The Register

Without competition due to 'extreme urgency' around pandemic Updated The UK's NHS Digital – an executive non-departmental public body for health service tech support – has awarded an £8m contract without competition to X-Lab, which builds healthcare software systems.…

Offences alleged to have happened a decade ago, say police Lawrence Jones, the former chief exec of Manchester-HQ’d hosting firm UKFast, has been charged with rape and sexual assault.…

'There'll be no more work from external/unpaid contributors' – dev The Qt Company has followed up on its plan to make long-term support releases commercial-only by closing the source for 5.15 today, earning protests from open-source contributors who say that the 6.0 release, which remains open, is not yet usable.…

FCC won't mull law reform this month Section 230 – the liability shield that more or less prevents websites, such as Twitter and Facebook, from being sued in the US for their users’ content – is going to survive the Trump era despite furious last-ditch efforts by the President.…

One owned by every 13-year-old with dreams of slinging an axe Bass. Treble. Mid. Volume. Erm, footswitch and... 5G FREQ?! We've got it, people, we've found the top-secret diagram of the "COVID-19 5G chip" that Bill Gates is going to insert into our brains!…

Though that might not be the workaround it needs The Scottish government is sizing up the market for suppliers to develop on its low-code technology platform and support its social security overhaul.…

A reminder that XP was both frugal and prone to falling over 12BoC With the Twelfth Night approaching, we finish our 12 Borks of Christmas* (12BoC) series by waxing a little Dickensian as the ghost of operating systems past pays a visit.…

Let's see Gartner top this Column This time last year, it would have been a simple matter to predict that the world's supply chain would be disrupted for all things tech, and that it would not be Trump who did it, but a sudden, unexpected pandemic that impacted every aspect of our working and personal lives. Right, Gartner? So what does 2021 hold for tech's big players? Let's hazard a guess.…

Doing lockdown with bags and bags of Chinese plastic bricks When one has a Lego Saturn V and a launch platform and tower to go with it, where does one go next? A crawler to transport the thing obviously.…

144Hz refresh rate and a 108MP camera? Review Released late last year with a price tag of £599 (about $812), Xiaomi’s Mi 10T Pro is an aspirational sub-flagship 5G phone that focuses on photography and performance.…

Chang'e-4 and Yutu rover are still exploring, and NASA will need their support satellite China has celebrated the beginning of a third year of exploration on the far side of the moon.…

This year’s New Year Resolution: Update your GIAC certs Promo You know you’re good in the trenches when it comes to cybersecurity. You might even have done a stack load of courses to ensure that you’ve filled in any gaps in your knowledge. Your colleagues know they can depend on you.…

Jio blames rivals for vandalising infrastructure in rural areas during protests Top India telco Reliance Jio Infocomm has taken the unusual step of vigorously denying it wants to diversify into farming.…

After years of waffle, potentially thousands of web addresses suspended Tens of thousands of .eu domains have been officially suspended due to Brexit.…

A new year, another, er, billionaire goes missing? Former CEO and founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Jack Ma has vanished from public view, fueling fears Beijing is punishing the cloud mogul for speaking out against the Chinese government.…

Privacy policy re-written, which is somewhat scary given Singapore has made trackers just-about-mandatory The Singapore government has decided to use data gathered by its TraceTogether COVID-19-coronavirus contact-tracing app in criminal investigations.…

What do we want? That whole 'don't be evil' thing. When do we want it? As soon as 30% agree to an election and then... Hundreds of Googlers have started forming a labor union at the internet giant and its Alphabet stablemates.…

Outdated clients stop working, organizations with thousands of end-points told to switch out .sys files It wasn't the best of New Year's Day mornings for some Check Point customers; in addition to possible hangovers, those who lagged with their patching had been left with inoperable systems and a tough fix ahead for some.…

Tech slinger upset it can't unload $560,000 worth of flying Chipzilla gizmos A drone reseller has sued Intel for hyping its Falcon 8+ drone system and for delivering a supposedly subpar product without the promised capabilities.…

Applicants will need to hold off until March at the earliest President Trump has thrown his anti-immigrant policies into the incoming Biden administration's lap, extending a ban on work visas until March 31.…

Also: Hints of Windows 10X, and don't press that red button, Dougal In brief Advertising platform AdDuplex rounded out 2020 with a fresh set of figures showing the latest incarnation of Windows 10 cresting double digits as the last three versions accounted for nearly 90 per cent of the 80,000 PCs surveyed.…

Where are the documents? I'm waiting! Fancy a coffee? Happy new year! Updated Messaging platform Slack is first out of the gates of 2021 with a good, old fashioned TITSUP*.…

But DMCA claims about circumventing security protections still stand A judge has ruled against Apple in its copyright battle with Corellium, a Florida startup that offers virtualized iOS instances for security researchers.…

'No concrete solutions' as of mid-December Teaching assistants at Canada's McGill University spent Christmas waiting to be paid as the institution struggled with a new Workday HR and payroll system, according to the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM).…

Why do most PCs not support error-correcting code? Chipzilla is to blame, says Linux don Linux creator Linus Torvalds has accused Intel of preventing widespread use of error-correcting memory and being "instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with its horribly bad market segmentation."…

Extra support, extra options, designed for hard work but won’t disgrace itself in everyday life Imagine if Samsung offered a semi-secret phone that it hardly ever allows to appear in shops, and which gets longer, stronger, support than is offered for its other devices. Imagine that phone delivers most of the experience of a premium Galaxy device but keeps a 3.5mm headphone jack and replaceable battery. It even boasts a docking feature not available in other phones and sells for less than Samsung's premium consumer handsets.…

But it's not over yet: Next step is Uncle Sam's appeal to London's High Court Accused hacker and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should not be extradited to the US to stand trial, Westminster Magistrates' Court has ruled.…

'Because I said so' There is at last a definitive answer to the question of why the Windows UI slapped a 32GB limit on the formatting of FAT32 volumes and it's "because I said so," according to the engineer responsible.…

The new internets of Iran, China, and Russia are nothing like the original Feature Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore said that the internet routed around censorship. But what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing? National governments are busy walling off their own sections, and in some cases changing the technologies that underpin it. What's more, they're not stopping at their own borders.…

Crossing the LogoWatch and Borkage streams: A Bork averted 12BoC Our journey across 12 festive fu-, um, screwups in our 12 Borks of Christmas (12BoC) series* nears its end as a Register reader regales us with an unfortunate choice of logo and a predictable Big Blue reaction.…

Everything is Windows' fault. Even when it really isn't Who, Me? The perils of dusty old kit, a cashing-in of brownie points and if in doubt, blame Microsoft! Start the week with another Register reader Who, Me? confession.…

CISA flags ‘further hardening’ advice as Microsoft reveals internal account compromises The extent and impact of the SolarWinds hack became even more apparent – and terrifying – over the holiday break.…

As China launches Alibaba antitrust probe, warns Tencent, and the clock keeps TikTok-ing for Oracle The Register’s writers and readers may have taken a few days off, but the US/China trade war rumbled on regardless. So let’s get caught up, shall we?…

Legal geniuses behind case ask for extra time to convert between Google Docs and MS Word The legal minds behind a so-far-failed attempt to sue United States vice-president Mike Pence so he can challenge the result of the nation’s presidential election have not only failed to put forward a convincing legal argument, but they also struggled convert documents from one format to another.…

Linus Torvalds has been back at work for a week and already has a second release candidate ready. What’s your excuse? Linux overlord Linus Torvalds has urged developers to “crawl out from under all the xmas wrapping paper piles and go test” after releasing release candidate two of version 5.11 of the Linux kernel.”…

For whom the return key tolls 12BoC Ah, Christmas dos. Remember them? A chance to humiliate oneself in front of colleagues and make the odd drunken confession or two. Welcome to the tenth whoopsie of our Twelve Borks of Christmas (12BoC) series*…

'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?' 12BoC It's that Christmas feeling: scrabbling around for the correct cable to attach a poppet's new toy to the family TV. Getting into the swing of things, today's bork, the ninth in our Twelve Borks of Christmas (12BoC) series*, sees something similar on a screen outside Waitrose.…

It has everything most normal people would want and costs £279 It's never been harder to buy a new phone. Five years ago flagships did everything, mid-rangers had obvious compromises, and sub-£200 handsets were trash.…

Tell you what, let’s have a meeting about it Something for the Weekend, Sir? Don’t wish me a Happy New Year: it doesn’t work. In fact, I think your annual good wishes may be hexing them.…

Santas sled of bork comes to Lanzarote 12BoC Viva Las Borkas! A trip to warmer parts today and a sign that seems to be showing us that most of unusual of things: a bork within a bork, on this, the eighth instalment of our Twelve Borks of Christmas (12BoC) series*.…

Brute force and ignorance a happy VAX does not make On Call The world of IT and hard physical labour are unlikely bedfellows, but a troublesome VAX installation brought the two together in today's On Call.…

El Reg lends our ear to companies and developers struggling to survive in Apple's cruel, cruel App Store world Special Report Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, currently dealing with antitrust investigations from governments and fending off lawsuits from their disgruntled customers, appear to be finally facing their moment of truth: Has Big Tech gotten too big?…

If it ain't broke, don't fix it Review Last month, Lenovo sent El Reg a loaner of its latest ThinkPad Carbon X1 ultrabook. This series is now in its eighth generation, showing that "innovation" doesn't always mean better. There's value in tried-and-tested designs, and this machine faithfully treads the steps of its forebears.…

Carpark sorrow as Windows failed to cough booty 12BOC On the seventh day of Christmas, the bork gods sent to me: a boot-hurt ATM, fix the printer, nerds, Scottish parking whi-i-i-i-nge, one dead DB, petty angry user, flightless Windows signage, and a server they said had ceased to be.…

A simple cut-and-paste text job from a 2008 EU treaty for genetic databases People are pointing to the inclusion of Netscape Navigator and SHA-1 in the newly-minted British Brexit trade deal – yet no one seems to have realised part of the text in question is a treaty underpinning an EU-wide DNA database.…

Lithium-ion had a lucky break early on. Successors will need billions of dollars to catch up – if they don't flame out first Feature "There are liars, damned liars, and battery guys" – or some variation thereof – is an aphorism commonly attributed to US electro-whizz Thomas Edison.…

Svelte, yet ordinary Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go is notable for its light weight, decent performance, and somewhat affordable price – but it is a long way from what the company had in mind when the Surface range was launched eight years ago.…

Two firewalls are better than one, right? 12BoC On the sixth day of Christmas, the bork gods sent to me: Fix the printer, nerds, Scottish parking whi-i-i-i-nge, one dead DB, petty angry user, flightless Windows signage, and a server they said had ceased to be.…

El Reg goes with the Flow Chromium may be all the rage nowadays, but other options that aren't Mozilla continue to be developed.…

To pay for parking you must first sign in to Windows 10 12BoC On the fifth day of Christmas, the bork gods sent to me: Scottish parking whinge, one dead DB, petty angry user, flightless Windows signage, and a server they said had ceased to be.…