The Register

Booster hurls probe, has nice sit-down on boat in the Atlantic NASA’s TESS spacecraft is in orbit following a successful launch from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40.…

Spark off questions from burny laptop, melty server and hot data centre havers Californian scientists have come up with a way of converting waste heat from electronics back into electricity with improved efficiency, according to a study in Nature Materials.…

High Court judge put boot into ad tech firm Comment Google's efforts to claim that it should be exempt from EU data protection laws because its search engine is "journalistic" really did not impress the judge in the Right To Be Forgotten trial.…

'Shatterproof', Mod-tastic, speedier stock Android – there's lots to like Released last autumn, and with this year’s range hoving into view, Motorola’s Z2 Force isn’t the newest kid on the block. But it still remains the only “shatterproof” phone on the market, and it has proved to be a great base from which to evaluate the latest Motorola Mods, which you’ll see in our forthcoming Mods roundup.…

Home Office admits national and local databases don't talk to each other, so everything is manual The UK government has admitted it can only delete custody images from its massive database through a complex manual process, and that it would cost too much to weed out all the images of innocent people by hand.…

And Huawei's given carriers a 14G network (it does 2G to 5G and we did the sums) Roundup Cisco leads the networking roundup this week, with news that there's one fewer way to avoid its WebEx brand: as part of a product reorganisation, what was Cisco Spark is to become WebEx Teams.…

Oi! Robots! Take this human job. PLEEEAASE take this job Singaporean scientists have asked the question “Can robots assemble an IKEA chair?” and come back with enough of a “Yes” that The Register feels it time to call for robots to take this job away from humans. Pleeeease, robots. Take this job away from us!…

Can you build an AI/ML FPGA? And could you tell your Mum you work for Zuck? Poll Facebook’s hinted it will join the ranks of hyperscalers that roll their own silicon, with a job ad for an “ASIC & FPGA Design Engineer”.…

First word on how card security for containers, VDI, SDN and web apps The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has issued a big update to its guidance on using payment cards with cloud computing services.…

Is it worth competing with SpaceX prices? Russia has dropped a broad hint that it might leave the space launch business to private operators.…

And AWS is closing in on $20bn a year, says nine-page letter to investor we read to spare you the new age derp Amazon has announced the yield from its money mine for the full year 2017: on full-year sales of US$178 billion, it generated an operating income of $4 billion and net income of $3 billion.…

Your security's only as good as your partners'. And some Facebook partners are rotten A security researcher has claimed it's possible to extract user information from Facebook's Login service, the tool that lets you sign into third-party sites with a Facebook ID.…

auDA bins plans for direct .au sales to focus on governance and not pissing off members The administrator of Australia’s top level .au domain, auDA, has been told to reform or be forcibly stripped of its role.…

Cisco issues critical patch to stop in-meeting attacks Cisco has patched a serious vulnerability in its WebEx software that lets an attacker remotely execute code on target machines via poisoned Flash files.…

Probe to see if Musk was up to something quite atrocious Updated California's workplace safety monitor is investigating Tesla over the conditions at its main assembly plant.…

Now for the last time, will you all please shift to IPv6?! You may have heard this one before, but we have now really run out of public IPv4 address blocks.…

Ordinary folk may be confused by title, takedown demand suggests Oracle, claims developer Zhongmin Steven Guo, has demanded that Apple remove an app he created because it contains the trademarked term "JavaScript."…

HC530 takes on Seagate's Exos X14, Tosh's MG07ACA Western Digital has caught up with rival Toshiba to introduce its own non-shingled 14TB disk drive.…

ACCEPT AND CONTINUE. ACCEPT AND CONTINUE Comment Facebook has previewed its new privacy settings, developed to meet new European privacy legislation that comes into force next month.…

Don't panic… until you finish reading RSA 2018 The iTunes Wi-Fi sync feature in Apple's iOS can be potentially abused by cops, snoops, and hackers to remotely extract information from, and control, iPhones and iPads.…

Don't panic… until you finish reading RSA 2018 The iTunes Wi-Fi sync feature in Apple's iOS can be potentially abused by cops, snoops, and hackers to remotely extract information from, and control, iPhones and iPads.…

Skype's tendrils spread to unexpected places Hidden dependencies in Microsoft's on-premises Dynamics 365 can leave users open to cloudy outages.…

Look, it's not rocket science, er, wait The management of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is to be audited by the agency's watchdog.…

'Uber for dogwalkers' app apparently a thing... The era of software-defined storage market is truly upon us. Forget city-sized enterprises looking to squeeze costs out of their data centre estate, Nexenta has scored big with Wag!, a US-based dog walking 'sharing economy' app for those that can't be arsed to exercise their pooch.…

Science-fiction horror trope now a reality in 2018 Scientists in Belgium have tested the security of a wireless brain implant called a neurostimulator – and found that its unprotected signals can be hacked with off-the-shelf equipment.…

When we miss a target we make it even harder to reach next time! Wait, what? Electric car maker Tesla is to boost production to 6,000 cars per week in June, company chief Elon Musk has announced – four months after his last production boost deadline sailed past unfulfilled.…

Staff refused stat minimum terms to exit voluntarily, you can guess what happened next IBM is preparing a redundancy chute for the good folk working in its Digital Business Group (DBG), The Register can reveal.…

A vision softly creeping... of an exoplanet or two Astronomers are building the world’s largest and most advanced superconducting camera – with the goal of snapping clearer shots of exoplanets for scientists hunting alien life.…

Intelligence agency a pipeline for women in infosec RSA 2018 Former members of an Israeli intelligence unit say their operation could serve as a model for the tech companies looking to bring more women into their ranks.…

Oh dear, Intel... look who's getting cosy with Cray Cray is adding an AMD processor option to its CS500 line of clustered supercomputers.…

Judge allows face recognition lawsuit class action status A US federal judge on Monday ruled that a lawsuit filed over Facebook's use of facial recognition technology can proceed as a class action, raising the possibility the social network could face billions in damages.…

Less checked online services bear brunt Identity fraud in Blighty hit a record high of 174,523 incidents last year – and the vast majority of it happened online.…

Onwards and upwards...until the next reorg Brit mega-comms firm BT has given its flagging b2b divisions a corporate facelift, merging the wholesale, public sector and business units into BT Enterprise.…

Boffins find supersized bits do not stand the test of time A study published by Nature this month suggests less is more when it comes to male genitals and species survival.…

And they're not the only software-defined object storage biz ready to cash in Analysis Software-defined object storage biz Scality has scored an extra $60m in funding to help along development of its cloudy storage tools.…

No, BT and Plusnet, you're not off the hook either Despite efforts to return to its roots as a broadband-only biz, TalkTalk remains the most moaned about ISP in the UK, according to data from regulator Ofcom.…

CLL18 workshops cover easy clustering, Agile trailblazing and more Whether you’re limbering up for Agile, going serverless or getting into containers, we’ve got a cracking lineup of workshops at Continuous Lifecycle London this year.…

And *checks watch* of course it'll be really useful for GDPR Data management biz Hortonworks has lifted the covers off a service that aims to make it easier for enterprises to identify, secure and connect data stored both on-premises and in the cloud.…

Brit boffins save planet A new enzyme developed at the University of Portsmouth will enable the recycling of plastic used for disposable drinks containers.…

Rifling through riff: Another option that's not Amazon's Lambda Seduced by serverless functions? Lured by Amazon's Lambda? If so, why not build a serverless framework at home? Project riff, an open source serverless platform from EMC/VMware spinoff Pivotal Software, aims to let you do just that.…

Cyber resiliency of the UK's health service still in disarray Nearly a year has passed since the unprecedented WannaCry cyber attack and the UK's NHS has yet to agree an action plan, according to a report by MPs.…

Lucky 66 lands – and also gives a lucky few a Spectre-protector Chrome the 66th is upon us and has added some features that Google previewed in months past.…

No roadmap. No timeframe. No success metrics. Not much grip on reality, either ANALYSIS Thirty-four technology companies inked a "Cybersecurity Tech Accord" on Tuesday which they said represents "a public commitment … to protect and empower civilians online and to improve the security, stability and resilience of cyberspace".…

Same-day delivery of mails, TXTs and docs for investigators probing crime or terror The European Commission has outlined its desire for a new legal instrument that would require carriers, clouds, email service providers and operators of messaging apps to produce a user’s data in six hours to assist investigations of “criminals or terrorists”.…

Members are not amused, ponder summons and debunk legal arguments The recently-sidelined former CEO of Cambridge Analytica has declined the opportunity to make a second appearance in front of the UK parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.…

The best thing about beating your head against a brick wall? It feels great when you stop Huawei has acknowledged the US market may be a lost cause, at least for now.…

Repeat after The Vultures: don't re-use passwords IKEA's TaskRabbit app and Website, which links buyers with people skilled with Allen key experts and other errand-runners, remain offline a day after the company announced a data breach.…

Hacking charge for twiddling URL – O Canada!? Comment There's a curious legal situation developing in Nova Scotia, Canada, right now.…

Managing Things, with intent Cisco has pitched its intent-based networking capabilities as a way to get control over the Internet of Things.…

Cough, cough, EternalBlue, cough, cough Wannacry, splutter, Stuxnet RSA 2018 "You don't launch a cyber weapon, you share it."…