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FCC boss tells telco industry he's available for lobbying work in January Analysis FCC head Ajit Pai has announced he will step down on Inauguration Day in January, bringing an end to a tumultuous four-year reign in charge of the US telecoms regulator.…

New API has same name but little integration with existing service AWS has added a messaging service to its Chime SDK, used by developers to build real-time conferencing features into applications.…

Chang'e-5 set for a lunar touchdown, Japan aims for Australia An exciting week is in the offing for space fans as China's Chang'e 5 prepares for a lunar landing and Japan's Hayabusa2 is set to return its precious cargo to Earth.…

Join us to learn how to save execs from themselves Webcast You have to hand it to the cyber-criminals. They really know how to mix a perfectly balanced cocktail of software engineering and human insight when it comes to crafting the perfect spear-phishing attack.…

Plus: Insider fixes and support extensions for old versions of Win 10 In Brief An odd thing has happened in the Windows 10 market-share figures published by ad slinger Ad Duplex. While the most recent release, the October 2020 Update (aka 20H2), crept closer to double digits, an older version also registered a gain.…

We said they were water-resistant, counters iGiant, as unhappy customers return from the beach The Italian competition authority (AGCM, or Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato) has fined Apple €10m (£8.97m/ $12m) over allegations it misled customers about the waterproofing qualities of its iMobes.…

Healthy block work paves the way IBM says it has managed to coax TLC-class endurance and performance from cheaper QLC flash chips, with customers of the company's FlashSystem 9200 all-flash arrays getting the benefits.…

Nothing from Chinese bogeyman allowed in core network by early 2023 The UK's Ministry of Fun* has published its roadmap for the removal of so-called high-risk vendors from UK telecoms networks as part of the second parliamentary reading of the Telecoms Security Bill.…

Legacy Business accounts to be axed from 4 January 2021 There is an early Christmas present for customers of TalkTalk Business as the company prepares to swing the axe on a legacy email service.…

What a spoon Infamous spoon-wrecking genius Uri Geller has lifted a 20-year ban on Nintendo from publishing Pokémon trading cards he claimed appropriated his likeness.…

Around 30% of premium notebooks sent by plane during pandemic, expect price rises on devices that are available to buy in January PC makers will be forced to compete for air freight space toward the end of this year as vaccines for COVID-19 are distributed around the world, both Dell and HP have warned.…

You didn't want fries with that, did you? Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to another in our series of digital signage behaving poorly. Today, the revelation through the medium of Windows that "chips" is, of course, the correct word for delicious bits of fried potato.…

A digital dial tone might have helped to keep the lights on for many Column Serverless is the new hotness. Like so much corporate IT, it's a complete misnomer. There are just as many servers as before, but your tasks – or microservices, if you need four more syllables – have no idea which ones they're using. Same meat, different stew.…

Modestly updating old phones won't work beyond Q4, says analyst Although shipments of smartphones to the channel recovered somewhat in the third quarter of 2020, that hasn't necessarily translated into sales.…

The Cassandra of 1980s tech: Doomed to warn, but never be heeded Who, Me? This Monday's Who, Me? is a reminder that for every ludicrous bit of company branding, there is always somebody behind the scenes yelling "No!"…

‘Removed by an unknown party’ says Bureau of Land Management POLL The mysterious monolith found in a remote corner of Utah last week has mysteriously disappeared.…

Hailed as visionary pioneer who changed both India and the software industry Mr Faqir Chand Kohl, the founder of India’s largest IT services company Tata Consulting Services and a pioneer of the nation’s IT industry, passed away last week aged 96.…

First solution: run on bigger servers to reduce chatter in the Kinesis fleet Amazon Web Services has revealed that adding capacity to an already complex system was the reason its US-EAST-1 region took an unplanned and rather inconvenient break last week.…

Also: New Zealand owl watching with Rocket Lab and ExoMars 'chute test In Brief Elon Musk's SpaceX demonstrated that a long-dormant pad could be reactivated with seemingly little effort after it launched the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite from Space Launch Complex 4 at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.…

UK data watchdog has been told and 'forensic' probe is ongoing Players' managers looking to lift salaries by a couple of million pounds or so better check their email read receipts: a full week after Manchester United was hit by hackers, many of its systems remain offline, with at least one report claiming the club is being shaken down for ransom.…

Budget sub-brand selloff will save jobs of workers, says founder, and avoid 'dragging innocent people' down Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has bid farewell to the company's budget sub-brand Honor, saying that selling the business will safeguard it from forces in America he believes are seeking to destroy Huawei.…

Here’s some information that will really help Promo You know you’ve got lots of data resting in your systems. But how much of it is usable information, that your colleagues can actually put to work?…

Sign up and make your voice heard A UK infosec bod has launched a petition asking the government if it would please drop its plans to install backdoors in end-to-end encryption.…

Must have lowered the asking price to one that isn't higher than entire group's market cap Capita has opened talks with a new suitor for its Education Software Solutions business, the one it tried to offload earlier in the year at a price reported to be higher than the entire group's market capitalisation on the London Stock Exchange.…

But Parliament seems a bit busy at the moment to legislate The UK government has announced plans to set up a Digital Markets Unit (DMU) to level the advertising playing field currently dominated by the likes of Google and Facebook.…

When I dreamt of a sci-fi future, I'm pretty sure this wasn't it Something for the Weekend, Sir? Help me up, would you, luvvie?…

Can we start a petition to abandon the whole 'lol jk ur in a simulation' arc too? The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. We've continued to put the Xbox Series S through its paces [read: played it a lot] with one of the titles available on the console from launch on 10 November, Assassin's Creed Valhalla.…

'Progress' report shows nobody's really paying attention any more How is Britain's £1.3bn National Cyber Security Strategy going? Nobody really cares any more – even the Cabinet Office, judging by its latest progress report.…

A grand uddertaking Irish computer vision and AI agriculture specialist Cainthus hopes to raise $50m after launching a facial recognition tool for cows.…

Another fine mess On Call Friday is upon us so take a moment from glumly hitting refresh on your government website of choice and join us for a story of abbreviations and adult filters in today's edition of On Call.…

Cloud giant has a lust for Rust so needs top minds and wants them to advance the language Amazon Web Services has quietly revealed that it has hired Rust compiler co-lead Felix Klock.…

No, really. It has signed a contract to make this happen in 2025 The European Space Agency has formalised its plan to dispose of space junk by using an orbiting claw to grab an old bit of rocket before dragging both the claw and the junk to a fiery doom.…

Alibaba in front with Huawei and Tencent on a second tier China's clouds grew by 65 per cent in 2020's third quarter, collectively hauling in $5bn of revenue in the period.…

New ways to evade sticking points apparently under discussion TikTok has another week to sort out its sale to Oracle, Walmart, and their investor pals.…

Hallucinate, Desegregate, Mediate, Try not to hate: INXS of 25 years on, PHP liberates the number eight Version 8.0 of the PHP scripting language is scheduled for release on 26 November, which coincides with the US Thanksgiving holiday.…

When we expect heavy traffic spikes we provision enough capacity to handle it... right? The gov.uk postcode-searching tool for Britons to find out what level of coronavirus lockdown they'll be in until Christmas has crashed on launch and been withdrawn.…

And on the B-side: Linux? Looking for something to do in quarantine? How about booting DOS from a 10-inch vinyl record?…

Maybe next time Brooker can choose to write a proper Black Mirror episode Streaming giant Netflix has agreed to settle a lawsuit over the trademark rights to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series of books.…

'These actions will help us to optimize the business by reducing the number of unprofitable customers' HP might have dropped the Ink Inc from its corporate banner but CEO Enrique Lores is still mining for the black gold: with the firm clawing back cash by slapping away the grubby hands of its pesky "unprofitable customers" from its printing rig.…

UK Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee report slams manufacturers as Euro Parliament votes to back tinkerers A new report from the UK's House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) argues the country should enshrine the "right to repair" in law and reduce VAT on tech repair services, while Europe's Parliamentarians also voted to further the cause.…

Direct observation published for first time As we near the northern winter solstice, the Sun continues to produce a steady power output of 384.6 yottawatts resulting from the fusion of hydrogen into helium in two distinct nuclear reactions. Direct observation of the secondary cycle was published in the journal Nature for the first time yesterday.…

Plus: Broadband ambitions meet cold water Among the economic doom and gloom of the UK's Autumn Spending Review, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak inadvertently revealed the sop UK.gov plans to throw to telcos after sacking Huawei from the UK's 5G rollout at the behest of an orange one-term president of the US.…

Watching, always watching Microsoft's Productivity Score has put in a public appearance in Microsoft 365 and attracted the ire of privacy campaigners and activists.…

Cheap and cheerful clearly appealed during pandemic It has been a difficult year for the mobile industry as economic uncertainty and widespread national lockdowns further depressed the public's appetite for handset upgrades. Some vendors are faring better than others, however, with Xiaomi proving especially resilient.…

Containers, serverless, CI/CD, tooling – we’d love to hear all about it Event If there’s anything that hasn’t come to a halt this year, it surely is software development and service infrastructure work. We know you’ve all been busy so here’s another chance to get in your presentation proposal for our Continuous Lifecycle Online 2021 conference.…

53 nations and 180 telcos have adopted Clean Network plan – and Huawei fell for it The United States' Clean Network plan has won support from 53 nations and 180 telcos, and Huawei has unwittingly legitimised it.…

Which rather kicks a hole in the planned debut of Slack-like Salesforce Anywhere Salesforce is reportedly deep in talks to buy Slack, according to The Wall Street Journal, which says a deal could happen "in days".…

Left last couple of bans alone but now says national security argument is bogus and calls for mutual co-operation China has responded to India's new round of bans on mobile apps by attacking the reasons for the banishments.…

It flew OK without MCAS – but not well enough to be certified as safe The Boeing 737 Max was safe enough to fly without the controversial MCAS system but would not have met safety certification rules, the EU Aviation Safety Agency has said after confirming the airliner will return to European skies in January 2021.…

French IT outsourcer says its overall losses will deepen as direct result Sopra Steria has said a previously announced Ryuk ransomware infection will not only cost it "between €40m and €50m" but will also deepen expected financial losses by several percentage points.…