The Register

After hundreds of hours of work, engineers called out of retirement for help

Pics The Hubble Space Telescope is back in action doing what it does best – capturing stunning images of the universe – after more than 50 NASA engineers worked hundreds of hours to get the instrument working again.…

Pre-bid manoeuvring won 27 per cent of shareholders, £919M offer was a winning move

Chinese gaming and web giant Tencent will acquire UK games developer Sumo Group, which has created games in the Hitman, Sonic, and Little Big Planet franchises, for £919 million (US$1.24B).…

Dances around the issue of whether it used NSO spyware at all as local politicians and media named as targets

Indian IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has denied the nation illegally used the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, but hasn't denied that India used it.…

Big Blue is the only leading supplier from 2020 to lose ground

IBM has been demoted from Leader to Challenger in Gartner's 2021 Enterprise Backup and Recovery Magic Quadrant – the only leading 2020 supplier to be so treated.…

The other bidder is China mobile, so top Oz telco has been approached to step in

Australia's dominant telco, Telstra, has revealed the nation's government has asked it to consider a partnership to acquire Digicel Pacific – the largest mobile carrier in the Pacific Islands – in a move seemingly designed to contain China's influence in the region.…

Maybe keep the email systems down a little longer if it helps this much?

IBM on Monday reported better than anticipated revenue for Q2 2021, sending its shares up in after-hours trading.…

Veep of cloud devrel exits after 'beyond car crash' all-hands meeting

Google Cloud's veep of developer relations abruptly left the web giant late last week after sharing a lengthy essay on how he no longer hated "all the Jewish people."…

And increase output of Fab 8 plant by 150,000 wafers per year

GlobalFoundries will build a second chip fabrication plant by its Fab 8 facility in Malta, New York, where it is now headquartered, and pledged to invest $1bn to increase that latter factory's output.…

Brace yourself, there have been some changes to the Start menu, File Explorer

Hands On In its publicity for Windows 11, Microsoft has focused on the "simplified design and user experience" of the operating system along with a few headline features: a centered Start menu that looks more like a dock from other OSes, Android apps in the Microsoft Store, Teams Chat in the taskbar, Widgets, and more.…

Plus: Telegram security probed, CISA boss confirmed, and more

In Brief Cloud-based IT provider Cloudstar has been hit by ransomware, taking down its systems. It said it is currently negotiating with the crooks that infected its computers.…

A tale of two holes and two mechanics of two different heights

A British Airways Boeing 787's landing gear collapsed during a botched test after a short mechanic asked a taller co-worker to insert a lock-out pin into a hole he couldn't reach – only for the second mechanic to put it in the wrong place.…

Now supports drag-and-drop editing and live data

Visual Studio 2022 has a new designer for Web Forms, the original web application framework that goes back to the first release of .NET.…

MoD, game developer take extremely dim view of excessive rivet-counter point-scoring

Hungary-based game developer Gaijin Entertainment found themselves in a tactically difficult position last week when a user of their combat simulator War Thunder tried to win an online argument by sharing classified documents in the company's game forums.…

Multinational software pedlar decides Maidenhead just doesn't have the je ne sais quoi it needs

SAP is going to new heights to raise its profile in UK business. A year and a half after Britain’s formal departure from the EU, Europe’s biggest software biz is unleashing €250m of investment in the next five years, including a new London office in The Scalpel, a 38-story skyscraper at 52 Lime Street in the City of London.…

It's working now and they're very sorry

Lloyds Banking Group – which includes Halifax and Bank of Scotland among its stable of financial operators – is back up and running after online and mobile banking services took a tumble earlier today.…

And US indicts four Chinese spies on suspicion of the hacks

The Microsoft Exchange Server attacks earlier this year were "systemic cyber sabotage" carried out by Chinese state hacking crews including private contractors working for a spy agency, the British government has said.…

Coronavirus restrictions lifting, but to what cost?

Police and anti-lockdown protesters are clashing outside the Houses of Parliament with tempers boiling over in Westminster just as "Freedom Day" in the UK hits the half-day mark. And according to the ONS, their concerns seem to be shared by those less likely to chuck a bottle too.…

Pandemic smiles on Unified-Comms-as-a-Service biz

Zoom is making a full-blown entry into the cloudy Unified Comms business by hoovering up Contact-Centre-as-a-Service (CCaaS) outfit Five9 in an all-share transaction valued at a whopping $14.7bn.…

System compatible with existing infra. No you can't eat it now, kids, it's for later, for upcoming 5G backbone

Japanese researchers have broken the world record for the fastest internet speed by transmitting data at 319 terabits per second (Tbps) using modern day compatible fibre optical cable, according to the country's primary comms research institute.…

Torvalds: 'At some point somebody just needs to actually submit it'

The latest release candidate of the 5.14 Linux kernel is a hefty beast, Linus Torvald remarked yesterday, seemingly impatient over how long it is taking Paragon to send in its long-awaited and much-reviewed NTFS driver.…