The Register

AT&T and T-Mobile also have to write enormous cheques before March 24 Radio spectrum doesn’t come cheap. Just ask America's communications regulator, the FCC, which just announced the winning bidders in its long-awaited auction of C-band spectrum, which hauled in a cool $81bn*.…

Plus: User passwords were stored in plain text after all The UK's National Cyber Security Centre is now helping IoT gadget firm FootfallCam Ltd secure product lines following the recent digital burglary of its nursery webcam operation.…

Experimental blocking of sites that load resources from four big companies makes the web unusable A new extension for Google Chrome has made explicit how most popular sites on the internet load resources from one or more of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.…

EFF bod slams effort 'to silence a critic' as $50k+ raised to challenge lawsuit Analysis A copyright-infringement lawsuit brought against a university staffer by Proctorio – a maker of software that monitors students during online exams – was this week dubbed "meritless" by an EFF analyst.…

Which? rides to the rescue of consumers and... er... Apple and Samsung? The UK Consumer's Association has kicked off a claim against chipmaker Qualcomm, alleging that its licensing activities have resulted in UK 4G smartphone owners being overcharged.…

Public outcry over access – all because £450m agency doesn't have school-grade web skills The Government Digital Service (GDS) has mounted its assault on the last standalone UK.gov department website – triggering two ministerial interventions to halt the damage amid a public outcry over access to justice.…

What it’s like managing code running at 200 KPH? Find out here Promo Managing corporate software is a significant challenge in today’s marketplace. Consider what it’s like keeping 250,000 lines of code up-to-speed when the system it’s running on literally races at 200 KPH and generates a stream of data spanning 700 different parameters.…

Contract was clear and trying to backdate changes was naughty, rules Australian court HP’s Australia tentacle has lost an appeal in which it sought to deny a top salesperson a colossal commission.…

Boffins find those developing apps for the chatty AI assistant can bypass security measures Computer security bods based in Germany and the US have analyzed the security measures protecting Amazon's Alexa voice assistant ecosystem and found them wanting.…

And managed to pull it at speed, despite the menace of quantum noise Researchers at the Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) claim they've invented the first high-speed quantum random number generator built on realistic quantum devices.…

CEO Jensen Huang admitted his wunder-biz is 'constrained' Nvidia continues to grow and beat Wall Street's expectations amid a global chip shortage. On Wednesday, it revealed bumper figures for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2021, the three months to January 31, and full-year results.…

Just the sort of thing you’d do if you want your national cryptocurrency to be broadly accepted China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates have signed up yo participate in a a “Multiple Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge” (m-CBDC Bridge) to explore how they might conduct cross-border transactions using cryptocurrencies.…

And pledges to 'push' for $37bn in funding to increase chip manufacturing capacity President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to do something about the semiconductor supply-chain woes that have left folks unable to obtain computer parts, system builders unable to ship PCs and game consoles, and automakers unable to manufacture vehicles.…

Island nation may become tech goliath's destination for 5G and edge research Dell has opened what it says is its first innovation hub of its kind outside of America, in Singapore.…

Tablets also sought with call for top builders to diversify operations India has added servers, laptops, tablets, and all-in-one PCs to the list of kit it is willing to pay to have made on its soil.…

End of an era for iconic electronics shop chain Store chain Fry’s Electronics announced on Wednesday it was shutting down for good, saying the internet and the coronavirus pandemic together sounded the death knell for the Silicon Valley institution.…

Judge Mendez also suggests trying to use 1934 law in 2021 is... sub-optimal California’s net neutrality rules will finally kick in this year after a judge rejected an effort by the cable industry to stop it.…

Few details beyond 'operational error' The US Federal Reserve's money-transfer systems failed on Wednesday for a number of hours, likely halting the electronic movement of billions of dollars.…

Not a great day for Bombardier, Leonardo and Seaspray customers A CAD drawing of a radar antenna stolen and leaked online by criminals is of a military radar system produced by defense contractor Leonardo and fitted to a number of US and UAE aircraft, The Register has learned.…

They say 'NASA' and 'ESA', not 'You tried' NASA took its mind off ongoing problems with the testing of its monster Space Launch System by slapping stickers on the fairings.…

Should be with carriers in the second quarter HPE is getting into the OpenRAN game, with the newly minted Communications Technology Group today launching the OpenRAN Solution Stack, which combines network functionality with a suite of management tools.…

Yet more woes for embattled industry As Taiwan grapples with a major drought, local chipmaker TSMC has started ordering water by the truckload to supply its fabrication plants.…

Tiny $4 computer meets tiny OS Those pondering what to do with the latest Raspberry Pi gizmo, the $4 Pico, have a new option in the form of a FUZIX port.…

Plus: Why the Chocolate Factory only uses code it builds from source Interview Worried about the security of Linux and open-source code, Google is sponsoring a pair of full-time developers to work on the kernel's security.…

Single-piece blend of metals to help get company into Prime time A 12 metric tonne 3D printer - one of the largest in Europe - has been commissioned by Orbex, intended to allow the Scottish space launch biz to "print" 35 rocket engines each year.…

Report says CEO sipped watermelon cocktails with NHS England chief at cosy party Campaign groups are seeking a judicial review of the UK government's decision to award a £23m NHS contract to controversial AI company Palantir.…

AMD or Intel flavours, Wi-Fi 6, and... an antimicrobial component? Lenovo is refreshing a large chunk of its ThinkPad line, upgrading specs for its mobile workstations-class devices and redesigning the X13 and X13 Yoga portables.…

Trial date set for February 2022 The multimillionaire former boss of UKFast, Britain's largest homegrown web hosting business, has denied allegations of rape and sexual assault.…

Opted for 128GB? Better hope that software bloat doesn't bite you Microsoft has dashed fanboy hopes that the swappable SSD in its new Surface Pro 7+ might lead to an upgrade or two in the future.…

It wanted £128m in wasted spending – but customer wasn't blameless for debacle, rules UK High Court Co-Op Insurance has won £13m from IBM in a High Court lawsuit brought over a £175m Agile software platform contract which collapsed in 2017 after a litany of failures by Big Blue and its subcontractor 1insurer.…

That's an expensive reimplementation Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has won a £4m contract to bump up the University of Manchester from Oracle Financials version 12.1.3 to 12.2.8 or later.…

Ah oui, mais est-ce de l'art? Bork!Bork!Bork! While a number of factors may be preventing the average tourist from enjoying European travels, bork appears to know no borders.…

In 'Woven City' human-driven cars aren't allowed, 'personal mobility devices' get their own roads, and sensors tell robots when you need help Toyota on Tuesday broke ground on "Woven City", a smart city project in Japan that doesn't permit private cars and where your robot might stock your fridge.…

New GIAC qual shows you can put the Sec into DevSecOps and quantify the risk in SRE Promo On the face of it, cloud penetration testing might appear a complex undertaking involving very different architectures, such as containers and Kubernetes, to those found in traditional on-prem infrastructure.…

AWS flicks the switch on EFS too for those who fancy sharing cloudy volumes Amazon Web Services has levelled up its cloudy macOS offering.…

Hey man, are your cookies trackin' me? Take 'em out. You gotta keep 'em separated Mozilla has revised the way the latest build of the Firefox browser handles HTTP cookies to prevent third-parties from using them to track people online, as part of improvements in build 86 of the code.…

Study sees increasing adoption of cloaking to bypass cookie barriers Boffins based in Belgium have found that a DNS-based technique for bypassing defenses against online tracking has become increasingly common and represents a growing threat to both privacy and security.…

Adds ‘Premium’ tier to ‘You can have any CPU so long as it’s a slightly old Xeon’ cloud Cloud contender DigitalOcean has upgraded its cloud, adding AMD CPUs, and adopting Intel's latest Xeon Scalable silicon.…

And guess what? Version 7.3 will emphasise hybrid cloud in line with new CEO Arvind Krishna's wishes IBM has formally announced a new version of its AIX operating system.…

13m passengers a day, a million tickets bought on digital platforms, and yet few details offered on what went wrong Indian Railways has revealed it has suffered “a number of incidents … regarding breaches in various IT applications” and appears to have blamed some of them on sloppy infosec practices among staff working from home due to the COVID-10 pandemic.…

Duo picked up sacks of cash sent via FedEx, UPS, USPS etc Two bagmen who collected cash from thousands of victims of robocall scams have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges.…

Senate intelligence committee hears ideas in light of SolarWinds disaster The private sector should be legally obliged to disclose any major hacks of their systems, says Microsoft’s president and top lawyer Brad Smith.…

If you don’t patch, the hosts driving all your virty servers are at risk. So maybe your to-do list needs a tickle? VMware has revealed a critical-rated bug in the HTML5 client for its flagship vSphere hybrid cloud suite.…

So says Digital Shadows as it puts a price on illicit access methods A growing category of cyber-crime consists of breaking into corporate networks and doing nothing else – except selling that illicit access to others for about $7,000 a go, says infosec biz Digital Shadows.…

Along with epidemiologists. As for the hospitality industry… not so much The IT industry is heading into boom times, according to the US government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics which has revised its annual jobs report in the face of the pandemic.…

And what may be CAD drawing of a military radar antenna The Clop ransomware gang claims to have stolen documents from aerospace giant Bombardier’s defense division – and has leaked what appears to be a CAD drawing of one of its military aircraft products, raising fears over what else they’ve got.…

'More about branding than it is quality,' reckons analyst Spotify will introduce CD-quality lossless audio streaming, in a new service for premium subscribers to be rolled out in selected markets later this year.…

Good chance a phone you buy this year will use this photography tech Samsung today announced its latest smartphone sensor tech, the ISOCELL GN2. Already in production, this image sensor promises improved low-light performance over its predecessors, despite supporting a high (50MP) megapixel count.…

An end to dongle hell in sight? This year's crop of MacBook Pro laptops are expected to include dedicated HDMI ports and an integrated SD card reader, says an analyst with the inside track on the twists and turns in Apple's roadmap.…

More women in tech workforce too, and salaries staying firm or going up The number of UK tech jobs has surpassed pre-pandemic levels and the sector now employs more individuals than at any time in its history, according to official data released today.…