The Register

Also, don't get the BOFH to publicly smack them with a LART Usenix Enigma It's frustrating getting users to keep information and systems secure on a daily basis. However, don't try any smart gimmicks – particularly offering wedges of cash or other prizes for good behavior.…

Version 6.4 brings the NSX GUI to the vSphere client VMware’s made no secret of its ambitions for its NSX network virtualization product, which it thinks has the potential to be bigger than server virtualization as organisations start to spread resources out across multiple clouds and on-premises bit barn.…

More than 500,000 users stung A security researcher has claimed that half a million Chrome users have been hit by four malicious browser extensions pushing click and SEO fraud.…

Multiplexing-over-UDP idea has hit the standards track, but is mostly ignored Google's contribution to Internet standards, the fast-than-TCP thanks to multiplexing QUIC protocol, has yet to extend much beyond the Chocolate Factory, according to a German report into its adoption.…

Brings in designers to apply a new coat of UI before world thinks it looks too shabby to run Now that the open source email client Thunderbird is sleeping in a separate bed from Mozilla, the project has called on outside help for a UI redesign.…

Good news – assuming software-defined storage is still viable after Meltdown/Spectre Microsoft’s released a new Windows Server Insider Preview Build – number 17074, to be precise – and the most notable new bits are in the Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) software-defined storage code.…

South America, Europe and Asia get pipes, DCs for Finland, Honkers and Hollywood Google has made more investments in submarine cables, sinking money into three due to come online in 2019.…

Nice tech, but shame on Microsoft, Alibaba's spinners Analysis Researchers from Microsoft and Chinese cyber-souk Alibaba separately claimed this week that their artificially intelligent software is as good as, if not better than, humans at understanding the written word.…

No active exploits, but crashes are happening in the wild Back in 2000, a bug crept into the Internet Systems Corporation's BIND server, and it lay unnoticed until now.…

Attorneys General go to court to rescue internet protections Twenty-two US State Attorneys General filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to undo the Federal Communications Commission's rejection of net neutrality in America.…

Nobody gets 100 Mbps, so nobody buys 100 Mbps, so nobody needs 100 Mbps. QED Australia's federal government yesterday tabled its response to recommendations put by the parliamentary committee on the National Broadband Network, and has mostly rejected its recommendations.…

Medics say they couldn't wait for backups to be pulled as ransomware ransacked kit A US hospital paid extortionists roughly $60,000 to end a ransomware outbreak that forced staff to use pencil-and-paper records.…

Big Red finally delivers patches for its x86 boxes – and 230-plus other problems Oracle has told users of its SPARC-powered platforms that they have the Spectre processor bug.…

Who's up for warrantless surveillance? Updated A number of US senators from both sides of the aisle have said they will filibuster an effort to approve the continuation of a controversial American government spying program.…

This is a work of fiction, says engineer's lawyer The engineer at the center of a massive self-driving car lawsuit – brought by Google-stablemate Waymo against Uber – neglects his kids, is wildly disorganized, and has a large selection of bondage gear, his former nanny has sensationally alleged.…

Micro patch rejuvenates abandoned Office add-on Microsoft Equation Editor was sentenced to death on January 9, 2018 at the age of 17, when a software update from Redmond removed five files necessary for the application to function.…

Sophisticated nasty also able to listen in based on location Mobile malware strain Skygofree may be the most advanced Android-infecting nasties ever, antivirus-flinger Kaspersky Lab has warned.…

Peter Madsen ruled fit to stand trial, but denies allegation Danish submariner Peter Madsen has today been charged with the murder of journalist Kim Wall.…

But don't worry, it got €4m budget boost this year The Irish Data Protection Commissioner has forked out almost €2m in the long legal battle involving Facebook and privacy activist Max Schrems, according to reports.…

UK govt's air prang watchdog publishes first UAV incident of the year A pilot flying a 3D Robotics Solo drone let his autonomous aircraft fly itself into a crane that some inconsiderate person erected on a building site.…

Man from Pru tears up £722m deal five years ahead of time Financial services slinger Prudential is to kick Capita to the curb, cutting short a 15-year mega deal and switching the administration of its life and pension policies to Tata Consultancy Services.…

ICO to investigate allegations of driver delivering side order of creepy A customer of takeaway delivery firm Just Eat has alleged a driver from an eatery used her phone number to ask her for a date.…

Geddit? Analysis Xiaomi's rush to go public is as much a sign of a speculative bubble as Bitcoin mania. Will it have a happy ending?…

Staff got until 26 January to load bullets on employment gun DXC Technologies' employees still reluctant to upload their "skill profile" onto a company database they fear will be used in the next big redundancy rounds yesterday got a ticking off from top brass.…

'I could very well have been bitten in a sensitive place, if you know what I mean' A lucky Frenchman has narrowly avoided having his todger bitten by a python that crawled up his U-bend.…

Researchers: Code designed to hit Linux devices A new variant of the notorious Mirai malware is exploiting kit with ARC processors.…

Wow, this is incredib- BLEEUUURGHGHGH Put on a virtual reality headset and it's hard to believe that your visual system is being stretched beyond its limit. Individual pixels are still visible and the narrow field of view makes it feel like you're wearing ski googles.…

Reg readers point the finger at ambiguous requirements Research "Agile development" can mean different things to different people. To some it's about easing up on traditional rigour, and even legitimising a quick-and-dirty approach to getting stuff out of the door. To others it's about implementing a different kind of rigour, in order to bust project backlogs in a more robust manner, and generally keep up with constantly changing business demands.…

Gartner predicts buyers ready to splash 4.5% more cash globally in 2018 Listless IT spend in Europe is dragging down the pace of global recovery, according to the latest prediction from entrail-prodders Gartner.…

DRS still letting the armed forces down big time A defence minister has told Parliament that Capita’s pisspoor Defence Recruiting System (DRS) has “glitches”, following reports from The Register giving a glimpse inside the shambolic system.…

Swallows N2WS so it can stick oar deeper in Amazon cloud Veeam has announced the acquisition of N2WS, an IaaS startup, whose board includes Veeam co-founder and President Ratmir Timashev, for $42.5mn cash.…

Company's journey from the heart of IT to the rest of the business continues ServiceNow has slipped into 2018 by slipping out a new release of its platform.…

Needs to make six to eight a year, predicts it can get back to 25 a year once airlines wake up Airbus has reported its most prolific year to date in terms of deliveries, but also warned that it needs a new buyer of its flagship A380 if it is to continue production.…

Boffins figure out when drones are watching, without decrypting the video stream If a drone-creeper is snooping on you, you could catch them by grabbing the video stream – but what if it's encrypted?…

Plans open source revival of XCP, to go places Citrix won’t Moves are afoot to revive Xen Cloud Platform (XCP), the open source version of XenServer that existed independently of Citrix before the company released its code to the Xen Project and made its own efforts open source.…

Tiangong-1 is out of control and can't keep it up any more Predictions are firming up for when China's Tiangong-1 spacecraft will make its final re-entry-crash-and-burn.…

Unlike similar services, this one sold purloined passwords The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has announced it has cuffed and charged a man for selling stolen identities and passwords at LeakedSource.com.…

'Benchmark crimes' under-state the true performance impact of security controls A group of operating systems specialists believes sloppy benchmarking is harming security efforts, by making it hard to assess the likely performance impact of security countermeasures.…

Azure Stack users invited under ‘IP Advantage’ umbrella Microsoft’s extended its “Azure IP Advantage” litigation protection shield to on-premises technology, by applying it to the Azure Stack hybrid-cloud-in-a-box systems.…

A long time ago, in a company far, far away … Lenovo has patched an ancient vulnerability in switches that it acquired along with IBM's hardware businesses and which Big Blue itself acquired when it slurped parts of Nortel.…

Because you need to ‘capitalize on exponential intelligence fueled by pervasive tech’ and only IBM can do that Exclusive IBM is to help its ailing services business with a re-branding exercise that will see its Global Technology Services (GTS) and Global Business Services (GBS) operations emerge as a single entity named “IBM Services”.…

Automation and SCADA-flingers admit fix has affected products Patches for the Meltdown vulnerability are causing stability issues in industrial control systems.…

Watch out Intel, there's a new mini-ruler in town Analysis Super Micro has a supernaturally dense thin server with up to half a petabyte of flash using unannounced Samsung SSDs.…

Detroit giant plans 40 full and hybrid models by 2022 American auto enormity Ford will increase its investment in electric vehicles to $11bn (£7.97bn) in the next five years, it announced yesterday at the North American International Auto Show.…

Panama corporation owns nearly 54,000 dot-UK sites HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has insisted on having a Panama company trading as the “Whois Foundation” formally stripped of a handful of dodgy web domains, even though the firm instantly offered to hand them over when challenged.…

Battling Zuck for the brain computer interface Microsoft has applied to patent a brain control interface, so you'll be able to "think" your way around a computer device, hands free.…

Debate rages on software, HCI slowdown though Analysis Several SAN suppliers have said their systems don't need patching against the Spectre and Meltdown bugs. We asked Dell and Pure Storage about the impact of fixes and whether their SANs and Dell's hyperconverged (HCI) systems needed patching.…

Part of major shake-up at outsourcer French outsourcer Sopra Steria plans to make 220 folk redundant from its UK government business as part of a major upheaval of its public sector operation.…

Anti-saucy snap programme makes more sense Facebook has settled a case with a 14-year-old girl after the social network hosted revealing pictures of her on a Facebook "shame" page.…

Chinese mobe-flinger probing the issue A large number of OnePlus customers claim to have been hit by fraudulent credit card transactions after making purchases on the phone company's site. And they're unhappy that the company has been slow to address the issue.…