The Register

More chip flaws await In 2015, Microsoft senior engineer Dan Luu forecast a bountiful harvest of chip bugs in the years ahead.…

ThinkPad owners need to update their software – unless they're using Windows 10 Lenovo wants ThinkPad owners to update their machines after its Fingerprint Manager Pro software was found to contain serious security vulnerabilities.…

ThinkPad owners need to update their software – unless they're using Windows 10 Lenovo wants ThinkPad owners to update their machines after its Fingerprint Manager Pro software was found to contain serious security vulnerabilities.…

But now lots of lovely cash abroad can be used more easily Drive-shipper Western Digital reported record revenues in its second quarter but new US tax laws dragged it into a $0.82bn net loss.…

Well, OK, there is a warrant. About that... – WikiLawyers WikiLeaker-in-chief Julian Assange has asked a British court to withdraw an arrest warrant against him, hoping that this would finally allow him to stop his unending Ecuadorean couch-surf.…

Tell the grid how much juice your auto autos are sucking, says UK transport sec AEV Bill A new amendment to the UK's Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill aims to make it mandatory for electric car charging point operators to transmit power consumption data to Britain's National Grid.…

Big Red's lawyers say $9.3bn deal was 'playbook' acquisition Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite was a "stage-managed" process rife with conflict of interest, lawyers for one of Big Red's shareholders have argued in a case alleging the biz overpaid for the cloudy ERP firm.…

You can muck about with Python and flight sims at home. For free Comment Udacity has cooked up a £2,000 "nanodegree" that "teaches students how to design their own flying cars".…

Well... that was unexpected Analysis Four years after Michael Dell took his company private, he is considering whether Dell should make a stock market comeback, or so "familiar sources" have told a slew of newsfolk.…

Manchester man seeks £50k damages for alleged data leak A Manchester man is suing his former employer, the UK's largest government department, claiming "highly private" information was divulged to his workmates.…

Privacy bods rip into attempts to make Investigatory Powers Act legal The government's attempt to bring the UK's data retention regime in line with European Union laws have been slammed by privacy campaigners, which has accused politicians of trying to avoid making necessary changes.…

Plus old churches – and even school playing fields Virgin Media has resorted to hiding in disused public toilets as Britain's demand for ever-fatter pipes to channel digital detritus into the home grows.…

Celestial choirs are coming to your screen soon Something for the Weekend, Sir? It's not working. Sorry, this has never happened to me before. Actually it has, frequently, but let that pass. Can we try again in a few minutes?…

Celestial choirs are coming to your screen soon Something for the Weekend, Sir? It's not working. Sorry, this has never happened to me before. Actually it has, frequently, but let that pass. Can we try again in a few minutes?…

Westminster event targets security experts Promo You may think you are ahead of the game when it comes to IT security, but are you ready for the threats fomented by the fertile imagination of cyber-criminals, or the unsuspected dangers lurking in areas you may not even have considered?…

Windows-only but sure, thanks Acronis has released a free, standalone version of its Acronis Ransomware Protection with AI-based Active Protection tech.…

Simulating physical sensations is a growing frontier in VR tech Haptic controllers are being touted as the next frontier in virtual reality. Having spent years obsessing over headset pixel counts, the VR industry is now playing with exoskeletal gloves, ultrasound waves and even electric shocks in order to simulate a sense of touch.…

Chocolate Factory touts more ways to blast banners Google says it will allow netizens to block nuisance "reminder" adverts that follow them around across websites.…

Just one hour of teaching grannies the internet left sysadmin a broken man On-Call Welcome again to On-Call, The Register’s weekly column in which provide a little therapy by letting readers share their stories of horror tech support entanglements.…

That's one way to stay secure Outlook will strip attachments from some forwarded emails once you've applied a security patch from this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has admitted.…

It's all kicking off Roundup Technology companies can't decide whether to take Russian money or run from it – not that they've ever been much good at turning down cash.…

Ajit Pai throws hissy fit at first sign of criticism Analysis Fresh from being mocked by Burger King, Ajit Pai – chairman of America's broadband watchdog, the Federal Communications Commission – has further undermined his authority by attacking a key advisory committee to his own regulator.…

Siri, what's a monopoly? Still dealing with the consequences of security research that demands changes in its processors, Intel on Thursday reported better-than-expected earnings in 2017's final quarter.…

Broken security? More like broken record UK Prime Minister Theresa May has reiterated calls for a special magic version of encryption to be developed by technologists so law enforcement can access everyone's communications on demand – and somehow engineer it so that no one else can abuse this backdoor.…

Personal info obtained to pull off 1,400 password resets. Now he's behind bars Jonathan C. Powell, who hacked into over 1,000 email accounts in search of sexually explicit images and videos of college-aged women, was jailed for six months for computer fraud, the US Department of Justice said on Thursday.…

Puny humans feebly try to fend off robotic takeover The Teamsters labor union wants package delivery giant UPS to promise not to replace any of its drivers with drones and self-driving trucks.…

Total coincidence: That's the same day Chipzilla's CEO sold off his shares Intel quietly warned computer manufacturers at the end of November that its chips were insecure due to design flaws, according to an internal Chipzilla document.…

Only 2 member states have adapted national legislation – SMEs, citizens still in dark The European Commission has admitted readiness for incoming data protection rules is very varied across the bloc, with just two countries having adapted their national laws.…

Components spread across servers, storage, networking Dell has split up and distributed the Chad Sakac-led Converged Platforms and Solutions Division (CPSD) across company's existing server, storage and networking units (Infrastructure Solutions Group).…

Tanks and jets or sexy cyber-warfare stuff? A long-rumoured review of British defence spending will not be "fiscally neutral", Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson told Parliament this morning as he announced that it is going ahead.…

And someone has already offered Microsemi, flogger of military and aerospace semiconductors, is reportedly looking for buyers after it was propositioned by an unnamed company.…

Continuous Lifecycle London gets two days of workshops We’ve got a cracking lineup of workshops at Continuous Lifecycle London this year, and because we’re spreading them over two days, you’ve got double your options for taking a deep dive into the topic of your choice.…

Version 3.0 scales up, shows some container love and promises validation Cisco has pushed a new version of its HyperFlex hyperconverged software out the door and given Microsoft a big hug by adding support for Redmond's Hyper-V virtualization software.…

Yes, keys your devs put in public repos got forked. RTFM Github rejected a DMCA takedown request from Chinese drone-maker DJI after someone forked source code left in the open by a naughty DJI developer, The Register can reveal.…

Fuel cell tech generates cleaner power for San Jose plant Supermicro has said it will start building servers and storage boxes at a new facility that can make 480 racks per month, powered by a 3MW fuel cell system to cut greenhouse gas emissions.…

Megflix anyone? Outgoing HPE boss finds new raison d'etre Outgoing Hewlett Packard Enterprise chief Meg Whitman is stepping out of tech and into the big chair at a "mobile-first media platform" startup.…

Support biz files court petition to recover additional $32m Oracle botherer Rimini Street has filed a court petition to recover another $32m from Big Red in the long-running copyright case.…

Italy and Austria first in line for new service Sky has signaled the end of the satellite dish with plans to make all its channels and content available online.…

VCs chuck money at data warehouse startup Data Warehouser in the cloud Snowflake has just raised $263.5m, eight months after raising $105m, making it a startup monster.…

It's not a knock-out: Fbook's privacy status will be tested in Austrian court Max Schrems can sue Facebook in Vienna as an individual, but can’t bring a class action suit, in a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union without a knock-out blow for either side.…

RIP, dragon lady who told us our true names Beloved dragon-tale spinning author Ursula K Le Guin has died. The novelist, probably best known for the thoughtful 1972 "anarcho-utopian" tale The Dispossessed, spent a lifetime exploring themes around revolutionary societies, individualism, anarchism and, of course, dragons. She was 88.…

Blueprints touted to ASIC, SoC makers to take on GPUs Patent troll Semiconductor licensing giant Rambus announced this week a physical layer design for accessing GDDR6 – aka double data rate type six synchronous graphics random-access memory.…

Please don't be like the admin who failed to update PSC first At a client site recently, we had to investigate why the upgrade from VMware vSphere 6.0 to 6.5 had gone wrong in that the normally rock-solid environment was a bit ill – to say the least.…

4,000 servers, 45,000 PCs and 2,500 apps all rebuilt, while other staff went manual It's long been known that shipping giant Maersk suffered very badly from 2017's NotPetya attack.…

Steve Yegge torches Chocolate Factory on his way out Seven years ago, Google software engineer Steve Yegge, having failed to understand the risk that a private social media rant might become public, lambasted Google for its failure to understand software platforms, with Google+ serving as his whipping boy.…

The plan is to throw the cloud at data collection and analysis, to produce alerts that matter Google’s parent company Alphabet has launched a security company named Chronicle.…

Diagnostic Data Viewer gives users a peek into what Redmond gathers from your PC Microsoft is laying its cards out on the table. The software giant has produced a tool that's claimed to show users how much personal information its Windows 10 operating system collects and sends back to Redmond for diagnostics.…

Dodgy punters blacklisted on National Ugly Mugs database A study into the effect of the internet on professional sex workers has shown the online world keeps them safer, happier in their job, and more able to weed out creepy customers.…

Fixed in 7.58.0 If you use libcurl, the command line tool and library for transferring data with URLs, get ready to patch. The tool has a pair of problems, one of which is an authentication leak.…

Because crooks salivate when you punch a PIN into a smartmobe at a market stall The advent of mobile point-of-sale (MPOS) systems has been a boon for consumers and retailers of modest means, but the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council's security wonks worried that they can't adhere to the strict hardware standards that merchants' credit card merchant terminals.…