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Plus: AI app for the visually impaired – and Clearview lawyers up In brief A tech savvy Reddit dweller has trained a machine-learning model to mimic David Attenborough’s world-famous plummy voice.…

Two other councils named in suit say: Not us, guv Facial-recognition tech firm Neology is suing a bunch of town and city councils in the UK after it failed to win a contract to install ANPR cameras across the North East.…

Astoundingly naughty students are your new case study on how not to manage personal device access to SaaS 94 Australian public schools will be without email for up to a week after students responded to mistaken use of a mailing list with horrible content, which in turn sparked a Reply-All storm that asked for the circulation of email nasties to stop.…

But please be aware this is a family museum Bork!Bork!Bork! Everyone loves a big a screen, none more so than Microsoft's Windows, which finds the devices irresistible when it comes to splashing unfortunate messages all over them.…

Did you know email can reach almost anyone in the world instantly and is great for marketers? Thanks for letting us know, SAP SAP has published a “Business trends” blog post that offers business etiquette advice so utterly obvious that a million thrice-recycled LinkedIn posts explaining how not to fail at life now seem clever by comparison.…

Cookies? Check. Coffee? Check. Warned security that the cast of The Matrix is on their way up? Er... Who, Me? Monday is here and sunshine has turned to showers in the UK. Take your mind off the "shorts or umbrella" quandary with an unusual tale of vampires, dating, and recreating The Matrix in Sun Microsystems' Chicago lobby courtesy of The Register's Who, Me? column.…

Plus: Someone's gunning for Mac developers In brief The US Department of Justice said a combined operation has led to its largest seizure of terrorist-owned cryptocurrency, taking around $2m (£1.5m) from Hamas’s military wing, al-Qaeda, and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).…

Up to 15 SMT8 CPU cores per chip, Power ISA 3.1 support, and other bits and bytes Hot Chips Big Blue hopes to roll out its first commercial 7nm data-center-grade processors – the IBM Power10 series – by the end of 2021.…

President says ‘other’ Chinese companies could feel the ban-hammer US president Donald Trump has suggested the United States may ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.…

Already a big mover in Foundation projects like Presto, GraphQL, Osquery and ONNX, so why not go all-in? Facebook has upgraded its Linux Foundation membership and by doing so will assume a seat on the organisation's board.…

YouTubers advised of opportunity to ‘get involved’ in some kind of push-back Google’s Australian tentacle has published a pair of protestations that repudiate Australia’s “News Media Bargaining Code” plan to have the advertising giant pay local news outlets for linking to their content.…

Which may be why PM Narendra Modi has also announced a cyber security policy Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has marked the nation’s Independence Day by pledging to connect all of India’s villages to optic fibre within 1,000 days.…

One-year deal worth quarter of a million dollars The US Department of Homeland Security has awarded a $224,000 contract to Clearview AI to purchase “information technology components,” in a deal sealed this week.…

DoD said to get extension to avoid crackdown on Chinese comms kit The crackdown on telecoms gear from Huawei and other Chinese companies in federal networks will not apply to US Department of Defense, at least for a few more weeks.…

China wants to break free from reliance on those outside the homeland More than a hundred TSMC employees have fled the world’s largest semiconductor fab, by market cap, to join smaller, less well-known Chinese chip factories after being promised much higher salaries.…

So surprising, what with the pandemic and Uncle Sam being so welcoming for immigrants right now Too few H-1B hopefuls applied for employment visas this year that the US government has held an unprecedented second lottery to reach its annual quota.…

How beams of light can boss around smart speakers Boffins affiliated with the University of Electro-Communications in Japan and America's University of Michigan have devised a way to use lasers to inject audio commands into mic-equipped devices.…

And there might be a delay before devs warm up to dual screens Comment The Surface Duo isn't an original idea – just look at LG's newest V60 smartphone or Toshiba's quirky Libretto Libretto W100 laptop. There's an air of experimentation about these devices, appearing to outsiders as a less-than-serious punt on a new direction. A gamble, essentially.…

You say broker, I say trojan, let's call the whole thing off Those wondering when the Microsoft love-in with Citrix might end will be relieved to learn that Microsoft Defender decided yesterday that Citrix Broker and High Availability Services bore all the hallmarks of a trojan.…

First Safe Harbor gone, now its replacement... Schrems the breaks! The long-running kerfuffle over the so-called Privacy Shield EU-US data protection agreement took another lurch this week after politicos announced plans to ponder an "enhancement" to the framework.…

*Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy A government drone pilot watched $950 meet a watery end after a bald eagle took umbrage at a DJI Phantom 4 Pro being used to map the shoreline of Lake Michigan.…

Case to be filed in the Netherlands and London Salesforce and Oracle are to face a GDPR lawsuit in London and the Netherlands that could cost them up to €10bn in fines, a legally aggressive privacy campaign group has claimed to The Register.…

Why does it always rain on me? Hewlett Packard Enterprise's UK operations were already feeling the squeeze before the COVID-19 pandemic made enterprises tighten spending on traditional infrastructure, according to the latest financial accounts.…

Infosec cert body looking into it as under-fire firm starts its own probe Exclusive British infosec accreditation body CREST has changed some of its exams after cheat sheets containing exam answers and practical walkthroughs were posted on GitHub in a repo that NCC Group confirmed included its own documents.…

The Register Theatre Company presents: Waiting for Windows Bork!Bork!Bork! Sometimes Windows sits and thinks, and sometimes it just sits. Today's entry in The Register's pit of signage silage is an example of Microsoft's former finest that sums up the last few months better than we could ever hope to.…

Lawyer driving case said to have been re-assigned and filed complaint against boss over alleged sub-$40m settlement United States labor secretary Eugene Scalia has reportedly personally intervened in Oracle’s wage discrimination case and suggested it could settle for a modest sum.…

And with a wave of his hand, the printer was fixed On Call Friday is here and while we cannot promise a break in the weather, we can bring forth another recollection from those brave souls staffing the helpdesk courtesy of The Register's On Call mailbag.…

If you haven’t touched yours for six-plus months, you have to cough up to prevent erasure come November Docker has warned that it plans to delete 4.5 petabytes of container images that haven’t been used for six or more months.…

Not just Germany stepping up to the plate – Ireland, too, we're told Britain's NHS has released its second go at a contact-tracing app to help limit the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus infections, thanks in part to some help from the neighbors.…

If you think the quantum world is confusing, wait until you see the pricing Amazon Web Services has fired up a cloud quantum computing service.…

‘Honoring the honest’ is the catchphrase for massive new online scheme India has announced a new technology-powered tax collection scheme that it hopes will increase its revenue.…

Ponders giving 'em immunity too for countermeasures up to hacking back. Australia’s government has proposed giving itself the power to take over private enterprises’ response to cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure.…

$2.5m-a-year CEO set to take a pay cut, so that's all right, then Mozilla has renewed its lucrative nine-figure deal with Google to ensure its search engine is the default in Firefox in the US and other parts of the world.…

Google yoinks smash-hit video game from Play store, too Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, filed a lawsuit against Apple on Thursday accusing the iGiant of illegally monopolizing iOS app distribution and app payments.…

From Russia, with love The NSA and FBI are sounding the alarm over a dangerous new strain of Linux malware being employed by Russian government hackers often dubbed the Fancy Bear crew.…

Hubble probe readings may reveal what caused Betelgeuse to briefly dim The light from the red supergiant Betelgeuse dimmed to a record low earlier this year, leading stargazers to speculate it was about to explode as a supernova. But now it appears the aging sun merely had a stellar sneeze.…

Day one: We're worth half a billion! Day Two: We're nearly worthless A two-day-old decentralized cryptocurrency called YAM collapsed on Wednesday after its creators revealed that a software bug had effectively vetoed human governance.…

Oslo outfit ups ante to show off privacy prowess in 3.2 Oslo-based Vivaldi has released an update to its Android browser replete with additional weaponry for the ongoing Tracker and Ad Blocker arms race.…

'We need this issue solved ASAP' Life ain't so suite (pardon) for a bunch of Google Apps Script developers thanks to a bug preventing them from using the platform's debug mode.…

Promises to ladle out more info on grand SRAM at Hot Chips Samsung Foundry has begun rollout of its latest 3D IC packaging tech, dubbed “eXtended-Cube” or “X-Cube*", which it claims can result in lower power consumption and faster overall speeds.…

This is how you win an election Updated Since the United States has had so much success flattening the curve (vertically), President Donald Trump has turned his attention to more pressing matters.…

Chairman of iPhone maker tells investors local markets will grow their own manufacturing ecosystems China's days as "the world's factory" are numbered, according to Foxconn chairman Young Liu.…

Never mind the delays, competition, or departures – we've got a strategy Intel has revealed details of its 11th Generation Core technology, including its Tiger Lake laptop-friendly system-on-chip family featuring Willow Cove CPU cores and so-called SuperFin 10nm transistors.…

Stop sniggering, don't forget those 'indirect taxes' Amazon says it pays Unlike arch-rival Amazon, eBay has assured the 300,000 third parties that use its online marketplaces it will continue to absorb the UK government's Digital Services Tax (DST) rather than pass it on.…

Stealing nudists' laptops? An appetite for cocaine? They're evolving! Video Footage from northern Germany appears to document an alarming development in the arsenal of wild boars – amphibious assaults.…

Get off my grass! ... And onto my WFH desktop Ink-tank printers flew off distributors' shelves in the first half of this year and onto the desks of work-from-home employees, providing one of the brighter spots for printer land in the first half of 2020.…

Finally, a digital transformation that really matters Charles Darwin's legacy lives not just in the idea of evolution by natural selection, but also in the samples he collected.…

Big Red: Everything's fine A bunch of Oracle developers supporting its Commerce systems are being let go as Big Red seeks to downsize the struggling platform.…

Lenovo says online sales soared in Q1 and has new hyper-plan for its data center unit Lenovo's long-suffering data centre group has posted considerably increased revenue and a modest loss, thanks to increased engagements with hyperscale clients.…

Heir to 2017’s successful Spectrum Next hits target in minutes The team behind 2017’s successful re-imagining of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is back with another new cut of the classic British Micro.…