The Register

Huge surge in applications for financial assistance show Governor Phil Murphy the ugly side of technical debt

The governor of New Jersey has asked COBOL-capable coders to volunteer their skills as the State’s mainframe computers have struggled to cope with a surge of requests for benefits to help citizens through the coronavirus crisis.…

A glimpse of life at Whaddon Hall

Vid An astonishingly rare film documenting British intelligence personnel, linked to the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, has been released by the park's trust, offering a glimpse of unsung heroes who helped win the Second World War.…

Another damning probe into vid-conf software emerges

Zoom has faced increased scrutiny and criticism as its usage soared from 10 million users a day to 200 million in a matter of months, all thanks to coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.…

Antisocial network sought surveillance tech to boost its creepy Onavo Protect app, it is claimed

NSO Group – sued by Facebook for developing Pegasus spyware that targeted WhatsApp users – this week claimed Facebook tried to license the very same surveillance software to snoop on its own social-media addicts.…

'Low cost of ownership'? This must be an April Fools

Oracle has chosen this week of all weeks to foist on the world an update of its application server WebLogic, festooned with new features addressing Java EE 8, Kubernetes and JSON.…

Testing times for SpaceX as another Starship prototype implodes

Video Yet another of SpaceX's Starship prototypes, SN3, was left in pieces last night following tank testing.…

Mobile compatibility issue fixed and working with data in grids made easier

Microsoft has updated its "citizen developer" platform, Power Apps, adding Mixed Reality support, fixing a compatibility issue with the mobile app, and improving options for working with data in grids.…

Science-teaching pair trek high and low to uncover cola geyser secrets

Did you know that the popular Diet Coke and Mentos soda geyser experiment works better at higher altitudes? Or that the average size of the bubbles formed on the scotch mints is about 6μm? Now you do, thanks to the wonders of science and those with a bubbling passion for it.…

Meanwhile, three-quarters of NASA staff now staying at home

ESA's mission operations centre in Germany has got back to doing interplanetary science after a short stand-down due to COVID-19.…

No MWC, no problem

Hello again, Moto. In the past month, the Lenovo-owned mobile maker has announced three new smartphones for the UK market. The latest is the Moto G8 Power Lite, which retails at £149.99, and offers a surprising amount of battery life for your buck.…

But it's still playing catch-up with big boys SAP and Oracle

ERP flinger IFS is inflicting more augmented reality on the unsuspecting world of repair and maintenance as it strives to catch up with Oracle and SAP.…

Project 'SOP2SaaS'... it just rolls off the tongue

The Cabinet Office is offering a £15m contract for a consultancy to help it shift central government enterprise applications to an as software-as-a-service delivery model, part of an ambitious refresh programme.…

Tough choice for adtech monolith in Foundem case

Google must either show its "crown jewels" to a man it described to the High Court as a search engine optimisation expert or give up parts of its defence in a long-running competition lawsuit, the UK High Court has ruled.…

Keep on working

Job Alert Welcome to this week's jobs list, a run down of the vacancies that El Reg is advertising for free to help keep tech people in work.…

CEO talks of measures to combat expected sales slide due to pandemic

Allvotec – the rebranded Daisy Partner Services business – is responding to the coronavirus crisis by furloughing a number of staff and asking all that remain to take a pay cut to avoid potential redundancies.…

This season's colours are blue, white and bork

Bork!Bork!Bork! Chicago! A town famed for what some might regard as a jumped-up quiche masquerading as pizza and home of the first skyscraper. Could there be a better venue for today's bork?…

Passwords-by-default feature may be faulty. But hey, who else just went from 10 to 200 million daily users?

Video-conferencing app maker Zoom has promised to do better at security after a bruising week in which it was found to be unpleasantly leaky in several ways.…

Saving Sales from a self-inflicted dirty deed

On Call Phew, March is over. Everything will be OK now, right? Right? Oh well... join us in nervously welcoming April with another tale from that special breed tasked with answering the phone, even when the subject matter is perhaps less than savoury.…

University lecturer and half of Duckworth/Lewis passes, aged 78

Eminent British mathematician Tony Lewis has died, aged 78.…

EFF raises alarm over increasing reliance on shoddy automation

Analysis The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Thursday warned that the consequences of the novel coronavirus pandemic – staff cuts, budget cuts, and lack of access to on-site content review systems, among others – have led tech companies to focus even more resources on barely functional moderation systems.…