The Register

Coffee giant brews UK customers a double shot of cock-up Starbucks' UK rewards card app went down for a prolonged period earlier this week, and a bunch of caffeine fiends are still reporting problems.…

Contesting decision of General Court that Irish set-up was kosher European Commission executive vice-president Margrethe Vestager is set to fight to have Apple's tax benefit in Ireland ruled as state aid.…

Beta means fully operational? Haha! Good one! A UK government system to avoid miles of road traffic congestion in the county of Kent as the Brexit transition period comes to an end will rely on software which is not yet in its beta version.…

And if you're keen to place an ad, get in touch – it's free Job Alert Looks like the summer's over and everyone is growing their tech team, judging by the bundle of openings we have this week.…

Hacker had set up shop on network using stolen Office 365 accounts An unspecified US government agency was hacked by a miscreant who appears to have made off with archives of information.…

Dress rehearsals done, nice shingly crater chosen – it's go time Video NASA intends to scoop up material from the surface of the Bennu asteroid on 20 October, and has planned up to three retrieval attempts before returning any samples back to Earth.…

It's the 'gaming funk' edition, also starring Wasteland 3, Crusader Kings 3, and Among Us The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column – the "funk" edition. Maybe you've experienced the sensation, maybe you haven't, but after finishing our last subject, Death Stranding (which was great by the way), we found ourselves in a quandary. WTF do we play next? And can we bring ourselves to write about it?*…

So... totally seamless then Better late than never. Earlier today, the UK government released its long-awaited contact-tracing app to the general populace, called NHS COVID-19.…

As I walk through this world... born-in-the-cloud companies have legacy problems too Amazon Web Services has changed its mind about ending support for the URLs originally used by S3 (Simple Storage Service), though it is delaying rather than ending its deprecation plans.…

Dinosaurs get one last roar Ignite Microsoft revealed plans at its virtual Ignite bash to roll out new versions of its venerable Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Project Server, as well as another perpetual release of its cash cow, Office.…

Digital Growth Experts Ltd hit send on 16k+ messages. The fine? £3.70 per text Digital Growth Experts Ltd (DGEL) is nursing a £60,000 smackdown doled out by the UK’s data watchdog after it sent out thousands of nuisance marketing text messages about hand sanitisers during the coronavirus outbreak.…

The tiny X-ray bullets are only the size of a grain of sand. Pew! Pew! Pew! Perseverance, NASA's latest Martian rover, will extend its two-metre robotic arm and use an AI-powered control system to carefully aim X-ray beams at ancient rock samples that might contain fossilised microbes.…

Telco tells freelancers it 'isn't immune to the economic volatility and uncertainty' caused by pandemic Exclusive BT is slashing day rates for contractors and reducing their notice period by 50 per cent due to the unpredictable nature of the economy caused by the coronavirus.…

Solution? A software update, natch An Ethernet failure aboard popular Swiss-made business jets could prompt the aircraft to move into an emergency descent as flight systems entered a "degraded" mode, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has warned.…

Sure, it's still wedged in the OS, but maybe you'd prefer something shiny and Chromier? Ignite Microsoft used the Ignite product singalong to reassure customers that its veteran Internet Explorer 11 browser would remain supported while also urging users to nuke the thing from orbit. It is, after all, the only way to be sure.…

High Court hears of offshore assets, tax fraud, and freezing orders The crumbling multinational empire of the distie once known as Entatech has come under scrutiny in the High Court again as liquidators working on behalf of the UK's taxman try to seize the assets of founder Jason Tsai and his family.…

Experts from industry and academia tapped to help increase competition The Ministry of Fun* has assembled a new task force of senior mobile industry bods to help diversify the UK's telecoms supply chain and reduce the exposure to so-called "high-risk vendors" such as Huawei.…

If you find yourself wrestling with big docs on small screens, Photoshop maker's iOS, Android apps may be able to help Adobe has introduced Liquid Mode into its PDF reader for Android and iOS, the intent being to make reading PDF documents on mobile a less painful experience.…

Just in time for the second wave and new movement restrictions England's National Health Service has finally released its COVID-19 contact-tracing app and while it is late to market compared to other nations' efforts, it appears to have more functionality than many.…

Join us next month to feel the Intel® Optane™ Effect Webcast Whatever the computing problem is, the traditional answer has been to throw more servers at it, which today means throw more processor cores at it. AI model building? More cores. Ecommerce? More cores? Pharma development? More, more, more.…

Also looks to have security and SaaS news in store for next week’s VMworld Strong hints have emerged that VMware is close to making the Arm version of its ESXi hypervisor a proper product.…

Incompatibilities and inconsistent standards support among browsers ensure an ongoing source of headaches Web developers resent having to deal with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari, which they cite among their top three pain points, alongside layout and styling inconsistencies among browsers.…

RISC-V design can play nice with Arduino and was totally home-spun so that’s something India has taken another small step towards silicon-self-sufficiency with the unveiling of a new domestically designed system-on-chip. But the microprocessor is a few generations behind best practice and won’t set the world on fire.…

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Territory wants to snip subjects to squeeze in coding, but knows its teachers aren't up to the job Hong Kong has proposed a new school curriculum packed with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) content – even though it lacks a working definition of STEM and its staff lack the skills to teach it.…

Elon Musk wants his money back, Volvo, Ford, Mercedes also pile in Tesla has sued the US government, seeking to not only end what it described as President Trump's "unlawful" tariffs on Chinese-made components but also a refund on all duties paid – plus interest.…

Video-sharing app appears to have had enough of presidential posturing TikTok has asked the courts for a preliminary injunction that would prevent the the Trump administration from banning the video-sharing app in America this weekend.…

Federal versus state action – the endless conundrum for the United States The legislative dance around a federal data privacy law continued on Wednesday at a Congressional hearing where a range of former FTC officials and California’s Attorney General were quizzed on how to make it a reality.…

Winner winner, lawsuit-binner An administrative law judge this week dismissed the US government's claim that Oracle unfairly underpaid its female and minority workers by hundreds of millions of dollars.…

Proposed Section 230 overhaul shockingly free of hyperbole Analysis The US Justice Department has emitted its proposals for changes in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – the magic shield that, with a few caveats, protects websites from being held legally responsible for their users' comments, posts, and other content.…

Accused senior management insist they weren't involved Four of the seven former eBay employees charged with cyberstalking a couple critical of the web auction house are scheduled to plead guilty next month.…

Tired of all the new at Microsoft's Ignite? Enjoy a bit of DEC goodness Microsoft has followed up the delightfully retro CRT style available in its Windows Terminal application with the arrival of a blinking attribute familiar to DEC fans of old.…

PCs for suited penguins Lenovo is expanding pre-installed Linux support to more of its machines in a bid to court the sizable developer pound.…

New features announced for Dynamics 365, but is it enough in 'notoriously tricky' market? Ignite Microsoft has confirmed new features for its supply chain software in a bid to boost its stature in a market packed wall to wall with established competition.…

Also two new budget blowers including £99 MicroUSB unit His gender politics are questionable. He drinks like Gazza. Put him behind the wheel of a sports car and watch him break every rule in the highway code.…

Google's cross-platform development tool targets the Windows desktop with support now in alpha Google's Flutter team has introduced the first alpha release targeting Windows, extending the cross-platform development tool to enable the same code to run on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and web apps.…

He either missed the memo or doesn't believe it ServiceNow's unstoppable showman CEO, Bill McDermott, has been telling anyone who will listen that the business's "destiny" is "to become the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century".…

Same mob promised not to target healthcare facilities The Doppelpaymer ransomware gang were behind the cyber-attack on a German hospital that allegedly led to one patient's death, according to local sources.…

Augment me to the Moon, with AR among the stars Ignite Microsoft will spread its eyewear for the wealthy (or corporate sponsored) across more countries, and has said it is seeing action in NASA's repeatedly delayed mission to the Moon.…

Chucks in Xbox Live Game Pass and other 'freebies' to sweeten the £599+ deal People don't buy flagships like they used to, and you can blame that on coronavirus or the rise of budget-friendly brands like Xiaomi. Regardless, a huge part of consumer smartphone spending is shifting downwards so Samsung has unveiled its latest not-quite-a-flagship device: the Galaxy S20 Fan Edition.…

Not personal info, but there are worries over deanonymisation. Remember that AOL research database? Microsoft exposed a 6.5TB Elastic server to the world, including search terms, location coordinates, device ID data, and a partial list of which URLs were visited, earlier this month.…

67P is a gift that keeps on giving GIF Astronomers have discovered an aurora in an unlikely place: Comet 67P.…

The Redmond-aligned can try the Cupertino-spawned lingo thanks to a Googler's intervention A Google programmer has made tools for Apple's Swift programming language available to developers using Microsoft's Windows operating system, a move likely to rekindle hopes that Swift, open source since 2015, will become popular beyond the macOS and iOS ecosystems.…

Extension developers told to look elsewhere for a sales provider Google has decided to shut down the Chrome Web Store payments API permanently after what was supposed to be a temporary closure at the start of the year.…

MCAS saga still hasn't ended as reps warn of trim wheel problem The British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA) has told American aviation regulators that the Boeing 737 Max needs better fixes for its infamous MCAS software, warning that a plane crash which killed 149 people could happen again.…

Redmond to take baby steps on desktop while established vendors turn gaze to enterprise deployments Ignite Microsoft has been flexing its muscles in the robotic process automation (RPA) market during its current virtual shindig, promising a happy marriage between bot-building and its low-code development platform.…

Promises full autonomy and big range boost too Tesla will make cars out of batteries and says doing so is the way to cut electric car costs to $25,000.…

No flight info, no adverts, just blackness... Bork!Bork!Bork! In these troubled times, it can often feel like there is no escape. Even an airport, once a gateway to adventure, now shows only a blank screen and, of course, bork.…

It’s always important for us to understand your views. That's why we’re shutting them down In an extraordinary display of raw political power, the organisation in charge of the .uk internet registry has responded to growing criticism of its actions by silencing critics.…

Join us this month to learn how to squeeze 25 years of local backups into the cloud Webcast One of the great things about moving to the cloud is not having to worrying about PST files any more, isn’t it?…

Techie teens, not IT support, tasked with helping work-from-home parents sort out vid calls, Word and Excel files, antivirus – survey report Parents are turning to their kids for tech support rather than the company IT department while working from home, we're told.…