The Register

Imagine an iPad running FaceTime clamped to a post stuck into a Roomba and you'll get the idea Japanese airline ANA has spun out a startup to develop and sell “avatars” - robots that comprise a remote-controllable stand with iPad-like device running a Facetime-like app, to bring your face into a room.…

Wow, how convenient On Monday, Amazon fired Chris Smalls, a worker at its Staten Island, New York, warehouse, who had organized a protest demanding more protection for workers amid the coronavirus outbreak.…

A few more months to get those servers upgraded 'in light of current global circumstances' Microsoft has blinked once again and delayed disabling TLS 1.0 and 1.1 by default in its browsers until the latter part of 2020.…

Feeling secure? Sucker Analysis The FBI has not followed internal rules when applying to spy on US citizens for at least five years, according to an extraordinary report [PDF] by the Department of Justice’s inspector general.…

What have you got for us, Detective? Amazon's Detective has hit general availability, adding to a range of AWS security services, which at this point has become a little confusing.…

Today's Window Walk is brought to you by the letters 'R' 'E' and 'G' Microsoft has persevered with the quickfire release cadence of the toolbox of stuff that should really be built into Windows 10 in the form of PowerToys 0.16.…

For a biz that prides itself on not censoring the internet, it sure likes censoring the internet Cloudflare, known for free speech advocacy, rolled out a self-styled family-friendly variation of its DNS service to block adult content – and ended up denying access to LGBTQ websites and sex education resources.…

Two-year campaign observed by Guardicore A malware gang is targeting Microsoft SQL servers with such precision that they're disabling rival gangs' software nasties in their quest to steal control of servers from their rightful owners.…

Playing catch-up with AWS and not that smart, but some advantages over DNS Google Cloud Platform's Service Directory, which aims to enhance microservice discovery, has hit beta.…

2021 looking ever more virtual and distant. Did March feel like a year for you too? Microsoft has switched its September Ignite event to a digital affair even as other organisers hope for a return to some semblance of "normal" by August.…

Enterprise cloud rains bonus down on software supremo... that's this year's holiday sorted then Salesforce.com has had a rummage down the back of the sofa and awarded CEO Marc Benioff $2.3m in small change.…

You lot can keep the blinkenlights flashing but you'll have to be TUPEd from BT... Exclusive - updated BT is outsourcing management of its mainframe estate to IBM in a five-year agreement that kicks off today. And while it may be April Fools' Day, some incumbent staff being TUPEd across to Big Blue aren't laughing.…

Web calculator should give you an idea of bog roll, pasta, booze stocks The UK is in its second week of official coronavirus lockdown, though society has been collectively shitting the bed for much longer – so surely by now we've all suffered the indignity of venturing out to the supermarket only to be faced with barren shelves.…

AIM-listed biz says THAT virus meant it has little choice, will seek a buyer AIM-listed software and managed services outfit K3 is to put its loss-making Microsoft Dynamics reseller division into the hands of administrators amid commercial unpredictability caused by COVID-19.…

Vicarious liability now applies to intentional leaks, top court says Morrisons supermarket is not liable for the actions of a disgruntled employee who deliberately leaked nearly 100,000 employees' payroll data online, Britain's Supreme Court has ruled.…

With licence fee under threat, where can corporation get the money from? The BBC has floated the idea of replacing its licence fee with a broadband levy in its submission to a government consultation.…

Authors, publishers unimpressed The Internet Archive has defended its decision to make its collection of 1.4 million books readily available online, despite most of them still being in copyright, by arguing that public libraries are currently closed.…

Space scientist reveals drive behind solar instrument experiment now approved by NASA NASA has formally green lit a mission to explore how the Sun whips up solar particle storms – those giant frenzies of charged particles that can frazzle orbiting satellites and destroy electronic systems on Earth.…

Connecting to a port greater than 8192 using a hostname now stalls, possibly Apple's latest update to macOS Catalina appears to have broken SSH for some users.…

Also: Satellite comms outfit OneWeb files for Chapter 11 Roundup Welcome to another roundup of the week's rocket-based tomfoolery for space nerds. Let's jump straight into it.…

It's actually another Huawei down the 5G antennas Stob Your attention please. I bring a message to you, Britain's IT community, from High Command.…

Steady now A survey of more than 800 organisations has found that 53 per cent are looking to upgrade enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.…

Three secrets of success you need to know, according to Quadrotech Webcast You merged. You sold a company. You’re migrating to a sovereign data centre. Whatever the reason for your Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration, it can be one of the most important and stressful projects you will ever take on.…

Flying a 50-year-old rocket to mark the anniversary of Apollo 13? What could go wrong? Exclusive Faced with spiralling costs for its Space Launch System (SLS) and pressure to put American boots on the Moon by 2024, NASA is to return the Saturn V to flight.…

$25k from you and $75k from the government buys improved productivity and economic diversity The Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong has increased the subsidies offered to local business’ technology investments by 50 percent.…

Super-crypto actually normal TLS, lawsuit launched over Facebook API usage, privacy policy rewritten UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson sparked security concerns on Tuesday when he shared a screenshot of “the first ever digital Cabinet” on his Twitter feed. It revealed the country’s most senior officials and ministers were using bog-standard Zoom to discuss critical issues facing Blighty.…

Could be a wearable, could be wired. Backed by big fines and jail The State of Western Australia has given itself the power to install surveillance devices in homes, or compel people to wear them, to ensure that those required to isolate during the coronavirus crisis don’t interact with the community.…

There's an app for that. Or text, if you dare. Or even retail outlets Singapore will bin the physical tokens used to provide two-factor authentication (2FA) for some digital government services.…

Australia starts crustacean migration Australia will arrange rescue flights for lobsters, shellfish, and other seafood, to ease the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy. No, it's not that kind of rescue: they're going to be eaten, hopefully.…

Techies, non-techies respond to COVID-19 by self-medicating at home With the San Francisco Bay Area, including Silicon Valley, on its third week of self-quarantine, and facing at least another month of being stuck in near-lockdown at home, habits have changed.…

Oh no, we've been rumbled With workers opting to telecommute and dial into video conferencing amid the coronavirus lockdowns, where possible, sales of formalwear are up... partially.…

Turmoil in the financial markets fells ambitious acquisition plan Xerox said on Tuesday that it is ending its hostile bid to acquire printer-and-PC maker HP due to financial complications arising from the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.…

K8s 'kind of a universal key' for going multi-cloud MariaDB has updated its cloud-native SkySQL database, promising a slew of features addressing deployment, management and analytics.…

Low demand, supply glut. Why bother? Samsung Display will discontinue production of LCD panels by the end of the year due to falling demand for the increasingly marginalised tech and a supply glut in the market.…

Although you need to hop in the Management API sidecar for the really good stuff NoSQL slinger DataStax has released an open source Kubernetes operator for Apache Cassandra as it seeks to cosy back up to the community.…

For now. (Having mattresses and smartbogs to fall back on doesn't sound so nuts anymore) Over half of Chinese electronics, scooters and underwear corp Xiaomi's revenue came from smartphone sales, according to audited figures published today [PDF].…

Plus note to admins: sending content to Microsoft is on by default and users cannot disable it Hands On Microsoft made a number of Office 365 Microsoft 365 announcements yesterday, including touting an expanded set of AI capabilities in its core applications.…

Lots of non-savvy users may be recycling previously hacked creds Group video chat app Houseparty has offered a $1m bounty to identify what it claims is an organised campaign to falsely depict it as a hackers' backdoor.…

If you ignore the T&Cs to probe a site's algorithms, don't expect the Feds to swoop in using the dreaded CFAA Netizens probing websites' algorithms for bias and discrimination, against the sites' terms and conditions, can breathe a small sigh of relief. A US federal court has ruled it's not a criminal offense to flout a consumer-grade website's fine-print.…

Bloody poms are full of great ideas Australian prime minister Scott Morrison may have to eat his words on how to limit the spread of coronavirus after the country's westernmost state announced "extreme and draconian" measures all of its own.…

How many customers' deets? It's not saying just yet Marriott Hotels has suffered its second data spillage in as many years after an "unexpected amount" of guests' data was accessed through two compromised employee logins, the under-fire chain has confirmed.…

Gotta find Huawei to handle 2020: Despite rosy 2019 figures, Chinese comms giant sees trouble ahead Huawei's rotating CEO reckons the Chinese government will retaliate against the US tech industry rather than allow the giant of the Middle Kingdom to be "slaughtered on the chopping board"* of US sanctions.…

DIY IDE Theia hits 1.0, and it's still compatible with all those extensions The Eclipse Foundation has pulled back the curtains on version 1.0 of Theia, an alternative to Microsoft's developer darling of the hour, Visual Studio Code.…

Proved for all sites, proved for all sites, there is nothing else we can do Two years ago, network infrastructure biz Cloudflare launched the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver, with the promise that internet users could use the service to surf the internet without being tracked - by Cloudflare at least.…

Filtering, anti-spoofing, coordination, validation to prevent crooks, spies hijacking victims' connections An internet community effort to improve routing security has got a boost from some of the internet’s biggest names.…

And few worried about security – are they right? Two-thirds of polled Register readers, on average worldwide, said it was business as usual in their IT departments amid the ongoing global coronavirus crisis. And fewer than one in ten said they were paralyzed by the pandemic.…

Employers, would-be employees, we're here to help during these trying times Job alert We've received a couple of solid responses to our offer last week, in which we invited organizations seeking tech staff to tackle the coronovirus pandemic to send in their recruitment ads and we would run them for free online. No catch, no snark, nor strings attached.…

MEX I can: A tale of ingenuity and innovation Space extenders As the European Space Agency flicked the standby switch on some of its long-lived spacecraft in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, The Register figured it was time for a look at how the agency has kept its fleet flying far beyond expectations. Today, the veteran Mars Express orbiter.…

Forget the Lambeth Walk, instead enjoy the Camden Bork Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to another in our uplifting series of incidents where someone else's IT misdemeanours are flashed at an unsuspecting world. Behold the bork.…

We've asked top tech companies if India's lockdown changes the service you receive. Most say no India is the dominant source of offshored IT workers, and home to big facilities for plenty of global IT companies. India is also in lockdown and workers there cannot leave their homes except under limited cirumstances.…