The Register

Plus: Google Health app for NHS hospitals discontinued, and Tesla under the spotlight

In Brief Facebook has apologized for an "an unacceptable error" after its AI systems asked folks who watched a British video about a Black man if they wanted to view more content on "primates."…

What happened to transferring £1,000-per-day consultant work to the civil service?

Flying in the face of a commitment to wean itself off consultants, the NHS Test and Trace programme has awarded Accenture a £4.8m contract extension to keep its much-criticised COVID-19 Test and Trace system up and running for another year.…

Taking the Pis in Paris

Bork!Bork!Bork! It is time for le Bork de Paris today as the curse of the cock-up fairy spreads beyond the shores of the UK to blight the Pis of France.…

Don't trust the insurer's techies, take the blame and other practical tips

Feature When I first became a company chief techie, the finance director patronisingly explained the basic asymmetry of prevention vs cure. Spending money on assets to stop an attack come out of capex, but spending after the disaster would be up to the insurer, with premiums deducted out of opex. Also, prevention costs reduced current bonuses.…

Tiers of a clown – or the early days of a better service model?

Opinion Docker has a problem: too few whales. Its user demographic is hugely skewed to free plan subscribers, while heavier users (meaning corporate customers) are too thin on the ground to generate enough money through their paid-for tiers.…

SMIC's 28nm colossus won't get China closer to self-sufficiency in stuff it buys from Intel and AMD, will help in other ways

China's largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has announced it will spend $8.87 billion on a new fabrication facility that will become China's largest such facility used for products other than memory.…

Bump and grind in the server racks

Who, Me? Monday is upon us, and with it comes a cautionary tale of how one Register reader's overconfidence led to his undoing, thanks to an unexpected interfacing with a belt buckle, in today's edition of Who, Me?…

Good news for consumers, exporters, and outsourcers

The BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – have agreed to smooth the path for e-commerce and trade in services.…

Sorry, vAdmins, you probably don't have an excuse to buy Apple's $699 wheels

VMware has announced something a little odd: it won't ever support ESXi running on Apple's 2019 Mac Pro.…

It's not as if politicians' birthdays aren't well known, and they get jabbed on live TV

Indonesian authorities have admitted that the COVID-19 vaccination certificate of the nation's President has circulated online and tried to explain that it's an indication of admirable transparency, rather than lamentable security.…

A confluence of recent confusion from around the world that you may have missed

ROUNDUP Welcome to this week's gallimaufry of gaucheness, as we present a selection of daft stories to make you glad that you're not that person.…

This isn't over says man pushing for neural networks' rights

AI systems cannot be granted patents and will not be recognised as inventors in the eyes of the US law, said a federal judge who decided to uphold a previous ruling by the US Patent and Trademark Office this week.…

Address randomisation not implemented on some, it seems

A Norwegian student who went wardriving around Oslo on a pushbike has discovered that several popular models of Bluetooth headphones don't implement MAC address randomisation – meaning they can be used to track their wearers.…

So, do copy that floppy?

Software piracy, long a source of anxiety among app makers and large software companies, may have some beneficial effects.…

Amid customer fury, PC maker says it has 'no plans to add any further push notifications' to its stealth adware

Lenovo has come under fire for the Tips application on its tablets, which has been likened to indelible adware that forces folks to view ads.…

Firefly Aerospace rounds out a wobbly week for rocket fanciers

Video The sudden and explosive end of Firefly Aerospace's first test flight of its Alpha rocket rounded out a hat-trick of woe for rocket fans this week.…

Critics celebrate reconsideration of 'spyPhone' regime

Apple on Friday said it intends to delay the introduction of its plan to commandeer customers' own devices to scan their iCloud-bound photos for illegal child exploitation imagery, a concession to the broad backlash that followed from the initiative.…