The Register

Defying expectations, kernel devs roared back to work Linux lead Linus Torvalds has labelled his last pronouncement on the state of the kernel "the incoherent ramblings of a crazy old man."…

Software quality crisis made worse by developer shortage, report claims Shoddy software cost the US an estimated $2.08tr in 2020, according to the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ). That's down slightly from a revised 2018 total of $2.1tr but still isn't anything to brag about.…

Ad giant's cookie replacement plan runs into resistance Google's plan to rewire online advertising by phasing out third-party cookies and building a so-called Privacy Sandbox has come under scrutiny from the UK Competition and Markets Authority.…

Don't worry, Mr President, we've found another platform for you: /dev/null Twitter on Friday permanently deleted President Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, over fears the election loser's tweets could incite further mayhem in America.…

Smaller biz terminates deal after Chinese watchdogs dither Optical networking biz Acacia Communications announced today it has pulled out of a $2.6bn merger agreement with Cisco.…

App delivery networking firm wants to solve customers' 'biggest pain points' Seattle-based application delivery networking biz F5 is planning to snaffle edge-as-a-service platform upstart Volterra for $500m.…

Problems for charging spies in future? Probably not, says ex-NCSC chief The SolarWinds hack exposed sealed US court documents – which could have a serious effect on Western sanctions against state-backed hackers.…

Stock prices sitting pretty at an all-time high of $2,020 after earnings guidance Despite missing analysts' forecasts, Samsung Electronics' guidance for its final quarter of 2020 paint a rosy picture, with profits likely up by a quarter year-on-year to ₩9 trillion ($8.22bn/ £6.06bn).…

Also: Another One Leaves the Crust, SLS gets ready to rumble, and SpaceX sets off the 2021 fireworks In brief The European System Providing Refueling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications (ESPRIT) took another step closer to reality this week as the European Space Agency (ESA) inked a €296.5m contract with Thales Alenia Space to build the module for the Lunar Gateway.…

Onward to OpenShift IBM-owned Red Hat is to snaffle container security outfit StackRox and plans to fold the company's tech into its OpenShift platform.…

But what Faculty lies behind the plans for adoption and economic expansion? The UK's AI Council could not have picked a worse week to launch its roadmap. As the world's media was understandably obsessing with the US panto-cum-insurrection season, who would highlight its attempt to put this island nation, newly unshackled from the EU, on a path to a 10 per cent GDP boost from AI by 2030?…

Quadrotech pledges to show you how to get migration right, first time Webcast Getting your business into the cloud is relatively easy. Moving a business around the cloud once it’s there? Well, that can be harder than you think.…

Regulatory hurdles, funding, pandemic, and Huawei have made this a big ask – but industry remains determined The 2025 deadline to deliver UK-wide gigabit broadband is "unreachable", according to a damning report from Parliament's spending watchdog.…

Running an unsupported version? Make a move or face possible outage. You have 11 days to comply Microsoft is about to make a potentially breaking change affecting the Azure Service Fabric runtime - due to an unspecified security issue - that could impact those still running on unsupported versions.…

A gesture of Churchillian solidarity with all they hold dear Faced with a stark choice between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the evil technocracy of the EU's Brussels dictatorship, plucky little campaign group Leave.EU was only ever going to make one choice.…

Don't worry your pretty little head about it or I'll shoot it off Something for the Weekend, Sir? Despite my warnings last week, one of you – yes, you – hexed the New Year.…

Officials instead probe similar levies mulled by UK, India, Europe The US government has decided against slapping import tariffs on French products, which would have been in retaliation to France taxing tech giants three per cent of online service revenues in the Euro nation.…

Real-world CVSS figures are a little variable, or so these folks reckon A German academic is running a study into the effectiveness of vulnerability scores – and is hoping the research will shed more light on the occasionally controversial system.…

Cold comfort for manager at the top of the escalation chain On Call The second On Call of 2021 is a warning not to mix pizza and hashes.…

Cash will go to airlines that bought the danger jets, victims' fund Boeing has agreed to settle a criminal charge that it conspired to commit fraud by deceiving federal aviation officials by withholding safety information about its 737 Max control systems.…

Even ecommerce platform Shopify permanently shutters Don's shops After the trashing of the US Capitol by a mob incited by President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg found the rampage, which had been planned for weeks on social media, "shocking" and extended the temporary block placed on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely, or for at least two weeks.…

Initial offer reported to be in region of $10.1bn, no certainty acquisition deal will be done French integrator-cum-outsourcing biz Atos has launched a bid, reported to be in the region of $10.1bn, to buy IT infrastructure services biz DXC Technology.…

Revolving screens, 5G, and an Alexa-based Show Mode Lenovo's IdeaPad and Yoga lineup is aimed at the consumer and prosumer camps, which allows it greater room to experiment than would otherwise be possible with the conservative ThinkPad range. Just look at the new crop of machines announced today in advance of 2021's annual CES trade show.…

R2DBC uses declarative techniques to create 'more powerful, efficient and scalable JVM solutions' MariaDB has released a connector for R2DBC in a bid to make its open-source relational database more friendly to the Java developer community.…

Project wins sponsorship, and Torvalds is interested, but can it succeed without the mothership's cooperation? Japan-based developer Hector Martin has formally kicked off the crowdfunded Asahi project, which aims to get Linux running on Arm-based Apple Silicon Macs.…

Chipzilla joins facial-recog race Intel has gingerly dipped a toe into the face-based authentication market with the launch of its RealSense ID product.…

Hmm, anything happening in the world at the moment? Demonstrating impeccable timing, Microsoft has updated the Dev Channel Windows 10 Insider build with a taskbar widget showing news updates.…

Martin Schroeter gets keys for biz set to launch at end of 2021 IBM has tapped up its former chief beancounter Martin Schroeter to run the breakaway IT infrastructure services division scheduled to launch at the end of next year.…

Human art will still, erm, probably prevail OpenAI released a sneak peak of its latest GPT-3-based neural network, a 12-billion-parameter model capable of automatically generating hundreds of fake images when it is given a text caption, stylized as DALL·E.…

Local authorities' shared Unit4 system is late, overbudget, and only works on Microsoft's cloud Two local authorities in northwest England have awarded reseller Insight Direct a six-year £35m contract for Microsoft licences and cloud services.…

Not quite what we meant by 'record-breaking' Third borksman of the apocalypse 123-Reg has ridden into 2021 with... you guessed it, DNS issues.…

Server-side React solves 'many other problems we have had for a while' says Core developer Facebook's React team has previewed Server Components, allowing developers to write code that runs on the server, speeding up data access and reducing the amount of code that has to be downloaded by the web browser.…

And funded by private venture that'll take a chunk of the damages for itself Chinese social media app TikTok is to be sued in the High Court as part of a class-action-style lawsuit due to be publicised by England's Children's Commissioner.…

Exciting news for green fuel, but quality control, financing will be a challenge New research from China is promising to double the efficiency of hydrogen storage at a time when low-carbon collection of the omnipresent gas is seen as a potential path to a greener energy economy.…

Oh yes, I'm the Great Suspender, pretending I'm doing well Analysis Back in November, 2020, netizens warned that a Chrome extension called The Great Suspender may be malicious. Around that time, Google was made aware of these concerns and looked into the situation.…

Maker of developer tools says it played no role in the attack, hasn't heard from investigators The SolarWinds security breach disclosed last month, which US authorities believe was of Russian origin and led to the compromise of at least 18,000 organizations, may have been enabled in part by software from JetBrains.…

We may finally get that privacy legislation, net neutrality Comment Despite an extraordinary day in Washington DC where, under President Trump’s urging, insurrectionists stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the approval of his replacement, Joe Biden is still going to become president of the United States on January 20.…

Welcome to the digital 1800s In a striking parallel to model villages created by Victorian industrialists for their workers, Amazon on Wednesday announced it would spend $2bn building affordable housing near its three new headquarters.…

If you don't agree then, well, you'll just have to use the infinitely better Signal WhatsApp users must agree to share their personal information with Facebook if they want to continue using the messaging service from next month, according to new terms and conditions.…

Images of evacuated and invaded offices, Senate PCs still left switched on shared online Updated Supporters of defeated American president Donald Trump this morning stormed the capital’s legislative halls, shutting down the process to confirm his replacement.…

Treasury Department clarifies advice with a brief FAQ The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has said it will de-list China's three largest telecommunications companies – China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom – after all, having received updated guidance from US regulators.…

With Fortinet, we'll help you weigh up your SASE options Webcast If you looked back at your list of 2020 New Year’s resolutions, would any of them make still sense for 2021?…

FRRP's full report will be uncomfortable reading for ex-CEO Mike Lynch The Financial Reporting Review Panel has said the senior Deloitte auditor who signed off Autonomy's accounts engaged in "word smithing" to help the British software firm hide its hardware sales from the market.…

Ahead of a formal probe, CMA want to ascertain risks to licensing, price gouging, and product cancellations The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has invited third parties to comment on the proposed $40bn acquisition of British-based chip designer Arm by US graphics giant Nvidia.…

It's 400, or indeed the 500 series, from here on out Intel is to sunset its 300-series motherboard chipsets, according to Chipzilla's prodict change notifications (PCN).…

Caveat: Four-nines SLA only applies to authentication, not admin features Microsoft is "taking the next step in our commitment to the resiliency and availability" of Azure Active Directory by promising 99.99 per cent uptime from 1 April 2021, rising from 99.9 per cent for the current Service Level Agreement (SLA).…

Nice work if you can get it... As UK school closures force working parents to juggle unfathomable phonics charts with their day jobs, it's time to turn our attention to those who accrue massive financial gain from the pandemic: consultants.…

Leaving-the-house version has, er, left the building Microsoft-owned Mojang is to pull down the shutters on Minecraft Earth, citing the "current global situation" as a factor in the decision to axe the augmented reality game.…

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Scotland’s Renfrewshire Council has awarded a £4.75m contract to incumbent ERP supplier Unit4 after its market test for a £2.3m contract offered little in return.…

Somewhere there is always an IT pro who warned this might happen Bork!Bork!Bork! Are you... genuine? It is a question often asked by software in recent years, and Windows is no exception in today's entry to The Register's hall of bork.…