The Register

FAA clears Musketeers to, fingers crossed, put whole Iridium birds into orbit America's Federal Aviation Administration has cleared SpaceX to launch satellites into Earth's orbit using the science upstart's rockets.…

Liverman, 24, to be sentenced in May after inking plea deal Justin Liverman, arrested by the FBI for breaking into the AOL email account of CIA director John Brennan, has today signed a guilty plea deal in the face of what his lawyers described as "draconian penalties."…

Carnegie Mellon researchers go all-in Poker is the next game for AI to beat. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed Libratus, a computer program that will go head to head with top poker players at Rivers Casino, Chicago, beginning next week.…

This is not a test. The data might be. Hang on... See me after class, Mr Hacker Cybercrooks are targeting UK schools, demanding payments of up to £8,000 to unlock data they have encrypted with malware.…

Consumer NVMe card treated like internal PC disk transplant WD has added an SSD card to its previously all-disk Black range.…

You know, for kids (but also, possibly, dads, nerds and life hackers) CES 2017 Smart Wi-Fi-enabled hairbrush? Virtual reality shoes? Some visions of the future at this week's CES trade show simply won’t materialise. But what about building a 'bot made of LEGO?…

You may have seen this before Mockups of Microsoft's "Project Neon" redesign have been leaked – we're sure by accident. Neon, as we reported last year, is an attempt to steer Windows away from the "flat" look that has dominated UX design in recent years, and make the system friendly for augmented or mixed-reality users.…

Happy New Year! Updated Just days into the new year, and poor old 123-Reg is already experiencing problems, this time in the form of a DDoS attack - something it is no stranger to.…

I've been through the desert with a phone with no name At least one manufacturer thinks a business-focused Android has prospects in 2017.…

Underfunded biz knocked out Analysis Cloud file storage startup Bitcasa - a firm cynics might say had an apparent death wish - has called it a day.…

Fall for bait and your money is gone, and that TV never existed Amazon UK customers would do well to be vigilant about the post-holiday deals they find on the retail site following the discovery of a sophisticated scam.…

Our records show that you ... stop shouting sir Former staffers at a Cardiff-based car rental company have been sentenced for conspiring to steal customer information to sell to ambulance chasers.…

Ready to develop the Internet of Things? Start here Reg Events We’ll be bringing the IoT world’s thinkers, doers and developers together in London in March, and we really want you to be there.…

My little runaway. A run run run run a runaway Something for the Weekend, Sir? Welcome back. Did you manage to take some time off over the Christmas holiday or were you (figuratively) chained to a (virtual) roomful of (literally) overheating blades?…

'Hands down the best desktop Linux distro I tested in 2016' Fedora 25 is the first of the major Linux distros to employ the Wayland graphics stack by default.…

A conspiracy of one? Analysis Prosecutors are turning to fraud charges in cases against people supplying set top boxes that can be used to access copyrighted material without paying for it because it makes cases easier for juries to understand.…

Sort out existing mobile networks first, argues Prof William Webb Book review All the hype around 5G is hiding the simple fact that we don’t actually need a new mobile specification. That is the central thrust of Professor William Webb’s new book, The 5G Myth: And why consistent connectivity is a better future.…

Pull the other one Analysis Kurt Chase, director of engineering services at Splunk, is effusive about Atlassian's Git-based Bitbucket but doesn't have a lot of nice things to say about jilted source control system Perforce Helix.…

Router biz sued by Uncle Sam for hardcoded passwords, exploitable bugs and more America's trade watchdog is suing D-Link, alleging the router and camera vendor failed to implement basic security protections in its gear.…

Only Linux victims can decrypt warped $247,000 BlackEnergy module - and then only maybe Variants of the KillDisk data wiping malware, famous for nuking computers in Ukrainian energy utilities, is now being used in possibly the world's most expensive ransom attacks.…

Surprise: Uber will probably appeal Switzerland is the latest country to decide that in spite of its protestations otherwise, Uber is an employer – at least in public liability terms.…

Router baron makes break from SOHOpeless device cesspit sporting chained multikill bonus Netgear has broken ranks from the consumer router security shame factory to offer a bug bounty sporting extra rewards for chained exploits.…

Government rushing data retention review Australia's telecoms industry advocacy body the Communications Alliance is renewing its push for the federal government to revise its data retention regime, amid fears that a review will see stored data sucked into civil lawsuits.…

Executives and politicians, not developers, made the rules Australia's welfare agency Centrelink is embroiling the government in a hugely damaging controversy, raising incorrect debts and auto-issuing threatening letters to citizens.…

Gadget-grasping goon gets $9,500 fine and jail time The Washington State Ferry service, on the US west coast, appears to have some high-tech enemies: a series of laser attacks have been fired at pilots on the craft that serve Seattle Bay and the surrounding locales.…

$4.8bn deal still very much up in the air A Verizon executive is once again casting doubt on the telco giant's $4.8bn bid to acquire Yahoo!…

Web advertising giant declares plugin is malware Google has removed ad blocking and privacy extension AdNauseam from its Chrome Web Store, and has taken the unusual step of flagging the extension as malware, thereby preventing AdNauseam from being used by those who have installed the software via Chrome's developer mode.…

Uncle Sam sues web ad giant over its megabucks geeks The US Department of Labor is suing Google for details of its staff's wages – though the Chocolate Factory claims it's bending over backwards to comply with the bureaucrats' demands.…

Data protection for distributed software Analysis Startup Datos IO is the Tesla of the backup industry, redesigning data protection for distributed apps and focussing on high-end customers with code to solve specific problems no one else can solve anywhere near as well.…

Ex-head of growth claims upstart's execs are fudging numbers ahead of IPO A former Snapchat employee has accused the selfie-slinging giant of illegally inflating its user numbers and misleading investors.…

Startup's internal strategy tensions lead to exec, CEO and board changes Analysis Startup CloudByte is having a substantial exec and strategy makeover as it embraces an open source approach to containerised storage.…

World's first VR shoes to go on sale in Autumn CES 2017 Concerned that a virtual reality headset just isn't enough real-life escapism for you? Then perhaps you need to pair it with VR gloves and boots for that double dose of sensory deprivation.…

BigBoss and SillyGoose based on MM Core backdoor Two new variants of some Windows spyware first discovered in 2013 have surfaced in targeted attacks, security firm Forcepoint warns.…

Sinn Féin man says Cook's 'legal excuse doesn't add up' Tim Cook has turned down an invitation to appear before the Irish parliamentary finance committee to offer his thoughts on the EU's ruling over Apple's tax affairs with the nation.…

Welshman insisted he was travelling to fight Islamic State and help war victims A former soldier from Wales has pleaded guilty to a terrorism offence after failing to reveal his mobile phone PIN to police.…

Puppies and pussies ousted from lamp-posts by free-ranging tech toys Pic If your heart sinks every time you see a badly photocopied picture of a missing cat, we’ve got some good news. They’re about to be replaced by far better quality pics of missing drones.…

Android mobile backup and monster USB stickery Toshiba and SanDisk are showing off Android phone backup and monster microSD/USB stick products at CES in Las Vegas, but they don’t want what happens in Vegas to stay in Vegas.…

Sound familiar? Yes, you read it on El Reg last July The Ministry of Defence has today re-announced for the third time that it has awarded a £30m contract to build a great big feck-off laser cannon for zapping the Queen's enemies.…

Old-school PRC response to the 140-character kid Incoming US president Donald Trump has been reprimanded by China for indulging in “Twitter diplomacy”.…

Government's obsession is a load of hot air, claims professor The government should ignore the 5G hype and invest its £700m funding earmarked for the technology on ubiquitous 4G technology instead, a top telecoms expert has urged.…

Bigs up its vSphere replacement creds Unlike what's happening with the famed Athenian ruin, Nutanix is building up its Acropolis product, and has made v5.0 available with more than 45 new features.…

Better mother matching needed Troubling new findings have been discovered that could affect the lives of (misleadingly* branded) "three-parent" offspring born thanks to breakthrough mitochondrial replacement therapy.…

Shard this for a game for forks! Mega Mountain View SQL decision 'coming' The cloud wars won't be won on price – but customers are waking up to the costs, according to Google.…

And the year hyper-converged infrastructure put a dent in SANs Storage Review in 2016 Storage in 2016 saw its on-premises SAN/filer array heartland assaulted by the public cloud on the one hand, and hyper-converged and software-defined storage on the other.…

Mighty Trojan probe will eye up biggest metal ball in Solar System Vid NASA has OKed two new missions to study some of the most interesting asteroids in our solar system, as part of its ongoing Discovery mission program.…

SGX needs I/O protection, Austrian boffins reckon Intel's Software Guard Extensions started rolling in Skylake processors in October 2015, but it's got an Achilles heel: insecure I/O like keyboards or USB provide a vector by which sensitive user data could be compromised.…

Spammer opts for penal colony Russia is reportedly letting convicted crackers take a seat in its offensive operations units, as an alternative to doing time.…

Calling 'tinkerers and thinkers' America's Federal Trade Commission has kicked off a challenge to see who can come up with good ideas for securing the Internet of Things.…

Amnesty nobs Plone CMS bug A hacker is claiming to have breached the FBI's content management system, dumping email addresses and SHA1 encrypted hashes with salts online.…

Boffins get best fix so far on mysterious 'FRB' location Sorry to say this, but fast radio bursts still aren't alien communications. There is a surprise, however, in the latest science about them – the only repeating burst yet known comes from a "puny" galaxy with no obvious sources for such a cataclysmic cosmic event.…