The Register

Shares up more than six per cent after-hours as Big Blue's Ballmer exits in surprise management shakeup In a surprise announcement on Thursday, IBM named a new CEO, Arvind Krishna.…

Smart websites should be fine – if you're being scummy, beware Next week Google is scheduled to release Chrome 80 to its stable channel, and says only "a very modest amount of breakage" of websites is expected.…

That tech backlash in full: More and more are using the antisocial network Facebook will fork out more than a half-billion dollars to settle a class-action lawsuit against its facial recognition tech.…

A supercharged 2020 ahead? Or is the Electric Emperor a little short on threads? Tesla stocks jumped last night despite a vaguely disappointing set of financials for Q4 of the company's fiscal 2019.…

We love cheap thrills, don't we? Ming-Chi Kuo, the analyst regarded as one of the most accurate soothsayers when it comes to Apple's product direction, is predicting a busy 2020 for Cupertino, with major refreshes across its entire laptop lines, as well as a new budget-oriented iPhone, and a greater selection of accessories.…

'Hundreds' of staffers in marketing analytics subsidiary to be hit Avast will pull the plug on Jumpshot, its controversial data analytics business, after it was revealed the company was harvesting its users' data.…

Survey is thinly veiled marketing from Microsoft, but the issue is real A new survey published by Microsoft shows the extent of confusion in businesses about how to comply with data protection regulations in the cloud era.…

I didn't see that on the side of a bus Tomorrow, after nearly four years of excruciating debate and rancour, the UK will finally depart the European Union. What happens then? Not much.…

I've been to the year 3000... Not much has changed, but they're still patching Linux Linux fans intent on holding back the years will be delighted to hear that the upcoming version 5.6 of the kernel should see 32-bit systems hanging on past the dread Y2038.…

Performance-focused release with a few new features The Document Foundation has updated its free and open-source LibreOffice suite to 6.4, which it describes as "performance focused", though there are also new features.…

And judging by today's Q3 numbers, that won't be welcome BT is factoring in a £500m financial cost over the next half decade in light of the UK government's decision to limit the amount of Huawei gear used in the building of the country's 5G and gigabit-capable networks.…

'We are focusing on defending systems over identifying and pursuing the person behind the cyber-crime' Enigma A plague of ignorance and misplaced priorities in government and law enforcement, from neighborhood cops all the way up to international bodies, is allowing cyber-crime to run rampant.…

This is literally the whole point of standards Column A country torn apart by nationalism, corruption and warring factions becomes desperate for a commodity supplied by a distant power. The country's leaders try diplomacy, which is rebuffed. They legislate repeatedly to limit supply, but demand is so high that borders become completely porous.…

Around 0.5% of emails opened in the 'bird today, according to one analytics tracker survey Mozilla says it will move the Thunderbird email client to a new, wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, called MZLA Technologies Corporation, which would allow it to monetise the project.…

Most detailed close-ups of our star are in – and get a load of these plasma bubbles the size of Texas The first images from Earth's largest solar telescope are providing the most detailed, close up views of our Sun yet seen.…

Although Meena makes sense, most of the time, color us skeptical of a scoring system devised by web giant AI researchers at Google have trained a giant neural network using a whopping 341GB of discussions scraped from public social media to create what they believe is the most human-like chatbot ever.…

Function accidentally returns OK instead of no-way Code dive The OpenBSD project's OpenSMTPD can be potentially hijacked by a maliciously crafted incoming email.…

Paranoid stance comes as Interior Department website falls over The US government has indefinitely grounded its fleet of roughly 800 drones over ill-defined fears of Chinese espionage.…

Knock knock knock: Give us the money! Knock knock knock: Give us the money! Apple and Broadcom have been told to pay the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) a beefy billion bucks for ripping off three of the US university's Wi-Fi patents.…

Azure am glad we got into the computer rental business, says CEO Microsoft on Wednesday made noise about inclusivity, trust, and sustainability, while also gleefully noting that it had banked about $1.5bn more than expected in its second quarter of its fiscal 2020 year.…

How can a border fee be due when no borders were involved, orgs complain A bunch of tech companies are suing the US government, alleging it illegally charged them an extra $350m in visa fees.…

For an organization accused of being 'all talk, no action', there's not even enough talking – to its own employees The United Nations’ European headquarters in Geneva and Vienna were hacked last summer, putting thousands of staff records at miscreants' fingertips. Incredibly, the organization decided to cover it up without informing those affected nor the public.…

Telecoms giant denies everything, Germans put in order anyway America warned Germany Huawei's cheap'n'cheerful 5G gear was effectively bugged by Beijing's spies and leaking secrets to agents, it is claimed. The US government's evidence of this alleged espionage has not been shared publicly, we note.…

Incredible fondleslab world first Samsung has lifted the lid on the Galaxy Tab S6 5G – a revamp of last year's model with a built-in 5G radio. Although this is a fairly modest upgrade, it is the world's first 5G tablet.…

Cook quizzed on supply chains, widens revenue guidance for second quarter Apple is in talks with suppliers located in Wuhan, China, to “mitigate” any disruption to production caused by the coronavirus outbreak, said CEO Tim Cook.…

You've fscked us, says Uncle Sam Yesterday it was decided that certain "high-risk" vendors, cough, cough, Huawei, will be permitted to contribute towards the UK's 5G network in a limited way.…

Microsoft tries its best to forget 2018's sh!tshow as Surface Go finds its feet AdDuplex's first set of figures for 2020 show that just over two-thirds of Windows 10 PCs are running 2019 software builds.…

Just keep 'em out the core and keep supply chains diverse, ja? It's not just the UK government that's wrestling with the decision to permit Huawei's gear on the 5G network. Across Europe, a similar debate has raged. Can Huawei, which many in intelligence circles believe to be inextricably linked to the Chinese government, be trusted to power the next generation of mobile telephony and data? Today, we got our answer: kinda.…

A curious tale of Bitcoin exchanges and the High Court A Canadian insurance business struck by ransomware paid off the crooks via a cyber insurance policy – and their English reinsurers, having shelled out 109.25 Bitcoins, want it back from the alleged blackmailers.…

Still 'work in progress' but that's a huge vote of confidence The WireGuard VPN protocol, which is smaller, faster and easier to configure than IPsec, has been merged into Linus Torvalds' git repository for version 5.6 of the Linux kernel, the next release.…

209 incidents since 2014, say Freedom of Information figures The NHS has suffered 209 successful ransomware attacks since 2014, according to new figures based on Freedom of Information requests, but with a dramatic improvement since 2017, the year WannaCry ransomware hit the health service.…

If Western Link had a report card, it'd definitely be under the C Brit energy regulator Ofgem has opened an investigation into National Grid and Scottish Power's operations on the Western Link subsea cable.…

Ours is on its way – a fortnight after B-Day There's good news and bad news for those seeking to commemorate the UK's departure from the European Union on 31 January.…

Things looking better after that annus horribilis A year ago, as Apple CEO Tim Cook mustered the strength to defend Apple's strategy in the face of shrinking sales and profits, he could have been forgiven for starting the day by privately weeping into his sugar-free cereal and unsweetened almond milk – the breakfast of Valley kings.…

Also: four years of preparation + four spacewalks = one working Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer? Roundup Welcome to this week's space roundup, with news of a hello to a resurrected instrument, a heart-stopping moment for an old friend and a final farewell to a teenage telescope.…

The Free Software Foundation really set the bar high there Good news everybody! The Free Software Foundation has blown through its self-imposed target of 7,777 signatories in its efforts to persuade Microsoft to make Windows 7 open source.…

Best case? They pass within metres of each other at 14.7 km per second There’s a small but distinct chance a defunct NASA infrared telescope and an old US Naval Research Laboratory satellite will crash into each other on Wednesday evening high above Pittsburgh, Philadelphia.…

Sometimes a cigar-shaped shadow is just a cigar-shaped shadow A neuropsychologist has warned against using artificial intelligence to detect possible signs of extraterrestrial life in images of distant planets and worlds.…

And good luck opting out of that one Ubiquiti Networks is once again under fire for suddenly rewriting its telemetry policy after changing how its UniFi routers collect data without telling anyone.…

Browser makers keep coming back to the need to please advertisers Enigma At the USENIX Enigma conference on Tuesday, representatives of four browser makers, Brave, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, gathered to banter about their respective approaches to online privacy, while urging people not to ask for too much of it.…

We're too outraged to do a Bohemian Rhapsody headline It was a devastating blow to the credibility of Europe’s Galileo satellite project: the navigation system fell over during an upgrade in July, requiring a reboot that took six days. Now it appears it officially never happened.…

Tune in to hear from Veracode on how to stay secure Webcast What is DevSecOps? Simply put, it is the merging of DevOps and security processes to ensure code is secure from development through to testing and deployment.…

Too bad the Republicans aren't going to agree with her Comment It's troubling how in the past few years some countries have, with increasing zeal, blocked off their own citizens from the internet for gross authoritarian reasons.…

'We finished 2019 very strongly – but that is on the strength of the product portfolio' says CEO Lisa Su AMD is touting record quarterly numbers as the chip designer closed out a solid fiscal 2019.…

Hundreds or more said to be chopped worldwide VMware today laid off staff across the globe in various roles and departments.…

And yes, Facebook is involved, as ever Smart-home biz Ring sends its users’ personal app data to a range of analytics and marketing companies, according to an analysis carried out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).…

Cache(me)Out(side), how 'bout dat? Intel on Monday issued a processor data leakage advisory, describing two chip architecture flaws, one of which it tried to fix twice before.…

How about that antivirus now, huh? DEF CON is cancelled. For real this time. DEF CON China, that is.…

Well, at least it's beefier and cheaper than Motorola's throwback effort Samsung is expected to go public with its next foldable flagship, the Galaxy Z Flip, early next month at its Unpacked event in San Francisco.…