The Register

Call me what you will - but don't drop me more than 26 times Oracle has launched a rugged computer-filled box which users should feel comfortable dropping from a 1.2m height but no more than 26 times.…

Plus: Verdict will be delayed for High Court to pass judgment on HPE civil case The US offered to let Autonomy founder Mike Lynch out on bail if he traveled to America to face criminal charges over the $8.8bn writedown of his company after its buyout by HPE – provided he stumped up $10m as bond.…

Share price rises after no-surprises 2020 prelims announced, CEO says 3-year turnaround doing OK Investors hate surprises. There were, however, no hidden nasties in Micro Focus's preliminary financial results for fiscal 2020 outlined today as the collection of fragmented legacy software assets crossed off year one of its 36-month turnaround strategy.…

Resignation letter posted to LinkedIn accuses cloudy CRM biz of 'countless micro-aggressions and inequity' A Black former Salesforce employee has accused the global CRM software company of "countless micro-aggressions and inequity".…

Widgets tie in with promise to 'elevate people and conversations in the system surfaces' Early Android 12 screenshots leaked yesterday on XDA have revealed what looks like a major design refresh and new privacy features, though they are unofficial and we cannot guarantee their authenticity.…

Bar the doors lest you get targeted Online criminals have increasingly targeted Remote Desktop Protocol connections over the past year, according to infosec biz ESET.…

Let a thousand torts bloom Companies deploying machine-learning systems trained on subpar datasets should be legally obligated to pay damages to victims that have been harmed by the technology under tort law, a law professor has opined.…

Hackers threaten to release source and docs, but games giant isn't playing ball CD Projekt Red, the Polish developer of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, has disclosed a major security incident in which several company systems were encrypted and confidential data stolen.…

99.5% were from before 2011 – so that's OK Data lost because of a scripting error introduced to the UK's Police National Computer (PNC) in November will take another 12 weeks to recover, according to a statement in Parliament.…

Overwhelming majority stand up to down tools, BT has days to meet with Communication Workers Union The clock is ticking for BT top brass to meet with the Communications Workers Union (CWU) after repayment project engineers (RPE) in the Openreach division voted for industrial action over a new grading structure.…

Going shopping? Hope your pockets are deep enough Bork!Bork!Bork! The enmity between Microsoft and Oracle is the stuff of legend, but it appears The Beast of Redmond may have had the last laugh, at least over its namesake.…

Campaign to oust him and 'carpetbagger' board picks up speed CEO of .uk registry operator Nominet has pleaded with the organisation’s members to hear him out before they consider backing a campaign to fire both him and other non-elected members of the board.…

Do you really think your safe copies aren’t top of the cyber-crims' hit list? Webcast Ransomware is one of the most insidious forms of cyber-attack, not least because it presents you with a range of highly unpleasant options.…

You read that right. A laptop with seven screens. Plus eight i9 cores, 64GB of RAM, four disks and three NICs An outfit in London, UK, called Expanscape has said it has received a surge in interest in its prototype laptop that sports seven screens.…

Oooh, you're so fancy, Commish! The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has begun a probe of a £6,248 spent on Hotel Chocolat via a corporate charge card made in the days leading up to Christmas, which may have broken internal rules.…

Twitter flaps about between the law and the right to free speech 4G and wired internet services have been restored to Jammu and Kashmir, the Muslim-majority Indian State that it stripped of semi-autonomous status in 2019.…

As China bristles, USA, Japan, India, and Australia create forum to explore the intersection of tech and regional security Universities and think tanks from Australia, the USA, Japan, and India have come together in a new group that together hopes to advance discussions on the intersection of information technology, regional security, and internet freedom.…

Shooter says he acted in self-defense Nashville Metropolitan Police in Tennessee said on Saturday that detectives are investigating the shooting death of Timothy Wilks, 20. The incident occurred during the filming of a video for the internet in the parking lot of Urban Air Trampoline and Adventure Park, a family entertainment business.…

New FCC boss Rosenworcel makes it plain she will bring back protections The US Department of Justice has dropped its lawsuit against California’s net neutrality law.…

Customers are asking and so spreadsheets are being compiled Exclusive Cloud contender Linode is having a serious think about offering Windows servers, a decision that would change its long-held stance of only renting Linux systems.…

Attempt to flood supply with sodium hydroxide thwarted, safeguards would have kicked in anyway, we're told The sheriff of a small city in Florida warned on Monday that hackers had tried to poison its water.…

Musk continues public love affair with cryptocurrencies Tesla has plowed $1.5bn (£1.1bn) into buying up Bitcoin, and expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of payment in the future, it announced on Monday.…

Android software kicked out of Google Play Store, may still be active on many handhelds Barcode Scanner, a popular Android app, slipped undesirable code into an update in early December, an update that had the potential to reach more than 10m devices though actual distribution is believed to be far less.…

What would that make WeWork then? SoftBank's Vision Fund, the investment vehicle behind Uber and WeWork, is riding high-flying technology stock, posting its biggest profit for years.…

Only then will it be known if the UAE's Hope probe was a success The United Arab Emirates' "Hope" probe is due to reach Mars orbit tomorrow (9 February) and give engineers and scientists their very own 27 minutes of tension.…

Frustration with bot-like support leads to cancellation of popular game What do you do if Google disables your cloud life? Andrew Spinks, co-author of the Terraria game and president of Re-Logic Games, does not know either, but has declared Google "a liability" and cancelled the port of Terraria to its Stadia platform.…

Mozilla moves Rust under a non-profit foundation Almost six years after it debuted, the Rust programming language is moving out of the Mozilla's house into a foundation of its own.…

That's the Snoopers' Charter in action for you British prosecutors can make use of evidence gathered by the French and Dutch police from encrypted messaging service Encrochat’s servers thanks to a legal interpretation of whether RAM counts as data storage, the Court of Appeal has ruled.…

Project will share more resources with Fedora and use a single login The CentOS board conducted a public Q&A just ahead of last week's FOSDEM 2021 open source conference – and there was an awkward silence when someone asked whether changing the end-of-life (EOL) date for a released project is something that might happen again.…

Hits UK shops in March Xiaomi has launched its first flagship blower of 2021 for the global market: the Xiaomi Mi 11, competing directly with the Galaxy S21, which has a slower processor and smaller screen.…

But then there's the issue of mega-constellations to contend with The long-awaited Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) has continued its march to reality with the launch of an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to radio astronomy.…

£93k should help interested parties stomach challenge amid tumultuous change England's NHS has advertised for two top tech jobs as the service struggles with an ongoing pandemic, a supposed digital transformation, and imminent central government reform.…

Tosses in extra cash 'to recognize the tremendous effort ... put into creating amazing universal apps' Hell hath no fury like a code monkey scorned. Don't believe us? Just ask Apple, which has been forced to dramatically improve the incentive offered to convince its Developer Transition Kit (DTK) users to return the prototype machines.…

Plus: Check if your Flickr photos are in facial recognition engines and and the list of NSFW words for AI Canada’s privacy watchdog has found Clearview AI in “clear violation” of the country’s privacy laws, and has told the facial-recognition startup to stop scraping images of Canadians and delete all existing photos it has on those citizens.…

The locked-down world and their Chromebook would like a word... Column Microsoft has changed a lot since Steve Ballmer left. It's hard to imagine Satya Nadella fostering an environment where workers felt they had to hide their iPhones for fear of enraging the boss. Microsoft is contributing so much to open source now it almost feels unfair to mention that Ballmer called open source "cancer". Almost.…

Well, what's an English degree gonna do when we're all strapped to PCs? Figures from UK university admissions service UCAS show computer science has seen a steady rise in popularity over the last decade.…

Redmond says it used forensics to find files on its own gear... rather than avail itself of deals for rivals Intel has accused a former staffer of not only leaving the manufacturer with a trove of confidential documents but also trying to use the information they contained to help Microsoft.…

We’re blinded by our trust of the Search box and its inscrutability Column A friend recently texted me in a panic from Florida, where he’d been consoling relatives following a death in the family. Those relatives had returned a positive COVID-19 test, then a negative test. My friend was exposed to them, so got his own test. It came back negative. His relatives were tested again. Negative.…

Just because you could, doesn't mean you should Who, Me? We start the working week with a Who, Me? reminder that in the world of databases, there is a difference between knowing you're right and knowing your rights.…

Warns €67.50-per-share offer would represent a very tidy premium, but may not happen British chip design company Dialog Semiconductor has confirmed it is in “advanced discussions” with Japan’s Renesas Electronics Corporation regarding a possible acquisition.…

After minister suggests current rules should be reviewed The Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) – big tech’s Asian lobby group – has written to Pakistani attorney general Khalid Jawed Khan with some helpful hints on good ways to frame a new content-blocking regime.…

But for less than two years and while putting distance between staff donors and Microsoft itself Microsoft used the take-out-the-trash time of Friday evening to announce its political action committee (PAC) has suspended donations to US politicians who voted to object to the certification of electors in the 2020 US presidential election, or who “supported such objections or suggested the election should be overturned.”…

Internet traffic dips markedly as protestors take to the streets Myanmar’s military junta has ordered fresh blocks on the internet.…

Linux quarterback wants you to test hopefully final rc of kernel 5.11 instead of ‘standing around, waiting for the next commercial to come on’ Linus Torvalds has strongly suggested that next week will see the release of a new version of the Linux kernel, assuming nothing odd happens and testers don’t watch too much footy on the telly.…

Plus: British Mensa in data leak blunder, DARPA are Star Wars fans, Sonicwall patch out, and more In brief Email security biz Mimecast not only fell victim to the SolarWinds hackers, leading to its own customers being attacked, it is also trimming its workforce amid healthy profits.…

Deep Space Food Challenge could also help solve nosh dilemmas here on Earth NASA has teamed up with the Canadian Space Agency to launch a competition to challenge foodies and engineers to design new food production systems that will feed future astronauts exploring the Moon, Mars, and beyond.…

For best results, take a second dose of privacy cleanse Google on Friday removed 25 Android apps from the Google Play Store after missing them during a prior purge. The apps contained the X-Mode SDK that the Chocolate Factory previously banned for selling location data.…

Trio introduce SAFE TECH Act to US Senate US Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on Friday introduced draft legislation to limit the legal protections available to social networks, websites, and anything else that provides an “interactive computer service.”…

If you started off there, best change your reused credentials SitePoint, an Australian learn-to-code publishing website, has been compromised while promoting the book Hacking for Dummies on its homepage.…

Feeling less than agile? So is the competition Promo If 2020 has left you reeling, we’ve got some bad news. The seismic changes the past 12 months have had on the economy and society are still playing out, meaning more disruption is on the horizon.…