The Register

Pending pronoun policing piques political protest In the past month or so, about 20 volunteer moderators out of about 600 have distanced themselves from Stack Exchange, the online network of Q&A communities, to protest corporate policy changes and the removal of a moderator, Monica Cellio, over alleged violations of as-yet unpublished Code of Conduct changes.…

CLOUD Act details surfacing in a fog of confusion A new treaty between the US and UK will require social media companies like Facebook to hand over private messages but, contrary to recent reports, will not break end-to-end encryption or force them to add backdoors to their software.…

Find everything you need to know to stay one step ahead with SANS next month Promo Hosted by the UK government’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and training specialist SANS Institute, the two-day CyberThreat Summit 2019 in London this autumn is a highly informative technical event bringing together security practitioners from the UK and Europe.…

Small poblem - you need 9,216 CPUs and 27,648 GPUs The world’s fastest deep learning supercomputer is being used to develop algorithms that can help researchers automatically design neural networks for cancer research, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.…

The worst thing to happen to them since the last thing Techie real estate upstart and VC cash furnace WeWork has called off its IPO amidst mounting corporate disasters.…

Remote code flaw sparks calls for major updates Admins of Linux and Unix boxes running Exim would be well-advised to update the software following the disclosure of another critical security flaw.…

The good news? It can’t do it again for three years Samsung has agreed to pay purchasers of its Galaxy S4 roughly $10 each for over alleged cheating on benchmark tests. And in case you’re wondering: yes, that’s the S4 that came out in 2013.…

Let's hope that 'take this job and shove it' moment was worth it A former system admin for a US Army contractor has been sentenced to two years behind bars for trashing his employer's network on his way out the door.…

US wants to take St. Vitamin, the yacht of Yevgeniy Prigozhin On Monday, the US Department of the Treasury (DoT) expanded its sanctions against entities associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian organization accused of meddling with US elections in 2016 and 2018.…

Surfers faced with challenging feeds on a new tab Something funny happened to the dwindling population of Edge users this morning as their browser began bleating at them in a variety of languages.…

Place to be for multi-session Windows 10 and life support for Windows 7 Microsoft has released Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) while reminding users that Windows 7 is inching ever closer to the end of support.…

Look, it's CB3ROB – remember them? Cops have seized the physical premises and servers of the Dutch-German ISP that once hosted The Pirate Bay – after storming the hosting biz's ex-NATO bunker hideout with 600 gunmen.…

Cryptocoin from selling hacking services, ppldeets online helps fund crimefighters British cops have raised £240,000 in their first ever UK-based auction of cryptocurrencies understood to have been seized from former TalkTalk hacker Elliot Gunton , who'd "earned" it selling hacking services and flogging people's stolen personal details online.…

Survey warns of 'brain drain' A survey of UK freelancers has found that changes to IR35 tax rules mean some are considering moving to another client if their current client tries to push them into a permanent position.…

Microsoft's motion for summary judgement granted Gears of War's Augustus "Cole Train" Cole is not Lenwood "Hard Rock" Hamilton, according to a Pennsylvania federal court.…

Asics confirms it was hacked A New Zealand plimsoll emporium has apologised for inadvertently playing smut on its promo screens for nine hours over the weekend.…

One day you may find yourself having to impress software A US firm is flogging facial-expression software to analyse job candidates' performance in video interviews and make initial selections for companies including Unilever.…

Also: Azure, SQL Server and keeping the Windows 2008 R2 lights on Roundup As the faithful attempted to stir up excitement for this week's hardware event, Microsoft has continued its efforts to ship the next version of Windows while also flinging out updates for Azure and SQL Server.…

Mars, Moon and shiny steel is all well and good. But how about sending a crew to the ISS without anything exploding, hmm? SpaceX CEO Elon Musk braved the wind to give the faithful an update on the progress of the Starship and Super Heavy program from the company's Boca Chica facility in Texas.…

Also, is AI as good as doctors? Roundup Let's catch you up on recent AI news happenings.…

Which cost Lake District land seller £25,000 Your work email signature block can be used to form a binding and legal contract, the Manchester County Court has ruled – costing an unfortunate land seller £25,000 from her hoped-for sale price.…

When boot messages go bad Who, Me? Welcome to The Register's weekly leap into the guilty, and not-so-guilty confessions of readers in our Who, Me? column.…

Plus, Baltimore's disastrous ransomware infection and worse IT practices Roundup Let's look at some of the latest security news you may have missed this week.…

Meanwhile: Trustworthy Accountability Group CEO dismisses ax-grinding critics Special report The Trustworthy Accountability Group, or TAG, was formed in 2015 to "eradicate digital advertising fraud, malware, ad-supported piracy, and to increase transparency across the digital advertising supply chain."…

The giant group of 12 galaxies formed when the universe was just 800 million years old The oldest protocluster of galaxies found to date began clumping together some 13 billion years ago, when the universe was just 6 per cent of its current age.…

El Reg brings you the hall of shame A bank paid a rapacious reseller more than £40 for a two-metre Ethernet cable that cost just 32 pence at trade price or retailed for £4 on a popular online store, in the latest survey of UK margin mugging.…

But that didn't stop them arresting him for being drunk We all like to think that we generally try to do the right thing. However, sometimes doing the right thing is not doing anything at all.…

Ohm my God On Friday Oracle said it had invested $40m in Ampere Computing, a designer of 64-bit Arm server-class processors, run by Renée James, who coincidentally also holds a seat on Oracle's board of directors.…

Coder claims iThings older than two years can be unlocked from Apple's clutches A programmer claims to have found a way to execute arbitrary code on recent-ish iPhones and iPads, paving the way for full-blown tethered jailbreaks.…

Fragrance Direct discovers 'malicious code' that led to leakage of customer data Online merchant fragrancedirect.co.uk has confirmed a miscreant broke into its systems and made off with a raft of customers’ personal data, including payment card details.…

Financial specialist picks up part of Big Blue that eyes up quants' models, trades and more Financial specialist SS&C is buying a bunch of IBM's risk algorithm assets as Big Blue continues to offload areas of the business it deems to be non-core.…

Bigger case means we can use even more glue! Apple's new iPad is a magical machine, able to take a user back to 2016, the year of the iPhone 7. Screwdriver demons iFixit have ripped one apart to find out just how retro the thing really is.…

Reg greybeards (whispered, stage left): We remember Google is celebrating its 21st birthday today – old enough to buy its own celebratory pint in many states in the US.…

Now we're really scared Amazon is drafting proposals for the regulation of facial recognition technology.…

But are landlords going to care about a template agreement? UK mobile networks could be able to shove their kit on more of the capital's rooftops following a draft agreement put together by the Mayor of London's office.…

No new arrests, no idea what happened Sussex Police still have no clue what happened during the Gatwick drone fiasco of Christmas 2018 – though the force now claims witnesses saw two small unmanned craft over the London airport during its 30-hour shutdown.…

No word on rugby fans or armrest-hoggers Japan Airlines is reportedly adding a baby symbol to its online seat booking system, allowing passengers to pick a seat according to possible noise levels.…

But says customers at last chowing through memory stockpile Micron's revenues for its Q4 were dramatically affected by the US trade dispute with China – and Huawei in particular - as well as larger stockpiling and trade uncertainties.…

Cheer up, it might never happen. But it probably will Employee confidence in the UK has fallen for the third consecutive quarter and the number of workers actively looking for new jobs is down 8 per cent as people hunker down for the perceived storms ahead.…

*grumble* Coming over here... hogging our internets *groan* Cisco has begun live trials of its OpenRoaming technology on the Orkney islands off the north coast of Scotland, intended to allow people to move more easily between Wi-Fi hotspots.…

Oh, and there wasn't a refund policy until folk complained The AI hysteria has led to a rash of budding engineers hoping to land a cushy job somewhere in Silicon Valley.…

Ghost ship intrigue in Return of the Obra Dinn, border bureaucracy in Papers, Please The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games. Five months in, the column has left me wondering why I've burned so many of my hard-earned Register tokens on stuffing my rig with powerful hardware. Darkest Dungeon is a 2D, side-scrolling roguelike and Kenshi's graphics are straight out of 2009 – neither take a high-end machine to run and enjoy but, sure, it helps.…

You Steer-ed into some potential trouble there Exclusive A British firm whose mobile apps monitor the mental state of 35,000 British schoolchildren is having to rewrite them after researchers found hardcoded login credentials within.…

Making sense of Microsoft's dev tool family Hands On Microsoft this week opened the gates on Visual Studio for Mac 2019 8.3, a flexible development environment for .NET, and The Reg can give you the lowdown on some of the new features.…

Some people just like to take the p*ss Something for the Weekend, Sir? Excuse me while I have another slash. Aaaaaah, that's better.…

The Reg fingers a pair of €5k sluggers from the land of clogs Oculus may be bringing hand tracking to the Quest, its standalone virtual reality (VR) platform, but haptic feedback is really where things are at.…

That time when a professional turned out to be somewhat amateur On Call Friday! At last! And with Friday comes the promise of the weekend and the reality of The Register's weekly dip into the big bag of On Call experiences.…

Microsoft gazes forlornly at the halcyon days of 2018, before that release happened Ad slingers AdDuplex celebrated the impending release of Windows 10 19H2 by reporting that, yup, the 10 May 2019 Update is quietly doing the business for Microsoft.…

Back to the drawing board folks A gas giant orbiting a tiny red dwarf star thirty light years away has left astronomers baffled because it's not supposed to exist, according to a study published in Science on Thursday.…

You gotta fight for your right to paaaartake in a legal process to inform folks of snoop orders When it comes to valiant defenders of the people from American spies there are many names that spring to mind. Microsoft is perhaps not typically one of them – though Redmond, if you had forgotten, is still battling the US government in a fight over cloud subscriber privacy.…