The Register

IT LIVES! Cybercriminals behind the Necurs botnet have reactivated the zombie network and returned to their original business of using compromised machines as conduits for spam distribution.…

Now, how to do that in a stagnant market? The wonderfully named Marco Grieco Wang-Andresen, number two EMEA exec at Acer, is floating across to run rival PC maker Lenovo's ops in the same territory, El Reg can confirm.…

De Rojas to have 're-energised' regional business British software giant Sage has lost a “trail-blazing” executive brought in to help oversee the transition to cloud from on-prem after less than six months.…

So that's OK then, nothing to see here The UK Information Commissioner has cleared the Information Commissioner of an alleged failure to apply Freedom of Information laws correctly, following an investigation into itself.…

'Numerous reports' received Microsoft’s March Windows 10 Update has claimed a new victim: Windows dialogue boxes built using Telerik objects.…

Smartphone hardware school of hard knocks A popular Indiegogo venture to build a secondary e-ink display for the iPhone has shut down after raising over $1m – and donors will not get their money back.…

Don't just fling unsecured open source OSes at world+dog, father of the Internet begs Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, has weighed in on Internet of Things security, warning that a Mirai botnet-style incident could happen again unless vendors start taking responsibility for their goods.…

Announces product integrations and new language for exchanging customer data Adobe and Microsoft have announced new product integrations along with the XDM (Experience Data Model) language for interchanging behavioural and marketing data between platforms.…

Advertisers, please help us build a better swamp Google has responded to a contagious YouTube advertising boycott which yesterday prompted a downgrade on Wall Street.…

Customers able to view account details of other users Mobile operator Three has admitted that some customers were able to view the mobile account details of other Three users via their accounts yesterday.…

Privacy impact assessments? Anyone? Bueller? Councils in the UK have work to do ahead of the EU's General Data Protection Regulations, according to the Information Commissioner's Office's department for good practice.…

Industry bods not keen on mandatory filtering Government proposals to force internet service providers into blocking content inappropriate for children with filters have been branded "disproportionate" by the industry's representative group.…

M call for papers due to close on March 31 There are just 10 days left until we close the call for papers for M, so if you want to tell the world how you’re putting artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics to work in business, we really want to hear from you.…

Don't decommission that MySQL server – yet The commercial release by Google of its Spanner database as a public beta last month came as both a pleasant surprise and a wake-up call: perhaps the end of NoSQL databases is in sight.…

Pocket powerhouse Review Huawei began to make significant inroads into the premium phone business in the West last year with its heavily promoted P9 models, and the Chinese giant has got this year’s shot at the market in early: ahead of Samsung and HTC.…

Doesn't say it's going to, just that it is preparing to do so... The Home Office has acknowledged that it is preparing to accept a landmark EU ruling from last year which restated that access to retained data must only be given in cases of serious crime, unlike the range of cases provided for under the new Investigatory Powers Act.…

If only there was some way to work out these frustrations... HPE is ensuring that no unpleasant memories linger for Enterprise Services staff being booted to DXC Technology by informing them they are no longer entitled to membership to the employee discount scheme.…

Mid-East airports and airlines hit by carry-on ban on gadgets From today, passengers are banned from flying into the US from specific overseas airports if their carry-on luggage contains devices larger than a mobile phone. The clampdown is a result of counterterrorism intelligence, we understand.…

GPU engines are out and AI translators will help you pull From voice translation to self-driving automobile, AI's impact in everyday life will become more and more apparent this year. The AI and deep learning market will experience even more rapid technological advancement, very rapid growth and adoption, and increasing competition for both hardware and software platforms. While AI fears will remain, the public will become more cognisant and comfortable with social media AI applications.…

Servicing your mechanical overlords Sysadmin Blog The machines are taking over. At the forefront of this change is the US Air Force, which now has more jobs for drone pilots than any other type. This is not likely to be an isolated event.…

If it's cloud connected and has a mic, it'll run it, beams exec Samsung has shed more light on its virtual personal assistant Bixby ahead of the March 29 launch of its flagship – and hopefully non-detonating – Galaxy S8 smartphone. The S8 will be a big user of Bixby.…

01001011 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100001 00100001 Artificial intelligence agents can invent their own language and talk among themselves to work out the best way to get a job done, a study has shown.…

VSAN may get a gig on UK's Astute-class boats. And is definitely getting a filesystem VMware says it's been asked to consider how nuclear submarines might use its virtual SAN.…

This is the stuff that binds Quarks together Boffins poring over data from the Large Hadron Collider's “Beauty” experiment are blinking in surprise, having turned up five new particles in one hit.…

XenApp Essentials pricing revealed Citrix has revealed a little more about XenApp Essentials, its replacement for the Azure Remoteapp application publishing service that Microsoft killed off last year.…

AI. Check. Machine learning. Check. Brand name. Check ARM is today touting a new way of organizing processor chips – one that will squeeze accelerators designed for AI and such tasks into phones, PCs, cars, and so on.…

Fentanyl merchant was good at Tor, rubbish in meatspace and at deleting browser history Delivery is the weakest link in the “dark web” drug trade: the postal habits of a large-scale trader have led to his undoing.…

The fix is simple: turn your modem on and off again to get a new IP address. Or ask your ISP to assign them more often Domain-name lookups only reveal websites visited, not individual pages viewed, right? Wrong: the interaction between a user and the DNS is more revealing than previously believed, according to a paper from German postdoc researcher Dominik Herrmann.…

Australia, of all places, is a tax haven for Apple New Zealand New Zealand has joined the international criticism of Apple's tax arrangements, with NZ$4.2 billion worth of sales over ten years yielding zero tax in the country.…

So far, no patch available to the public Nest's Dropcam and Dropcam Pro security cameras can be wirelessly attacked via Bluetooth to crash and stop recording footage. This is perfect for burglars and other crooks who want to knock out the cams moments before robbing a joint.…

Podule returns home after grim experiment leaves 40 dead After almost a month spent attached to the International Space Station, SpaceX's Dragon capsule has successfully returned to Earth. The podule, laden with science experiments including the bodies of 40 mice, is now on its way to NASA via ship.…

Air travel to the US from eight countries appears to be affected People traveling by air to America from an undisclosed list of countries will no longer be allowed to carry devices larger than a mobile phone in carry-on baggage.…

Search king tweaks rules to human raters Google has asked its search quality raters not to assume that users looking up Holocaust denials, or whether women or Islam or black people are evil, are "racist or bad people."…

City wakes up to emails cancelling long-awaited 1Gbps broadband Analysis Looking back, it should have been obvious: when Google announced in 2011 that it would roll out its own super-fast internet service for just $70 a month, offering 1Gbps over its own fiber, it started out in Kansas.…

Meanwhile, potential Russian campaign links probed Vid Monday mornings are never pleasant, are they? Take FBI director James Comey and head of the NSA Admiral Mike Rogers, for example, who kicked off their week by being grilled by the US House Select Intelligence Committee.…

Claiming you can't remember your passphrase to unlock data is willful defiance The US Third Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld a lower court ruling of contempt against a chap who claimed he couldn't remember the password to decrypt his computer's hard drives.…

Click here to see her stolen nudes, and then here, and here, and again here, and... Scammers are exploiting a new batch of leaked celebrity nudes, using the stolen selfies to lure in gawpers and make a fast buck.…

Access Group exec: We'll be buddies if you survive the redundancy scheme Staff at Safe Computing - Britain’s nearest equivalent to Workday - are feeling anything but secure about their livelihoods after reading a proposal by their new owner to axe some jobs.…

Mabe you could pay with Bitcoin. Like at Microsoft. Oh wait* IBM's fortunes are set to change, we're sure of it. After 20 straight quarters of sales decline, the business has launched Blockchain-as-a-Service.…

UCL researcher on the tragedy of the age of data Interview Sure, algorithms are insanely useful, but we need to watch we don't become complacent and unable to question them, University College London's Dr Hannah Fry warned in an interview with The Register.…

Official advice: Don’t touch that phone! BlackBerry has finally acknowledged problems with the much-delayed 10.3.3 update to BlackBerry 10 that users began to receive late last year.…

Kent man faces Wireless Telegraphy Act charges A Kent man has been on bail for seven years over allegations he operated a GSM gateway which allowed consumers to get cheaper calls abroad.…

Second regulator to probe MSP The Financial Conduct Authority is to probe the accounting screw-up at Redcentric that was made public last autumn when the firm admitted to overstating assets and understating net debts by millions of pounds.…

Penny pinching pensioners restricted to 60cm allocation Beijing authorities are forcing desperate defecators to submit to a facial scan before receiving an allotment of toilet paper, sparking a debate over privacy, crowd control and the toxic qualities of Chinese loo roll.…

Wow, who knew? Clients don't like to be associated with jihadis and racists Google has promised a review of its ad policy on YouTube after a backlash from blue-chip advertisers. It follows a series of reports by The Times demonstrating big brand ads running over content that breaches YouTube guidelines, such as jihadist videos and other inflammatory or racist material.…

And all it got in return was a £60k fine Updated Norfolk County Council left files containing sensitive information about children in a cabinet which was dispatched to a second hand shop.…

Jeremy 'easy to work with' Fleming is incoming Jeremy Fleming, the deputy director-general of MI5, is to helm GCHQ following the surprise resignation of Robert Hannigan this January.…

US law, EU law and post-Brexit what'll UK do law Interview You know, we know, everyone knows… the EU's General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect May of next year for every member of the European Union, and that will include the United Kingdom.…

It's a real Peng... win Sysadmin blog Microsoft now runs a bunch of Windows servers on ARM processors. Apparently, these ARM chips are quite good at their jobs and Microsoft might try converting entire categories of workloads over. All around the world the tech press has speculated on whether or not Windows on ARM will be showing up in on-premises datacenters. In doing so, they've completely missed the point.…

Jeff Jones jumps joins #deleteuber movement Uber's president Jeff Jones has joined the #deleteuber movement because he's come to realise the company's values aren't compatible with his own.…