The Register

No wonder J2157 clocks in at 34 billion solar masses The greediest supermassive black hole spotted by us Earthlings is an eye-popping 34 billion times more massive than our Sun, and gobbles nearly a solar mass of nearby gas and dust every day.…

It's only downloaded 26.5m times a week, NBD A lingering vulnerability in lodash, a popular JavaScript helper library distributed through package manager npm, has prompted developers to kvetch about the fragile state of security.…

Not to worry, there are only *searches* several thousand devices apparently exposed online Network administrators are urged to patch their F5 BIG-IP application delivery controllers following the disclosure of a pair of critical remote takeover bugs.…

Is that listed phone number going direct to a professional or a call center? Special report Addicts seeking substance abuse treatment are being deceived by phony medical clinics advertising on Google's business directory system – and the web giant seems unwilling or unable to fix the issue.…

Best get updating pronto, folks The Apache Project's popular Guacamole open-source remote desktop software contained vulns allowing remote attackers to steal login creds and hijack targeted machines, researchers have said.…

Continental capers lead to 750 UK arrests French and Dutch police have boasted of infiltrating and killing off encrypted chat service EncroChat, alleging it was used by organised crime gangs to plot murders, sell drugs, launder criminal profits and more.…

Redmond also praised for blocking malware control systems on its clouds Microsoft has emitted a pair of security patches to address flaws in Windows 10 that can be potentially exploited by miscreants to hijack PCs. A victim simply needs to be tricked into opening a file containing a specially crafted image on a vulnerable system.…

Hunting for the right file is the 'bane to anyone's productivity' allegedly Microsoft is rolling out a swathe of updates to OneDrive, increasing the upload file limit for the cloudy bit barn from 15GB to 100GB.…

Surprise! The UK has been shut out of an EU-led project From the department of "chickens coming home to roost" is news that the European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded prime contracts for the next six Copernicus missions, and the UK has missed out.…

Privacy-focused Librem 14 laptop available for pre-order Purism, a San Francisco social purpose company that emphasises privacy and free software, today flung out its latest notebook: the Librem 14.…

Plus: Apple declares first-gen Retina MacBook Pro 'obsolete' Google has discontinued its hugely popular Pixel 3A and 3A XL mid-range smartphones. While the device will continue to receive updates for the foreseeable, the Chocolate Factory has no plans to produce more units.…

Record 53.6 million tonnes produced last year - that's 7.3kg per person on the planet The United Nations is sounding the alarm on increasing levels of e-waste, with 2019 producing a record 53.6 million tonnes of the stuff: an increase of 21 per cent in just the past five years.…

Undisclosed amount of money to change hands VMware is buying Datrium, a business that started out in the cut-throat world of HCI and then switched to disaster recovery in the cloud.…

VPN gear vulnerable to remote hijackings Cisco has patched a cross-site scripting vulnerability in two VPN routers it sells to small businesses and branch offices.…

It's like the Chocolate Factory isn't dominant enough already Updated Twenty consumer and citizen rights groups have published an open letter [PDF] urging regulators to pay closer attention to Google parent Alphabet's planned acquisition of Fitbit.…

Icon backgrounds banished, but some Insiders may have to wait for new toys Microsoft has unveiled a long-teased update to the Windows 10 Start Menu for its loyal fans... or at least some of them.…

Amendment aimed to push back introduction to 2023/24, but it'll go ahead as planned next year MPs have voted against an amendment to the Finance Bill which set out to delay changes to IR35 legislation for off-payroll working, a subject close to the heart of many IT contractors.…

Sharing's caring The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has proposed that Google should open its click-and-query data up to rival search engines to help them improve search algorithms and properly compete with the web giant.…

'If diversity is not important to you, then at least you might care about the bottom line' Open Source Summit Diversity and open source can help fix the software developer skills gap, argued Scala contributor and Carnegie Mellon Assistant Professor Heather Miller in a keynote talk at the virtual Open Source Summit North America.…

Southampton Central: 'Old fashioned', 'tired', and now... borked Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's addition to the encyclopaedia of borkage comes courtesy of some digital signage sat next to ticket machines in the fair city of Southampton, UK.…

This year is just one disappointment after another, eh? The black hole thought to be nearest to Earth – a mere 1,000 or so light years away – may not exist at all, more than a dozen scientists have warned.…

Find out how to weather the storm – tune in online here this month Webcast The financial services world has had a tough decade. From a global financial crisis to an uptick in regulation to the COVID-19 coronavirus, and possibly yet another financial crisis off the back of that, it’s no wonder the sector is often seen as traditionally slow to digitally transform. With everything else going on, it often feels like there’s simply no time.…

There's iron in them hills, maybe The latest measurements from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) suggest the Moon contains more metal than previously thought.…

Golden State AG prepares crackdown Today is the first day that California will start enforcing its new data privacy law, so if your website doesn’t have a “Do not sell my personal information” link in, say, the footer, you may soon regret it.…

Senior techie sues, says he was snubbed due to Dalit ancestry, HR ignored complaints A senior engineer working at Cisco headquarters in Silicon Valley claims he was mistreated by coworkers and managers because of his Indian caste status – and that HR ignored his complaints about the matter.…

Stability gains for Windows-fiddling throwback Microsoft has freshened up its PowerToys preview with a 0.19 release aimed at making things a bit more stable.…

Still outstanding issues but gaining ground faster than previous efforts The Windows 10 2004 rollout is moving a little quicker than the last major update to Microsoft's OS.…

New Regular Expression evaluator borrowed from Chromium V8 - a sign of more collaboration to come? Mozilla has released Firefox 78 with a new Protections Dashboard and a bunch of updates for web developers. This is also the last supported version of Firefox for macOS El Capitan (10.11) and earlier.…

244 workers TUPE'd to new employer UK retailer John Lewis Partnership is buddying up with services giant Wipro and ejecting 244 tech staff into the arms of the outsourcer as it does so.…

New skills aplenty and Teams tweaks from Uncles Brad and Satya Kind old Microsoft is discounting certifications in its technology and making access to training via LinkedIn free as businesses swing the axe in the post-lockdown world.…

Privately owned vehicles still illegal on public highways, however Electric scooters are finally coming to the UK after the Department for Transport confirmed it would allow limited trials of rented two-wheelers from this weekend.…

Outsourcer charged with bolstering PPI chaser's business transformation Global consultancy-cum-IT services outfit Capgemini has won a £40m contract from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) to provide IT and developer support to its new business strategy.…

A delay until 2022 looms as sensor problems on Atlas V add a few more days to schedule It is squeaky bum time at NASA after the launch date for the agency's Perseverance Mars rover was pushed back yet again, raising the spectre of a multi-year delay.…

Legislation to root out subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces following year of civil unrest China's mainland government has enforced a sweeping national security law in Hong Kong, increasing its hold on the territory in what HK's chief exec, Carrie Lam, has described as the "most important development" in the former British colony's history since its handover.…

Deutschland, uber alle allies Germany is helping the UK develop its new decentralised contact-tracing app, the country's ambassador Andreas Michaelis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.…

Top uni takes action after El Reg highlights concerns by academics Special report MIT has taken offline its highly cited dataset that trained AI systems to potentially describe people using racist, misogynistic, and other problematic terms.…

It's free too – until you've burned through £1,000 worth of data, that is UK map boffins at the Ordnance Survey (OS) have opened up its shiny new Data Hub, replete with APIs and access to MasterMap data.…

Please, sir. I want some more TikTok OPPO yesterday pushed out its latest smartphone for the UK market: the bargain-basement A72, which packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 platform and retails at £219.…

Oh Snap: Based on Ubuntu but without package manager. Warpinator anyone? The Linux Mint team has released Mint 20 Cinnamon, a long-term support (LTS) release. It is based on Ubuntu 20.04, will be supported until 2025, and new Mint versions will use the same package base until 2022.…

CodeGuru guesstimates how much AWS will charge you to run that source on its cloud Amazon has made its machine-learning-tools that automatically review and profile code, so you can find out where bottlenecks are and how it's going to cost you in the AWS cloud, generally available.…

Make a secure digital transformation possible Webcast Most businesses tell us that they think email encryption is a priority that's part of their digital transformation and cloud migration. But not many of them use the security mechanism consistently.…

Or was target practice for a Death Star? Astronomers are on the hunt for a rare gigantic star located 75 million light years away that seems to have disappeared after nearly 20 years of observations.…

EvilQuest targets Mac pirates, poses as legit network security and music tools Security bods are sounding the alarm following the discovery of a rare brand-new strain of Mac ransomware.…

So much for preventing malicious software from peeking at sensitive files Six months after software developer Jeff Johnson told Apple about a privacy bypass vulnerability opening up protected files in macOS Mojave, macOS Catalina, and the upcoming macOS Big Sur, the bug remains unfixed – so he's going public.…

Man claims life savings lost in theft aided by telco staff AT&T has been sued for a second time over allegations its staff gave thieves control of a specific individual’s cellphone number to steal a large chunk of cryptocurrency.…

Bogus signatures may fool your corp network's gatekeeper Palo Alto Networks has issued a fix for a security hole in its firewall products – one so serious, Uncle Sam urged organizations to patch it ASAP as foreign hackers "will likely attempt to exploit it soon."…

Lawyers lick their lips at litigation to come Analysis The internet's domain names have become potentially trademarkable following a decision by the US Supreme Court today that Booking.com can in fact be registered with America's Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) – against officials' objections.…

Open-source database project gets new heads, inclusive code of conduct Salvatore Sanfilippo, better known by the nickname antirez, stepped down on Tuesday as the maintainer of Redis, a popular open-source database project released in 2009.…

Norwegian cancels 97 orders, sues for compensation over halted fleet A Boeing 737 Max has flown for the first time since the fleet was grounded globally after two total-loss crashes – on the same day a European airline cancelled its order for almost 100 examples of the controversial aircraft and sued its US manufacturer over the debacle.…

Follows its customers into the cloud Couchbase's database-as-a-service product has hit general availability – although this is just on Amazon Web Services initially, with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform soon to follow.…