Microsoft's cloudy Windows Virtual Desktop: It fills a gap, but there are plenty of annoyances

You shall not PaaS? An Ask Me Anything reveals common gripes

Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), an Azure-hosted VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), plugs an obvious gap in the company's cloud offerings, but comes with its fair share of annoyances too, many of which came up in a recent Ask Me Anything laid on by the team.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/30/microsofts_cloudy_windows_virtual_desktop_fills_a_gap_but_with_plenty_of_annoyances/

We're great, boasts Huawei in founder's Little Red Book - but isn't that a video game screenshot?

As resilient as a bullet-riddled piece of, er, video game artwork

An intensely dreary Little Red Book of media quotes from Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei uses photos to boast of the company's grit and resilience to damage – illustrating the concept with what looks remarkably like a screenshot from computer game Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/30/huawei_il_2_sturmovik_game_screenshot_oddness/

Vodafone hurls sue ball at Ofcom over plans to relax BT leases

Claims loosening BT's price cap will cost businesses £230m

Vodafone has lobbed a sue ball at regulator Ofcom for relaxing regulation of BT's wholesale fibre leases - a move it claims could cost British businesses £230m.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/29/voda_throw_sue_ball_at_ofcom/

Hong Kong ISPs beg Chinese govt not to impose Great Firewall on them

'Network censorship will only accelerate the loss of HK to competing cities'

The Hong Kong ISP Association has said any moves by China to shut off the semi-autonomous territory's uncensored internet connection, African dictator-style, "would immediately and permanently deter international businesses" from staying in the one-time British colony.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/29/hong_kong_isps_great_firewall_protests_china/

UK.gov: Huge mobile masts coming to a grassy hill near you soon

Bad news for Nimbys and 5G health cranks, good news for 4G

The British government has raised the spectre of giant mobile masts looming large over the English countryside in its 5G consultation review paper as a furhter loosening of planning regulations is considered.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/29/huge_mobile_masts_coming_to_a_hill_near_you_soon/

Never tell me the odds! Oracle makes fresh appeal against $10bn JEDI ruling

Out of options we are running

Oracle is having one last shake of the dice by going back to court to try to force the Pentagon to reconsider kicking it out of the running for the $10bn contract to run cloud services for the US Department of Defense.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/28/oracles_last_ditch_jedi_appeal/

American ISPs fined $75,000 for fuzzing airport's weather radar by stealing spectrum

FCC also moves, albeit glacially, on robocalls

Three ISPs will be fined $25,000 apiece by America's broadband watchdog, the FCC, for interfering with weather signals in Puerto Rico.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/24/fcc_spectrum_fines/

Wait a minute, we're supposed to haggle! ISPs secretly want folk to barter for broadband

11?!! This cost me 12! Do you want to ruin me?!

Just like the market stall owner in the The Life of Brian, it turns out internet service providers want customers to haggle with them to cut better deals.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/23/isps_secretly_want_customer_to_barter_over_broadband/

What is it with hosting firms being stonewalled by Microsoft? Now it's Ionos on naughty step

Email issues dog the company formerly known as 1&1

Ionos, the hosting company formerly known as 1&1, has found itself on Microsoft's naughty list as emails from its servers won't reach Outlook.com accounts.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/22/ionos_outlookcom_email_issues/

Gartner awakens from trance, tells huddled villagers: 5G revenue will almost double to $4.2bn next year!

It has been foretold!

IT prophesier Gartner has performed its ritual reading of market omens to foretell next year's global 5G network infrastructure revenue. The hype wizards reckon that in 2020 the market will hit $4.2bn, an 89 per cent increase from 2019 revenue of $2.2bn.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/22/5g_revenue_will_double_to_nearly_42bn_next_year_gartner/

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, internet, and more

FCC delivers postmortem after blunder crippled US fiber links

A handful of bad network packets triggered a massive chain reaction that crippled the entire network of US telco CenturyLink for roughly a day and a half.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/20/centurylink_outage_report_fcc/

TSO Host no closer to solving customers' email issues as Brit firm pops up on more blacklists

Punters bemoan comms silence with no fix in sight

Customers of Brit hosting outfit TSO Host are suffering from a cluster of issues leaving them without email services for a prolonged period or a clear idea when they'll get them back.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/20/tsohosts_still_struggling_to_fix_email_issues/

RIP Danny Cohen: The computer scientist who gave world endianness meets his end aged 81

He also developed one of the first ever flight simulators

The computer scientist who created the first visual flight simulator, gave us the compsci concept of endianness and whose pioneering work blazed a trail for modern VOIP services has died at the age of 81.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/20/danny_cohen_obituary/

Generous Google gives Chrome users Inbox Zero: Sign-in outage boots own browser out of webmail, services

Baffling bug forces folks to use Safari, IE, etc

A bizarre outage left unlucky Chrome users unable to sign into Google services, from Gmail to Google Docs to even Chromebooks, earlier today.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/19/google_signin_outage/

US government blinks again in its trade-deal bluff-fest with Chinese mobe maker Huawei

You'll never get Huawei with it… but here's another 90 days

The US Commerce Department has granted another "extension" to Huawei, allowing the telecoms company to continue to buy American goods despite being on an "entity list" of banned companies.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/19/us_government_huawei/

Workplace collaboration, secure systems, privacy regulations obeyed – pick two? Nope, it's possible to pick all three

Your biz needs a flow of information... just not flowing out the door

Sponsored  Giving employees fast, convenient access to mission critical data from wherever they happen to be, and from whatever device they are using, is a fundamental principle of digital transformation, which in most cases cannot be compromised. And the parallel, explosive growth in the use of online content sharing and collaboration services by teams within and between companies has been sufficiently pronounced for Gartner to declare the enterprise content management (ECM) market “dead (kaput, finite and ex market name)”.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/19/data_storage_regulations/

Alibaba: There's a trade war going on? Could've fooled us – just check out these swollen digits

Cloud biz still dwarfed by retail but everything's up

Alibaba, China's nearest equivalent to Amazon, is weathering the "uncertain economic" landscape caused in part by the "trade war" between the US and Middle Kingdom governments.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/16/alibaba_results/

Fancy a career exposing cloud data leaks? Great news, companies are still largely clueless

Unit 42 crew tours the cloud security hellscape, finds admins have learned nothing

Anyone hoping to halt the flood of data leaks stemming from cloud services got bad news this week when Palo Alto's Unit 42 found little sign companies were improving their security practices.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/16/cloud_security_sucks/

Salesforce takes the multi-signer DNSSEC ball and runs with it

Extending DNS security protocol to multiple platforms takes root

A plan to expand the current DNSSEC security protocol to cover multiple DNS platforms has received the backing of Salesforce, with a first proof-of-concept implementation of the approach announced on Thursday.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/salesforce_multi_signer_dnssec/

Cisco axes hundreds, shares tumble amid China cut-off – but we're winning the trade war, right? So much winning

Small percentage of workforce but sign of the times

Cisco has laid off 500 programmers in its home state of California amid disappointing financial results and a sagging share price.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/cisco_job_cuts/

Virtually all polled enterprises say they'll use SD-WAN in next two years. Do you know what it is? Let us fill you in

SD-WAN, bam, thank you, ma'am

Backgrounder  Businesses relying on hybrid clouds need to be especially mindful of how they protect the sensitive data that flows between their on- and off-premises systems. Employees can be anywhere, using multiple devices (sometimes simultaneously) and any type of network (including public Wi-Fi) to access cloud services, all of which need to be secured against malware, unauthorized access and eavesdropping.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/benefits_of_sdwan/

We're not going Huawei even if you ban our 5G kit, Chinese firm tells UK

Translation: they're in Blighty to stay and they know it

Huawei has reportedly boasted that it will continue investing in the UK even if the British government U-turns on allowing the Chinese company to supply critical 5G mobile network equipment.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/huawei_confident_about_uk_market/

Cisc-o-no! 'We’re being uninvited to bid' on China deals admits CEO as Middle Kingdom snub freaks out investors

Stock price dives as Wall St learns of trouble overseas and weak outlook

Cisco warned of problems on the horizon as it wrapped up it fiscal 2019 financial results [PDF].…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/cisco_q4_2019/

Mind your MANRS: Internet Society names and shames network operators that bungle their routing security

Peer-to-peer networks meet peer pressure

The Internet Society has stepped up its long-running effort to improve routing security with a new online stats engine.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/14/internet_society_manrs_stats/

Pentagon says ethics complaint against JEDI mega-cloud is a non-issue. Its Time Lords say: That is not logical

Case not closed on concerns over how $10bn winner-takes-all super-contract was written

Despite the US Department of Defense's assurances last week that any and all ethics complaints against the $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract had been fully resolved, the Pentagon's internal investigators say they are still poring over the matter.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/14/pentagon_ig_ethics/

Apple is a filthy AWS, Azure, Google reseller, gripe punters: iPhone giant accused of hiding iCloud's real backend

Breach of contract, false advertising, unfair business practices sueball fired

Apple is being sued for breach of contract, false advertising, and unfair business practices for allegedly reselling Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform services under its iCloud brand – and failing to adequately disclosure that relationship to customers.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/14/apple_cloud_confusing/

All roads in US cable biz GTT's Brit network seem to lead to Menwith Hill

You know, the US spy station with the golf balls

A curious thing happens when you look at a map of fibre-optic cables – most of the UK section of American cable operator GTT's network appears to link the NSA spy station at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire with continental Europe.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/13/gtt_uk_cable_network_menwith_hill/

Pentagon makes case for Return of the JEDI: There's only one cloud biz that can do the job and it starts with an A (or rhymes with loft)

DoD daleks want to exterminate Oracle's Vulcan mind-meld with White House

The US Department of Defense is pushing back against criticism of its proposed $10bn winner-takes-all cloud mega-deal, dubbed JEDI.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/09/pentagon_jedi/

Just one in five UK constituencies receive 4G from all four mobile operators – research

National roaming still not a thing

Only 20 per cent of UK parliamentary constituencies receive full 4G coverage from all four mobile operators, according to research by consumer charity Which?…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/09/just_one_in_five_regions_get_4g_from_all_four_mobile_operators_which/

Ransomware attackers have gone from 'spray and pray' to 'slayin' prey'

Don't believe the numbers, say security watchers, it's worse than ever

Black Hat  Ransomware infections may be down, but only because attackers are getting better at targeting them.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/08/blackhat_malwarebytes_ransomware_report/

Shopaholic Salesforce flashes $1.35bn, sucks up field service biz ClickSoftware into cloudy arm

Greased Field Service Lightning

Cloudy CRM giant Salesforce has splashed $1.35bn acquiring Israeli software company ClickSoftware, its latest spending-spree purchase.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/08/salesforce_snaps_up_clicksoftware_for_135bn/

Virgin Media's Project Lightning now at 1.8m connections. Just 2.2m to go before year's end, right?

And yes, broadband flinger appears to shift focus to hybrid

Virgin Media has reported adding 130,000 premises to its £3bn full-fibre Project Lightning connections in its second quarter, bringing the total to 1.8 million.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/08/virgin_adds_another_130k_lightning_premises/

1Gbps, 4K streaming, buffering a thing of the past – but do Brits really even want full fibre?

Over to you, Betteridge's law of headlines*

Analysis  As a nation, Brits feel starved of full-fibre connectivity and look hungrily at the availability of 1Gbps on the continent, says prime minister Boris Johnson. Except evidence suggests that they don't.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/08/does_uk_really_want_fullfibre/

If you have burning app-performance questions, now's the time to ask... and by 'now', we mean 'later this month'

Quiz Riverbed on software monitoring

Webcast  As modern businesses move to the cloud, software becomes more complex and more dispersed, and can degrade in an increasing number of ways. Companies can find maintaining a consistent level of service is an ever-growing challenge.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/08/webinar_performance_measurement/

Off somewhere nice on holibobs? Not if you're flying British Airways: IT 'systems issue' smacks airports once again

It's just not summer without a TITSUP delaying travel, is it?

It's not the summer holidays without an IT cock-up causing a major delay at London airports, once again courtesy of British Airways.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/07/it_issues_causing_delay_for_british_airways_passengers_again/

Cloud computing's no PICNIC*: Yep, biggest security risks down to customer, not provider

*Problem In Chair Not In Computer, says report

Industry nonprofit the Cloud Security Alliance has published a report on the top threats to cloud computing, concluding that the biggest issues are caused by customers, not by the cloud "solution" providers (CSPs).…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/06/the_biggest_security_risks_in_cloud_computing_are_in_the_enterprise_not_in_the_cloud/

Cloud vendors can't resist the lucrative smell of gaming dollars – and they're all in it to win it

It makes sense to provide infrastructure for the biggest biz in entertainment

Feature  For better or worse, it looks like cloud computing is here to stay. Among other things, "someone else's computer" is changing how people buy and consume entertainment, and after murdering television, the cloud is now messing with the very nature of video games.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/06/cloud_vendors_gaming_dollars/

Amazon Web Services doubled its footprint in the UK and will only get bigger, reckon analysts

Capita retains software and IT services top spot... for now

Amazon Web Services has nearly doubled its footprint in the UK market, turning over £850m last year, according to an analysis by TechMarketView.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/06/aws_doubles_uk_footprint_sits_review/

Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One's AWS S3 buckets got hacked?

Senator Wyden fears AWS may be insecure by design, urges billionaire to answer a few Qs

After last week's revelations that a hacker stole the personal details of 106 million Capital One credit card applicants from its Amazon-hosted cloud storage, a US Senator has demanded Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explain what exactly what went wrong.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/06/wyden_amazon_letter/

Choc-blocked: AWS sues sales exec for legging it to Google Cloud. Yup, another bitter battle over non-compete clauses

Amazon demands restraining order preventing bod from jumping ship to Chocolate Factory

Amazon is suing a former AWS sales exec in the US after he suddenly jumped ship to rival Google Cloud, contrary to the non-compete clause in his contract.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/05/amazon_sues_aws_sales_exec_non_compete/

BT flogs off its fleet vehicle maintenance limb to German private equity types Aurelius

Press 2 for a new van

BT is selling its fleet vehicle maintenance and leasing business to German private equity firm Aurelius.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/05/bt_flogs_its_fleet_biz/

Cloudflare punts far-right hate hole 8chan off the internet after 30 slayed in US mass shootings

Image board cesspit will be back in one way or another

Cloudflare has yanked its services from 8chan, the "lawless" 4chan spinoff forum favoured by far-right nuts and paedophiles, after two mass shootings in the US over the weekend left nearly 30 people dead.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/05/cloudflare_stops_services_to_8chan/

Broadcom billionaire Henry Nicholas and pal on drugs rap cough up $1m to avoid the clink

Charges for chip giant cofounder and pal downgraded in special plea deal

Broadcom billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III and a pal will avoid a stretch behind bars after cops seized a huge stash of narcotics from their Las Vegas hotel suite.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/03/henry_nicholas_broadcom_plea/

Apple loses FaceTime patent appeal again. And again. And again. And again. And again... yes, it's the fifth time

VirnetX victorious. It may actually see some of that money eventually

Apple has lost its fifth legal appeal against the holder of network protocol patents, VirnetX, inching the case forward one judgment at a time.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/02/apple_facetime_patent_appeal/

Openreach hands out £14m in compensation for broadband outages. Not to you, silly, to your ISP!

BT's digital network biz noticed it wasn't paying out enough

BT's Openreach is forking out £14m to refund internet service providers for network outages and faults.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/02/openreach_coughs_up_14m_in_underpaid_compo_for_isps/

This is not the cloud you're looking for.... Oracle's JEDI mind tricks work as Trump forces $10bn IT project to drop out of warp

Defense Sec halts contract decision, probes for Amazon bias

The Pentagon is putting its controversial winner-takes-all $10bn cloud contract, dubbed JEDI, on hold as it investigates whether the whole process was biased in favor of Amazon.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/01/jedi_cloud_contract/

Google shores up G Suite against hapless users in the enterprise: App whitelist, physical security keys, and more

Notable omission from list of trusted stuff? Microsoft Outlook

Google has begun rolling out the beta of its Advanced Protection Program for enterprise, a set of stricter security policies intended for employees "most at risk".…

via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/01/google_rolls_out_advanced_protection_beta_for_g_suite/

Hull be damned: KCOM shuts shop as UK High Court waves through £627m Macquarie deal

Meanwhile, Vodafone closes Liberty Global gobble

Private equity investor Macquarie's £627m takeover of Hull-based broadband monopoly KCOM has been approved by the UK High Court.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/01/kcom_shuts_shop_as_627m_macquarie_is_complete/

Networking giant in hot water for selling US govt buggy spy kit? Huawei again? No, it's Cisco

American tech giant coughs up $9m for shipping vulnerable crates of crap to Uncle Sam

Cisco finds its bank balance $8.6m lighter after it agreed to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit in the US over its video surveillance software.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/01/cisco_surveillance_kit/

As many as 100,000 IBM staff axed in recent years as Big Blue fights to reinvent itself as cool with the kidz – court file

Age discrim legal battle reveals damning internal details

An ongoing age-discrimination lawsuit against IBM by one of its former star cloud salesmen has this week blown the lid off Big Blue's inner struggle to reinvent itself as a hip'n'cool place for millennials.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/01/ibm_fired_100000_staff/