The Register

Hard Rock Hamilton claims Cole Train was modeled on him – and he wants damages A former football player, professional wrestler, and motivational speaker is suing Microsoft, claiming an iconic character in Redmond's Gears of War game ripped off his likeness.…

♪ Stop your messin' around, better think of your future ♪ The transition team for US president-elect Donald Trump has announced that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani will advise the incoming administration on how to secure America's digital infrastructure.…

Tragic decline is slowing, though, say IDC beancounters Santa's sack was bulging over Chrimbo, but it wasn't due to PC-shaped presents – computer sales slipped again in the final quarter of 2016, capping off five consecutive years of market shrinkage.…

Eonite hopes to get ahead of a rapidly moving market with top tracking software A Silicon Valley startup is hoping to get ahead of the rapidly moving VR market with software that offers what companies have been chasing for the past few years: inside-out tracking.…

Gee, what a lovely parting gift by outgoing US prez A last-minute rule change signed off by the outgoing Obama administration has made it much easier for the NSA to share raw surveillance data with more than a dozen government agencies.…

Crystal ball, that is Clairvoyant Gartner has once again dusted off the crystal ball in its quarterly global IT spend divination ritual to predict a 2.7 per cent year-on-year increase in 2017.…

Screw you, guys, we're going home Security exploit peddlers Shadow Brokers announced their retirement on Thursday – and released 58 tools for hacking Windows PCs for free by way of a parting gift.…

Randall Stephenson makes case for yuuuge merger AT&T boss Randall Stephenson has been spotted at Trump Tower in New York City – reportedly in an effort to sell the president-elect on his company's plan to buy Time Warner.…

Database pwned, cyber-forensics outfit admits The Israeli company that found fame when it was fingered as a potential source of hacking software used by the FBI to crack open an iPhone has itself been hacked.…

Kaymera: building on shoulders of a giant, claim The arrival of a security hardened version of Google’s supposed "iPhone killer" Pixel phone from Kaymera has received a sceptical reception from one expert.…

If Exagrid pulls it off, it'll be a first Exagrid, whch produces deduping disk backup target arrays, announced record revenue for the fourth 2016 quarter; its 12th,consecutive cash-positive quarter.…

EyePyramid operation targeted politicians and business leaders A hacking operation featuring the EyePyramid trojan successfully compromised the systems of numerous high-profile Italian targets, including two former prime ministers, say Italian police.…

Pockets of growth in Europe fail to prevent overall decline EMEA geography purpose-built backup appliance sales shrank 9 per cent annually in the third 2016 quarter, through there were pockets of growth.…

Back In Black coming to BBC 2 soon The BBC has announced that it will this year broadcast Terry Pratchett's last story: His own.…

Big Blue coats DS8880 boxen with cognitive paint IBM has announced all-flash versions of three DS8880 monolithic arrays revealed last year, with increased flash capacities and a coat of cognitive marketing paint.…

Nothing to do with gov shifting to its cloudy services, apparently LogoWatch Confused commuters disembarked at Westminster tube this morning to discover the station at the seat of power had been rebranded "Webminster" in a "hilarious" guerilla marketing campaign by Amazon Web Services.…

DevOps, Containers, CD? We’ve got it all Reg Events We’re chuffed to be able to reveal the first tranche of speakers for Continuous Lifecycle, our three day-extravaganza of DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Containerization and Agile in May.…

Computer said yes, sales peeps said yes, speed checker said: Noooo Concerns are growing that some customers switching to BT fibre broadband may not be able to receive the service, despite the ISP "availability" checker saying otherwise – leading some to mistakenly sign up for the service.…

Aimed at small customers, kicks off in February Come February, Redmond will be ending pay-as-you-go Azure access for new customers on the Microsoft Products and Services Agreement, as it turns to channel partners to win small customers who are floating away.…

Big Blue pretty sure it can sell more Watson boxes if this works IBM says it will partner with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a study of whether blockchain technology could be used to securely transfer medical information.…

Banker's PR: Normal service levels resuming... whether that continues, we DON'T KNOW Day two and old nag Lloyds Banking Group’s online and mobile app services are still up and down like the Grand National, with no sign that customers will be put out of their misery any time soon.…

Great environment to train computers – and don't worry about all that violence Developers building self-driving cars can now take their AI agents for a spin in the simulated open world of Grand Theft Auto V - via OpenAI’s machine-learning playground, Universe.…

5G is such a drag CES 2017 So the stakes are high, and many companies are already playing hard. There were important announcements from two of the most established chip suppliers in the auto sector, NXP and Nvidia – the former particularly closely watched because it will soon be part of Qualcomm.…

Hoping to buy time, get better settlements... nothing's going to stop the cuts As hundreds of workers at Fujitsu prepare to down tools over the imminent threat of widespread redundancies, a power struggle at top of Unite, the union representing the staff, is taking shape.…

Follows its own destiny – at a price The Linux Mint project dropped a last-minute gift during the Christmas period – Mint 18.1.…

There will be blood Dell Technologies' 140,000 staffers have been wincing in anticipation fror the expected 2,000-3,000 layoffs after the $67bn EMC acquisition completed, and now the wait is over. The axe is swinging and heads have begun to roll.…

You mean I can phone people with this?! Having access to the world's information at your fingertips is a handy feature of smartphones, but it's the alarm clock function that folk really appreciate, according to a survey by uSwitch.…

And local sysadmins left to reset ground crews' 'dealer module' Toughbooks Key software for the troubled F-35 fighter jet has been repeatedly delayed, causing problems for the British armed forces as they wait for Americans to iron out the bugs.…

Cute photo? Your biometrics just got raided, boffins warn Researchers from Japan's National Institute of Informatics say people's fingerprints could be extracted from photographs using yet-to-be built technology.…

Hydraulic press action has explosive results Video Graphene is said to be the wonder material of our age, but it’s largely a 2D affair. Now scientists have made 3D structures out of the stuff that will be an engineer’s wet dream.…

Neat microwave trick could be key to reaching absolute zero Physicists working at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a way to theoretically cool an object to absolute zero.…

Ecuadorian broom cupboard denizen refuses to cough up info for once Video WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was blasted by fans during a live online Q&A – after he, for once in his life, refused to disclose information.…

Phishing, denial of service, and remote exploitation part of hacking banquet Hackers of unknown origin cut power supplies in Ukraine for a second time in 12 months as part of wide-ranging attacks that hit the country in December.…

Alphabet shutters another moonshot bad idea Being bought by Google X increasingly looks like a kiss of death: Alphabet has shuttered the Titan project which proposed hosting solar-powered broadband on high-altitude solar-powered drones.…

Nice market you have there, Bluetooth. Shame if anything should happen to it ... At CES last week, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced a certification program for devices supporting the TimeSync feature.…

Container escape vuln patched Docker has patched what it calls a “minor” container escape.…

Feds face potential legal nightmare ahead of trial Lawyers for a California doctor accused of hoarding child sex abuse images are challenging the legitimacy of crucial evidence a PC repairman handed to the FBI.…

Encryption got you down? Google will manage your secrets for you Google on Wednesday introduced its Cloud Key Management Service in beta to help Google Cloud Platform customers deal with their encryption keys.…

Watchdog's staff outline new guidelines, but it won't matter if Commissioner Pai has his way US comms watchdog the FCC has issued new guidelines on the controversial practice of "zero rating" and whether it is illegal or not.…

Document police with 'god-like' access denied therapy – claim Two former Microsoft employees have sued the Windows giant seeking compensation for the mental trauma of screening child sex abuse photos, murder videos, and other extreme content flowing through the company's online services.…

Upstart has been dying to talk about how it didn't rat out its customers in 2013 CloudFlare successfully fended off an FBI demand for people's private information, we can report this week now that a gagging order has been ripped away.…

Techies charged by Uncle Sam In one of the toughest smackdowns in recent US corporate history, Volkswagen has pleaded guilty to Dieselgate fraud charges, and will cop a massive fine.…

Bigwig denies any wrongdoing The heir-apparent of Samsung has been pulled into the bribery scandal that sparked the impeachment of South Korea's president.…

All the best tech gossip here...

Scaling up, out, and across, but workout flops at files HPE has given its SV3200 software a workout to strengthen its muscles with a raft of enhancements, but draws the line at using ARM for file access.…

If true, we're talking remote viewing of people's CCTV cams Xiongmai, the vendor behind many Mirai-vulnerable DVRs, has earned the consternation of security watchers once again.…

Closing China's disk drive manufacturing plant Reuters reports Seagate is closing its Suzhou disk drive manufacturing plant in China, shedding a whopping 2,217 jobs.…

Hey girl. Your scale-out filer's fast enough for me Case study In file serving, the blue chip case studies are movie special effects. Fast file access is what the SFX people – and by extension movie heartthrob and meme favourite Ryan Gosling, whose film they were working on – need.…

Your website will work, but might be riddled with errors GoDaddy was obliged to revoke digital certificates on Tuesday as the result of an unspecified software bug.…

Email threat scans and cloud uptake bolsters firm's fortunes Barracuda's business grew a little faster as customers continued moving to the public cloud and ransomware scared them into securing their emails.…