The Register

Here's how to sim that with RAM and hard drive space The esoteric world of quantum computing is all aquiver following a robust blog post from IBM essentially rubbishing claims from Google that it has achieved "quantum supremacy".…

Well, it's more of a dash really The UK government has a cunning plan to help meet its carbon emissions targets: green number plates.…

Javier Soltero looks forward to making a 'profound impact' on people's lives Former Cortana boss and Acompli co-founder Javier Soltero has popped up at Google to helm the G-Suite team, nearly a year after his departure from Microsoft.…

Another step towards affordable space access for Brit boffins Brit rocket outfit Reaction Engines has demonstrated its precooler chilling air in Mach 5 conditions in less than 1/20th of a second.…

Outlet says it's been ordered to cease trading under name Larry Ellison's database behemoth is threatening serious legal consequences for a blockchain and cryptocurrency news service called "OracleTimes".…

Any cloud you like, so long as it rhymes with bee fix hive On the eve of its FY20 Q1 earnings and with the Ignite shindig around the corner, Microsoft has announced the purchase of cloud migration outfit Mover.…

Digitisation across primary and secondary providers is the bigger challenge Analysis Plans for a "fully paperless" National Health Service have been announced and re-announced countless times – most recently they promised we'd be paper-free "within the decade".…

Ex-Trump advisor goes through the looking glass, round the corner and down the drainpipe Steve Bannon – former Trump adviser and long-term rattler of sabres against China – has produced a piece of propaganda thinly disguised look at recent events at America's favourite bogeyman, Huawei.…

Whistleblowers claim to have email and audio evidence Infosys shares dropped almost 15 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange yesterday on news that regulators are investigating serious allegations of false accounting at the organisation.…

Could drop further, depending on how zealously it's enforced After a boom in IT contractors over the last decade, the number of freelance techies working in the UK dropped last year in the wake of public sector off-payroll working reforms.…

Users will be able to buy own licences and administrators cannot prevent it Microsoft will allow "self-service purchase and license management capabilities" for Office 365 users, initially for its Power Platform low-code services, PowerApps, PowerBI and Flow.…

Also: ESA hopes for parachute joy, NASA veteran is put out to orbital pasture Roundup Last week the International Space Station celebrated its first all-woman spacewalk, ESA politely asked NASA for some help with parachutes and boffins said "goodnight, sweet prince" to the last Van Allen Probe.…

Bossman helps the poor saps who can't see the wood for the trees Canalys Channels Forum The reputation printing has built over the decades is all wrong. It is actually good for the natural world – just ask the boss of HP, the planet's largest maker of print products.…

Admin rights needed to fire up the malware and – hey presto! Security researchers at ESET have published details of a backdoor into Microsoft's SQL Server via hooks and the splendidly named "magic passwords".…

Windows code armors its arse Pointing to a five-fold increase in firmware vulnerabilities over the last three years and not saying much about the growing number of Windows vulnerabilities, Microsoft on Monday said it has been working with PC-selling and silicon-making partners to ship kit that implements protection from malicious low-level device code.…

Join us this lunchtime with experts from Google Cloud and Trax to discuss costs, tools, and more Webcast Whether you run your business on-premises or in the cloud, you probably wish your developers and admins could deploy and manage applications without having to learn different environments and APIs every time.…

It's all thanks to this year's 'unsually wonky' polar vortex The hole in Earth’s ozone layer is the smallest it has ever been since scientists discovered the puncture nearly 35 years ago, according to NASA.…

But, but her emails! The US State Department has delivered its report [PDF] into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email system and, amazingly enough, there wasn't anything scandalous nor classified on it at the time.…

Show me the money. No, really, show me the actual money iFinex, the parent company of crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex, is seeking subpoenas in its quest to recover more than $880m in missing funds.…

Try not to save files to your Windows PC called cmd.exe or regedit.exe Video A flaw in the Trend Micro Anti-Threat Toolkit can be exploited by hackers to run malware on victims' Windows computers.…

Netizens' traffic flowing out of box could have been sniffed by miscreants Analysis NordVPN spent today attempting to downplay a security breach in which someone sneaked into one of its servers for purposes unknown.…

Quickfire Windows 10 Fast Ring release ends a busy week at Microsoft Roundup It was a busy week in Redmond as Microsoft geared up for its November Ignite shindig – new Windows 10 builds were flung, Azure capacities increased and Teams got a fresh feature... hold music.…

Dutch agreement should be extended to entire bloc, says statement The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has expressed "serious concerns" over whether the contractual terms of agreements between EU institutions and Microsoft, for use of products such as Windows and Office 365, is compliant with data protection rules.…

Researchers find nefarious uses for Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices Google Home and Amazon Alexa can easily be hacked to eavesdrop on users or extract information by asking questions that appear to come from each smart speaker provider, according to researchers.…

Software used by millions not compromised this time, says biz On Monday, security biz Avast said it believes some of its credentials were stolen and abused in an unsuccessful attempt to subvert CCleaner, a file cleanup utility that it acquired in 2017.…

Wikileaks founder said to be frail, labours to confirm name and date of birth An emotional and clean-shaven Julian Assange has appeared in court to request more time and resources to prepare his defence against extradition to from the UK to the US on espionage charges.…

New three-year agreement to pull S/4HANA customers into Azure SAP and Microsoft have linked arms as part of SAP's "Project Embrace", a collaboration with Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform aimed at migrating the German firm's customers to the public cloud.…

Research blames 'culture of trust' for weak fraud protections UK charities are misjudging the risks of fraud, according to research from the Charity Commission and the Fraud Advisory Panel.…

Only really, really little astronauts need apply With launchpads in New Zealand and (soon) the US, small-sat flinger Rocket Lab toasted a ninth successful launch of its Electron rocket by taking aim at destinations beyond Low Earth Orbit.…

Missing Google already? Huawei has admitted that US sanctions are hurting its mobile phone business as it struggles to find alternatives to Google's software suite.…

Buried on Friday PM, just before pub o'clock Among the daily two-dozen or so government updates on Brexit progress slipped in as everyone went to the pub on Friday were a bunch considering the impact on copyright and intellectual property.…

Security biz to slurp Aussie compliance outfit Infosec giant Trend Micro is buying Australian compliance biz Cloud Conformity for $70m to help customers check the configuration of their fluffy white services – one of the major causes of cloud security breaches.…

You know my stats don't lie and I'm starting to feel it's wrong Action Fraud (AF) is referring fewer computer misuse cases to police investigators despite official statistics showing nearly a million offences were reported last year.…

Mats Järlström's fight shows you never cross an engineer Exclusive A Swedish engineer's umbrage at a traffic ticket has led to a six-year legal fight and now a global change in the speed with which traffic light signals are timed.…

Russian-backed cell's Middle East campaign pretended to be of a Persian persuasion British and US spies have blamed Russian hacker group Turla for masquerading as Iranian hackers to launch recent attacks mostly on government systems in the Middle East.…

At least it'll wipe clean Update Readers anxious for an update on the health of the wobbly Samsung smart fridge currently squatting in UK retailer John Lewis's Oxford Street store will be interested to learn that a culprit has been fingered.…

'At the exact moment you get curious about getting involved in cybercrime, you get a little tap on the shoulder' What's the best way to stop young gamers slipping into a life of cybercrime? Google ads from the cops, apparently.…

'I wonder what our users are surfing for… Oh' Who, Me? Welcome to Who, Me?, The Register's weekly confessional of sins, smut and surfing from the seemingly infinite pool of reader misdeeds.…

All in a week's work Roundup Just in case you're addicted to the world of AI, here's more news beyond what we have already covered this week.…

Help us understand your day-to-day challenges and triumphs with this reader poll Survey So much of the misery inflicted on customers by financial institutions is caused by disjointed systems and clumsy hand-offs between departments.…

Plus, new allegations in Iran and American hacking war Roundup Here's your Register security roundup to kick off your week.…

Hint: It rhymes with 'throwing' as lawmakers baulk at lobbing an unknown amount of cash into the 2024 lunar bonfire NASA brought a smile to faces of Boeing shareholders this week with the announcement that it would be ordering 10 Space Launch System (SLS) core stages from the US aviation giant for Artemis rocket launches to the Moon. Although paying for the things could be tricky.…

Vatican coders exorcise API gremlins but, we must confess, they missed one little monster.... Exclusive The technology behind the Catholic Church’s latest innovation, an electronic rosary, is so insecure, it can be trivially hacked to siphon off worshipers' personal information.…

Always-on, always-recording, always-analyzing gear mulled America's border cops are considering adding facial-recognition technology to body cameras worn by agents.…

Redmond's sign-on system is so secure, nobody can get in Microsoft is battling to fix its knackered multi-factor authentication system that today blocked customers from logging into their Microsoft 365 and Azure services.…

Oracle co-CEO, and ex-HP boss, dies aged 62 after stepping aside for health reasons Obit Long-time Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd died this morning. He was 62.…

Senator Ron Wyden's on the warpath with 'Mind Your Own Business Act' A proposed law bill in the US aims to give regulators genuine powers to go after companies that fail to protect citizens' privacy up to and including jailing bosses.…

Heat probe tentatively resumes journey 5m into the red planet There was good news for Martian miners this week as NASA's stuck mole began making progress into the red planet's soil once more.…

Third new senior health role in 4 months. Cough and say arrrrgh Google's parent firm made its third big health hire in four months yesterday in the form of Karen DeSalvo, a one-time Barack Obama administration official.…

It's like reinventing the steering wheel... so they say Google has hit back at US president Donald Trump in the never-ending legal spat over its use of Oracle's Java code in the Android mobile operating system, urging the US Supreme Court to judicially review an appeal court's 2016 ruling against it.…