The Register

Suffered 'loss or damage' as a customer? Get Ofcom's permission and sue away Britain's Telecommunications Security Bill will allow anyone to sue their telco if they suffer "loss or damage" as a result of a system breach – but only if they get Ofcom's permission.…

Dual-screen Android phone released from period of US exclusivity Microsoft will give the Surface Duo an international release, bringing the dual-screen phone to the UK, Canada, France, and Germany in "early 2021".…

Regularised linear and Gaussian process regression thrown into predictive models too Data visualisation big fish Tableau is promising users the ability to get their hands dirty without having to download its seriously weighty desktop client.…

One? Two? Nope. Six CVEs patched after being found in Dualog Communications Suite A software suite intended to let merchant ships’ crews digitally communicate with the world ashore was riddled with security vulnerabilities including undocumented admin accounts with hardcoded passwords and widespread use of Adobe Flash.…

Online Harms draft gets most things right, still gives Facebook and friends too much leeway Analysis Tech giants face massive fines of up to 10 per cent of their annual revenue if they fail to follow new rules aimed at reducing the amount of harmful content on their platforms, the UK government has decided.…

Another nail in the coffin of assuming that airgapped means secure Mordechai Guri, an Israeli cyber security researcher who focuses on covert side channel attacks, has devised yet another way to undermine air gapping – the practice of keeping computers disconnected from any external network for the sake of security.…

Promised it was free and safe, but Facebook’s promises about privacy aren’t worth the mouse you click ‘em with Australia’s competition and consumer commission (ACCC) has hauled Facebook into the nation’s Federal Court for alleged false, misleading or deceptive conduct.…

SMIC in turmoil as TCMS legend reportedly elevated beyond non-exec role China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has advised investors that its co-CEO has “possibly” resigned.…

84-minute brownout and eight-hour VPN vanishment caused by update that left systems unable to access config files Google has explained how it took a big slab of its Euro-cloud offline last week, and as usual the problem was of its own making.…

Predicts massive data centre builds to add 50 million petabytes of capacity by 2025 as 60 percent of workloads run in clouds A key Chinese policy think tank has delivered its full vision for how the nation can build a “smart economy” by the year 2035.…

'solarwinds123' won't inspire confidence, if true Updated SolarWinds, the maker of the Orion network management software that was subverted to distribute backdoored updates that led to the compromise of multiple US government bodies, was apparently told last year that credentials for its software update server had been exposed in a public GitHub repo.…

De-FAAMG'd tech outfits fear being steamrolled The second tier of tech giants have formed a new coalition focused on making sure changes coming to platform liability don’t squash them.…

It's great being king Last week, Larry Ellison wished staff well as his IT giant Oracle prepares to move its headquarters from Silicon Valley, California, to Austin, Texas... though he apparently will be going in the opposite direction, to Hawaii.…

Fellow industry giants shuffle feet nervously Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Twitter €450,000 after ruling a bug in the firm's Android app that allowed users private messages to be publicly viewed infringed the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).…

Nope, it just makes them worse RoTM AI and automation in the workplace risk creating new forms of bias and unfairness, worsening inequalities in the world of work, according to a UK think tank report published today.…

Big Red: This is not some gimmick so that you buy support from us In the wake of Red Hat's decision to end support for CentOS Linux comes a raft of alternatives to fill the void, including Project Lenix - an offshoot of Cloud Linux - and Oracle's free Linux, which Big Red is heavily promoting.…

New Ofcom rules require ISPs to give more personalised measures New Ofcom rules will require ISPs to provide prospective customers with personalised speed estimates specific to their premises, rather than guesses derived from properties with similar characteristics.…

The cloud can make life easier. Here’s how... Webcast Keeping track of your data is always a worry, whether it’s a question of where it is, or, more existentially, what it is.…

Down from original estimate of $60m, and Apple is investigating if supplier guidelines were breached On Saturday workers at an iPhone production facility in India rioted over a pay dispute, smashing windows and damaging equipment. The damage has since been valued at about $7m, according to the facility's Taiwanese owner, Wistron.…

We're not taking cues from Windows now, are we? Updated Hopefully not shooting for parity with Windows, the Linux team followed the weekend release of version 5.10 of the kernel with... an update barely a day later.…

Stop us if you've heard this one before Good news: the UK enjoys cheaper broadband compared to its European neighbours. Bad news: it is slower and poor value for money.…

Google has a better track record but the same issue: when authentication breaks, everything breaks Google has posted more details about its 50 minute outage yesterday, though promising a "full incident report" to follow. It was authentication that broke, reminiscent of Microsoft's September cloud outage caused by an Azure Active Directory failure.…

23,000 Britons' data was among unsecured info, finds research Two thousand servers containing 45 million images of X-rays and other medical scans were left online during the course of the past twelve months, freely accessible by anyone, with no security protections at all.…

Andromeda Strain anyone? Scientists at Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have confirmed they have samples from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu in the lab and may have more than they originally thought.…

Firebolt says it can do it better while the cloud giants talk up services tweaks Analysis Tech stock sailed through an era-defining moment last week as recently IPO'd cloud data warehouser Snowflake surpassed IBM in market capitalisation.…

As UK govt mulls eye-watering 10% penalties for goliaths that don't scrub away illegal content Tech giants Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple will face massive fines under proposed European Union rules, up to six per cent of annual turnover, if they abuse their market dominance to crush competition.…

Judges looked for innovative concepts, clear positioning and a feasible business plan Promo Since kicking off a new life with its own mobile ecosystem and app store – App Gallery – Huawei has been searching for trailblazing app concepts it hopes will reimagine the way we use smartphones. Launched in July, Huawei’s AppsUp competition was open to developers across the world, with a prize fund of US$1m.…

Orion networking monitoring users need to take action as we summarize what the hell is going on Analysis As the debris from the explosive SolarWinds hack continues to fly, it has been a busy 48 hours as everyone scrambles to find out if, like various US government bodies, they're been caught in the blast. So, where are we at?…

Every three years, people try to patch a poorly crafted copyright law Analysis Right-to-repair advocates are arguing with the US government over what legal powers people have to fix or upgrade their own kit without paying manufacturers.…

Mind your MANRS as politics meets network security China Telecom has joined the global routing security group MANRS, just as America's communications regulator decided to formally investigate whether the company was a national security threat.…

Only joking – we're surely still below Gawker in his estimations Tim Cook reportedly intervened personally to stop Apple TV from producing a series loosely inspired by the antics of Gawker – the controversial and infamously combative blog, which routinely lambasted figures in media, tech, and entertainment.…

Miscreants threaten to make files, source code public within 72 hours The Pay2Key ransomware group on Sunday posted what appear to be details of internal files obtained from Habana Labs, an Israel-based chip startup acquired a year ago by Intel.…

Chocolate Factory hopes it will 'lead to greater productivity, collaboration and well-being' for staffers Google will allow the majority of its staffers to work from home until September 2021, and the search giant will experiment with a hybrid model that combines office-based and remote working after that.…

And what's the impact of months-long compromise? UK.gov won't say – as CISA orders shutdown of machines Concern is gathering over the effects of the backdoor inserted into SolarWinds' network monitoring software on Britain's public sector – as tight-lipped government departments refuse to say whether UK institutions were accessed by Russian spies.…

Tired: Pholdables. Wired: Pholdables you can fold eleventeen times OPPO has shown off its latest concept foldable phone, produced in conjunction with Japanese design studio Nendo, which uses three hinges to create a slider-style effect.…

Yes, the one that cost the British Army 25,000 new soldiers when IT went live Capita has scored a payday after the British Army quietly handed it a £140m extension to its shambolic DRS military recruiting contract and tacked on a project to migrate certain systems to Microsoft Azure.…

Ofqual publishes for the sake of 'transparency' but it's clear as mud UK exams body Ofqual has published the code behind the summer's results fiasco. Sort of.…

Also: ESA signs contracts for the Space Rider and Boeing's Calamity Capsule aims for March 2021 In brief Richard Branson might have to wait a little longer to ride in Virgin Galactic's sub-orbital jalopy, SpaceShip Two VSS Unity, after an aborted test flight saw the spacecraft return to Spaceport America in New Mexico.…

Also: PowerShell Crescendo, Visual Studio Code C++ on Pi, and a milestone for SharePoint In Brief Microsoft's Teams continues to play catch-up to Zoom with the long-overdue implementation of Breakout rooms.…

Price believed to be £100m lower than initial estimates Capita has agreed to offload its Education Software Solutions (ESS) biz to a private equity buyer for around £400m, which is understood to be £100m below its lowest valuation when the unit was put up for sale.…

Gmail and co go TITSUP* Google services such as YouTube and Gmail started the week with an almighty bang as the Chocolate Factory's cloud came crashing to the ground.…

The Reg takes sneak peek at source tour, hosted by engineer who wrote it Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has continued his series of Windows insights with a rummage around historical Task Manager source code.…

Animal cognition may be better fit for AI devs than human, adds prof Researchers in Germany have shown that cognitive abilities among four-month-old ravens are about equal to that of great apes at the same age.…

Cool off: It ain't Candy Crush on an iPhone, pal Review The mobile industry has given us 108MP cameras, headache-inducing stereoscopic 3D displays, and the Escobar Phone. Each year, it seems as though some vendor is trying to up the ante with unprecedented levels of weird, leaving you to wonder where we’ll eventually end up. Microsoft Bob Mobile? A Samsung Galaxy S21 Theranos Edition?…

We need regulations on web advertising Column Google makes its money from being the world's middle man for online advertising. It's kind of a tech company too, but in a good-enough sort of way rather than the "hey, we invented the transistor" sort of way. It doesn't do anything nobody else can do, except leverage its search dominance into advertising dominance.…

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr Kubrick Who, Me? Still dipping your toe into this Monday? How about diving into a tale from The Register's Who, Me? archives, which this week is a timely reminder that some things have never been entirely safe for work.…

This is not the way to win more work from China, say some politicians as Samsung signs up to enlarge OLED plant Workers at one of Apple’s three iPhone assembly plant rioted on Saturday evening over unpaid wages.…

We’re not upgrading to gorgeous new hardware because cloud services have stagnated I’ve wanted to want a shiny new iPhone since the last lot were launched, but I haven’t been able to actually make myself desire the new model. Try as I might, it hasn’t worked. My three-year-old iPhone X works perfectly, still has ‘the snappy’, and doesn’t have a scratch. So why would I get a new smartphone?…

HCL heads Hanoi in search for 3,000 new workers, which is just two percent of headcount and one quarter's usual hiring rate, but a vote of confidence Indian IT services giant HCL has gone in search of 3,000 staff who can serve its global clients from Vietnam.…

Supply chain hack linked to attacks on major US agencies possibly by Russia's Cozy Bear gang Updated SolarWinds' "Orion" IT monitoring platform has been compromised, and speculation is swirling that it was used in attacks on major US government agencies that could also be linked to last week's revelation that FireEye's top hacking tools have been accessed.…