The Register

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.…

Company notes that it can always take its biz elsewhere as tech firms jostle to move to Lone Star state Samsung is seeking a taxpayer bung of almost $1bn for its proposed semiconductor fabrication plant in Texas, according to documents filed with the state.…

Electron 11, source control tweaks, plus general spit and polish Microsoft has pushed out another update to dev favourite Visual Studio Code, but opted to hold off on the Apple Silicon version after a last-minute bug reared its head.…

Install your updates pronto If you use Google Chrome or a Chromium-based browser such as Microsoft Edge, update it immediately and/or check it for updates over the coming days: there is a zero-day bug being "actively exploited" in the older version of Chrome that will also affect other vendors' browsers.…

'We've effectively configured our transition to a subscription model' Teradata has beaten its own and the market's expectations for the fourth quarter of 2020, more than doubling its cloud revenue.…

In reality, eschewing cables remains a bad idea until wireless tech catches up What happens when you prioritise form over function? You get Xiaomi's latest futuristic concept phone, a port-less and borderless slab of glass and metal designed to give the appearance of a free-floating display.…

All over the world... Job Alert We're doing our bit to keep techies tech'ing with free job listings for anyone looking to hire such skills in the midst of these testing times.…

Insists 'We're not backtracking' as tenants given longer to move to something more secure Microsoft has shifted gears on plans to disable Basic Authentication for five Exchange Online protocols this year, provided your tenant is actually using them.…

Plus a mangle of other applications on track to be switched for cloud platform Brit transport giant FirstGroup, which runs rail and bus companies in the UK and US - including North America's Greyhounds - is looking to replace decade-old HR and payroll systems with a single cloud solution in a five-year contract.…

R, me hearties: Boffins sift through 6.5 million individual dataset Banking data from 6.5 million individuals over six years is providing evidence that even moderate gambling can be associated with financial distress, negative lifestyles, and an increased likelihood of death.…

Today's bork is brought to you by the keys ctrl, c and v Bork!Bork!Bork! Tesco, king of the High Street Bork, may have departed the Thai retail business, but it has left a little bit of borkery behind.…

I tried calling all 27 countries for some help with Acrobat but their mums said they were out Something for the Weekend, Sir? I have never indecently exposed myself. On the contrary, I do it rather well.…

They still laid him off, though On Call This week's episode of On Call, as ever, comes with a warning: Be careful moving that beige box, for you may not realise what it does.…

And we all know how good small business are at patching... NOT Cisco has addressed a clutch of critical vulnerabilities in its small business and VPN routers that can be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code as the root user. All the attacker needs to do is send a maliciously crafted HTTP request to the web-based management interface.…

Every breath you take, Google’s watching you - and offering an alternative to recently acquired Fitbit Google has announced that its own Pixel Android phones will soon gain the power to measure users heart rate and respiratory rate.…

Android edition just didn’t do the job and Health Ministry knew it. Now Japan is in its third and nastiest wave of infections Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has admitted that the Android version of its COVID-19 contact-tracing app has not informed users of contact with virus carriers since September 2020.…

A whole new dimension of social responsibility as Taiwan’s population falls while demand for stuff it makes surges Hon Hai Precision Manufacturing – aka Foxconn – reported two sets of numbers this week: record revenue, and record birth-rate among staff.…

Turns out words have consequences Electronic voting machine maker Smartmatic has sued Fox News, three of its hosts, and two of Donald Trump’s loyalists – Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell – for an eye-popping $2.7bn in defamation damages over the false claims it stole the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden.…

Modis also accused of suspending techie for criticizing working conditions The Alphabet Workers Union on Wednesday filed a labor complaint against Google contractor Modis, claiming that for the past six months the staffing firm has prevented workers from discussing wages and job conditions as allowed under US law.…

Another day in the world of the Bezos-built worker's panopticon +Comment Amazon has installed AI cameras inside its delivery vans to nitpick its drivers for, we're told, safety reasons.…

New Jersey court says defendant must be able to challenge evidence A New Jersey appeals court has ruled that a man accused of murder is entitled to review proprietary genetic testing software to challenge evidence presented against him.…

'Try telling leaders of libpng, libjpeg-turbo, openssl, ffmpeg etc they can't make "unilateral" changes to their own projects' Google has proposed a framework for discussing and addressing open-source security based on factors like verified identity, code review, and trusted builds, but its approach may be at odds with open-source culture.…

Out-of-work actors beware, Azure can take on voice-over duties Microsoft has pushed its Custom Neural Voice service to general availability, although you'll have to ask the company nicely if you want to use the vaguely unsettling text-to-speech service.…

Openreach FTTP doing very well, thanks FTTP rollout numbers from the BT Group's "arm's-length" infrastructure arm, Openreach, were the bright spot in an otherwise difficult quarter, which saw consumer and enterprise revenue slump.…

Plus: Parliament says UK was too hasty booting Chinese giant off networks EU infosec agency ENISA has announced that it will begin licensing 5G network equipment providers as Britain's Parliament issued a report criticising the way Huawei was kicked out of the UK's 5G networks.…

They also have to use the credit before 31 May or lose it Apple has provoked the ire of its Mac developer community by asking for the early return of its ARM-powered Developer Transition Kit loaner computers.…

Huh, where's our $13m then? Scratchpad, a startup based around easing Salesforce data input, has snared $13m in new funding, apparently without even really wanting to.…

Hello lonely. Let's get you feeling productive Microsoft's latest take on employment engagement, Viva, is aimed at cheering those working remotely with only Office and Teams for company.…

Atom bond length of Es measured for the first time Chemists have measured a fundamental chemical property of einsteinium, a mysterious and radioactive element that was discovered in the debris of America's first full-scale thermonuclear device test – the Ivy Mike shot in 1952.…

Community? 'The software isn’t changing at all. This is a label on the name, nothing else' The Document Foundation (TDF) has released LibreOffice 7.1 Community, while continuing to complain about free-loading enterprises who do not pay for support. The "community" label is an effort to steer them away, though it is not a cut-down version.…

With top research talent focused on commercial AI goals where do we go? Boffins from Denmark and the UK have measured the AI brain drain and found that private industry really is soaking up tech talent at the expense of academia and public organizations.…

Represented himself, but judge denies last-minute attempt to make it an age discrimination claim A long-serving IBMer has won an unfair dismissal lawsuit after representing himself against a qualified barrister – although his related discrimination claim was struck out by the judge.…

Time to grow up and smell the dollars as founder Sacha Labourey steps back February's game of musical CEO chairs continued today with the appointment of Stephen DeWitt as boss of DevOps darling CloudBees.…

Google and Alibaba playing catchup Sixty five per cent of all the money customers spent globally on infrastructure clouds in Q4 went into the pocket of AWS, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba, according to the latest research by analyst house Canalys.…

That’s a 41% traffic relief for all concerned The Google-sponsored Chromium project has cleaned up its act and the result is a marked decline in queries to DNS root servers.…

Tune in online this month and learn how to mind the security gap Webcast It’s been almost a year since large parts of the workforce beat a hasty retreat from their offices, and began a mass experiment in working from home, often courtesy of Microsoft 365.…

Older commercial machines rely on insecure Mifare Classic payments Some commercial Nespresso machines in Europe that incorporate a smart card payment system can be manipulated to add unlimited funds to purchase coffee, thanks to reliance on technology that's been known to be insecure for more than a decade.…

New site lists the ‘bit of a sprawl issue’ that Redmond offers the faithful A sysadmin supergroup has created a site that tries to list all of the portals Microsoft offers its users.…