The Register

'It's like being in my own bubble back here' Though taxis can do a lot of things, like getting one from A to B, emptying out bank accounts, and even transporting BSODs, we suspect that preventing the spread of COVID-19 is not one of them.…

'While Bob never got to play on the big stage, he always followed the band around and got to ride on the bus' One anniversary unlikely to be marked within the bowels of Redmond is that of Microsoft Bob. However, a retired engineer has taken to YouTube to confirm that the unloved interface did indeed enjoy a second life as digital ballast for Windows XP.…

Lawyers for fined firm make eyebrow-raising claim to irate ex-customer Ticketmaster is claiming that the ICO's £1.25m data breach fine clears it of any responsibility for its network being infected by card-skimming malware, according to correspondence seen by The Register.…

Quis custodiet ipsos bork-es? Bork!Bork!Bork! Join us on a jaunt to an Australian shopping centre, where Windows 7 rules the roost and the digital signage, it seems, might be watching your every move.…

Famed director dispenses a reality check for wannabe Martians Film-maker Werner Herzog has upended the scorn bucket over billionaire electric car and space firm mogul Elon Musk's plans to create a city on Mars.…

This must have cost a packet... MongoDB has just found out what it can spend the marketing budget on, if not the usual fodder of canapés and international flights.…

Needed for probe testing how X-59 can break sound barrier without breaking eardrums NASA has revealed it’s building network cables capable of surviving supersonic flight.…

SaaS revenue tops licences for the first time in solid Q3 VMware has reported Q3 growth that beat guidance offered earlier in its financial year but said results would have been better but for a slowdown in “transformational projects”.…

Authorities warn aliens to get a permit before they do this sort of thing Poll The Utah Department of Public Safety has found a mysterious metal monolith in a remote corner of the state.…

Palo Alto Networks spotted subscriber IDs and MAC addresses on the move UPDATED Infosec researchers at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 threat intelligence unit spotted a pair of prominent Chinese apps leaking personal data, and after it informed Google the ad giant dumped the apps from its Play store.…

43 apps axed, including those helping buyers and sellers of digital tat bazaar India has banned another 43 apps from operating in its territory.…

Plus or minus some caveats Comcast has vowed to enforce its 1.2TB-a-month download limit in more US states, expanding the policy to cover the nation's northeast and mid-Atlantic corners.…

Ring, Echo owners get emails explaining how to switch off incoming functionality Amazon is close to launching Sidewalk – its ad-hoc wireless network for smart-home devices that taps into people's Wi-Fi – and it is pretty much an opt-out affair.…

If you've been pwned in the past, pay special attention to this one VMware has published a series of workarounds for critical command injection vulnerabilities in its Workspace One Access, Access Connector, Identity Manager and Identity Manager Connector products.…

Any opportunity to nudge customers cloudwards, but no word on whether generosity will extend to Europeans Microsoft is slicing a chunk off the cost of its subscription productivity suite, but interested businesses must be both small and US-based.…

Hopefully no dogfood was eaten ahead of this incident UK electronic retailer Currys PC World found its website in need of urgent maintenance this afternoon and pulled its online orifice offline.…

What untold treasures could these primitive technologies hold? Carriers are eagerly eyeing industrial IoT as a way to fatten slender margins, and diversify from their traditional bread and butter of handset sales and subscriptions. The latest foray into this space comes from Vodafone, which plans to sell an end-to-end system to UK biz customers.…

Yes, even Amazon got a piece of 'multi-billion' dollar meal AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM can celebrate Thanksgiving safe in the knowledge they have won a place on the US Central Intelligence Agency’s lucrative Commercial Cloud Enterprise contract.…

Stuff that helps with Chipzilla's bottom line, basically Intel CEO Bob Swan has penned an open letter to President-elect Joe Biden congratulating him on his win, and urging his incoming administration to continue investment in domestic semiconductor manufacturing.…

Software dinosaur will run alongside new CDS platform, says HMRC A top civil servant has said UK tax collector HMRC has not set a date to end use of a vital 26-year-old customs system, even though plans to migrate began seven years ago.…

What do 20 pizzas and five hours of face time with your most boring mate have in common? Cravings for social interactions affect the same area of the brain hit by hunger pangs after a long absence of nosh, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found.…

2027 ban prelude will be new Ofcom micromanagement powers Not content with its planned ban on Huawei equipment in the UK's 5G phone networks, the British government now wants to threaten Huawei-using telcos with fines of £100,000 a day unless they follow binding new rules on how existing kit can be used.…

Leaky data systems fixed now, but the issue affected millions Feature Two separate internet affiliate networks have closed vulnerabilities that exposed potentially millions of records in one of the most sensitive areas: payday loans.…

Lower back roasting on an open fire, carpal tunnel nipping at your... too early? Review The modern workplace isn't just hopelessly dreary – it may also be ruining your health. Repetitive motions from keyboard and mouse usage can conspire to smite your wrists with carpal tunnel syndrome, for which surgery is often the only cure. And that's before we get into the osteopathic wreckage caused by a career spent plonked on a cheap office chair, glaring into a monitor.…

Check out this OutSystems Tech Talk Promo Today’s dev teams want to collaborate quickly to build great apps but are held back by a variety of challenges, such as limited resources.…

Group claims adtech 'has nothing to do with privacy' but is rather an attempt 'to take control of the web' Google's Privacy Sandbox took another knock today as Marketers for an Open Web (MOW) wrote to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) requesting a block on the technology's launch.…

Nice tweak, but nothing epic enough to erode monopoly money Apple has made another tweak to its rules for in-app purchases.…

And it’s working: metrics measuring contract value grew in Q1 2021 as customers signed for subscriptions When listed companies report their quarterly numbers most start with their revenue figure and then explore other numbers that tell the story they want investors to understand. But Nutanix is now going straight for other numbers related to annual contract value (AVC) that reflect its plan to win one sale and then sell more stuff to the same customer – a practice known as “land and expand.”…

2.45 TeraFLOPS number-munching PCIe card to be bolted into x86 servers NEC will soon sell as a standalone item the PCIe accelerator cards it uses to power modest supercomputers.…

Is it possible to pull the RUG from under these numbers? Comment Intel has taken fresh aim at arch-rival AMD, this month briefing tech journos on benchmarks showing Ryzen-powered laptops not only slowing down when unplugged from mains power but also losing to Intel's latest Core microprocessors whether on battery supply or not.…

As Beijing brings in another that regulates internet infomercials and stops teens buying their tat Imagine if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google supremo Sundar Pichai or Like-seeker-in-chief Mark Zuckerberg gave a major speech that heartily endorsed new government regulations - even though they make business harder - and argued they’re necessary, timely, and just.…

Web traffic, email redirected, personal info exposed in DNS hijacking Miscreants were able to hijack traffic and email destined for various cryptocurrency-related websites this month – by hoodwinking GoDaddy employees.…

Exec, two officers, one other charged Apple's head of global security tried to bung cops hundreds of free iPads in exchange for special gun permits, it is claimed.…

'In his own way, he was trying to fulfil the letter of the law' says cop A Frenchman has been fined after police in Brittany discovered him breaking the country's harsh lockdown laws with a written note saying he'd left home to "smash a guy's face in."…

If all goes as planned China's ambitious Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission kicks off tonight with a launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province.…

Also: Edge to take to the M1, and TypeScript 4.1 is here In Brief Microsoft's army of unpaid Windows Insider testers can look forward to a Windows 10 turkey without that crucial bit of juicy 64-bit Intel on Arm stuffing.…

SANS Institute expands course lineup to help you think like a hacker Promo When it comes to cyber attacks, it’s not enough to just sit there, hoping miscreants will pass you by. You have to think like a hacker, stress testing your own systems to ensure they are as tight as possible.…

No diggity, NoSQL Open-source NoSQL in-memory database Redis is the most popular database in the world if, that is, your world is solely within Amazon Web Services.…

And both lived to tell the tale With a breath of some much-needed good news, The Register is obliged to point out that it's nice to see Florida Man* upending the stereotype of "world's worst superhero" by actually doing something heroic.…

Bug? iFixit muses in teardown of Cupertino's top-tier mobe The iPhone 12 Pro Max represents the top end of Apple's latest smartphone lineup. This is a tier that historically has differentiated itself not just by its price, but also by its camera, which Cupertino insists can produce shots that rival those taken on professional kit.…

Do they byte? In Brief Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida is now guarded by robotic canines that will patrol the area before popping back to their kennels for a recharge.…

Procurement services? Not any more. Exchequer services? No thanks. IT Services? Reduced Updated Capita, the outsourcing provider held dear to the hearts of Reg readers everywhere, is seeing million of pounds lopped off the value of its contract with a gaggle of small councils in the middle of England.…

Companies House filing for year ended 31 January 2020 shows strong growth Dell Corp UK has reported a double-digit revenue bounce on the back of purchasing a couple of organisations from elsewhere in the group and selling a healthy amount of hardware, support, and software maintenance.…

Cyber House Party charity event scheduled for 17 December – just bring your dosh and (maybe) some ear plugs Locked up indoors with nothing to do as the evenings draw closer? If lighthearted chats about cyber security are your thing, followed up by some banging dance tunes, then we have just the event – all in the name of charity, of course.…

Bring-your-own-key may no longer be enough for EU data protection body The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued guidance that calls into question recommendations to cloud services providers in responding to the Schrems II ruling, which struck down the Privacy Shield arrangement for moving data from the EU to the US.…

Remember the days when 'we made it up as we went along'? Who, Me? DNS (or the Devil's Naming Service as we've heard it called) takes centre stage in this week's tale from the Who, Me? vaults: a warning of the terrors of the forgotten typo.…

Image Manipulation Program spawned GTK, which begat GNOME The General Image Manipulation Program, GIMP, has turned 25.…

Plus: A new web app from Google to generate AI monsters Drones and machine learning algorithms are helping beachgoers get live updates to alert them whenever sharks are in the water.…

No incident response plan? We can help you there… Promo You know the symptoms – a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, tingling in the fingers, blood thumping in the temples as time slows to a crawl. Realizing you’re facing a full-on cyber attack can feel horribly visceral, even if the attackers are virtual.…

Do you see what I TSMC? The USA and Taiwan have emerged from their first "Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue" with an agreement that co-operation around semiconductors is their top priority.…