Personal Tech News and Views for the World • The Register

Bank IT bod pocketed nearly $1m in kickbacks from tech contractor bosses for sending deals their way, Feds claim

CityFibre relieves TalkTalk of its FTTP sister biz for £200m – after Boris win blows away Labour's nationalisation vow

South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal and unjust' sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos

Looking for a great value broadband deal? War-torn Syria will do you proud

Opera hits back at 'short seller' whose report claimed its 'predatory' microloan droid apps could hurt, er... investors

'I am done with open source': Developer of Rust Actix web framework quits, appoints new maintainer

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Server-side Swift's slow support story sours some: Apple lang tailored for mobile CPUs, lacking in Linux world

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia accused of hacking Jeff Bezos' phone with malware-laden WhatsApp message

No backdoors needed: Apple ditched plans to fully encrypt iCloud backups after heavy pressure from FBI – claim

WTF, EFS? Experts warn Windows encryption could spawn nasty new ransomware

Leave your admin interface's TLS cert and private key in your router firmware in 2020? Just Netgear things

Get hands on with Kubernetes, service meshes – and more – at our fantastic Continuous Lifecycle London conference

Software engineering performance monitoring: Do your metrics measure up in the modern DevOps age?

Continuous Lifecycle London 2020: First speakers revealed for our tip-top conference on DevOps, CI/CD – and more

Just an FYI: That cool funky CI/CD tool you're installing now could be next year's legacy tech

Dixons Carphone to London Stock Exchange: Yay, we grew 2% in the festive quarter. Oh, hang on, no we didn't

New SAP co-CEO 'runs simple' to Davos in Mercedes hydrogen car

EU've been naughty: GDPR has netted bloc €114m in fines since 2018

Microsoft picks a side, aims to make the business 'carbon-negative' by 2030

Looks like the party's over, folks: Global PC sales set to shrink as Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off, says Gartner

Over a thousand electronic gizmos went missing from London councils last year

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

A fine host for a Raspberry Pi: The Register rakes a talon over the NexDock 2

Geek's Guide

SpaceX ponders its next mission to blot out the Sun with another 60 Starlink sats

Fly me to the M(O₂)n: Euro scientists extract oxygen from 'lunar dust' by cooking it with molten salt electrolysis

World-record-breaking boffins reveal the fastest spinning thing on Earth – and it's not George Orwell in his grave

Big Falcon explosion as SpaceX successfully demos Crew Dragon abort systems

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

How a Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25,000 AI contest with hidden code – and was fired from dream SV job

Image-rec startup for cops, Feds can probably identify you from 3 billion pics it's scraped from Facebook, YouTube etc

Europe mulls five year ban on facial recognition in public... with loopholes for security and research

Verity Stob

US court rules: Just because you can extract teeth while riding a hoverboard doesn't mean you should

Who says HMRC hasn't got a sense of humour? Er, 65 million Brits

Help! I'm trapped on Schrodinger's runaway train! Or am I..?

World's richest bloke battles Oz catastro-fire with incredible AU$1m donation (aka load of cheap greenwashing)

Personal Tech

Looks like the party's over, folks: Global PC sales set to shrink as Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off, says Gartner

Smartphone shipments slightly up, personal computers to resume historical trends

21 Jan 08:30 | 32

Personal Tech

Leaks point to Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with mammoth 108MP camera and ... what? 16GB of RAM

RAM, bam, thank you .. actually... hmmmm. That's kind of excessive

14 Jan 18:42 | 54

Personal Tech

APEX predator? Chinese phone-flinger Vivo teases upcoming concept phone

Oppo and OnePlus stablemate plans shock for 2020

14 Jan 10:44 | 15

Personal Tech

Guilty as charged: Apple confesses some Smart Battery Cases are having 'issues', offers replacements

Nine-month production run of gear provides 'intermittent' charging results for fans

13 Jan 17:10 | 23

Personal Tech

That's Huawei we roll: Firm claims it's slinging 100k of its pricey, China-exclusive Mate X foldable phones each month

In other words... A long time ago we left the Galaxy far, far away...

13 Jan 14:53 | 6

Personal Tech

CES la vie: Shrunken Ultrabooks, muted mobiles and Segway's adult prams at world's biggest consumer tech show

CESThanks Vegas - it's been weird

13 Jan 12:31 | 18

Personal Tech

There's something fishy going down in the computer lab

Who, Me?Macro or Mackerel? Whatever it is, it looks o-fish-al. We'll get our sealskin coat

13 Jan 08:00 | 69

Personal Tech

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

CESGood luck running apps on that round display

10 Jan 12:20 | 81

Personal Tech

LG announces bold new plan for financial salvation: Trying to actually make phones people want to buy

Expect some wow factor in our newer phones, says company chief

09 Jan 19:15 | 45

Personal Tech

Chin up, kids, and mind the webcam: Honor lifts lid on MagicBook 14-inch and 15.6-inch laptops

CESNot a good look if camera hits you from the wrong angle

09 Jan 15:24 | 9

Personal Tech

The Nokia 3.2 is a phone your nan will love: One camera's more than enough, darling

ReviewThis 'Droid won't break speed records, but battery lasts ages and you've got 2 years of updates

09 Jan 10:56 | 75

Personal Tech

GSMA report: Sorry, handset makers, 5G is not going to save the smartphone market

Better LTE than ever, cos you'll prise my perfectly serviceable old mobe from my cold, dead hands, say respondents

08 Jan 17:15 | 68

Personal Tech

Samsung’s aspirational Galaxy Chromebook: Shell out $1k for a fast beaut (and remember to try Linux if you're into that)

CESSvelte beast, pretty on the inside

08 Jan 09:02 | 22

Personal Tech

Under construction: CAT lobs bargain-basement rugged mobile that will take a kicking and keep on clicking

CESWant a pretty mobe? Tough

08 Jan 07:01 | 20

Personal Tech

Latest patent brouhaha: Sonos wheels out Doomsday device in bid to block Google Home sales.... The Register

Search engine monster sued by rival smart-speakers maker in scrap over intellectual property

08 Jan 00:02 | 25

Personal Tech

AMD rips covers off 64-core Threadripper desktop monster, plus laptop chips, leaving Intel gesturing vaguely at 2021

CESThis top-end Ryzen costs four thousand bucks, mind

07 Jan 21:19 | 48

Personal Tech

Lenovo intros choose-your-own-adventure Yoga Slim 7: Ryzen spend $360 less on shiny or take a dip in Intel's Ice Lake?

CESAMD Ryzen 4000 and Intel configs both available

07 Jan 15:50 | 14

Bank IT bod pocketed nearly $1m in kickbacks from tech contractor bosses for sending deals their way, Feds claim

CityFibre relieves TalkTalk of its FTTP sister biz for £200m – after Boris win blows away Labour's nationalisation vow

South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal and unjust' sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos

Looking for a great value broadband deal? War-torn Syria will do you proud

Opera hits back at 'short seller' whose report claimed its 'predatory' microloan droid apps could hurt, er... investors

'I am done with open source': Developer of Rust Actix web framework quits, appoints new maintainer

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Server-side Swift's slow support story sours some: Apple lang tailored for mobile CPUs, lacking in Linux world

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia accused of hacking Jeff Bezos' phone with malware-laden WhatsApp message

No backdoors needed: Apple ditched plans to fully encrypt iCloud backups after heavy pressure from FBI – claim

WTF, EFS? Experts warn Windows encryption could spawn nasty new ransomware

Leave your admin interface's TLS cert and private key in your router firmware in 2020? Just Netgear things

Get hands on with Kubernetes, service meshes – and more – at our fantastic Continuous Lifecycle London conference

Software engineering performance monitoring: Do your metrics measure up in the modern DevOps age?

Continuous Lifecycle London 2020: First speakers revealed for our tip-top conference on DevOps, CI/CD – and more

Just an FYI: That cool funky CI/CD tool you're installing now could be next year's legacy tech

Dixons Carphone to London Stock Exchange: Yay, we grew 2% in the festive quarter. Oh, hang on, no we didn't

New SAP co-CEO 'runs simple' to Davos in Mercedes hydrogen car

EU've been naughty: GDPR has netted bloc €114m in fines since 2018

Microsoft picks a side, aims to make the business 'carbon-negative' by 2030

Looks like the party's over, folks: Global PC sales set to shrink as Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off, says Gartner

Over a thousand electronic gizmos went missing from London councils last year

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

A fine host for a Raspberry Pi: The Register rakes a talon over the NexDock 2

SpaceX ponders its next mission to blot out the Sun with another 60 Starlink sats

Fly me to the M(O2)n: Euro scientists extract oxygen from 'lunar dust' by cooking it with molten salt electrolysis

World-record-breaking boffins reveal the fastest spinning thing on Earth – and it's not George Orwell in his grave

Big Falcon explosion as SpaceX successfully demos Crew Dragon abort systems

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

How a Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25,000 AI contest with hidden code – and was fired from dream SV job

Image-rec startup for cops, Feds can probably identify you from 3 billion pics it's scraped from Facebook, YouTube etc

Europe mulls five year ban on facial recognition in public... with loopholes for security and research

US court rules: Just because you can extract teeth while riding a hoverboard doesn't mean you should

Who says HMRC hasn't got a sense of humour? Er, 65 million Brits

Help! I'm trapped on Schrodinger's runaway train! Or am I..?

World's richest bloke battles Oz catastro-fire with incredible AU$1m donation (aka load of cheap greenwashing)

Personal Tech

Looks like the party's over, folks: Global PC sales set to shrink as Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off, says Gartner

Over a thousand electronic gizmos went missing from London councils last year

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

A fine host for a Raspberry Pi: The Register rakes a talon over the NexDock 2

Leaks point to Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with mammoth 108MP camera and ... what? 16GB of RAM

APEX predator? Chinese phone-flinger Vivo teases upcoming concept phone

Guilty as charged: Apple confesses some Smart Battery Cases are having 'issues', offers replacements

That's Huawei we roll: Firm claims it's slinging 100k of its pricey, China-exclusive Mate X foldable phones each month

CES la vie: Shrunken Ultrabooks, muted mobiles and Segway's adult prams at world's biggest consumer tech show

There's something fishy going down in the computer lab

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

LG announces bold new plan for financial salvation: Trying to actually make phones people want to buy

Chin up, kids, and mind the webcam: Honor lifts lid on MagicBook 14-inch and 15.6-inch laptops

The Nokia 3.2 is a phone your nan will love: One camera's more than enough, darling

GSMA report: Sorry, handset makers, 5G is not going to save the smartphone market

Samsung’s aspirational Galaxy Chromebook: Shell out $1k for a fast beaut (and remember to try Linux if you're into that)

Under construction: CAT lobs bargain-basement rugged mobile that will take a kicking and keep on clicking

Latest patent brouhaha: Sonos wheels out Doomsday device in bid to block Google Home sales.... The Register

AMD rips covers off 64-core Threadripper desktop monster, plus laptop chips, leaving Intel gesturing vaguely at 2021

Lenovo intros choose-your-own-adventure Yoga Slim 7: Ryzen spend $360 less on shiny or take a dip in Intel's Ice Lake?

POPULAR

LastPass stores passwords so securely, not even its users can access them

Hospital hacker spared prison after plod find almost 9,000 cardiac images at his home

Intel server chip shortages continue to bite: HPE warns of Xeon processor supply drought for the whole of 2020

The delights of on-site working – sun, sea and... WordPad wrangling?

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Big Falcon explosion as SpaceX successfully demos Crew Dragon abort systems

Leave your admin interface's TLS cert and private key in your router firmware in 2020? Just Netgear things

How a Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25,000 AI contest with hidden code – and was fired from dream SV job

Wave goodbye: DigitalOcean decimates workforce as co-founder reveals lack of profitability, leadership turmoil

EU've been naughty: GDPR has netted bloc €114m in fines since 2018

No horrific butterfly keys on this keyboard, just you and your big, dumb fingers

Pair charged with murder, manslaughter after IBM Aspera boffin killed in New Year's Eve laptop theft struggle

Intel teases NUC-leheads with new desktop-class graphics systems and a fast i9 CPU

HP's Elite Dragonfly lappie to let Tile gadget-trackers stalk it till they're Blue in the tooth

EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield V, Penguinistas respond by demanding crippling boycott

Samsung leads 5G early birds after shipping 6.7m phones to snatch over half of the market

SanDisk's iXpand Wireless Charger is the unholy lovechild of a Qi mat and a flash drive

Imagination and Apple, sitting in a tree, l-i-c-e-n-s-i-n-g GPU tech semi-secretly: Brit chip designer strikes iGiant deal

Latitude 9510 lappy has a speakerphone so you can tell the conference call all about your 30-hour battery

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

Greetings from the future where it's all pole-dancing robots and Pokemon passports

A user's magnetic charm makes for a special call-out for our hapless hero

Fly me to the M(O₂)n: Euro scientists extract oxygen from 'lunar dust' by cooking it with molten salt electrolysis