The Register

'Doomsday scenario' unless devops crowd walks this way Aleksa Sarai, a senior software engineer at SUSE Linux GmbH, has disclosed a serious vulnerability affecting runc, the default container runtime for Docker, containerd, Podman, and CRI-O.…

Bonkers dust world colonization that was never going to happen definitely isn't going to happen The group trying to crowdfund a plan to colonization of Mars that was declared suicidal has shuttered its shop front.…

Accused hacker can write Reg headlines. Who knew? Lauri Love will find out whether he is getting his computers back from the National Crime Agency on 19 February, a judge ruled today.…

Plus: Cygnus freighter to spray more sats across the heavens As Elon Musk crowed over the performance of SpaceX's Raptor engine and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus departed the International Space Station (ISS), debris watchers were ruing the 10th anniversary of the first accidental hypervelocity satellite collision.…

Oh and by the way, there's a consulting reorg on the way Brand new Teradata CEO Oliver Ratzesberger wouldn't be drawn on headcount reduction in the legacy data warehouser's consulting group, but admitted realignments will be made to bag "megadata" customers.…

JESUS MOOOOOOOM The relationship between mother and son is a strange one. Sigmund Freud's "Oedipus complex" made all of psychology awkward, and mums haven't helped by cherishing and coddling their perfect little boys well into adulthood.…

Western Digital hard drive also among the spoils Accused computer hacker Lauri Love is in court today arguing with the National Crime Agency over whether the British government agency should return PCs they seized from him.…

JavaScript emulator gains audio support and proper '90s Doom The JavaScript incarnation of Windows 95 received a version bump last week, giving those trapped in the snow or stuck in the office a lunchtime of delight listening to the bleeps and bloops of yesteryear.…

Lad Media, The Lead Expert don't look so 'expert' now The bosses of lead-generation firms Lad Media and The Lead Experts have been slapped with four and six-year bans on forming companies respectively after they fell foul of direct marketing laws.…

Eben Upton talks to El Reg about hopes, dreams and solid starts The first Pi shop has opened its doors in Cambridge and, if the first weekend of trading is anything to go by, has done rather well.…

Latest data dribble from distant New Horizons reveals things are strange out there NASA's New Horizons probe mission has once again given boffins something exciting to think about. New data sent back to Earth has meant they'll need to rework our understanding about the shape of 2014 MU69 (aka Ultima Thule).…

But you'll love our sticker scheme... right? Interview The EU has not seen evidence that Huawei poses a threat to its internal markets – and says that even if it had, blocking the controversial Chinese company's products is up to EU member nations, not the political bloc.…

New Windows 10 build and Small Basic turns 1.0 Roundup Last week the headlines were dominated by Microsoft seemingly putting the boot into its own productivity suites and bashing its elderly browser. But of course there was plenty else afoot within the sphere of Redmond.…

NAS-ty: Strange activity sinkholes antivirus update checks Network attached storage maker QNAP's customers have reported being hit by a mystery issue that disables software updates by hijacking entries in host machines' hosts file.…

'Idiot? You're calling me a f*cking idiot?!' Who, Me? Once again, Monday has put an end to the weekend's fun – and Who, Me? is tagging along, as always.…

And more from the world of machine learning Roundup Here's a quick summary of recent AI news to kickstart your week beyond what we've already reported.…

Requirement threatens to break the bank To prevent a data grabbing snafu along the lines of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google is asking developers who use sensitive Gmail APIs to pay for a security audit that proves their apps play by the rules.…

Better to drink plenty of water, we reckon Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer, as the old saying goes. Well it isn’t true, it doesn’t matter what order you down your drinks, you’ll be hungover all the same.…

All your extra bits and bytes of this week's infosec news in less than 5 minutes Roundup Here's a summary of more infosec news beyond what we've already reported this week – enjoy.…

It's something to do with the Mexican border wall Analysis When the Democrats took over the House of Representatives in America, one of the first things that the House Energy and Commerce Committee did was call a hearing on net neutrality. We had a familiar feeling of dread at the time.…

Arkansas is looking good, Kentucky not so much Analysis In what could prove to be an important turning point in the rollout of fiber across the US, this week the Arkansas congressional committee voted to repeal their state's prohibition on municipal broadband.…

'No evidence that any data has been accessed time' say Australian officials as fingers pointed at foreign spies The Australian Parliament has reset all passwords on the parliamentary computing network following an unspecified security incident.…

Publisher will take a long hard look, make sure it's not on a sticky wicket... OK, OK, enough National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc (AMI) today denied it blackmailed Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos by threatening to leak his nude selfies if he didn't play ball.…

Workaround needed if you suddenly run into trouble with latest Linux OS update While the Redmond executioner was bringing the axe down on the neck of Azure Party Clusters, an Ubuntu security update has done the same to the Azure cloud's Service Fabric Linux Clusters.…

Snooping court says police kit can be covert surveillance tool Police's body-worn cams can be covert surveillance tools, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has said.…

A bit last-decade, but there are improvements – and it's free! While Microsoft was upending the scorn bucket on its own productivity tools, The Document Foundation shoved out an update of LibreOffice, replete with user interface tweaks and improved Office compatibility.…

'We're hiring thousands' for digi revolution... yes, we've cut 14k in last year. Don't compare y-o-y, urges CEO, it's about q-o-q DXC Technology's trigger-happy CEO mentioned the word "hire" or "hiring" 27 times during last night's conference with financial analysts. It's almost as if Mike Lawrie was trying to make a point. As for his use of the term "digital" – he uttered it a full 78 occasions.…

Backup biz slurps security firm for $618.5m Online backup service Carbonite has inked a deal to buy Webroot for over half a billion dollars to help it fling cloud-based endpoint security at smaller biz.…

We're not convinced 'people who want to harm kids will follow the kid, not the watch' is a great comeback Kids' smartwatch-pusher Enox, whose Safe-KID-One watch was pulled by the European Commission, has hit back against the bad PR – with some rather unusual arguments.…

Microsoft: We know what we said then, listen to what we're saying now Oddly enough, for the second time this week, Microsoft has been spotted telling the world that its software is, er, not very good.…

Chap slapped with harassment warning, sacked from UK mobile network A staffer at BT Group's EE has been accused of using his employee access to peek at his ex's account details and change her phone number to spy on her texts.…

'Normally you'd have reams of documentation... all they have is one page' The UK taxman has been slammed for a lack of transparency over the assessment of its tool to check contractors' tax status amid claims it has not retained full records of testing.…

Not a euphemism. I really did this Something for the Weekend, Sir? I spent this week on the floor.…

Bug appears to hate tunes released this year A bug has music lovers with a Google Play subscription stumped – devices won't cast music from 2019 to connected speakers.…

Also: Well done, Squirrels, you've got your Commercial Astronaut badge Roundup Over the past two Earth days, NASA released pics of China's Moon lander, SpaceX saw a Falcon delay to its Crew Dragon and the UK failed to name the ExoMars rover Rover McRoverface.…

If someone asks for their data, you give it to them, scolds ICO A Buckinghamshire housing developer has been forced to pay up £1,500 after ignoring a person's request for information the company held on them.…

'Never assume soon means less than lifetime of Universe... in software' On Call It's the end of the working week - for most of us. Time to kick back, brew a morning cuppa and delve into this week's On Call, our weekly readers' column of tech traumas.…

Astroboffins haven't seen anything quite like it Astronomers are scratching their heads after discovering a protostellar disk around a young star containing a whopping amount of salts.…

Let us copy your snippets, or say goodbye to revenue Google is warning publishers that online visitor traffic – which drives ad revenue – could plummet as much as 45 per cent if the contentious Copyright Directive being considered by European lawmakers goes forward.…

David Pecker picked a pic of billionaire's pickled pecker Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos today published an extraordinary open letter claiming National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc (AMI) is trying to blackmail him by threatening to leak purloined pics of the billionaire's "semi-erect manhood."…

Privacy advocates stunned that explicit rules ignored, blame head of FCC Analysis US lawmakers have again called for an investigation into cell networks after it emerged that they have been selling specially protected user location data intended only for emergency services.…

Something something dark, billowing cloud computing: Massive multi-hour outage across US, and it's still down Wells Fargo customers have been unable to access their online bank accounts for more than seven hours today – after smoke knackered one of its data centers.…

Patch your iThings – there are at least two holes being exploited right now in the wild Apple on Wednesday removed the vestigial "Do Not Track" (DNT) privacy technology from Preview Release 75 of its macOS Safari browser, and buried the corpse without ceremony. DNT is also missing from mobile Safari 12.1 in the soon-to-be released iOS 12.2.…

How do you solve a problem like compliance? Microsoft has continued to buff its open-source halo by signing up to the OpenChain Project, which is aimed at simplifying the plethora of licences floating around the open-source community.…

Big Red claims Labor Dept has 'secret pact' with private plaintiff's lawyers Oracle has accused the US Department of Labor (DoL) of bringing new claims into a pay discrimination suit because it knows its original case against the Silicon Valley corp will fail, and of "coordinating" with the lawyers for plaintiffs in a civil case.…

Change reversed while forum probes how many affected Parent gabfest platform Mumsnet has reported a data security breach that it claimed happened amid a "software change" en route to migrating services to the cloud.…

There's life in the old Silicon Glen yet Though Texas Instruments has finally pulled out of its wafer fabrication plant in Greenock, Scotland, all is not lost for the 300 folk employed there – fellow US firm Diodes Inc has stepped in with a £50m buyout offer.…

Holster the chainsaw, Big Blue kit designed to know if tree's a crowd for overhead cables Not satisfied with trimming headcount, IBM has turned its gaze to chopping trees that might interfere with power lines.…

As for the Big 4 UK mobile firms, there's a first mover disadvantage The UK's Ministry of Fun* has introduced draft legislation enabling UK operators to charge roaming fees for calls and data inside the EU, should the UK crash out of the EU (and the larger EEA) next month.…

Rail fails to keep up with 4G As well as the traditional New Year's price hikes, UK rail commuters face an additional humiliation – data speeds aren't increasing as fast as they might.…