The Register

Shame about the name Hands-on Review Available for order this week, BlackBerry’s penultimate own-brand phone is a luxurious but light big sibling to its DTEK50. That was the first to marry a reference design, from TCL, to BlackBerry’s own “hardened” Android. The DTEK60 – not a name that rolls off the tongue – also uses BlackBerry’s Android, but aims for the boardroom rather than the shop floor. It’s one of the year’s nicer surprises.…

Yep. That sounds about right Honesty in job ads is rarity. When employers talk of "exciting admin management opportunities", they really mean: paper-pushing drones wanted.…

That's plenty for Remote and Branch Offices, says firm Scale Computing is set to announce a single-node configuration of its HC3 hyper-converged infrastructure appliance (HCIA).…

Well knock us off our unicycles, we had no idea! Reg Standards Bureau Ever wondered what the equivalent weight of a tram was in skateboarding rhinoceri? The answer is apparently 30, as any Aussie will tell you.…

Or is that what the Matrix wants us to think? Star physicist Stephen Hawking has reiterated his concerns that the rise of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems could spell the end for humanity. Speaking at the launch of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Intelligence on 19 October, he did, however, acknowledge that AI equally has the potential to be one of the best things that could happen to us.…

Envisioning provisioning Sysadmin blog In the 10 years since the modern form of public cloud computing went mainstream, it has changed the entire industry's approach to IT. In response, IT's top vendors have had to change as well. Like any technology, however, the public cloud has adapted, evolved, and become something much different than was ever originally envisioned.…

But 'illegal activities might continue to be financed' Plans to bring virtual currency exchanges and digital wallet providers within the scope of EU anti-money laundering (AML) legislation have been backed by the European Central Bank (ECB).…

Scammers: 'Gunna be lit, fam' Microsoft is warning of fake copies of its Security Essentials that if executed will throw a fake blue screen of death, pwn machines, and lead users to technical support scams.…

Bike-mounted cams on the ground are just fine, though The Swedish judiciary has ruled that camera drones are surveillance devices, meaning their pilots will have to get a seldom-issued permit to use them for private flights.…

Kid schools telco: 'So have you heard of access controls?' Virgin Media has shuttered a kindergarten-grade bug in a third party website that exposed up to 50,000 résumés it's received over the years, complete with names, street and email addresses of applicants.…

Brian Ridpath has 419 problems, but the potentially fictional Lisa Johnson ain't one A lonely beancounter has been jailed after he fell for what appears to be a classic Nigerian email scam, and conned £150,000 out of a friend so he could bankroll his fake damsel in distress.…

Erm … didn't Amazon just make a deal with VMware for something similar? Yes, it did Amazon Web Services (AWS) has revealed a new on-prem-VM-to-cloud teleporter that aims to help organisations take virtualised workloads to its cloud.…

Wi-Fi Alliance certification program kicks off with Intel, Qualcomm chipsets to the fore The WiFi Alliance reckons it's bestowed on a waiting world the first hint of what 5G will look like, and apparently it's a radio link that can manage 8 Gbps over 10 metres.…

Aggressive data protection services needed, as every business's data gets hyperscale Comment Acronis CEO Serguei Beloussov thinks data protection services have to stop being reactive and become active managers of data integrity, security and storage.…

Manifesto silent on copyright, calls for privacy, anonymity and open data in open formats The Pirate Party looks set for a successful outing in the coming weekend's Icelandic elections.…

300 staff to get their 140-character farewell Twitter is going from “troubled” to “beleaguered”, with reports that after it failed to flog itself it's going to cut loose as many as 300 staff.…

Bishop Fox report says Merlin@Home vulns are real and deadly St Jude Medical has suffered another setback in its lawsuit against Muddy Waters and security company MedSec.…

Patch to drop 1400 UTC, Tuesday. And the haste of its release suggests this is scary The world's second-favourite content management system, Joomla!, is warning of a critical security hole so bad its developers aren't saying what it fixes.…

Big Blue in compensation talks with Australian government IBM has tried to explain why trivially-small denial-of-service attacks took out the systems it provided for Australia's Census, causing a 40-hour outage.…

♬ 'Cause tonight is the night when two become one ♬ IBM has started sublimating the SoftLayer brand and will henceforth put its own Bluemix brand front and centre.…

Alleged Playpen perverts win a concession A US judge overseeing an FBI “Playpen case” has told agents to reveal whether or not their investigative hacking was approved by the White House.…

Head of chip giant's VC arm bullish about exits Pretty much everyone can agree that 2016 has been awful all round, but hey here's something we can look forward come January 1: 2017 is going to be the year of new tech IPOs, according to the CEO of Intel's venture capital arm.…

Lowell McAdam talks acquisitions, 5G and IoT Verizon is going to decide how much it is willing to pay for Yahoo! next month when an investigation into its massive security breach is completed.…

Unsuspecting investors given full Brazilian from TelexFree scam operation The CEO of VoIP telephone service TelexFree has confessed that his company was a front for a $1.8bn pyramid scam.…

Russia hoping to block accused miscreant's extradition The US Department of Justice has unsealed its indictment against a Russian bloke accused of hacking high-profile websites.…

Get patching now Apple has distributed a fresh round of security updates to address remote-code execution holes in iOS, macOS, Safari, and the firmware for Apple Watch and AppleTV.…

Apple still rules the roost – but it's not a popular perch The latest figures on smartwatch shipments have shown a dramatic decline in interest among consumers.…

Chip giant puts $38m into next generation of digital tech Intel has launched a new group to cozy up to pro-sports, aimed at working with the major leagues to introduce the next wave of technology from virtual reality to data analytics, tracking and image capture.…

No matter who wins US prez race, merger faces rocky ride AT&T's proposed $84.5bn acquisition of Time Warner is already facing a gauntlet of opposition from government officials and activists.…

But babies can start video chatting early The American Academy of Pediatrics has changed its recommendations for children's use of electronic media, and has cut the overall time it recommends that tots spend on-screen.…

Hardware vuln strikes 18 of 27 tested mobes Security researchers have demonstrated how to gain root privileges from a normal Android app without relying on any software bug.…

Looks past pesky shareholders to joyful Ellison marriage NetSuite closed in typical fashion what promised to be the final quarter before it is subsumed by Oracle - growth in turnover continued, as did operating overheads and losses.…

Astronomers will have to wait until 2028, according to predictions A rare gravitational lensing event will give researchers a precious chance at hunting new planets in Alpha Centauri in 2028, astronomers have predicted.…

Soz, you'll just have to get in your car and pick up a basket Asda customers were bereft of their weekend deliveries after a server glitch cancelled 15 per cent of online orders.…

US products compromised by Mirai mischief in another Internet of Things success Chinese electronics firm Hangzhou Xiongmai is set to recall swathes of webcams after they were compromised by the Mirai botnet.…

Millipede possesses a tetrad of todgers. Oh, and 200 poison glands Scientists have discovered a new species of millipede with four penises lurking deep within the crystal cave of Sequoia National Park.…

Copyright chief removed, moved sideways The US Copyright Office has been given a brutal Silicon Valley-style sacking, the first time the Copyright Register has been dismissed in 119 years.…

Audit follows IT disaster that resulted in farmers being underpaid Whitehall's spending watchdog is to review the achievements of the Government Digital Service in light of the Rural Payments Agency's IT disaster.…

'Spotlight' on the money in a post-cloud-hype world The cost and expense of AWS and Azure is helping drive cloud hopefuls to OpenStack, the organisation has said.…

But don't forget: the network needs monitoring Block-based storage (and particularly that based on Fibre Channel) has always been the favoured child when it comes to vendors talking about their products and solutions. All of the high-end performing devices tend (but not exclusively) to be block-based.…

Reputation management comes out of the shadows It isn’t just feral estate agents who drape their cars with adverts. Reader James sent us this photo, which you may want to examine more closely if you’re an enthusiastic Wikipedian.…

Nearly 80% accuracy in human rights trials from reports RotM Artificial Intelligence can predict the outcomes of European Court of Human Rights trials to a high accuracy, according to research published today.…

Dyn-Dyn-Dyn... it's a knockout! A group called New World Hackers has claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack that rendered significant portions of the web unreachable last Friday.…

MicroProfile play targets the Eclipse Foundation Oracle aims to land the delayed Java Enterprise Edition 8 on or before October 2017.…

Fatter flash and in-drive compression helps to boost performance Hitachi Data Systems has a new enterprise all-flash array and a faster hybrid array, doubled flash drive capacity and updated its Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS).…

Cross-party collective of 105 MPs sign open letter to US President to save Love A cross-party collective of 105 MPs has penned an open letter to US President Barack Obama, requesting that he intervene to withdraw the extradition requests for alleged #OpLastResort hacker Lauri Love.…

How's that plan to break with monopoly suppliers going? The Cabinet Office is gearing up to ink another mega pan-government Oracle licensing deal, multiple sources have told The Register.…

Not just Europeans who'll consume Cloud 28+ Hewlett Packard Enterprise is taking Cloud 28+ - aka Worldwide Indirect Digital Services - to a global audience, leaked internal documents have revealed.…