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No 'alien' megastructure, but lots of ongoing weirdness In January, boffins decided they'd settled the mystery of “Tabby's Star”, the far-off star that dimmed so rapidly it almost looked like something, or someone, was responsible. Scientists have since shrugged off the idea the dimming is caused by an "alien megastructure". Instead, they suggest there's just a lot of dust surrounding the star, which makes for many odd moments.…

Narendra Modi's app may be a bit too slurpy India's ruling party is scrambling to defend its use of followers' data after a pseudonymous security researcher accused PM Narendra Modi of snooping on citizens with his personal app, which has been installed by around five million users.…

You'll want to install the March update. Like right now – if you can avoid broken networking Microsoft's January and February security fixes for Intel's Meltdown processor vulnerability opened up an even worse security hole on Windows 7 PCs and Server 2008 R2 boxes.…

You'll want to install the March update. Like right now – if you can avoid broken networking Microsoft's January and February security fixes for Intel's Meltdown processor vulnerability opened up an even worse security hole on Windows 7 PCs and Server 2008 R2 boxes.…

Miscreants go down to the wire meddling with emergency dispatch's server The US city of Baltimore suffered a brief outage on part of its 911 service at the weekend – and hackers are being blamed.…

Our tech support support group, On-Call Live, hits the harbour city on April 19th Every Friday, The Register publishes On-Call, a Reg-reading IT Pro’s tale of woe when called upon to provide tech support.…

Official report blows lid on behind-the-scenes Analysis On December 2, 2015 Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik attended a holiday party at Farook's workplace – the non-profit Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California – and without warning started indiscriminately shooting at employees.…

Someone call Scotty – he'd know how to fix this thing The launch date for the James Webb Space Telescope has been kicked back a year to 2020, NASA confirmed during a press conference on Tuesday.…

You thought this was over? You thought wrong, laughs Larry The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington DC has revived Oracle's bid to bill Google for billions over its use of copyrighted Java APIs in its Android mobile operating system.…

0.5 PFLOPS FP32, 0.5 PB of effective flash storage Pure Storage and Nvidia have produced a converged machine-learning system to train AI models using millions of data points.…

WSL blueprint open-sourced to tempt distro makers Microsoft quietly open-sourced a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) sample last night in an effort to persuade Linux distribution maintainers to add their distros to the Windows Store.…

It comes with a pencil! You kids remember what a 'pencil' is? Apple is trying to reclaim is status as the cool kid in class with a fresh round of products aimed at the education market.…

To be fair, the camera will take some beating It's a long while since I heard some whalesong at ear-splitting volume. It takes me back to Nokia's final years as the world's No. 1. Back then you couldn't tell whether it was trying to be a New Age NGO or a phone company. The whalesong was deafening.…

App biz refuses to comment – but it DID write the software Uber reportedly disabled safety systems on the autonomous Volvo XC90 that killed a pedestrian Stateside last week, according to the makers of the car's sensors.…

Cambridge Analytica Deep Throat says ICO needs to gen up on technical terminology The UK's data protection watchdog needs to hire more staff that "understand how databases work", according to whistleblower Chris Wylie.…

Cloudy marketing tools get AI powers... what do you mean, bad timing? Adobe Summit "We've emerged beyond just the company that’s known for Photoshop," claimed Adobe's Cody Crnkovich, head of platform, partners and strategy, today as he introduced AI and profiling features designed to enable marketers to deliver more creepy personalised advertising and comms.…

P20 and P20 Pro: The Notch that wants to be a Nokia Lumia 1020 Hands On Over the years, very few phone makers other than Samsung have produced a phone that might tempt an iPhone stalwart to switch to Android, but Huawei may have just joined the elite.…

Coinkidink? Nah. Crooks are switching tactics There was a big drop in exploit kit development last year, and experts have equated this to the phasing out of Adobe Flash.…

Less Hindenburg, more fuel cells Alongside its electric vehicle ambitions, the British government is also pouring a few millions of pounds into hydrogen fuel cell-powered car tech trials.…

As 16% of UK tech support services bods prepare to leave, obvious questions are raised IBM is to lay off more than one in 10 workers across the UK Technology Support Services (TSS) division, with insiders telling us that some areas will be hit so severely that clients will inevitably feel the pinch.…

Servers were over capacity, Kerslake review finds Vodafone has come in for criticism for the "catastrophic failure" of its National Mutual Aid Telephony system (NMAT) in today's review of the deadly suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena last year.…

The 'last thing you want' when selling up, sighs neighbour Dumping boats on streets may just be a thing after an another example showed up, this time on the streets of Southampton and filled with all sorts of garbage.…

Won't someone please think of the children? Without the distraction of pissing around online, you'd think kids might stand a better chance of doing their homework. But it seems some parents blame their darlings' performance at school on crap broadband speeds.…

But we should be honoured. He'll actually *personally* ask an exec to come Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has once again declined to cross the Atlantic to give evidence to British MPs as part of their inquiry into social media and the spread of fake news.…

Four-piece suite coming for IT wallets A flurry of array related activity came out of Infinidat today. Well, it is a Tuesday so why the hell not.…

Checking in on how IMAP could help folk throw off Zuck's yoke Once upon a time the internet ran on open protocols, and anyone could host servers that ran these protocols. Your first dial-up internet connection probably came with a bundle of tools for groups and chat. If you weren't happy with the service from your ISP you'd point the client at another. The internet was open and federated, with tons of innovation at the client end.…

That's the National Cyber Security Centre when it's at home Efforts to improve the UK.gov's secure server setup are being ramped up through an expansion of a scheme from the National Cyber Security Centre, the infosec folk at British crypto and intel agency GCHQ.…

April, May talks span levitation and existential risk Tractor beams and dangerous technology are two stalwarts of science fiction, but if you want the facts, join us at two fascinating Register Lectures over the next couple of months.…

Network strategy head reveals more in interview +Comment Vodafone's 4G drone tracking system is not a full control platform but it can help serve up "connectivity, command and control, and telemetry," the mobile operator's Santiago Tenorio Sanz told The Register.…

Bod accused of masterminding malware attacks on banks around the world European cyber-cops have felt the collar of a bloke suspected of running a network of crims that used malware to pinch €1bn (£874.8m, $1.24bn) from cash machines and other banking systems.…

CEO Jim Whitehurst damns Docker with faint praise, as you would after buying CoreOS Red Hat’s posted a strong end to its 2018 financial, crossed the US$3bn-a-year-run-rate barrier and reported growth in its key products.…

Miscreants can spoof URL with potentially nasty results A security researcher based in Germany has identified a flaw in the way Apple's iOS 11 handles QR codes in its Camera app.…

ViperCard takes a bite out of old-style programming Video Apple fans with a bent for nostalgia have some to wallow in after a HyperCard clone debuted on Monday.…

Death notice offers refunds, if you agree not to sue Exclusive SAP has begun the process of shutting down its cloud-based SAP Anywhere suite for small businesses.…

Acer turns Chrome OS into a fondleslab so you don’t give teacher an Apple Google and Acer have given the world its first Chromebook Tablet.…

Linksys, Wemo brands come along for the ride Hon Hai Precision Industry's Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT) subsidiary has announced a deal to slurp Belkin International for US$866 million in cash.…

Kepler data thought to be glitchy reveals two-week wonder When a star goes supernova, it gets very, very bright, very, very quickly, then spends a good few months fading away. But boffins have now reported that an object named KSN 2015K faded away in just a fortnight.…

Which won't be terrifyingly hard: it's pretty good at making old kit like the way it moves The ink has dried, so to speak, on TLS 1.3, so it's time for work developing software to implement the standard to begin in earnest.…

When you log off forever, who can access your social media accounts? And your Bitcoin? The Australian state of New South Wales has ordered an inquiry into what happens to your social media accounts and digital assets once you’re dead.…

Still a better investment than art school or avocado toast University students are opting to use their student loan money to invest in cryptocurrency, rather than school.…

Denies ties to Cambridge Analytica and insists it didn't knowingly break the law AggregateIQ – a Canadian political advertising firm that played a role in the 2016 US election and the UK's "Vote Leave" Brexit campaign – left its applications and database credentials publicly accessible, security firm Upguard said on Monday.…

Talk about being in the pits: Hamilton, Mercedes gutted after weekend timing glitch Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton was left fuming after a software glitch denied him an easy win in first race of the 2018 season on Sunday.…

Expect to hear a lot about censorship and criminals in the next few months Analysis As blowback against Facebook and its business model enters its third week, with netizens railing against the amount and type of personal data the social network has on them, calls for new privacy laws have started growing.…

Bye bye, says American Pai. Throw my server in the levy Federal Communications Commission boss Ajit Pai wants to cut some overseas companies out of the market for lucrative US government broadband contracts if they are deemed a threat to the Land of the Free™.…

'Non-public' FTC investigation a new headache for Zuckerberg The US Federal Trade Commission has confirmed it is probing Facebook over privacy concerns, sending the social network's share price into a downward spiral.…

More b*llsh... IT The UK government has published a details-light "cyber security export strategy" intended to help local SMEs win contracts abroad - despite having struggled to boost its own spend with small businesses.…

Brit industry, military locked out From the department of "You only just realised this?" come reports that the UK government has been somewhat taken aback that the EU plans to exclude Britain from the Galileo satellite programme due to Brexit.…

♫ It can fine you, it can block you ... but it can only suggest you... Oh-oh: protect data ♬ The UK's age verification overlord has issued guidance for checking whether citizens should be able to access online smut, emphasising data protection and its plan to take a "proportionate regulatory approach".…

No buyer found for moribund tat bazaar PwC’s Maplin Electronics’ administration team has laid off another bunch of hapless souls from head office as the protracted - and some might say doomed - search for a buyer to rescue the retailer runs on.…

Novel idea might reduce risk of accidents A bicycle industry chief has suggested that cyclists ought to be equipped with "bicycle to vehicle" beacons so they are more "visible" to autonomous vehicles.…