The Register

James Damore decides he doesn’t need a day in court James Damore, the one-time Google developer who infamously suggested his bosses' diversity rules made it impossible to voice some opinions, has dropped his lawsuit against the internet titan.…

Smithers: If I really must go outside, can you arrange it so I encounter the smallest possible number of virus-laden humans? Singapore is trialing robot dogs to enforce social distancing in its parks, to assist the national coronavirus-control effort.…

Nice way to get to Alpha Centauri though boffin tells us: 'Such a laser system could be used as a weapon' Coin-sized pieces of graphene can be accelerated by firing low-powered lasers at them in micro-gravity conditions, say scientists. The technology could be a stepping stone to graphene solar sails, which could propel future spacecraft using starlight or a laser array.…

Problems aside, no one is sure how useful phone-based tracking will be The NHSX, a technology group within the UK government's National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.…

Zero-click remote-code exec hole found by Googler, updates emitted Samsung has patched a serious security hole in its smartphones that can be exploited by maliciously crafted text messages to hijack devices.…

Hayabusa 2 expected to return with out-of-this-world material in December Video Close-up footage of asteroid Ryugu, taken by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft as it touched down to retrieve a sample, reveals the near-Earth object’s surface may have been torched by the Sun as its orbit changed over time.…

Virus knocks hackers online: Show will try going virtual amid pandemic Annual Las Vegas hacker gathering DEF CON has officially called off its physical conference for this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.…

Apparently. But we’re so incredulous, we’re gonna test those claims on live internet TV… Webcast “The journey to cloud” echoes through all organisations. It’s a Bildungsroman – a story of empowerment and betterment. A shiny, towering cityscape of gleaming edifices and elegant spires. It’s like an ascension into the actual clouds. Like dying and waking up in heaven.…

iGiant not only screwed up the wiring, it knew it was shipping dodgy gear, it is claimed Apple is potentially facing a class-action lawsuit over the failure of displays on its MacBook Pro line.…

Schneider Electric patches vulns after Trustwave raises alarm Two Schneider Electric SCADA products had vulnerabilities similar to the ones exploited in the Iran-bothering Stuxnet worm, an infosec outfit has claimed.…

It's over, Amazon, we have the high ground (and all you had was a high price) says Redmond Updated Amazon.com has filed a second, secret, appeal against the decision to award Microsoft the Pentagon's $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.…

If you listen closely, you can hear how the creatures' full-throated call increases in volume when you are on holiday On Call Friday is here! How is your weekend looking? Same as the last one, and the one before that? Never mind – before breaking into the lockdown lagers, join us for another entry in The Register's tales of those brave souls who are On Call.…

Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.…

And now to avoid container sprawl costing you plenty Microsoft has slipped out licensing details for SQL Server running in containers and it will likely encourage developers to be pretty diligent in their use of Redmond’s database.…

It's like three buses showing up at once carrying $8bn India’s largest mobile carrier, Jio, has just scored a third new investor in three weeks!…

There's revenue to be had with being a participant in the payments web, and the Apple experience to measure up against Samsung has announced it will launch a debit card.…

Despite you know what, little evidence of a rush to new racks Equinix has posted its Q1 FY2020 results for the period ending March 31st, along with some interesting insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted data centre consumption.…

Even Exchange’s marketing bod reckons tests of feature could be a career-defining moment Microsoft may just have made Reply All storms a thing of the past, by adding a suitable blocker to Exchange in Office 365 environments.…

Update used wrong data type, causing Tinder to Spotify to fall over A change in the Facebook SDK backend managed to crash many popular iOS apps that integrated the code library, used for implementing various Facebook services.…

Switchzilla issues a whopping 30+ patches in time for the long UK weekend Cisco has emitted a fresh round of software updates to address nearly three dozen security holes in its products.…

High-frequency audio could be used to stealthily track netizens Technical folks looking to improve web privacy haven't been able to decide whether sound beyond the range of human hearing poses enough of a privacy risk to merit restriction.…

A compelling addition to repo house – but is the Redmond flavour too strong? GitHub had a lot to say about its plans at its virtual Satellite event yesterday, but the most far-reaching was the advent of Codespaces, the ability to edit code online, integrated into the GitHub user interface.…

John Cena!* Online resources only for free and end users due to the 'unprecedented period' Video conferencing darling of the hour, Zoom, has tightened up support rules in order to "better serve" users.…

Middle management is about to learn just how necessary they are Last night, one of the most senior figures in the IT industry from one of the biggest companies gave the strongest indication that when COVID-19 lockdowns gradually begin to lift, people will not return to the jobs they once had. That means both tech jobs, and how technology supports other business roles.…

'Extra time for you to test,' you lucky, lucky developers Google has applied the brakes to Android 11, pushing things out by a month as it grapples with a world that is much changed since planning for the release began.…

Tune in online this month to find out how to protect your business from data extortionists Webcast It's been "the year of ransomware" for about the past three years. And while you may be tired of hearing about the trend and just getting used to the reality, you may also like to remember: instances of attacks are climbing – quickly – and we’re now reaching a level where more than half of ransomware schemes result in a business paying out.…

We all need to tighten our belts For the first time in over three decades, BT has suspended its dividend scheme as the former state-owned teleco grapples with the fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the financial uncertainty that'll inevitably ensue.…

Secarma may be next for Inflexion buyout Cloud hosting biz UKFast's founders, Laurence and Gail Jones, have "exited the business" as a private equity firm ups its stake – all as UKFast itself starts eyeing up Jones-owned infosec biz Secarma.…

Things will change forever, nods ex-Facebooker Alex Stamos Video conferencing software biz Zoom has bought Keybase in a surprise move just weeks after hiring Facebook's one-time CSO.…

Multinationals' UK arms pair up to take on Voda and former state-owned telco Telcos Telefónica and Liberty Global today confirmed plans to join their O2 UK and Virgin Media subsidiaries into one combined entity in a deal analysts branded a "blockbuster merger".…

Advertise your open positions here for free, no catch, and find opportunities within Job Alert This week we've got job openings from all over the globe to tempt you, your friends or your past colleagues back into work, or indeed into new ventures.…

'B' is for basic controls that up and disappeared A study of the UK online advertising market, conducted by global accounting firm PwC, has found that publishers get just half of what advertisers spend, with the other half siphoned off by ad-supply chain intermediaries.…

NoSQL, no problem for Facebook-originating RocksDB MongoDB and fellow database biz Rockset have integrated products in a bid to make it easier to work with the NoSQL database through standard relational database query language SQL.…

One has the vulns, the other has the brass neck to pull off heists. Right? Russia might begin carrying out cyber attacks against Britain's 5G networks "at the behest of China", the chairman of a Parliamentary Select Committee has ventured.…

At last, we can write headlines with all the letters intact For a company defined by design and attention to detail, the Butterfly keyboard was a tremendous humiliation for Apple. Conceived in 2015, it replaced the previous scissor-switch mechanism for one with a smaller profile, allowing Cupertino to continue shrinking already-svelte laptops.…

It is time. We need a new Regism and cannot go to the pub to think of one. Can you help? It is no secret that we like to use the odd bit of shorthand at The Register when biting the hand that feeds IT. Now we need a fresh one for Microsoft.…

Remember when all we had to complain about were crappy rail services? Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to another in The Register's inexplicably long-lived series of digital signage suffering the odd public whoopsie.…

Cracks the 150,000-employee mark as revenue falls just short of $10bn Indian services giant HCL Technologies has wound up its 19/20 financial year by reporting 15 percent annual growth but a flat Q4.…

Automated operators can pay up like anyone – or anything – else Microsoft has detailed a new form of software licence it offers to non-human users.…

Enterprise demand set to soften, offset tier-two cloud, telco sales Global server shipments reached an industry record-breaking 3.3 million units in the first quarter of 2020, marking a 30 per cent year-on-year growth, Omdia analysts estimated this week.…

Lee Jae-yong ends dynastic control and will even let staff join a union Samsung's heir has said that he will not pass down management of the South Korean conglomerate to his children, ending three generations dynastic rule.…

Doesn't play well on iPhones, but bureaucrats rushed it out rather than wait months for perfection. Meanwhile serious bug reports have emerged Australia’s “COVIDSafe” contact-tracing app was rushed to market in the knowledge it would perform poorly on some devices and without agreements in place to let actual contact-tracers use the data it collects. As a result, no collected data has been used in at least 10 days since its launch.…

Decades-old theory may require a rethink thanks to Japanese probe The Moon is believed to have formed from the leftovers of a proto-Earth smashing into a Mars-sized Theia nearly 4.5 billion years ago.…

Australia bit barn outfit NEXTDC adds classic film reference to usual mix of resilience, connectivity and security Australian serial entrepreneur Bevan Slattery has revealed that he told the architects of a data centre he funded to make it resemble the sets used in classic submarine flick The Hunt for Red October.…

Microsoft, Cisco, Google etc gang up to form Open RAN Policy Coalition Some of America’s super-corps have remembered how the US became the dominant global technology force it is, and have vowed to use innovation over threats to counter Chinese dominance in 5G markets.…

OK, a third agreed with Thales when it asked the question About a third of firms and organisations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa still believe the humble password is a good enough security measure, according to a survey carried out by French firm Thales.…

ML eggheads, devs get more bang for their buck, say OpenAI duo Machine-learning algorithms are improving in performance at a rate faster than that of the underlying computer chips, we're told.…

Politicos watered down earlier efforts, so data defenders will fight to the end The small group of policy wonks that forced California’s legislature to rush through privacy legislation two years ago are back – and this time they want a ballot.…

Very '90s kit was everywhere – and it saved Apple's ass too On this day in 1998, Steve Jobs took to the stage of the Moscone Center in San Francisco for a product launch that would indelibly change the face of computing and arguably save the firm he founded almost 22 years earlier.…

It's a long, long buildup to CEO's soliloquy, it's a long way to go Knowledge 2020 With the long flights, late nights and early starts, IT conferences might seem endless. But with the shift to the online format becoming standard, for now at least, participants might be spared the trial of endurance.…