The Register

Brace for cost, job cutting in the aftermath Network infrastructure giant CommScope has decided to buy some growth, shelling out US$7.4bn (£5.67bn) for broadband and video gear slinger Arris International.…

Don't mess with second-hand tome peddlers Amazon has backed down from a growing dispute with secondhand booksellers, in an almost unprecedented act of reasonable behavior from the online behemoth.…

Mega-hacks nudge Congress to consider privacy standard The rash of high-profile IT security breaches, data thefts, and other hacks that have erupted over the last year or so may push US legislators to consider laws similar to Europe's privacy-protecting GDPR.…

Net neutrality probe finds it's not the end of the world, though Analysis US cellphone networks are all throttling video to some extent, providing lower-quality stream to their customers, and some are purposefully undermining Skype as an alternative to their services.…

Meanwhile, SpaceX forges ahead with BFR, pretty chill A third Soyuz was successfully launched yesterday, effectively clearing the way for crewed operations to resume, while the results of the US midterms may have unfortunate consequences for NASA.…

CEO apologizes following mass walkout by Googlers, then bungles justification for censored Chinese search Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday announced internal policy changes in an attempt to address employee demands. This comes after thousands of Googlers walked out last week over executives' handling of sex pests and sexual assault within the ad giant.…

Watchdog tells manufacturers to reveal what they slurp on tots Connected toy makers should make clear what data they slurp up, the UK's Office of the Children's Commissioner has said in a report warning of the long-term impact of amassing data on kids.…

Full teardown necessary should butterfly keyboard need service The team at iFixit took a screwdriver set to Apple's refreshed MacBook Air and found it a step in the right direction for repairability.…

Mixing up on-premises and cloudy containers Networking giant Cisco has opened the corporate kimono to reveal tech that manages its on-premises Kubernetes environment and AWS's cloudy version in a single product.…

How much? They won't say – but they now have a board seat The Abu Dhabi government has taken a minority stake in alternative Brit broadband bods Hyperoptic through its state-run investment firm.…

They're heeeeeeeeeeeeere The most disruptive – if you pardon the cliché – newcomer to the UK phone market in years has finally launched. Xiaomi's first three devices will be sold by Argos, Currys, John Lewis, operator Three, Carphone and Amazon from tomorrow, the firm said.…

Version 2.1 of Docker Enterprise brings Windows App Migration Program Docker on Thursday plans to introduce a Windows Server Application Migration program with the release of Docker Enterprise 2.1.…

Oh, and Gartner publishes spending prognosis for life after the EU Systems integrator CGI has warned that British customers are starting to put their tech purchases on ice as the Brexit looms into view, but that doesn't mean it won't be able to exploit the situation.…

Software-defined, hybrid cloud components, sold as-a-service that's delivered on-prem? WTF? VMware and Lenovo intend to run beta tests of Project Dimension from next month – think of it as VMware's infrastructure-as-a-service cloud that runs on a customer's data centre on-premises and at edge locations.…

Microsoft co-founder's gift from beyond the grave The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence has added new features to its academic search engine, Semantic Scholar, to make it easier for professionals and plebs to understand and advance research.…

Critical bugs patched in switches, messaging, analytics Cisco this week patched critical vulnerabilities in its switches, Stealthwatch, and Unity voice messaging system. Oh, and 'fessed up that it accidentally shipped software that included in-house-developed exploit code for attacking Linux systems via the Dirty COW flaw.…

Brexitary Dominic Raab bullish about adequacy – because everything's going sooo well Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has claimed businesses need to do "very little" to ensure data flows after March – despite official advice that they should start drafting new contracts in case of no deal Brexit.…

*squints* Well, it's flexible. It's a, er, thing. It's... New products are traditionally developed in darkness – but rarely launched in darkness too. Samsung yesterday turned the auditorium lights way down before "revealing" its first Foldable Thing. This Foldable Thing was brandished in a Samsung executive's hand – some distance from spectators. And you couldn't get any nearer.…

It's all so unProfessional Updated Microsoft's activation servers appear to be on the blink this morning – some Windows 10 users woke up to find their Pro systems have, er, gone Home.…

The future's... made of ... virtual insanity Hutchison's Three UK has detailed an ambitious network and IT overhaul as it paves the ground for 5G.…

Austin Thompson, 23, cops to $95,000 worth of damage The man accused over DDoS-bombing several online games hosts in 2013 and 2014 has entered a guilty plea under a deal with US authorities.…

It looks like you're trying to run a rail service. Do you want some help with that? Window admins rejoice! It isn’t just you that can’t get Office 2010 to uninstall silently. The mighty brains behind the UK railways have had just as much trouble.…

MP falls for PC support scam While fraudsters traditionally prey on the gullible and feeble-minded, their wicked ways have ensnared British Labour MP Diane Abbott.…

'Lesser-known' names escape public scrutiny, claims Privacy International Privacy International (PI) has filed complaints of "systematic infringements" of data protection law by seven info-sucking companies that it says find it too easy to fly under the radar.…

Look out for traffic to and from these IP addresses and ports Once again, a hundred thousand or more home routers have been press-ganged into a spam-spewing botnet, this time via Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).…

FAB, Lady Penelope NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has kept its cool, successfully surviving sweltering temperatures to reach its first close encounter with the Sun, coming within 15 million miles of the solar surface.…

The good news? Nobody appears to have lost any Bitcoin, says Gate.io This week's hijacking of StatCounter's JavaScript to swipe Bitcoins from a crypto-coin exchange was the result of a web cache poisoning attack, apparently.…

Chinese mid-tier phone-makers, 5G hype to the rescue Breaking up is expensive: losing Apple as a customer meant Qualcomm missed out on 50 million cellular modem chipset sales for the latest batch of iPhones, and slipped into a net loss for its fiscal 2018. However, the chip designer insisted the worst is over.…

But at what point do advertised capacity specs become misleading? Analysis A US district judge has dismissed a false advertising lawsuit against Apple that tried to take the iGiant to task for its bloated mobile operating system.…

Videographer stung after app nukes '$250k' of footage Adobe is being sued after Premiere Pro unexpectedly deleted a snapper's valuable media files.…

Software goliath says it's all about diversity ... and the bit about retaliation isn't true Microsoft and two men have been sued by a woman who claims that, during her time at the company, she was sexually attacked, discriminated against, and unfairly fired.…

Rogue managers can seize control of web shops A vulnerability in the WooCommerce online store platform, used by over four million vendors, can be exploited to hijack WordPress installations hosting the software.…

Tenth Circuit wins lawsuit lottery over terrible policy Six lawsuits filed against controversial new 5G rules drawn up by America's communications watchdog have been bundled into one, and will be heard at the Tenth Circuit of Appeals.…

The monster workhorse with price tag to match El Reg's editorial team does not typically cheerlead any tech, we are dispassionate observers sat at the side of the industry's sales super highway. Or something like that. The latest offer from Dell, however, was too tempting to ignore.…

Google: Hey, it'd mean more if there was global agreement European efforts to implement a digital sales tax have stalled after Ireland, Sweden and Denmark yesterday stood firm in their refusal to approve measures aimed at scraping more cash in from tech giants.…

Ex-Chipzilla exec may have told staff, 'Stick with me, this time next year we'll be millionaires' Former Intel boss Brian Krzanich who split from Chipzilla months ago – after a past fling with a fellow employee came to light – is to head up a business that sells tech to dealerships.…

Firm: We know you wanna chat, guys, but Zuck won't Friend you What’s the old saying – misery loves company? Well, it's certainly true for British MPs and their efforts to grill Mark Zuckerberg, as another three parliaments have been added to Facebook’s group snub list.…

Ooh... and council tax too! Again! UK capital borough is truly spoiled People of the City of Westminster will continue to have their council tax collected and housing benefit managed by Capita for up to another decade, the outsourcing badass confirmed today.…

Heavily read-optimised QLC flash drive leads the charge Micron has started shipping its 2.5-inch 5210 ION flash drive, positioning it as a 10,000rpm disk drive replacement offering much better read access performance for more or less the same price.…

ICO's second report into data analytics in campaigning lands with a thud Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, universities and political parties are all in the dog house as the UK's data protection watchdog condemned a "disturbing disregard" for personal privacy across the system.…

Hey Cortana, where's your VP? Javier Soltero, head honcho of Microsoft's Cortana business, has stepped down.…

Bug hunter rages at wearisome disclosure process An infosec researcher has expressed his frustration with disclosure processes by going public with a zero-day in VirtualBox, Oracle's open-source hypervisor.…

Yes, the one where El Reg won the open justice verdict... Aria PC has lost its appeal against a previous legal ruling that the reseller took part in a VAT carousel fraud to the tune of £750k – though its MD insists the firm will appeal the ruling again.…

FTC antitrust lawsuit due for trial next year A US district judge has made a preliminary ruling that Qualcomm is obliged to license its technologies to its rivals.…

Will it increase capacity in a tuned-in MAMR? Toshiba, the third-placed disk drive maker behind Seagate and Western Digital, shipped 23.4 million units from its factories in 2018's third quarter.…

Chipzilla more like Tyrannosaurus Rekt AMD said on Tuesday it's going to roll out a 7nm 64-core second-generation Epyc server processor, dubbed Rome, in 2019.…

Taxpayers splash £100m+ to save doomed agency Picture the scene. A father is returning home to his family, his face etched with anxiety, and darkened by shame. The family sits expectantly around an empty dinner table.…

If yes, wow, you're well ahead of the game Backgrounder Recent headlines have been full of IT security breaches at major corporations, such as the theft of customer data from British Airways in September 2018. Yet, smaller companies should not believe that they fly beneath the radar of attackers.…

Maybe time to put down that Bitcoin-mining rig and pick up that spade? Cryptocurrencies require as much, if not more, energy to mine as precious metals like copper, gold or platinum, according to some latest calculations.…

Ancient light source may last trillions of years before dying Astronomers claim to have found the oldest star yet discovered – a 13.5-billion-year-old sun hovering on the edges of our Milky Way, according to a new study.…