The Register

Why can't robots just learn to do things without being told? Vid Robots normally need to be programmed in order to get them to perform a particular task, but they can be coaxed into writing the instructions themselves with the help of machine learning, according to research published in Science.…

Azure DevOps Services invites hackers to test its limits There's more money to be made from bug hunting in Microsoft code after Redmond announced its 10th active bug hunting reward scheme, the Azure DevOps Bounty Program.…

Bet you were expecting a rude ring pun here? Well, not today Saturn’s characteristic rings may only be as old as 100 million years, and thus formed during a time when dinosaurs still roamed on Earth.…

Out of 284 flaws, 33 are rated critical. Big Red admins have big patches ahead Oracle admins, here's your first critical patch advisory for 2019, and it's a doozy: a total of 284 vulnerabilities patched across Big Red's product range, and 33 of them are rated “critical”.…

Open-source CMS gets a pair of critical fixes Drupal has issued a pair of updates to address two security vulnerabilities in its online publishing platform. The vulns are a little esoteric, and will not affect most sites, but it's good to patch just in case you later add functionality that can be exploited.…

Cock-up went unnoticed for two Olympics, one World Cup, an EU referendum, and a US presidential election Twitter has fessed up to a flaw in its Android app that, for more than four years, was making twits' private tweets public. The programming blunder has been fixed.…

Amazing how a big cash payout focuses the mind A Vermont state employee drove 6,000 miles in six weeks to prove that the cellular coverage maps from the US government suck – and was wildly successful.…

Not so fast, there, Ajit... Updated America's broadband watchdog, the FCC, has asked the courts to postpone an appeal against its net neutrality repeal out of "an abundance of caution" due to the partial US government shutdown.…

'The Server Side Public License v1 does not meet standards' MongoDB justified its decision last October to shift the free version of its NoSQL database software, MongoDB Community Server, from the open-source GNU Affero General Public License to the not-quite-so-open Server Side Public License (SSPL) by arguing that cloud providers sell open-source software as a service without giving back.…

Set to update automatically? Say hello to my little friend… Select Windows 10 devices are now automatically downloading Microsoft’s troubled 1809 update, according to the support page for the operating system.…

No more Chinese tech vendor grants for at least three to six months, compsci students told Oxford University is reportedly suspending all research grants and donations from Chinese tech giant Huawei, according to a Chinese newspaper.…

Redmond to throw cash at the problem, hopes some might stick to affordable homes Microsoft has revealed it is to spank the best part of $500m on attempting to deal with the lack of affordable housing in the Seattle area.…

Mark Hurd confesses: I didn't take my passport – but usually that's not an issue Forget cyber security or emergency hamburgers – the real impact of the US government shutdown is only just beginning.…

Prof Maureen Baker told tribunal info security and clinical safety are two separate things The founders of medical symptom-checker app Your.MD knew that a number of key medical information databases were "open to anyone who knows the URL", emails seen by a London tribunal have revealed.…

'They used to be seen as the good guys, and Oracle was the bad guy'. So that means... everyone is the bad guy now? Open-source vendors that haven't already switched to less permissive licences will do so this year as the move to the cloud threatens their business models, a senior Oracle exec has said.…

Sueball lobbed at Brit government over Data Protection Act The High Court has agreed to hear a campaign group's case against the UK's Data Protection Act, which they say leaves immigrants with fewer rights over their data.…

Hipsters choke on pumpkin spice latte as the beloved original is tipped into a dumpster Hipster laptop lids are in for a scraping as messaging-for-millennials platform, Slack, has taken a beating with the rebranding stick.…

Has it gotten backuppers' backs up? You bet it has Amazon has rolled out its own backup service for AWS apps and data, a move that will inevitably hit independent suppliers of backup for the cloud computing service right in the wallet.…

'Ecncouraging' numbers as it switches from licensing to subs push Shape-shifting accounting software biz Sage issued a trading update this morning and the good news - for investors at least - is that it didn't contain any nasty surprises, but did highlight a bounce in cloud sales.…

Microsoft introduces the Schrödinger Linux Subsystem. (It might work. It might not.) Hot on the heels of a patch for the version of Windows 10 that Microsoft hopes will undo the woes of 2018 comes a fresh insider build to break stuff just a few days before the company's bug bash.…

Now is a good time to get a password manager app Infosec researcher Troy Hunt has revealed that more than 700 million email addresses have been floating around “a popular hacker forum” - along with a very large number of plain text passwords.…

They see AI, cybersecurity as 'battle fronts' - and rising populism will make it worse - former UN official Oracle OpenWorld Technology and cyber security will be the "battle fronts" of global competition, and artificial intelligence will become crucial to the US-China trade war, a former UN official has said.…

Why the battery story doesn't add up Analysis Apple’s iPhone slump may be down to the company’s generosity and kindness - according to Apple-friendly blogger Jon Gruber.…

It's Amazon how quickly these monopolies begin Column At the annual spectacular of crap that we optimistically term the Consumer Electronics Show, I found myself locked into a room with Alexa.…

No idea who could have been behind this one... The South Korea Ministry of National Defense says 10 of its internal PCs have been compromised by North Korea unknown hackers .…

You mean they are collecting our opinions to sell ads? Who would have guessed it? Most Facebook users have no idea that the ad biz compiles data profiles of their online activities and interests, according to research conducted by the non-profit Pew Research Center.…

Israeli company was 'feeling lucky' but lost out Google has won a patent dispute over its famous "I'm feeling lucky" button that immediately connects a user to its top-raking search link with a single click.…

Lawsuit claims coin thief was part of a gang targeting crypto whales The victim of a $24m cryptocurrency heist is suing his assailants in what is believed to be the first ever RICO claim involving digital currency.…

The poor cotton seedling froze to death as temperatures plunged during the lunar night The budding cotton seed hailed as the first plant to ever grow on the Moon, has, erm, died.…

Community outcry over exile of cloud networking biz leads to terms of service revision Game engine maker Unity Technologies has reversed its excommunication of cloud service provider Improbable with a revision of its Terms of Service that allows game developers to work with unapproved technology providers.…

California Congresswoman claims FCC 'failed to listen to reasonable input' America's comms watchdog – the FCC – has controversially forced local governments to charge a flat fee for 5G cell towers. It's a move opposed by everyone except the mobile operators, and has been challenged by new legislation.…

UEFI malware has been in the wild for more than two years The Fancy Bear hacking group's Lojax rootkit is far from a one-off tool, and may have been active in the wild for years before it was first reported.…

IPO? Maybe 2019. Perhaps 2020. Depends, OK? Enterprise cloud botherer Infor announced today that shareholders were tipping the best part of $1.5bn into its coffers ahead of a potential IPO.…

Trump, communism and 5G - a rare glimpse into the founder's past and present Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei does not give interviews, so the two-hour audience the firm granted to US media on Monday was a landmark - and perhaps a recognition of the crisis enveloping the company. Huawei faces a rising tide of headlines about its trustworthiness as a corporate supplier.…

The subscriber you have dialled is no longer available... Legacy data warehouser Teradata has appointed an insider as its CEO, and will be hoping his cloud and subscriptions strategy will get its growth mojo back.…

Third stage failure means atmospheric fireworks show Warned by the US and Israel not to launch a satellite, Iran went ahead and launched one anyway, but the payload didn't make it to orbit.…

A tale of XSS, SQL injection and OAuth implementation Crafty infosec bods exploited XSS vulns on dusty corners of Epic Games’ web infrastructure to steal Fortnite gamers’ login tokens and compromise their accounts – using a genuine Epic Games URL to phish their marks.…

Whoa - is that an Access 97 iceberg dead ahead? Microsoft has released a second raft of fixes for Windows 10 following the monthly Patch Tuesday excitement last week. It has also issued some fixes for its latest Windows Insider build.…

Not even using the founder's brand could save Big Blue's Slack for suits IBM is killing off its collaboration-plus-AI tool Watson Workspace from the close of next month due to crappy customer demand.…

Privately owned firm, er, changes its growth strategy +Comment Backup firm Veeam, privately owned and headquartered in Switzerland, has taken on $500m in surprise funding.…

Need to email an order for a s*$tload of hamburgers from your smartphone? Microsoft has an app for that The US government may be enduring its longest shutdown in history, but federal workers can at least console themselves with Microsoft’s Outlook mobile app that has been given security clearance for use.…

And... stock-botherers seem happy with that Supercomputing remains a tough place to do business, with Cray warning investors that it expects to report a siginificant net loss for both 2018 and this financial year.…

Reverse ferret by reassuringly expensive consultant Blockchain companies are upset with management consultant McKinsey for pointing out the technology is stubbornly stuck at base camp after years of hype.…

Want some more cash? Get some more skills. And perhaps a moving truck DevOps darlings Puppet has emitted some juicy salary data from its annual DevOps survey, showing that the US is still the place to go for an impressive IT paycheck.…

Future Circular Collider hopes to rack up 100 tera electron Volts to probe physics CERN, the European research hub in Geneva, is already home to the world’s largest particle accelerator – and it’s hungry for another one that’s bigger and better.…

Living in a box, living in a faraway box, I'm living in a box Pic A tiny cotton seed brought to the Moon's surface by a Chinese spacecraft has apparently just sprouted, quite possibly making it the first Earth-based plant to start growing on our rocky satellite.…

Evidence-based policy? What a novel idea... Analysis President Trump on Monday signed legislation that attempts to make US government data more accessible for people and machines, though his predecessor deserves much of the credit.…

2011 ban on interstate, foreign sports betting extended to online lotteries, poker, casinos Last November, US Justice Department officials, having reviewed the nation's laws, quietly concluded that, oops, interstate and international internet gambling is actually illegal. For some reason, that view was only made public on Monday. And for now, this hot take is not being enforced across the country.…

Crooks banked $270,000 in just one move, it is claimed A pair of Ukranian hackers broke into America's financial watchdog to swipe insider info for stock traders, it is claimed.…

Yes, it plans to appeal again Apple has, for the fourth time now, lost an appeal against a $440m patent-infringement damages award, payable to VirnetX – and pledged to appeal the decision.…