The Register

Yes, you read that right, an American exec is actually going to serve time... eventually. When he chooses Anthony Levandowski, the top engineer who pleaded guilty to stealing self-driving car trade secrets from Google, was sent down for 18 months in the US on Tuesday.…

'A secure dev lifecycle has a much higher ROI than letting the public do the bug detection work for you' Microsoft's bug bounty program has exploded in terms of scope and payouts.…

Mexico, US boffins used technique 'for the first time' with ground-based radio 'scopes to spot exoplanet Astronomers discovered an exoplanet for the first time using the astrometry technique with ground-based radio telescopes, according to fresh research published in The Astronomical Journal on Tuesday.…

Apple still leading in anti-cookie diet, Google – predictably – in the rearguard A week after Firefox 79 debuted, Mozilla says that it plans to start rolling out version 2.0 of its Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) scheme to prevent redirect tracking on the web.…

Qualcomm bugs among the worst – including a critical hole in wireless networking Google has emitted the August edition of its Android software security updates.…

'New investigation casts fresh uncertainty over the deal,' says analyst The European Commission has pulled out its microscope to perform a full-blown inspection - under EU Merger Regulations - of Google’s proposed $2.1bn purchase of Fitbit and the wider data implications for users and rivals.…

Bank account numbers and sort codes may have been accessed by intruders Hackers who accessed the servers of the British Dental Association (BDA) may have made off with members' bank account numbers and sort codes, according to reports.…

Facebook's man told: 'OK, now you are just trolling us' Linux devs have dismissed a proposed patch to the kernel that would only work with a Nvidia driver, motivating a second patch that will prevent disguised use of proprietary code in GPL modules.…

More customers, more coverage, but profit proves elusive It was up, up and up some more for Virgin Media in its latest full quarterly numbers: UK internet customers increased, network coverage swelled and losses almost tripled.…

Hello, 2009 called, they said they've got an email for you A Chinese state-backed hacking crew named Taidoor is deploying a custom remote access trojan (RAT) against Western organisations, according to US authorities.…

Modelling suggests massive second wave without major improvements Data modelling from UK universities shows that the nation could be heading for a massive second wave of COVID-19 cases unless the government ramps up its controversial test-and-trace system.…

Sorry, it's a bit early for Crimbo singalongs, isn't it? All of the tablet vendors' Christmases have come at once: sales into the channel went through the roof in Q2 at levels only typically seen during the winter holiday quarter amid a coronavirus-induced buying frenzy.…

Institute says the knowledge needed to run it is fading, but the move wasn't without opposition The University of Cambridge has said that it will decommission its on-premises Hermes email service in favour of Microsoft's Exchange Online. Currently both systems are in use.…

Outsourcing giant's boss Jon Lewis continues to swing the axe Capita has hit the eject button on its managed print services (MPS) wing – the loss-making Workplace Technology division is back in the hands of its original founder, Paul Gillett.…

'Most companies' want to make code 'completely transparent' SonarSource claims – but not outside the firewall SonarQube, an open-source product by SonarSource that claims to be "your teammate for Code Quality and Security", was the focus of adverse publicity recently when a computer consultant chose to publish proprietary source code from well-known companies on the internet – alleging it was largely obtained via badly configured SonarQube installations.…

You can guess why – but in some places internet actually got faster Video-streaming binges as a result of the coronavirus lockdown have flooded broadband networks and led to a reduction in connection speeds.…

Software upgrade to deliver less lethally-stubborn automation The United States' Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has revealed the conditions under which it will permit Boeing's beleaguered 737 MAX to resume commercial flights.…

Gotta catch 'em all China will force gamers to use their real names when playing online in an ongoing effort to make gaming in the country more "tasteful".…

Former trade minister Dr. Liam Fox named as source of leaked trade docs Former UK trade minister and current Conservative MP Dr. Liam Fox has been named as the source of hacked trade documents released during last year's British elections.…

No excuses left – we'll help you on the fast road to compliance Webcast "Things are never going to be the same." That’s the kind of phrase still being thrown around as we rub our eyes and try to wake from the rather bad dream we’ve been sharing for the past few months.…

Also teases 5G handsets, but says they won't reach India or Singapore Google has revealed its new mid-range smartphone - the Pixel 4a – and an on-sale date of sometime in October.…

Bluetooth and GPS widget will be used to enforce home COVID quarantine Singapore will fit all incoming travelers with a wearable tracking device to prevent them from breaching their mandatory quarantine.…

Also touts scheme to have USA to pocket finder’s fee for allowing TikTok sale US president Donald Trump spent much of his Monday on matters impacting the technology industry.…

When will this madness end? The massive amounts of exposed data on misconfigured AWS S3 storage buckets is a catastrophic network breach just waiting to happen, say experts.…

All aboard the exascale express Having acquired supercomputer biz Cray last year for $1.3bn, HPE on Monday said it has fully integrated the two businesses. The enterprise-oriented IT firm will offer high-performance computing under the HPE Cray supercomputing brand to address what it calls the Exascale Era.…

Chances of it getting enacted in time for the election - slim to almost nil The US House of Representatives has passed a spending bill which includes a $500m election security provision.…

Game developers face local license law that could 'devastate' iOS revenues Apple removed over 30,000 apps from its iOS App Store in China on August 1st, according to China-based analytics biz Qimi Data.…

Chinese-owned vid app reportedly moving HQ to London The chairman of UK Parliament's Defence Committee has suggested making popular app TikTok subject to Huawei-style code reviews by GCHQ, if its reported move to a new London HQ comes true.…

iFixit reveals repair won't be trivial At $179.99 (£140), Amazon's Echo Frames smart glasses aren't cheap. So, if they break, can they be easily fixed? According to the veteran tech torturers at iFixit, the answer is... not really.…

Resell agreement set up amid plans to build next gen of home automation and security gear Google is partnering with ancient alarm and automation vendor ADT to push its Nest smart home kit to more consumers and small businesses.…

OpenSSF to take projects from CII and OSSC under its umbrella The Linux Foundation has formed the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) with founding board members representing companies including IBM, GitHub, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, NCC Group, and Red Hat.…

We'll show you how to build that one platform to rule them all Webcast You’ll often hear arguments from IT pros over whether to embrace a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud for your next bold enterprise technology move. In case you’ve been living under a large rock formed of legacy server stacks and bundles upon bundles of Cat 5 cables for the last few years, yes, there’s a stark difference between hybrid cloud and multi-cloud.…

CRM biz doesn't 'anticipate any kind of material financial impact' but can't say same for those whose data was nicked "We discovered and stopped a sophisticated attempted ransomware attack," Blackbaud CEO Michael Gianoni has told financial analysts – failing to mention the company simply paid off criminal extortionists to end the attack.…

Same height, bit faster, same wing layout as iconic 1960s airliner Virgin Galactic, Beardy Branson's ongoing spaceflight wheeze, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Rolls-Royce to develop "engine propulsion technology" for its "high speed commercial aircraft".…

PC giant blames restructure costs HP made a 1.3 per cent pre-tax profit margin on total sales at its British trading outpost in 2019, according to a filing at Companies House.…

Yes, the one with a $193.8bn cash pile Apple is reportedly trying to negotiate a 50 per cent rent cut with its UK retail landlords as it wrestles with the high-street turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.…

But otherwise a capable machine for the road warrior Review What makes a good business laptop? Historically, corporate IT buyers have had to choose between portability, versatility, and sheer power. You might get one or two, but the likelihood of finding a device smack-bang in the middle of that Venn diagram was vanishingly small.…

This should have been started a year ago, Solihull council docs say Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, responsible for administering the sleepy suburban cul-de-sac just south of Birmingham, England, has awarded a £1.6m contract to an ERP systems integrator.…

Third-party skills and smart speaker incarnations also discontinued Microsoft has decided to restrict the roles that its AI assistant Cortana is permitted to fill.…

Doug Engelbart had the idea. Bill English did the engineering and made the first ever mouse William English, who helped build the first computer mouse in 1963, died last week at the age of 91.…

Behold, the Move of Certain Doom Who, Me? Take a trip back to the 1980s with a Monday morning cautionary tale of cleverness, COBOL and mainframe programming in today's Who, Me?…

Payroll company kept over $70m of tax and founders spent it lavishly The co-founder of a company that left IT contractors unpaid has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years.…

Meanwhile, Linux KDE desktops can be pwned by evil archives In Brief Cisco customers once again find themselves needing to patch critical vulnerabilities in Switchzilla's gear.…

Automation tool RDS can now push MySQL and PostgreSQL onto Arm, MariaDB coming soon Amazon Web Services has made instances powered by its home-baked Arm servers more approachable by starting a preview of its Relational Database Service (RDS) on the hardware.…

Apple leads in shipments, but also records the slowest growth among branded fondleslab-flingers Tablet computer shipments have grown by 18.6 percent thanks to the COVID-19 crisis.…

Lots of love for AMD and POWER 10 and a hint of some Google's operational code making it into future releases Linus Torvalds has released a new version of the Linux kernel.…

‘Appreciates President Trump’s personal involvement’ and promises so much security, you’ll be tired of securing Microsoft has confirmed it is considering the purchase of made-in-China social network TikTok and that its CEO Satya Nadella has spoken with US president Donald Trump to re-assure him about the security and taxation implications of the putative purchase.…

Plus: Latest hardware results from MLPerf and why so-called text deepfakes are dangerous In brief Rite Aid, an American drugstore chain, secretly deployed facial recognition cameras to spy on its shoppers across 200 stores for eight years.…

Book tries to sell science to girls, so our nine year-old Reg reviewer gives her opinion Book review In Dana Dash: First Girl on the Moon, it shouldn't be surprising that Dana Dash, a 10-year-old science-obsessed girl, makes it to and walks on the Moon – but that doesn't make it any less exciting.…

Don't bother packing your bags for HSC J1631+4426 just yet, it's 430 million light years away Astronomers have spied a tiny galaxy with the lowest oxygen levels yet observed, a discovery made possible thanks to a machine-learning algorithm.…