In this reboot of the Three Paper Thursdays, back after a hiatus of almost eight years, I consider the many different ways in which programs can be sanitised to detect, or mitigated to prevent the use of, the many programmer errors that can introduce security vulerabilities in low-level languages such as C and C++. We … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: Sanitisers and Mitigators →

Just as in other types of victimization, victims of cybercrime can experience serious consequences, emotional or not. First of all, a repeat victim of a cyber-attack might face serious financial or emotional hardship. These victims are also more likely to require medical attention as a consequence of online fraud victimization. This means repeat victims have a … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: Exploring the Impact of Online Crime Victimization →

Microsoft, Cisco, Google etc gang up to form Open RAN Policy Coalition

Some of America’s super-corps have remembered how the US became the dominant global technology force it is, and have vowed to use innovation over threats to counter Chinese dominance in 5G markets.…

Decades-old theory may require a rethink thanks to Japanese probe

The Moon is believed to have formed from the leftovers of a proto-Earth smashing into a Mars-sized Theia nearly 4.5 billion years ago.…

Lee Jae-yong ends dynastic control and will even let staff join a union

Samsung's heir has said that he will not pass down management of the South Korean conglomerate to his children, ending three generations dynastic rule.…

Automated operators can pay up like anyone – or anything – else

Microsoft has detailed a new form of software licence it offers to non-human users.…

Cracks the 150,000-employee mark as revenue falls just short of $10bn

Indian services giant HCL Technologies has wound up its 19/20 financial year by reporting 15 percent annual growth but a flat Q4.…

It is time. We need a new Regism and cannot go to the pub to think of one. Can you help?

It is no secret that we like to use the odd bit of shorthand at The Register when biting the hand that feeds IT. Now we need a fresh one for Microsoft.…

One has the vulns, the other has the brass neck to pull off heists. Right?

Russia might begin carrying out cyber attacks against Britain's 5G networks "at the behest of China", the chairman of a Parliamentary Select Committee has ventured.…

'B' is for basic controls that up and disappeared

A study of the UK online advertising market, conducted by global accounting firm PwC, has found that publishers get just half of what advertisers spend, with the other half siphoned off by ad-supply chain intermediaries.…

Advertise your open positions here for free, no catch, and find opportunities within

Job Alert This week we've got job openings from all over the globe to tempt you, your friends or your past colleagues back into work, or indeed into new ventures.…

Middle management is about to learn just how necessary they are

Last night, one of the most senior figures in the IT industry from one of the biggest companies gave the strongest indication that when COVID-19 lockdowns gradually begin to lift, people will not return to the jobs they once had. That means both tech jobs, and how technology supports other business roles.…

A compelling addition to repo house – but is the Redmond flavour too strong?

GitHub had a lot to say about its plans at its virtual Satellite event yesterday, but the most far-reaching was the advent of Codespaces, the ability to edit code online, integrated into the GitHub user interface.…

Even Exchange’s marketing bod reckons tests of new Reply-All-stopper could be a career-defining moment

Microsoft may just have made Reply All storms a thing of the past, by adding a suitable blocker to Exchange in Office 365 environments.…

And now to avoid container sprawl costing you plenty

Microsoft has slipped out licensing details for SQL Server running in containers and it will likely encourage developers to be pretty diligent in their use of Redmond’s database.…

Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue

Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.…

It's over, Amazon, we have the high ground (and all you had was a high price) says Redmond

Updated Amazon.com has filed a second, secret, appeal against the decision to award Microsoft the Pentagon's $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.…

Schneider Electric patches vulns after Trustwave raises alarm

Two Schneider Electric SCADA products had vulnerabilities similar to the ones exploited in the Iran-bothering Stuxnet worm, an infosec outfit has claimed.…

Zero-click remote-code exec hole found by Googler, updates emitted

Samsung has patched a serious security hole in its smartphones that can be exploited by maliciously crafted text messages to hijack devices.…

A review by Rob Cranley (9). A great flight sim that absorbed many, many hours of my youth

A review by SomeRandomHEFan (46). Getting closer

Для того, чтобы узнать дату, необходимо решить несложную задачу.

Компания Xiaomi осенью прошлого года выпустила смартфон Mi Note 10, но обновление Android 10 добралось до аппарата только сейчас.

Компания Xiaomi, неожиданно для всех, объявила дату анонса очередного смартфона из линейки Redmi K30.

Аналитики из Canalys опубликовали рейтинг 10 самых продаваемых смартфонов на глобальном рынке в первом квартале 2020 года.

Мы уже не раз писали о том, что компания Xiaomi готовит к выходу бюджетный смартфон Redmi 9. Сейчас в сети появилась очередная утечка, намекающая на его скорый анонс.

Компания обещает бесплатный ремонт устройств и возмещение расходов, если ноутбук уже отремонтировали.

Экспедиционная группа из Китая поднялась на гору Эверест и решила там же протестировать в экстремальных условиях камеры смартфонов.

OED Word of the Day: femina, n. The long pale feathers from the wing tips of a female ostrich, used as decorative plumes

OED Word of the Day: microfinance, n. The provision of loans and other financial services to low-income individuals and communities for the creation of small businesses…

“When I was 17, I was in a serious accident and had to be home for months. Looking out at our boring backyard, I daydreamed a plan for my life. It became a blueprint.” So writes Holly Korbey in a lovely piece at Let Grow. There are different kinds of daydreaming, of course, and some don’t […]

The incentive to automate will be enormous for $15 per hour minimum wage. Of America’s nearly 16 million retail workers, the biggest group — 4.6 million — are salespeople. Their average wage is $10.47 an hour. After that, the country has another 3.4 million cashiers, and their average wage is $9.28 an hour. Only a quarter of salespeople earn more than $14 — and only 10 percent earn more than $19. The figures are worse for cashiers. But in the race to automate there will be a clear winner: Amazon. Why: Amazon can automate more easily than can physical stores. It is analogous to why long haul trucking can be automated before taxis: Just as highways are simpler places than...

By 2060 Phoenix Arizona will have 132 days a year over 100F. Dallas will 55 and Pecos Texas 101 days. My view about problems: We should solve them. If the Earth really does heat up substantially then we should pull the CO2 back out of the atmosphere while also releasing cooling gases. If its practical we should also raise the albedo (surface reflectivity) of the planet. Right now cities should change their zoning laws and roads policies to make buildings, roads, and other surfaces more reflective. No more dark buildings. Use light colors of concrete, white shingles, and other surfaces that reflect more light. That would be beneficial even if the Earth was not heating up. Hot cities are unpleasant...

The Miami Beach danger zone for mosquitoes carrying Zika virus is expanding. This isn't just about microcephaly in developing fetuses. Since Zika attacks neural progenitor cells it might cause lasting damage in adults too. A case of acute sensory polyneuropathy in an adult caused symptoms that lasted for months. It is suspected that Zika causes inflammation of sensory nerves and possibly an auto-immune response. So Zika is bad. What should we do about it? Wipe out the mosquitoes that carry it. Totally drive them to extinction. These mosquitoes are invasive in the Western Hemisphere. If a mosquito causes major health problems for the human species we should just wipe it out. Wiping out a mosquito species could be done with...

Already we've hit the $1000 genome and faster and cheaper DNA sequencing is on the way. DNA sequencing is going through a speed-up and cost-cutting rate that is similar to that which computer processors have been going through for decades. While the doubling rate of computer power has slowed quite a bit the rate of decrease in DNA sequencing costs has kept up the pace and, in fact, the rate of decline in DNA sequencing costs suddenly accelerated at the end of 2007 has been going down pretty sharply ever since. The cost decline seemed to halt during 2014 only to plunge in 2015. So why should you care? Really cheap massive amounts of DNA sequencing of cancerous cells will...

Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University find that robots really do decrease human employment. As robots and other computer-assisted technologies take over tasks previously performed by labor, there is increasing concern about the future of jobs and wages. We analyze the effect of the increase in industrial robot usage between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets. Using a model in which robots compete against human labor in the production of different tasks, we show that robots may reduce employment and wages, and that the local labor market effects of robots can be estimated by regressing the change in employment and wages on the exposure to robots in each local labor market—defined from the national...

Keep calm, and stay geeky people!