The Register

Oil transport by road allowed after Colonial Pipeline goes down, operator says recovery is under way but offers no recovery date One of the USA’s largest oil pipelines has been shut by ransomware, leading the nation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to issue an regional emergency declaration permitting the transport of fuel by road.…

NASA records, shares sound of Ingenuity drone on Mars, like we're in some kind of sci-fi flick Video One of the microphones on Perseverance, NASA’s latest and greatest Mars rover, has recorded the sounds of its autonomous helicopter Ingenuity flying on the Red Planet, providing scientists with the first ever audio samples of an aircraft operating on another planet.…

'Elon's tweet does not match engineering reality' states poorly redacted report Tesla CEO Elon Musk's public statements about the state of his automaker's Autopilot assistive driving technology overestimate the system's capabilities, according to documents released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).…

Antisocial giant insists 'Help keep FB free of charge' messaging is merely educational The number of Facebook and Instagram users on iOS agreeing to be tracked by the social networking behemoth for targeted ads has fallen drastically in the week since Apple's iOS 14.5 debuted – and Zuck & Co have hit back.…

But beware lock-in-as-a-service, analyst warns MariaDB has added proprietary bells and whistles, in the form of distributed SQL, for its DBaaS and supposedly developer-friendly front end.…

Plus: NCSC warns of how hostile powers may exploit smart city infrastructure Russian spies from APT29 responded to Western agencies outing their tactics by adopting a red-teaming tool to blend into targets' networks as a legitimate pentesting exercise.…

Biz expected 4,000 signups, got 60,000, system couldn't cope GitLab says a surge in demand and a technical shortcoming resulted in the DevOps outfit yanking a free certification offer barely two days after turning on the tap.…

Totally Sucks, Buddy: Debit payments held up since April, online and app still wobbly, say readers TSB admitted today it still hadn't fixed a transaction processing issue that has for days held up customers' payments, with users continuing to have issues at the time of publication.…

Software giant vows data processing of EU cloud services to stay in EU, which means that currently... Microsoft has announced plans to ensure data processing of EU cloud services within the borders of the political bloc in a move that expert observers claim reveals problems with the firm's existing setup.…

I thought we were friends An Apple exec has spoken of his shock after Fortnite creator Epic Games installed a hotfix that allowed it to deploy its own payment methods, thus skirting the 30 per cent App Store tax.…

Move comes days after firm acquired by Muse Group Open source audio software outfit Audacity, now under new management, is adding some "basic telemetry", much to the alarm of many of its community.…

Just four years to go before planned switch-off The tiny Suffolk town of Mildenhall is the second place where Openreach has stopped selling copper products as the company develops its strategy for withdrawing legacy telephone lines.…

A reminder of golden Start Menu days Bork!Bork!Bork! There are certain things that do not belong in pizza. One is pineapple. Another is the Windows Start Menu.…

Now that's a Buffett overflow error Bug of the week Here's a programming gremlin that caught our eye this week: a share price exceeded the 32-bit unsigned integer limit of a stock exchange's code.…

We're nicer in person, we swear In an attempt to make Twitter feel less like a small-town Wetherspoons at closing time, the company will start asking users to reconsider sending tweets its algorithms perceive to be mean.…

No lessons learned from (literally) decades of media format wars Something for the Weekend, Sir? Argh, where did I put that old comic? Someone told me it's a collector's item! It has value!…

'Discriminatory or harassing conduct will not be tolerated' A permaban from Perl events over "unacceptable" behaviour has been reduced to a year for the developer concerned, named by several separate Perl sources as Matt Trout.…

Algos guiding self-driving cars don’t expect to see a STOP sign next to food. So if someone put a pic showing apples at a busy intersection ... Black Hat Asia Computer vision systems display “correlation bias” that makes it possible to create adversarial images, that could have real-world consequences such as messing with self-driving cars’ ability to accurately interpret road signs.…

I'll talk you through the steps... oh sh- On Call Corporal Cockup meets Major Outage in this week's episode of On Call as a reader's helpful walkthrough takes down the telephony server.…

Satellite shootdown test still causing operational and diplomatic hassles after 14 years Tired of space junk and weapons, US military commanders presented to Congress on Wednesday an argument to create a framework for rules-based order in space.…

You know the drill: shake your head in disbelief, then figure out if patching will wipe out a weekend or be merely inconvenient Cisco has revealed a pair of critical bugs in its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure product.…

Asia is already short millions of trainees; expert warns talent pipeline will dry up in response to government snooping Black Hat Asia Asian nations in which governments are keen on citizen surveillance struggle to develop ethical hackers, as prospective workers fear their activities may be misunderstood, according to security specialist Mika Devonshire.…

Why are you giving yourself a kick in the innovation economy? China has protested India’s decision to prevent local carriers using made-in-China 5G kit in network trials.…

Developers want to do this, says Google. Ummm ... guys, you do remember the thousands of malware nightmares you’ve hosted and sold? Google has decided the time has come to require app developers to disclose the data their wares collect, and their security practices, in their Play Store listings.…

'There is scant evidence to support manufacturers’ justifications for restrictions' America's consumer watchdog, the FTC, today scolded technology makers for their anti-repair practices, and signaled it will support new legislation that ensures people can mend their own stuff without penalty.…

World Password Day returns to remind us how much passwords suck Google has marked World Password Day by declaring "passwords are the single biggest threat to your online security," and announcing plans to automatically add multi-step authentication to its users' accounts.…

Coming to a computer near you ... this decade ... maybe IBM Research says it's made the world’s first 2nm process node chips, squeezing 50 billion transistors onto each of the fingernail-sized dies.…

While some teen generated 7.7m bogus pro-NN notes to US broadband regulator Broadband companies in 2017 launched an $8.2m campaign to repeal America's net neutrality rules that spent $4.2m to sway policymakers with millions of fake comments. But only their hired guns are being held accountable.…

Wanna find out if Jane Brit has had a shot? Just lob her postcode and DoB into this NHS site An NHS Digital-run vaccine-booking website exposed just how many vaccines individual people had received – and did so with no authentication, according to the Guardian.…

Official CPython is slow, but there are many ways to get better performance Facebook has released Cinder, used internally in Instagram to improve Python performance, while another faster Python, called Pyston, has released version 2.2 and made the project open source (again).…

Good thing researchers spotted it, no evidence of exploit in the wild A heap overflow vulnerability in Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip modem firmware, used in Android devices, could be exploited by baddies to run arbitrary code on unsuspecting users' devices, according to Check Point.…

Free breakfast, lunch and dinner? Listening to Ryan Reynolds talk shit? Massages for gratis? Why the hell wouldn't they return One in five Googlers will be permanently working from home once the pandemic abates but for the majority it seems free meals in staff canteens, guest celebrity speaker appearances, resident gyms and massage therapy are irresistible lures.…

Microsoft Xbox exec called up to explain differences with gaming console The legal spat between Epic Games and Apple entered somewhat philosophical territory on Wednesday as the battling sides debated over whether the iPhone legitimately constitutes a general-purpose computing device, or is merely a locked-down platform with a specific purpose, such as a games console.…

They were not the cloud we were looking for, says DoD in brief to Supreme Court In another chapter to a saga that refuses to die, the US government has recommended [PDF] that the Supreme Court rejects Oracle’s efforts to overturn a Department of Defense decision to award the $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft.…

Among the findings, WPF remains most-used desktop framework despite years of promotion for UWP The Microsoft-sponsored .NET Foundation has released a survey-based "State of .NET" report showing that efforts to broaden the appeal of the technology beyond its own platform have had limited success so far.…

(Almost) Why? Kickstarter and nostalgia of those who have forgotten the pain The beast is back... almost. A "100 per cent compatible Visual Basic 6 solution" has been promised to the backers of a Kickstarter. There is, however, no word on how much it would cost to ensure it stayed dead.…

Default passwords, no updates, and your data's flowing through these Consumer org Which? reckons more than two million Britons are connected to the internet through routers that were last updated in 2016.…

Please insert tape number 363 of 4087* French cloud provider OVH has outlined a three-point plan designed to avoid a repeat of the loss of data and services resulting from the fire which engulfed its Strasbourg operations on 10 March.…

There are so many reasons to join us next week at our tip-top DevOps conference, get your ticket now Event We’re checking the lighting, tapping the mikes, and ironing out the gremlins before kicking off Continuous Lifecycle Online on Monday, May 10 from 0900 BST – and we’d really like to see you there.…

On the other hand he was fine Graphic images Everyone knows the trope. The baddies smash their way in and gun down the guard standing in front of the vault. "Dammit," says the lead bad guy, "it's a biometric scanner, we'll never get in!" His most grizzled henchman turns round, holding up the dead guard's lifeless arm. "Oh yes we will…"…

Whoever came up with the SWEEP acronym can have a job at El Reg Highways England, the authority responsible for the nation's roads and related infrastructure, is asking tech vendors to bid for a project worth up to £15m to replace its ageing pavement information management systems.…

What a time to be alive Singapore’s dominant ride-sharing app Grab has added a service for large dogs, or humans who own large numbers of dogs.…

Terms and conditions apply Version 90 of Google's Chrome browser includes a bit of extra security for users of recent versions of Windows and the latest x86 processors, in the form of hardware-enforced stack protection.…

There was just a little fire. But not enough to worry anybody Video SpaceX’s latest test of its Starship vehicle has stuck its landing for the first time.…

Trio claim database queries can lead to remote code execution Black Hat Asia A trio of researchers at Palo Alto Networks has detailed vulnerabilities in the JET database engine, and demonstrated how those flaws can be exploited to ultimately execute malicious code on systems running Microsoft’s SQL Server and Internet Information Services web server.…

For everyone else, get back to work and ordering those Amazon Prime deals Blue Origin is planning to launch its first crew into space on July 20 – and a seat on this inaugural spaceflight is up for auction.…

Remote code execution possible on vRealize Business for Cloud – which knows a lot about your private and public platforms VMware has admitted its vRealize Business for Cloud product includes an “unauthorised VAMI API” that can be exploited to achieve remote code execution on the virtual appliance. The security flaw is rated critical, scoring 9.8 on the ten-point Common Vulnerability Scoring System.…

Code for the Baidu Apollo brains of the service is yours for the taking on GitHub, too Chinese web giant Baidu has commenced operations of actual autonomous taxis on the streets of Beijing.…

Counterfit automatically creates adversarial inputs to find weaknesses Microsoft this week released a Python tool that probes AI models to see if they can be hoodwinked by malicious input data.…

Antisocial giant dismisses chat app rival's 'stunt' in escalating war of words Encrypted messaging service Signal on Tuesday made a show of trolling Instagram and its parent company Facebook by creating ads that incorporated audience targeting categories into its ad copy.…