The Register

Say goodbye to the lovely cleaner air we've been breathing for a year The COVID-19 pandemic has passed the one-year mark, and as vaccines roll out, there is light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Here's something to dampen the spirits, though: global air pollution levels are rising, thanks to increased human activity.…

Facebook signs deal to send cash to News Corporation’s Australian mastheads and Fox News wannabe Facebook and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation have struck a deal under Australia’s laws that require The Social Network™ to either send money to local news publishers or face the prospect of being dragged into an arbitration process.…

Reportedly dangles same deal as Apple’s for smaller devs, in one of the few markets it doesn’t utterly dominate Google’s South Korean limb is reportedly on the cusp of slashing the cost of selling apps on its Play store.…

In two to four years, and there's no danger, NASA tells The Reg The most massive chunk of junk yet was just ejected from the International Space Station – though, don’t worry, the 2.9-ton crate containing old batteries shouldn’t be too much of a nuisance. It is expected to harmlessly burn up in Earth’s atmosphere two to four years from now.…

Sky Global’s Jean-Francois Eap denies any wrongdoing The CEO of Sky Global – which sold encryption chat software with customized smartphones – has come out fighting after Uncle Sam charged him with knowingly assisting the international drug smuggling trade.…

Chocolate Factory still stomping bugs out of its bird-themed post-third-party-cookie features Updated Google's effort at "building a privacy-first future for web advertising" already looks like it will require some privacy retrofitting.…

Core counts and clock speed about the same though architecture work said to bring performance boost AMD on Monday showed off its family of third-generation Epyc server processors code-named Milan.…

Redmond says gremlin identified tho rollback is taking longer than expected Updated Microsoft's Azure Active Directory (AAD) service broke down on Monday for at least some customers, thereby preventing affected Azure users from logging into and authenticating with the cloud giant's services.…

Spend your cash on real locks, advises Cranfield University Installing a smart doorbell on your abode could actually increase your home's attractiveness to burglars, researchers from Britain's Cranfield University have said.…

Yep. Gadget botherers had to haul out a 'specialist tool' Released in China last year, and about to drop in the UK, the Xiaomi Mi 11 drew attention because of its status as the debut device for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset. Now it has got the interest of right-to-repair campaigners iFixit for different reasons altogether.…

Space: Not all its cracked up to be Bad news for astronauts and cosmonauts alike: The International Space Station (ISS) is continuing to lose pressure after Russian attempts to patch cracks in the outpost's hole have failed to stem leaks.…

Developers adopting latest and greatest will have to tangle with XAML Microsoft has released its second preview of .NET 6, but confirmed there will be no visual designer for WinUI 3.0 when it comes out in November this year.…

But what does this actually mean? Join us to find out Webcast It’s almost a cliché to say that in the past 12 months we’ve seen technological transitions that should have taken years happen in a few weeks, whether it’s a shift to remote working or the embrace of the cloud.…

Market as a whole swelled 7% in 2020, as COVID-smacked nations built out networks, says analyst The global market for telecoms equipment grew 7 per cent during 2020, according to an analyst report, in a year marked by an increased dependence on Internet connectivity and widespread 5G deployments.…

If you want floating Pis, check out the International Space Station Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has dismissed speculation over a possible stock market float, telling The Register: "It's not something we're actively pursuing."…

Go-live deadline of 2019 whooshed by - and that's going to cost taxpayer £173m Stability problems with the UK Border Crossing system meant only 300 staff were able to use the delayed software in December last year, well short of the 7,000 expected to use it by June 2021, according to a report by MPs.…

HMRC shuffles the pork barrel again UK tax collector Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs is looking to have a friendly chat with tech vendors as part of its plan to contract £23.1bn in "mobility services".…

Plus: Verkada flaw finder cuffed and Apple boss may have leaked secrets In brief It's looking like the exploitation of critical Exchange flaws that Microsoft revealed at the start of the month could be much worse than folks first suspected.…

Judge rules 'Communist Chinese Military Company' designation 'arbitrary and capricious' Stocks in Beijing-based electronics outfit Xiaomi leapt today after the firm was given a preliminary injunction removing it from a Trump-era US blacklist targeting "Communist Chinese Military Companies" (CCMC).…

Org was originally supposed to launch in 2022 – then a pandemic happened The UK's £158m Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (VMIC) has an "urgent requirement" for a £7m SaaS ERP system as the facility's launch is being accelerated due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.…

Can they pull it off? They sure know how to code. Straddling the agnostic position of consultants with the ardor of a vendor may be harder Feature India’s outsourcers grew and grew by working on other peoples’ software.…

The politics of a global decentralised high-speed public internet service Column 2020 was, by general consent, a bit naff. Everyone moped around not doing much. Everyone except Elon Musk, who pushed some 800 radiating routers into low-earth orbit (LEO) atop his personal fleet of reusable space rockets. As you do.…

Behold, the amazing bullsh*tting man Who, Me? Today's edition of Who, Me? is a sorry tale of credit where it most certainly is not due.…

New reconstruction based on more evidence finds ancient mechanical computer could track planets, moon, eclipses, even the seasons and stars Academics from University College London and The Cyprus Institute assert that they’ve built the most accurate model of the Antikythera Mechanism, the one-of-a-kind ancient Greek machine made of meshed gears.…

Only for Google cloud customers, and The Chocolate Factory will need 'deep familiarity with your workloads’ Google Cloud has turned the company’s famed site reliability engineering methodology into a consulting service.…

Plans include replicating Singapore’s consumer tech security ratings scheme The Biden administration has outlined its plan to address US government security in the wake of attacks on SolarWinds' Orion platform and Microsoft Exchange, with closer private sector collaboration the centerpiece of its response.…

Data centres are on track for restoration from March 22nd and more than 3,500 new servers already secured There’s good news and bad news for customers of French cloud operator OVH.…

'Quad' group wants alternatives to China. Also freedom and governance that reflects shared values The first “Quad summit” of leaders from Australia, India, Japan, and the USA has announced the group will create a “Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group”.…

Open source project shows Apple has done some funky stuff with M1 The Asahi Linux project has published the first progress report detailing its effort to port Linux to the Apple Silicon platform.…

Plus: Google Ethical AI team firings backlash worsens In brief Facebook this week revealed an internal project to create machine-learning models that can understand visual, audio, and written content from videos publicly uploaded to its social network.…

Weapons-grade hypocrisy on one side, opportunistic hand-wringing about the press on the other Video Google and Microsoft were locked in a rare public war of words on Friday as the US House subcommittee on antitrust held a hearing to discuss how Big Tech has impacted the media.…

Boffin who invented ANS encoding and made it public domain worries Microsoft will come rent-seeking Analysis In June, 2019, Microsoft applied for a US patent covering enhancements to a data encoding method known as rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System (ANS) family that form the foundation of data compression schemes used by Apple, Facebook, Google, various other companies, and open source projects.…

Gross? Maybe, but at least your Fitbit is still working Imagine you are out for a run with tunes fuelling your stride. Suddenly, your earbuds run out of juice and your good vibes come to a screeching halt. "Ugh," you groan as you look to your activity tracker for encouragement, only to realise it's dead too.…

I don't believe it, I had to see it, I came back, I came back haunted Google on Friday released proof-of-concept code for conducting a Spectre-based attack against its Chrome browser to show how web developers can take steps to mitigate browser-based side-channel attacks.…

Less than a fifth of a linguine, for goodness' sake – come on now Reg Standards Bureau A new potential contribution to the world's sole source of approved units of measure has emerged – the Haribo gummy bear.…

Nice to see politicos agree on something, even if it is 'bipartisan dislike' of China A change in occupancy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hasn't done much for Huawei's fortunes as the Biden administration looks set to toughen restrictions against the battered Chinese telecoms outfit.…

GCHQ offshoot points orgs at Microsoft advice and tools The UK's National Cyber Security Centre has reminded Brits to patch their Microsoft Exchange Server deployments against Hafnium attacks, 10 days after the US and wider infosec industry shouted the house down saying the same thing.…

iFixit's flagship autopsy finds glue. Lots of glue iFixit – an organisation with a toddler-like proclivity for breaking phones – today published its teardown of Samsung's latest and greatest: the Galaxy S21 Ultra.…

Writing to forbidden memory and not closing the door cause headaches for custodians of restored spacecraft The Hubble Space Telescope resumed science operations this morning after a software error knocked the veteran spacecraft offline.…

Industry will pick up the rest of bill... yep, this old chestnut again The UK government is set to release £500m of funding for the Shared Rural Network to improve mobile access in far-flung areas by adding new infrastructure and convincing operators to share their antennas with rivals.…

So how's that UWP thing working out for you? Axe-happy Redmond has set the clock ticking on paid apps from its moribund Microsoft Store for Business and Education.…

Come on in and take a look at this week's opportunities – and keep those free ads coming if you need tech talent Job Alert With the pandemic still in full swing, The Reg is publishing free job ads to help keep tech professionals in gainful employment during these unusual times.…

The circle is complete. Now I am the master… er, I mean 'the source' Something for the Weekend, Sir? "Let me be absolutely clear about this…" As soon as you hear these words, you know the rest of the sentence will be evasive, meandering, and vague.…

'They're dictating how to monitor networks, without fully understanding the impact on the sector' Introduced last year by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the UK's Telecommunications Security Bill aims to change how mobile and fixed-line communications systems are built and operated.…

Similar attempt was made in London, where it failed Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou's legal team has begun proceedings against HSBC in Hong Kong to obtain documents they believe will support her defence against extradition from Canada to the US.…

37 years later and fomer state-owned telco might be facing its own Black Monday For the first time since 1987, the Communication Workers Union is to run a national ballot of unionised workers at BT Group to test their appetite for strike action over job losses, office closures and more.…

The foulest stench is in the air, the funk of forty thousand... cigarettes? On Call A reader's brush with filth is retold in today's episode of On Call in which the dirtier side of IT is laid bare.…

Less pew, pew, pew and more click, click, click NASA released this week the first audio recordings captured by its six-wheeled nuclear-powered rover Perseverance in action, zapping rock samples as the Martian wind eerily whispers in the background..…

Works just fine on ancient low-end Androids, so now The Social Network™ can monopolise developing nations too! Facebook has unveiled a new weapon in its world domination plan: a two-megabyte version of its Instagram app.…

Cloud company offers slightly confused roadmap to restoration French cloud provider OVH has suggested a UPS could be the cause of the fire that destroyed one of its data centres and took another three offline.…