The Register

Microsoft tries its best to forget 2018's sh!tshow as Surface Go finds its feet AdDuplex's first set of figures for 2020 show that just over two-thirds of Windows 10 PCs are running 2019 software builds.…

Just keep 'em out the core and keep supply chains diverse, ja? It's not just the UK government that's wrestling with the decision to permit Huawei's gear on the 5G network. Across Europe, a similar debate has raged. Can Huawei, which many in intelligence circles believe to be inextricably linked to the Chinese government, be trusted to power the next generation of mobile telephony and data? Today, we got our answer: kinda.…

A curious tale of Bitcoin exchanges and the High Court A Canadian insurance business struck by ransomware paid off the crooks via a cyber insurance policy – and their English reinsurers, having shelled out 109.25 Bitcoins, want it back from the alleged blackmailers.…

Still 'work in progress' but that's a huge vote of confidence The WireGuard VPN protocol, which is smaller, faster and easier to configure than IPsec, has been merged into Linus Torvalds' git repository for version 5.6 of the Linux kernel, the next release.…

209 incidents since 2014, say Freedom of Information figures The NHS has suffered 209 successful ransomware attacks since 2014, according to new figures based on Freedom of Information requests, but with a dramatic improvement since 2017, the year WannaCry ransomware hit the health service.…

If Western Link had a report card, it'd definitely be under the C Brit energy regulator Ofgem has opened an investigation into National Grid and Scottish Power's operations on the Western Link subsea cable.…

Ours is on its way – a fortnight after B-Day There's good news and bad news for those seeking to commemorate the UK's departure from the European Union on 31 January.…

Things looking better after that annus horribilis A year ago, as Apple CEO Tim Cook mustered the strength to defend Apple's strategy in the face of shrinking sales and profits, he could have been forgiven for starting the day by privately weeping into his sugar-free cereal and unsweetened almond milk – the breakfast of Valley kings.…

Also: four years of preparation + four spacewalks = one working Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer? Roundup Welcome to this week's space roundup, with news of a hello to a resurrected instrument, a heart-stopping moment for an old friend and a final farewell to a teenage telescope.…

The Free Software Foundation really set the bar high there Good news everybody! The Free Software Foundation has blown through its self-imposed target of 7,777 signatories in its efforts to persuade Microsoft to make Windows 7 open source.…

Best case? They pass within metres of each other at 14.7 km per second There’s a small but distinct chance a defunct NASA infrared telescope and an old US Naval Research Laboratory satellite will crash into each other on Wednesday evening high above Pittsburgh, Philadelphia.…

Sometimes a cigar-shaped shadow is just a cigar-shaped shadow A neuropsychologist has warned against using artificial intelligence to detect possible signs of extraterrestrial life in images of distant planets and worlds.…

And good luck opting out of that one Ubiquiti Networks is once again under fire for suddenly rewriting its telemetry policy after changing how its UniFi routers collect data without telling anyone.…

Browser makers keep coming back to the need to please advertisers Enigma At the USENIX Enigma conference on Tuesday, representatives of four browser makers, Brave, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, gathered to banter about their respective approaches to online privacy, while urging people not to ask for too much of it.…

We're too outraged to do a Bohemian Rhapsody headline It was a devastating blow to the credibility of Europe’s Galileo satellite project: the navigation system fell over during an upgrade in July, requiring a reboot that took six days. Now it appears it officially never happened.…

Tune in to hear from Veracode on how to stay secure Webcast What is DevSecOps? Simply put, it is the merging of DevOps and security processes to ensure code is secure from development through to testing and deployment.…

Too bad the Republicans aren't going to agree with her Comment It's troubling how in the past few years some countries have, with increasing zeal, blocked off their own citizens from the internet for gross authoritarian reasons.…

'We finished 2019 very strongly – but that is on the strength of the product portfolio' says CEO Lisa Su AMD is touting record quarterly numbers as the chip designer closed out a solid fiscal 2019.…

Hundreds or more said to be chopped worldwide VMware today laid off staff across the globe in various roles and departments.…

And yes, Facebook is involved, as ever Smart-home biz Ring sends its users’ personal app data to a range of analytics and marketing companies, according to an analysis carried out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).…

Cache(me)Out(side), how 'bout dat? Intel on Monday issued a processor data leakage advisory, describing two chip architecture flaws, one of which it tried to fix twice before.…

How about that antivirus now, huh? DEF CON is cancelled. For real this time. DEF CON China, that is.…

Well, at least it's beefier and cheaper than Motorola's throwback effort Samsung is expected to go public with its next foldable flagship, the Galaxy Z Flip, early next month at its Unpacked event in San Francisco.…

Terms for open-source C++ toolkit tweaked to encourage contribution The Qt Group is making changes to the terms under which its popular open-source Qt library is available to encourage more commercial licensees and a higher level of contribution from users.…

Only Insiders need apply for now A fresh version of the Windows take on DTrace will allow developers to chase down those pesky low-level bugs without exposing the posterior of their systems to miscreants.…

Still seeking some general intelligent action The UK government's procurement arm has floated the creation of a framework to allow public sector techies to buy something that hasn't been invented yet: artificial general intelligence, er... general artificial intelligence.…

Department of Fun straps on a holster, strides into the wild west of online gadget users The British government has finally woken up to the relatively lax security of IoT devices, and is lurching forward with legislation to make gadgets connected to the web more secure.…

Well, in our non-core networks and sporting a 'high-risk' nametag The British government is set to severely restrict the use of Huawei's cheap kit to a fraction of non-core networks across the UK due to worries about the Chinese vendor's link to China.…

'Magical,' says Steven Sinofsky on 10th birthday of Apple's fondleslab Former Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has spoken his mind about the launch of Apple's iPad (now celebrating 10 years) and its impact on Microsoft.…

It's all Boeing to go wrong unless everyone gets to come to the party NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has dribbled a little something from the scorn bucket over last week's Authorization Bill, which both postpones boots on the Moon and turns the Lunar Gateway into a "Gateway to Mars."…

Azure Functions 3.0 goes live, Microsoft Search learns some new acronyms, and more Roundup Welcome to another roundup of the Microsoft news you might have missed over the last week, from acronym excitement to Windows 10 updates and Teams-wielding rowers allowing Redmond to stick its oar in.…

Now patched, but yikes. For our next meeting, let's dial in from a phone box Video-conferencing outfit Zoom had a major vulnerability in its URL scheme that miscreants could exploit to eavesdrop on private meetings.…

Also reckons that it should 'accurately document the data recovery procedure' for metadata corruption. Y'think? Hosting outfit Gandi has published its postmortem regarding this month's outage and concluded that while it still has "no clear explanation", the main problem was "the duration".…

Drinking the Kool-Aid outside the box Stob Did you catch the recent TV version of The War of the Worlds?…

Scheduled for summer 2020 Zorin, which provides a Linux distro designed to look familiar for migrating Windows and Mac users, has announced a subscription-based management tool for Linux desktops.…

Cryptic tweets and likely deets as late May dates revealed Analysis At its upcoming I/O event, Google will almost certainly lift the lid on the latest version of Android – which will most likely be called Android 11 after Mountain View called time on its dessert-themed nomenclature last year.…

Don’t worry: The PM's only going to let the best boffins in... honest British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced an unlimited immigration program just days after signing Blighty's agreement to withdraw from Europe.…

If printers and nuclear reactors on the internet are fair game, so's the gizmo on your face, we'll concede Enigma You'd think virtual reality's biggest problems right now are breaking into meaningful mainstream adoption, and not making wearers of the headsets look utterly ridiculous. But no, it's possible you are wrong.…

As Chinese cities go into quarantine, investors get nervous over the lockdown of the world's workshop Stocks in a bunch of semiconductor companies dipped by four to five per cent on Monday – after China banned travel in and out of the manufacturing hub of Wuhan to isolate the new coronavirus that has already killed more than eighty people.…

'We all use other people's code' Enigma In a chilly conference room at the San Francisco's Hyatt Regency on Monday, legal and digital security pros convened at USENIX's Enigma conference to hold forth on security, privacy, and related matters.…

Dun-dun-dun, another one bites the dust Google App Maker, which lets people build simple web-based applications using a graphical user interface, will be axed early next year.…

We'll laugh at today's mandated holes in the same way we laugh at those from 25 years ago Enigma More than a quarter century after its introduction, the failed rollout of hardware deliberately backdoored by the NSA is still having an impact on the modern encryption debate.…

They’ve got money, explains American watchdog that just can’t help itself The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is under fire from lawmakers, and one of its own commissioners, for excluding New York State from a $16bn rural broadband fund that is supposed to cover every corner of the US.…

Meanwhile, probe reveals how Avast's 'anonymized' user data can be, er, deanonymized On Saturday, Google temporarily disabled the ability to publish paid Chrome apps, extensions, and themes in the Chrome Web Store due to a surge in fraud.…

It's not you, it's G An issue with Google’s online storage system, Google Drive, booted users out of the web giant’s online word processing and spreadsheets services on Monday morning, US west coast time.…

Hardened cybercrooks must be shaking in their boots A US state that was struck by a ransomware attack last year is now proposing a local law that would ban possession of malicious software.…

Though we might not hear about it straight away Huawei or another way? The British government is expected to decide tomorrow whether to include the Chinese tech giant's kit in the core of the UK's 5G networks at a meeting with the National Security Council.…

Mind you, he was instructed by HPE Autonomy trial HPE's accounting expert told the High Court that making "significant sales of hardware" and burying them in its accounts meant Mike Lynch's Autonomy may have given "the impression" sales growth "was in its core software business".…

Now all safely under BT's wing Smart phonebox firm InLinkUK went bust in December. Now, thanks to a statement of financials issued by administrators Duff & Phelps, we can peer into the troubled firm's accounts.…

Patched vuln was 'in active use', firm reveals Cisco has confessed to a vulnerability in its Webex Meetings Suite sites and Webex Meetings Online sites that allowed an "unauthenticated" attendee sitting on a workstation far, far away to join a "password-protected meeting without providing the meeting password".…