The Register

Decisions, decisions. Lucky number 13? Poll Peter Capaldi will demateralise as the 12th Time Lord this Christmas after four years.…

The highest levels of service Another month, another problem with comedy outfit 123-Reg whose long-suffering customers are this time suffering from an email outage.…

And no one has any idea what to actually do about it The UK defence secretary has accused Russia of using hacking to destabilise the West.…

Spending fluctuates on how 'companies respond to our decisions' Communications regulator Ofcom splashed an extra 11 per cent on legal costs in 2015/16 compared with the previous year, spending £4.9m seeing off threats from operators.…

I'm an 'early riser', if you know what I mean Something for the Weekend, Sir? I've been up all night, doing the business like hammer and tongs, going at it again and again. I can be relentless when I'm on the job – a man of action and drama.…

Report warns of 'inconsistent' and 'chaotic' response to routine data breaches A scathing parliamentary report into UK.gov’s infosec practices has called for the government to step up its efforts to protect Britain from cyber attacks in the face of today’s “chaotic” practices.…

Firm still Helping People Exit ahead of the CSC spin merger Hewlett Packard Enterprise is bundling hundreds more UK Enterprise Services (ES) staff out of the door ahead of the looming ‘spin merger’ with CSC.…

Over to you, dear readers. Start your MS Paint engines! Logowatch Artist David Hockney has redesigned the masthead of The Sun newspaper – and in the spirit of free expression and artistic endeavour we want you, dear Reg readers, to join us in honouring this beacon moment in the cultural life of Great Britain.…

Boffins urge bosses to keep their developers cheerful Miserable software developers produce miserable software, to the further detriment of organizational productivity and personal health.…

Identifying fake news is too hard at the moment, say developers, but we can spot lies in headings Two AI researchers are behind a daring open challenge to fight the spread of outrageous headlines that are completely detached from reality. (As if anyone would write such things, tut-tut.)…

Happy days as reader impersonates The Fonz ON-CALL Welcome to another Friday and therefore to another edition of On-Call, The Register's regular recycling of readers' recollections!…

It's not Advanced Persistent Threats, it's Adequate Pernicious Toerags Usenix Enigma 2017 The chief technical director of GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre has rebuked infosec companies for spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about hackers to sell products.…

New classes of bugs found by machine-learning-powered tools Usenix Enigma 2017 Machine-learning systems are unearthing new classes of bugs in operating systems and apps, according to bods from America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).…

Even detachables like the Surface are making buyers snooze The tablet computer market has slumped into “spiraling decline”, according to box-counter IDC.…

Security ops service adds more sources telling you when to panic, and how much ServiceNow has made some new friends in the information security industry and will use its new friends to tell you how fast to panic about intrusions.…

We take a look at a couple of startups and their hype Comment Containerized apps will gravitate to using containerized system services such as storage and security.…

Coming soon: Cracking IoT kit and industrial control systems Popular offensive hacking toolkit Metasploit now works on hardware, including cars, after a major update to the 13-year old platform.…

The Australian Synchrotron warns it's been wormholed, but not dangerously UPDATE The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) is investigating a computer security breach at the Australian Synchrotron that saw hackers steal scientists' usernames and passwords Friday.…

NSX-T takes network virtualization into the weird world of cloud-native apps VMware has revealed a new cut of its NSX network virtualization product, “NSX-T”.…

No, not Trump... think clouds and parcels Amazon.com shares sank in after-hours trading after its Q4 2016 earnings fell short of analysts' estimates.…

'AND WE MAY NEVER MAKE A PROFIT,' laughs photo-spaff app maker all way to the bank Millennial vanity magnifier Snap Inc, the post-profit maker of Snapchat, hopes to raise $3bn in an initial public offering.…

Don't forget the human touch, says Citrix Promo Webinars are seen as the top-performing lead generator, and the growing business use of mobile devices is extending their reach ever further.…

Public to finally get to see regulator orders before vote The new chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, has come good on a promise to modernize the regulator by getting rid of its most infuriating habit: secret orders.…

US ISP is always app-y to take your money Comcast has kicked off a beta program that will let customers watch TV on Roku hardware, but only if they pay extra.…

More than 1,000 government computer systems shut down A county in Ohio, US, has had to shut down its entire IT infrastructure due to a ransomware outbreak.…

So brave, so very brave Tech goliaths Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are planning to take a stand against the Trump Administration's hardline immigration policy ... because their bottom line demands it.…

Despite the layoffs, Mozilla insists it will be increasing its headcount Mozilla is ending its Connected Devices initiative, the flailing software maker's effort to influence the design and development of networkable things.…

Workaround is to disable the thing – no fix just yet for unlucky corps hit Updated Anti-malware firm Webroot has apologized after an update pushed out this week borked computers at unlucky companies, leaving the PCs unbootable.…

2-in-1s are all about 'generating customer love' In its advice to the manufacturing community, Microsoft has said it wants PC builders to focus on quality and features that differentiate PCs from Macs. It's also seeking to migrate high-end features, and AR, into cheaper kit.…

Hello darkness my old friend Microsoft program manager Mads Torgersen has posted about the company's programming language strategy, stating that the plan for Visual Basic has shifted from co-evolution with C# to a focus on "core scenarios".…

No customs union, everything else TBD The UK government has published its long-awaited white paper on negotiating a withdrawal from the European Union.…

Update your StruxureWare Data Center Expert to v7.4, quick! Schneider Electric has issued a patch for its StruxureWare Data Center Expert industrial control kit following the discovery of a flaw that could allow remote access to unencrypted passwords.…

'It's a nice opportunity,' says Canuck outsourcing giant While most of the world looks on in despair at Trump, Canadian outsourcer CGI is rubbing its hands together at the prospect of some lovely new business.…

DevOps takes on the challenge Promo By working closely together, development and operations teams are improving the speed and quality of application development. But what about the database?…

Cloud provider offers DR-as-a-service using flash Analysis All-flash arrays are now the storage choice du jour for storing fast access primary data but have not been used for storing secondary data, such as unstructured data, ordinary files and just-in-case disaster recovery (DR) data. But change is coming, driven by cheaper flash drives and the realisation that fast access to secondary data is, obviously, better than slow access.…

Steve Jobs didn't just stiff Apple devs, he stiffed Pixar VFXers too VFX workers who created animations for Pixar and Disney movies have won $100m in an out-of-court settlement of a wage-fixing lawsuit.…

Weaker pound and UK revenue decline pooping on the party Vodafone posted a sales fall of 20 per cent to €1.7bn (£1.4bn) in the UK for its third-quarter results, dragging overall sales down 3.9 per cent to €13.7bn (£11.6bn) compared with the previous year.…

Oz police go watchdog over profiteering pot-pushers Aussie coppers have got into the consumer rights business after a distraught stoner turned to them to complain about profiteering by her local pot dealer.…

Las Vegas hotel changes world Reg Standards Bureau Our thanks today are due to Michelle O'Sullivan, late of this parish, who snapped a wonderful poster boasting to residents of the LINQ Hotel in Las Vegas of its recycling prowess.…

Hacking convention's founder hacked off with executive order The next edition of the well-regarded ‪PasswordsCon‬ conference is in doubt as an indirect result of the Trump administration's controversial travel ban.…

Is your machine learning? Pity the 34 staff of Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance in Japan, diligently calculating insurance payouts and brutally replaced by an AI system. If you believe the reports from January, the AI revolution is here.…

A story of a £24k ring and a man who compared himself to Nelson Mandela A "serial entrepreneur" from Leicester who compared himself to Nelson Mandela and whose solar power company is alleged to have defrauded Hewlett Packard Enterprise out of $17.5m in discounts has been jailed for 18 months by the High Court following an application by HPE.…

24-rack unit replaced with 15 'blades', performance gained, millions saved – so they say A 24-rack NetApp system has been replaced with a single Pure Storage FlashBlade product at a customer site.…

Yep, that's gotta hurt Sysadmin blog Holistic IT is hard. There are those among us who want to purchase hardware, software, services or so-called turnkey "solutions" – as vendors call them – bearing logos and stickers and otherwise don't require any architect-level thinking. None of us wants to dive deep into compliance regimes to understand what we need to do.…

Even in rural Australia, sharing is resisted Analysis The advantages of network sharing seem glaringly obvious in a world where the mismatch between mobile data demand and mobile data ARPU is rushing MNOs’ profits. The need to reduce the cost of delivering those rising tides of data is urgent, but many operators are ready to discuss almost any tactic – Wi-Fi offload, automation, outsourcing, even an early move to more spectrally efficient 5G radios, or an outright merger – rather than consider sharing the RAN load with others.…

Just... why? Comment Mark Zuckerberg is the world's fifth-richest man on the basis that stock markets think he's pretty smart. That's not the entire reason for Zuck taking his place alongside Gulf oil sheikhs – but it's certainly a big factor in Facebook's astronomical evaluation. But this week's Facebook strategy insights make you wonder how smart he really is.…

Wholesale price agreement slashes telco-to-telco charges The European Commission has taken the next step towards the scheduled end of roaming charges in the European Union, securing agreement on maximum wholesale charges telcos will be able to charge each other to handle roaming subscribers.…

Windows XP? SHA-1? USB sneakernet? What were they thinking? Or smoking? The Netherlands has decided its vote-counting software isn't ready for prime time, and will revert to hand-counted votes for its March 15 election.…

He who controls the film rights controls the universe The legendary sci-fi novel Dune is going to be turned into a movie again – and, thanks to director Denis Villeneuve, it may not suck.…

Plus: Boston Dynamics builds 'nightmare-inducing' jumping pram Videos Watch out – robots are now fast and strong enough to catch live fish and kick balls underwater, according to a group of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.…