs to see pending orders and ensure a steady flow of food to the front of house.…

Practical jokes: just don't On Call Welcome to another entry in The Register's On Call files, where we learn that the hilarious pranks of an IT joker can be enjoyed as much as millionaire actor George Clooney's "fun" leg-pulling.…

Early users get speed, so policy-makers may stop building, but more users means slower speeds ... Elon Musk's Starlink project has copped more criticism, this time from a researcher at APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia-Pacific region.…

First, COVID vaccinations, now atmosphere generators for an alien world? We're really cooking on gas now Earthlings have succeeded in creating oxygen away from their lush home world and on the unforgiving dust planet Mars for the first time, using equipment on a robot they have lovingly dubbed Perseverance.…

Sad news: Cupertino seems to think you won’t be comfortable going out until at least the end of the year COVID-19 vaccinations have been administered to hundreds of millions of people, but Apple seems to think that you'll be safest if you don't go out until at least the end of year.…

Expects breakthroughs in design, materials and more. No pressure: Xi Jinping dropped in ahead of launch China's highest-ranked university has opened a new school dedicated to integrated circuits and given it the job of achieving breakthroughs and creating a generation of tech talent for the nation.…