The Register

Higher barrier to entry, but nothing SQL devs can't handle Interview The latest version of Neo4j's graph database – 4.0 – touts new scaling features and better security. The Reg talks to self-confessed graph fanboy Dr Jim Webber about how the graph-wrangler is, at last, able to scale to accommodate large databases, and about its biggest enemy: the inertia of developers who stick with SQL no matter what.…

In a world of virtual keyboards, who's keen for some keypress fun? Some time later this year, a TCL staffer will press the red button on the Blackberry brand phones production line and, unless another firm takes the reins, it'll be the end of the road for the humble BlackBerry.…

One of five practical conference sessions for people of all ability levels Event If you’re a seasoned tech pro who’s wondering what DevOps is all about, good news... our Continuous Lifecycle London conference has added a workshop just for you.…

Blackpool isn't just about stag dos, chips, and illuminations, after all Blackpool is literally and figuratively using artificial intelligence to pave the way for a better future for Britons, or something like that.…

Grimey man unveils a pair of deals Pop-star accomplice Elon Musk on Tuesday indicated he hopes to fly his Starship over Texas – and pocketed a major deal to launch a satellite for NASA.…

Can't we just get a pint and wait for it to all blow over? Is that asking too much? LG Electronics has withdrawn from the Mobile World Congress trade show, held at the end of this month, citing concerns over the new virulent and deadly coronavirus.…

1% of 1% of users affected, but as it's Google that's still in the six figures A bug in Google's Photo software caused potentially 100,000 or more netizens to have their personal videos exposed to complete strangers last Thanksgiving.…

El Reg digs into claims by Kiwi browser maker that ad giant is not GDPR compliant Analysis Google is potentially facing a massive privacy and GDPR row over Chrome sending per-installation ID numbers to the mothership.…

Untested tech, no training, last-minute rollout, buggy code – sound familiar? It’s all so painfully familiar: with a crunch date of February 3, the Democratic Party in Iowa decided to charge ahead with an IT rollout that comprised an entirely new software system spread out across thousands of sites to record the result of the Democratic caucus for its presidential nominee.…

Crap security? Shocked, shocked, we tell you This may shock you, but Huawei effectively built a poorly hidden, insecure backdoor into surveillance equipment that uses its HiSilicon subsidiary's chips, it appears.…

Or so clams this vendor's marketing Attempts to infect computers with ransomware and other malware over networks are decreasing, reckons infosec outfit Sonicwall.…

Golden Gate Capital jettisons equity before IPO can kick in Cloudy ERP outfit Infor has been picked up by Koch Industries after investment biz Golden Gate Capital sold off its remaining equity stake.…

Technical requirements file appears to include references to US biz's other operations Analysis Suspicions have grown deeper that a lucrative contract to run Colombia’s .co registry was rigged to favor US-based operator Afilias, thanks to unusual references in one of the South American government’s official documents.…

Gives punters more time to move to S/4HANA because that's what everyone wants to do, right? SAP has blinked first in the face-off with customers by agreeing to extend standard support for Business Suite 7 (BS7) applications, and outlined its "maintenance commitment" for S/4HANA for the next couple of decades.…

It's 2020 and people are still letting S3 storage leak A private yacht crew recruitment agency has left an AWS bucket containing the CVs, passports and even some drug test results for up to 17,000 people exposed to world+dog, according to reports.…

Replaced by former Computacenter bod in non-exec role Kevin Loosemore will stand down as chairman of British software firm Micro Focus as the company continues to struggle with its disastrous takeover of HPE's software biz.…

So some pholdables still crap then Not only is the Motorola Razr a nostalgic homage to a simpler time, but it's foldable too. Unfortunately, it's the latter feature irking some users, who have complained about unpleasant noises whenever they snap their pricey devices into the clamshell mode.…

Can you smell the democratisation of IT? Neither can the shrinking 'others' section AWS remains the biggest provider of infrastructure clouds with a revenue haul of $34.6bn in 2019 but for the first time it has pulled in less than double that of nearest rival Microsoft, which inhaled $18.1bn.…

5,000 password resets, multi-day outage, och aye! A further education college in east Scotland has been struck by what its principal described as a cyber "bomb" in an apparent ransomware attack so bad that students have been told to stay away and reset passwords en masse.…

Like glitter and paste jewels? This is your mobe Pablo Escobar was a lot of things. Folk hero. Terrorist. Murderer. Drug kingpin. Revered and reviled in equal measure. Now, almost 30 years after his death, his younger brother is keeping his flame alive – with foldable phones.…

Even Fulham Broadway is no sanctuary from The Curse Of Bork Bork!Bork!Bork! Those worrying about what befell the near-universally disliked Windows Vista will be delighted to know that its name persists on-screen in UK branches of phone flinger EE.…

Loving all those cores? You probably won't love the price Kind old VMware is updating its pricing model in a move to "continue meeting our customers' needs". Provided those needs involve paying more for CPUs with more than 32 cores.…

'It's going to be amazingly OK' The roller coaster ride that is the semiconductor industry suffered its worst annual slump in almost two decades in 2019 - and is now braced for the potential disruptions caused by the outbreak of the Coronavirus.…

Now there's no excuse OpenSK, a new open-source project from Google, lets folk make their own security key for less than £10.…

C'est simple comme bonjour! Orange, France's largest telecoms company, will use Nokia and Ericsson to deploy its 5G networks as pressure to ban Huawei from European networks mounts.…

The customers will never know what we did. Until now Y2K As the IT world continues to suffer the after-effects of 20-year-old botched Y2K fixes, please take a moment to enjoy a bonus Y2K tale of Microsoft Access 97 taking the place of a mainframe at a particularly paranoid financial institution.…

Red Planet's sporadic E layers shed light on our world's interference NASA’s Mars-orbiting MAVEN spacecraft is helping scientists uncover the longstanding mysteries of how small clouds of concentrated plasma in Earth's atmosphere interfere with our radio signals.…

Exploitable API blew away anonymity, abused by systems in Iran, Israel, Malaysia Twitter has admitted a flaw in its backend systems was exploited to discover the cellphone numbers of potentially millions of twits en masse, which could lead to their de-anonymization.…

Someone's not getting a five-star rating Uber has temporarily suspended the accounts of two drivers and 240 users in Mexico, after both drivers carried a passenger that may have been infected with the Wuhan coronavirus that has officially killed at least 426 people so far.…

Full-year profit up 14% to $34.3bn, YouTube bringing in $15bn ad sales – and shares down Google's parent Alphabet on Monday reported $162bn in revenue for its 2019 fiscal year, up 18 per year over year, and $46bn in revenue for its fourth quarter, up 17 per cent.…

US watchdog struggles to do its job over illegal sale of folks' whereabouts It’s been nearly two years since it was first revealed that US cellular networks were selling real-time location data with inadequate safeguards. Late last week, after months of political pressure, the regulator in charge, the FCC, finally revealed the results of an investigation.…

Verizon's hypocrisy, Amazon's negging, odd targeting from Google Comment It all looked so good. A stunning third quarter in Sunday’s Super Bowl left the San Francisco 49ers looking like dead certs for the armored rugby trophy. And then it all fell apart: the Niners pulled a WeWork, and got crushed like an orange in a Juicero by the Kansas City Chiefs.…

Software biz's celebration of inclusivity questioned by ousted staffers Special report In late January, code storage biz GitLab published a blog post declaring that "diversity and inclusion is a core value at GitLab and fundamental to our success." Nonetheless, the company has had trouble retaining female executives.…

Ditches mobe-cum-tablet for clamshell It's a matter of days until Samsung unveils its latest lineup, and already leakers have got their hands on footage of its latest flexible mobe in all its bendy glory.…

All your clouds look like K8 Google will support Windows Server Containers in its Kubernetes engine, and has emitted a connector that makes all its cloud resources look like Kubernetes.…

End of an era in mobe design The humble BlackBerry (by TCL™) is dead. At least in its current incarnation.…

Jan Wörner dodges another round of 'hurdles' by stepping down European Space Agency Director General, Jan Wörner, has confirmed he will be vacating his post in 2021, citing "some hurdles" in public as his reason for leaving but writing of "dirty games" in an email to staff.…

Silent geolocation-dependent services are so reliable A German artist has had a bit of fun with Google Maps after tricking its free satnav service into displaying traffic jams – by walking around with a hand cart full of mobile phones.…

It was indeed the expired certificate wotdunnit. Popcorn time! Updated Microsoft's Slack-for-Suits collaboration platform has decided that Mondays aren't for it and has gone back to bed, much to the distress of Office 365 customers around the world.…

IT services offline for days now Australian courier company Toll has shut down several of its key systems after a "security incident" last week, prompting a backlash from frustrated customers.…

Option to securely carry your user profile with you in next release The systemd-homed service, which enables portable home directories, has been merged into the code for systemd and will be included in the forthcoming 245 release.…

He was also secretly filming in leisure centres A perv who reportedly hacked people's iCloud accounts to obtain sexual images before sharing them online has been sent to prison for nearly three years.…

Also: Latest Windows 10 Insider Build's new surprise feature, which rhymes with 'chug' and doesn't like penguins Roundup Welcome to the first Microsoft roundup of February 2020, the month after the plug was finally pulled on Windows 7. There remains, however, plenty left for Redmond to put the boot into, from Windows 10 Insider builds to poor old UWP.…

Some assembly required. Just like the real thing The Register's resident brick botherer picked up Lego's new International Space Station (ISS). But is it any good?…

Partner webinar pours cold water on compute cartridge for boardroom behemoth Those hankering for a big bastard Surface Hub with a bit more horsepower could be in for disappointment as Microsoft appeared to confirm that the 2X won't be showing up any time soon.…

Tried not suing your customers when they make claims? FIC 2020 EU companies aren't taking out insurance against attacks on online assets because the companies selling coverage aren't organised enough – while Brits are more likely to pay off ransomware crooks than others.…

Only extra special Clubcard holders entrusted with Media Player on the move We interrupt the McDonald's-based borkage to bring you news of a Windows desktop spotted in an unlikely place – the handheld device used by shoppers to scan their purchases at the Tesco store in Carlisle, UK.…

Top military officers talk about response thresholds at French shindig FIC 2020 Western military alliance NATO could have reacted with force to the 2017 WannaCry ransomware outbreak that locked up half of Britain's NHS, Germany's top cybergeneral has said.…

Starting from scratch. A really big scratch Who, Me? Welcome back to Who, Me?, The Register's regular ramble into the dark recesses of readers' memories where we prod consciences with a long, sharp stick.…

January's other AI news summarized for you... by a human... honest Roundup Let's catch you up on the latest goings on in the world of AI beyond what we've already written about.…