The Register

Triple-I worked on Homeland Security and ICE systems An IT contractor has agreed to pay back $6m to the US federal government for charging expert IT rates while sending newbies.…

The last attempt to resume your country failed. Would you like to try again? Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork is back with a bang this week as Windows disgraces itself not on a mere kiosk, but on a billboard glaring balefully out over Manchester Piccadilly.…

Some enterprise folk less keen on cloudy machine learning Cassandra database slinger DataStax has "paused" its AIops project, Vector, while it figures out what exactly AIops is.…

Showdown over future of the .uk operator set for late March, shenanigans already alleged The .uk registry operator Nominet has opened voting on an extraordinary measure that would see its CEO fired and non-elected members booted off its board.…

GSMA chief offers new burgers-per-year benchmark for techno-impact GSMA Director General Mats Granryd has opened the Shanghai edition of the Mobile World Congress by saying the world “demanded global mobility around the clock” during 2020, that smartphones delivered, and by doing so showed how technology can be a force for good.…

Already interest from MEPs, one body tells us Microsoft and four European press industry trade groups on Monday urged the European Union to introduce new laws that would require websites like Google and Facebook to pay publishers for linking to news content on their platforms.…

Relationship status changes from ‘Separated’ to somewhere between 'In a Domestic Partnership’ and 'It's Complicated' ANALYSIS Facebook and Australia have done a deal that will see news links returned to The Social Network™ Down Under.…

See how plucky Perseverance touched down on the unforgiving dust world Video NASA successfully landed its fifth robotic rover on the surface of Mars just five metres from its target, the American space agency said after releasing footage of the historic landing.…

‘We are only insanely paid vs ludicrously paid at Google or Netflix’ If you need to talk to someone at Microsoft in a hurry over the next day or three, they may be a little slow to reply as the Windows giant has rolled out its annual internal poll for employees.…

Even kit from 2019 is covered and so are the modestly priced A and M series Samsung has announced that all its Galaxy devices will now receive security updates for four years after initial release.…

ASF board member resigns in protest of org's online chatter 'policing' The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has removed Marko Rodriguez from the TinkerPop project he co-founded because his provocative Twitter posts were said to have violated the ASF Code of Conduct.…

Check Point says Beijing 'reconstructed' Equation Group's hacking tool long before leak A zero-day exploit said to have been developed by the NSA was cloned and used by Chinese government hackers on Windows systems years before the cyber-weapon was leaked online, it is claimed.…

It's not a bug, it's a feature you need to put in a change request to alter, says developer Updated Prison inmates in Arizona who should be eligible for release remain incarcerated because the state's inmate management software can't handle sentence adjustments, it is claimed.…

Bit derivative, though Talent borrows, genius steals. With that in mind, here's Huawei's first new pholdable in almost two years*: the Huawei Mate X2.…

Real names, usernames, and what appears to be SHA-1 hashed passwords exposed Daycare camera product NurseryCam was hacked late last week with the person behind the digital break-in coming forward to tip us off.…

Display-tastic firm's work on flashy CES kit said to have been paused LG has reportedly put its novel rollable phone on ice, telling suppliers to pause work on the project as it re-examines the long-term viability of its loss-making mobile business.…

Begone foul stash for the secret hash Microsoft has issued an update for its Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI software that adds integration with Active Directory.…

Time to do a test for clear media after world+dog starts seeing pink squares Apple is investigating a weird graphical glitch in the latest M1 Mac Mini, which sees intrusive pink squares spontaneously appear on the display.…

Observers say having multiple clients works in favour of techie contractors The UK's tax collector has lost its appeal against TV presenter Kaye Adams in a £124,000 IR35 case which, according to tax experts, could have implications for IT contractors.…

It’s a bird, it’s a plane… holy crap there’s a nacelle in my kitchen In what can only be described as a bad day for Boeing, not one but two of its planes suffered engine fire and began shedding parts along their respective flight paths.…

Plus: IBM reportedly trying to sell Watson AI Health, and more In brief Google has finished its probe into the controversial ousting of Timnit Gebru, co-leader of its Ethical AI unit. The ad giant promised to implement new procedures around “potentially sensitive employee exits,” though it did not make its findings public.…

What to do when companies think they own their customers Column Towards the turn of the century, my girlfriend revealed what she wanted more than anything else: a Tamagotchi. She added, in terms that revealed a good working knowledge of the Lysistrata, that it was my job to get her one.…

'Shambolic', 'unfair', 'wholly incorrect'... all because they wanted rid of their sales manager A UK cloud reseller that tried to fend off an unfair dismissal lawsuit by giving “knowingly untruthful” evidence to a judge has been ordered to pay more than £80,000 by the Employment Tribunal.…

Latest and greatest put Samsung in second, while Huawei risks irrelevancy The launch of the iPhone 12 massively distorted the smartphone market in Q4 2020 with the new 5G-capable mobes sucking oxygen from rival Samsung.…

Big Bang? More like Big Bork thanks to a warning shouted too late Who, Me? This week's Who, Me? is dedicated to that moment when you realise you're about to do something silly but are unable to stop yourself.…

Plus: IBM's lawyers hacked, Kia denies ransomware hit, France declares war on hackers, and more In brief Brave has patched up its privacy-focused web browser after it was spotted leaking its Tor users' dark-web habits.…

Banks given limits to their involvement with web giants’ online lending operations China has set out new rules for lenders that operate online, and they’ll probably make life harder for Alibaba’s financial services limb, the Ant Group, should it consider another attempt at a stock market listing.…

5.9 percent of silicon made at home now, goal is 70 percent in 2025 and the USA's sanctions seem to be biting China-owned silicon manufacturers' domestic market share has slipped below six percent, according to analyst firm IC Insights, suggesting the nation's goal of silicon semi-self-sufficiency in just four years time is in strife.…

Talks continue but pay-for-news law won’t be amended Australia’s finance minister says it is his “expectation” that the nation “will pull back from advertising on Facebook” while The Social Network continues to prevent the sharing of links to news stories in the nation.…

Behaves like a legit software installer and phones home for instructions, but lacks a payload US security consultancy Red Canary says it’s found MacOS malware written specifically for the shiny new M1 silicon that Apple created to power its post-Intel Macs.…

Popular programming language, at the top of its game, still struggles to please everyone Feature February 20, 2021, the 30th anniversary of Python, finds the programming language at the top of its game but not without challenges.…

Brits score vital win against US giant's gig economy model The UK Supreme Court yesterday ruled that Uber’s drivers in Blighty are workers for the app-based taxi service, rather than self-employed contractors, potentially paving the way for more than 40,000 drivers to claim minimum wage and paid time off.…

Goodwood Festival of Speed took a nasty turn in 2019, finds AAIB A “flying car” drone being shown off at Goodwood Aerodrome in England was using unlicensed spectrum for safety-critical radio commands – and when its operators lost control the craft climbed into airspace reserved for Gatwick Airport, an accident report has revealed.…

Doomed bill seems to forget municipal broadband exists due to failures of private sector House Republicans this week proposed legislation that would ban the creation of municipal broadband networks at a federal level, and shutter networks in areas where some private competition exists – purportedly to improve internet access across the US.…

Consistency is key Microsoft is almost as keen to kill off Legacy Edge, Windows 10's original great browser hope, as it is to stomp on the ancient Internet Explorer – because it looks like it'll be sticking around on the Surface Hub.…

First Amendment under the microscope Former NFL player and pro-wrestler Lenwood Hamilton has asked the Supreme Court to revive his suit accusing Microsoft and Epic Games of using his likeness in the Gears of War game franchise.…

Canine friends may not be as dumb as they sometimes like to appear Canine stars of internet videos the world over have another feather in their cap as a scientific study claims they show signs of self-awareness and understanding the consequences of their actions.…

Who wants to live forever? Rationalisation of the Long Term Servicing Channels at Microsoft has led to the firm chopping the support lifecycle of the next LTSC of Windows 10 in half: from 10 to five years.…

Bloke was placed into vulnerable category because of his weight The conflict between imperial and metric reached new heights this week as a man believed by his GP surgery to be 6.2cm tall was invited to be vaccinated against COVID-19.…

Gouging in a pandemic? Shurely shome mishtake... Laptops aren't quite as rare as hen's teeth or rocking horse shit but massive demand means inventories for all vendors are low, and clearly the laws of supply and demand are leading some to raise prices.…

Aria. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? Speaking to the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee last autumn, Dr Peter Highnam, US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) deputy director, said: “Having national security as the mission frames everything. It is not wide open; there is always context and use cases.”…

How about some investment... or at least a tax break? The US semiconductor industry has sent an open letter to President Biden [PDF] asking for support in domestic semiconductor research and manufacturing, arguing the sector's importance to national security and the country's tech dominance demand it.…

Worth a try, eh, chums? Huawei has lost its novel endeavour to use a 1879 law in London as part of its efforts to get CFO Meng Wanzhou out of a US extradition tussle in Canada.…

Office 2021 is on the way and 'the cloud is where we invest' Microsoft has announced plans for its lucrative Office product line, with Office 2021 and a Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) version that halves the support given to editions from years past.…

A 48-month, £41m hyperscale cloud service deal done with HMRC The UK's tax collection agency might not have had much luck squeezing money out of Amazon Web Services but the cloud division of Jeff Bezos' empire has managed to convince HMRC to sign off more multimillion-pound contracts.…

Not quite the data dump I thought you meant Something for the Weekend, Sir? The authorities have asked me to send them my poop in the post. Not all of it, mind. That would be ridiculous.…

Miserly? No, they'll throw in a loan for a season train ticket too The UK's Ministry of Justice is hiring a director of technology, offering £130,000 plus a season ticket loan for whoever wins the chance to "fix the basics" of Britain's disintegrating, delay-ridden, semi-digitised justice system.…

Press space or click mouse to continue ...wait, not yet, doh! A judge has ruled that Citibank can't claw back more than $500m (£360m) it mistakenly paid out after outsourced staff and a senior manager made a nearly billion-dollar (£700m) user-interface blunder.…

Wow, this PC is hot stuff... actually it might be a bit too hot On Call Can you smell burning? Is it the Friday morning bacon? Are you having a stroke? Or is it something more sinister? Find out in this week's episode of On Call.…

Singapore's holding a global mega-conf in August, will have 600 no-quarantine-required rooms ready Singapore has created a hotel that makes COVID-19-safe business meetings possible, in an attempt to give long-haul commercial travel a boost. But while the new facility will makes meetings possible, it also makes the fun parts of business travel impossible.…