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Nobody caught – er, held us responsible, says Chinese firm Huawei was able to snoop on the Dutch prime minister's phone calls and track down Chinese dissidents because it was included in the core of the Netherlands' mobile networks, an explosive news report has claimed.…

NASA’s JPL lab speaks to The Reg The first human-made helicopter to take flight on another planet, Ingenuity, has hovered in Martian skies after NASA at last launched the device into the air.…

'Eskom should pay the pending dues for the Oracle software that they use' Oracle has pulled the plug on support for software described as "quite essential" to "crucial operations" at South African energy firm Eskom as part of an ongoing licensing dispute.…

Modified Keemi disinfects, takes temperatures, tells you off for not socially distancing South Korea Telecom (SKT) has linked up with Yongin Severance Hospital to commercialise and deploy facility-roaming robots that minimise the need for face-to-face contact, thus supporting reduced COVID transmission.…

Procurement raises questions over supplier creating its own sales pipeline within govt The UK's Home Office is tendering to recruit a supplier to help manage the selection of its IT projects, leading to concerns over conflict of interest.…

Would move for The Greater Good™ actually be good, though? Comment UK authorities could lawfully copy the FBI and forcibly remove web shells from compromised Microsoft Exchange server deployments – but some members of the British infosec industry are remarkably quiet about whether this would be a good thing.…

Regulations On A European Approach For Artificial Intelligence One of the Brexit bonuses we’ve been enjoying since January 1st is that we have abandoned our influence within the world’s regulatory superpower.…

Two-week vote dismissed options to back or sack controversial FOSS figure The Debian developer community has decided to say nothing about the new controversy surrounding Richard Stallman relection to the board at the Free Software Foundation.…

Two windows, one tetchy techie – what could possibly go wrong? Who, me? Today's tale from The Register's Who, Me? files is a reminder that a momentary loss of focus is all that is required to trigger a potentially catastrophic error.…

Mathematician and massive figure in digital publishing lives on in every PDF Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe and co-creator of PostScript - and a reason this story is visually appealing - died Friday, April 16, at the age of 81.…

To stop protests by far-right party that wants France’s ambassador expelled Pakistan shut down several social networks within its borders on Friday but lifted the ban after around four hours.…

Three-pronged adoption drive includes cut-price courseware India has launched a national IPv6 drive.…

We gotta do this again? Really? Oh, alright then. But this eight release candidates thing is not great Linux kernel development boss Linus Torvalds has reluctantly issued an eighth release candidate for version 5.12 of the FOSS OS.…

Plus: 'First civil lawsuit' against police for incorrect facial recognition match in wrongful collaring, and more In brief Bystanders in New York City were stunned this week when cops left a public housing complex with a handcuffed man and a robot law enforcement dog trotting after them.…

Reinventing web advertising tech at a time of heightened privacy concern proves difficult Analysis With Google testing its FLoC ad technology in preparation for the planned elimination of third-party cookies next year, uncertainty about potential problems and growing legal support for privacy is shaking up the digital ad industry.…

And the 13th guy NASA today announced the next US lunar mission will use SpaceX's HLS Starship to put American astronauts on the Moon's surface.…

Unless by aliens you mean Russians Photos and videos taken by US Navy officers of strange-shaped aircraft streaming across our skies a couple of years ago have been officially labelled as unidentified flying objects by Uncle Sam.…

Big Blue, insisting it doesn't condone retaliation or discrimination, may appeal On Thursday, a federal jury in Seattle, Washington, found that former IBM sales manager Scott Kingston had been unlawfully fired by the company and denied sales commission after challenging the treatment of subordinates as racially biased. And it awarded him $11.1m.…

Prepare yourself for an onslaught of 'you're holding the container wrong' Docker Desktop for Apple Silicon has been released, although it's not quite the seamless conversion some may expect.…

Old people were let go while the CEO was talking about hiring a bunch of young people, says complaint Former HP workers who allege they were dismissed in order to clear a path for younger employees have been granted certification [PDF] for their proposed collective action by a California district court.…

Company insists it's a legit operator that's here to help Positive Technologies has hit back at the US government's "groundless accusations" that it helped the Russian state carry out cyber attacks against the West – by highlighting how "government agencies of different countries" use its products.…

It's floaty floaty vom time as boffins plan prototype cooler spin on modded 727 Boffins are set to get a ride on the Zero Gravity Corporation's "weightless research lab" to test a refrigerator designed for jaunts to orbit, the Moon or even Mars.…

It's time to move on from 2016 From the department of "I'm not dead yet" comes news of a Slackware 15 beta release, nearly five years after the distribution last saw a major update.…

25% were rejected, and it's less than 2013's figure... but be wary of what Redmond does with your information Microsoft has had a busy six months if its latest biannual digital trust report is anything to go by as law enforcement agencies crept closer to making 25,000 legal requests.…

Announcement light on safety details and the world still doesn't look ready Each year nearly 250,000 people flock to the sprawling Messe Berlin for IFA, one of the world's biggest tech consumer trade shows, to peruse the stands and discuss all things laptops, phones, and... fridges.…

If only it had a built-in loo and pillow, then we could work 24/7 A luxury desk designed based on what Brits "want to see" in their home office setup is not sure what it wants to be.…

Kids have missed almost an entire year of education due to coronavirus so parents have sought help online Five people were arrested in Hong Kong this week for selling electronic question banks for primary schools online. Hong Kong Customs detected the operation and seized over 59,000 suspect teaching materials.…

Filing reveals: Google staff called meeting over data privacy issues the 'Oh Shit' meeting Australian federal court sent a message to Big Tech about its willingness to act on privacy violations when it ruled today that Google had "partially" misled consumers about collecting mobile phone personal location data.…

Picking up the slack on AWS, Azure, and GCP Vendors should only be allowed to go "cloud-native" once, no matter how many times they try to pull off the publicity trick. We can decide later how we'll police this house rule – electrical clamps to the nodes, anyone? – but for now let's look a recent suspect: Informatica.…

PanOptis was obliged to provide 4G LTE licences – but no one mentioned it A federal judge in Texas has allowed Apple a limited retrial [PDF] in its battle with PanOptis, which stung the iPhone maker for $506m in damages over claims it infringed the company's 4G LTE patents.…

Watch as I channel my digital Yosser Hughes, violence included Something for the Weekend, Sir? Gizza job*. I can do that. Go on, giz it.…

Sueball sees social network squaring off against app upstart in UK branch of worldwide fight A legal battle between a company which says Facebook Live infringes one of its patents and the anti-social networking biz is currently playing out in the High Court of England and Wales as part of a long-running multinational legal battle.…

Not quite what we meant by 'disk capacity' On Call Welcome back to On Call and a timely reminder that no matter how careful and clear you think your instructions are, a user will somehow always misunderstand.…

Perhaps gigantic puffy exoplanets aren't as hostile to life as previously thought Astronomers believe five binary-star systems identified by NASA’s now-defunct Kepler Space Telescope could have the right properties to support extraterrestrial life, according to new calculations.…

Automotive supply is a 'top priority', analysts told TSMC this week warned the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor supplies will probably continue throughout this year and next.…

E-commerce wing to also get a huge fulfillment center for Q3 2022 Indian e-commerce company FlipKart, majority owned by US behemoth Walmart, has chosen AdaniConneX to build its third data center in Chennai. It is expected to be one of the largest private cloud deployments in the country,…

ioXt Alliance aims to bring 'transparency and visibility' On Thursday the ioXt Alliance, an Internet of Things (IoT) security trade group backed by some of the biggest names in the business, introduced a set of baseline standards for mobile apps, in the hope that IoT security may someday be a bit less of a dumpster fire.…

Linux for Windows switchers: smooth user experience, if users steer clear of Windows apps on Wine Zorin OS 16 Linux has moved into beta, promising improved performance and a more extensive application Store covering Flathub and Snap as well as old-style repositories.…

Lowest scoring sections were 'performance' and 'deal', but it looks like it could be a lot worse You aren't the only one feeling like you're giving more than you're getting from your employer – a chunk of Microsofties are of the same opnion.…

Plus HTTP/2 web server written in Rust Deno 1.9 hit the streets this week touting new features including an HTTP/2 server written in Rust.…

Mayor thrilled with $175m up front for Guitar Town infrastructure projects Oracle is continuing its journey into the heart of the southern United States with a $1.2bn investment in a new campus in Nashville, set to create 8,500 new jobs.…

It won't fly. 'We are collateral damage' Things have taken a tern for the worse for the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, which is seeking an exemption from the EU for a law that takes flight tomorrow, so their birds can participate in a long distance European race.…

And Positive Technologies has been slapped with American sanctions Russia’s infamous APT 29, aka Cozy Bear, was behind the SolarWinds Orion attack, the US and UK governments said today as America slapped sanctions on Russian infosec companies as well as expelling diplomats from that country’s US embassy.…

Another UK institution topples at the hands of miscreants The University of Hertfordshire has fallen victim to a cyber attack that has resulted in the establishment pulling all its systems offline to deal with the situation.…

Emulation could make more sense than migration. Here’s why… Webcast There’s nothing like the joy finding a piece of vintage vinyl on eBay, having it appear on your doorstep, then watching your friends’ faces light up as you drop the needle into the groove.…

Incoming iPhone 13 could be final slimline version All good things come to an end. And pointless things, too, with Apple reportedly planning to discontinue the iPhone Mini after the next iteration expected later this year.…

Accidental borkage ... or a not-so-subtle hint that it really is time to move on? Multiple customers have told The Register that OneDrive for Business on Windows 7 is falling over for them, with one reporting that Microsoft has quietly pulled the plug on support.…

Matchbox goes green with sustainably produced toys based on electric cars Soon tots will be able to throw their toy cars at the 4K TV and claim it was Autopilot what did it, Daddy.…

Chap brought in $27m deal – so bosses withheld two-thirds of his pay A salesman who claimed bosses at software biz SAS diddled him out of half a million pounds in commission had "no reasonable prospects" of successfully proving his case, an Employment Tribunal judge has ruled.…

COBOL-inspired caps lock English just don't add up when dealing with large SQL codebases Structured Query Language (SQL) at scale can lead to unstructured, unmaintainable database code - at least as far as Google is concerned - so boffins affiliated with the biz have devised an open source logical programming language to make SQL more amenable to maintenance.…