The Register

Staying human in an automated lifecycle Everyone knows that IT is a byword for burnout. Admins, coders and hardware jocks frequently keep unsociable hours. Putting in 60-hour weeks is something of a norm. Such punishing workloads can and do push people over the edge. Everyone deals with stress in different ways.…

Password Manager, Maximum Security and Premium Security are all at risk A bug in its software meant that Trend Micro accidentally left a remote debugging server running on customer machines.…

Microsoft can stop worrying about smartphone non-strategy Remember the rapacious smartphone growth that turned once-troubled Apple into the world’s most valuable company? That’s over.…

MoD doubles infosec spending as digital threats grow Software powering Britain's nuclear-tipped Trident II missiles is to be updated following fears of a cyber-attack, according to reports.…

Who needs humans to task drone strikes, anyway? The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has received a “milestone” report from Massive Analytic, a company developing an “artificial precognition and decision-making support [system] for persistent surveillance-based tactical support.”…

Plug in. Go, go, go BUILD 2016 Microsoft’s love of Linux is extending to its flagship Visual Studio suite.…

Regulator will then beg for EU permission to act Telecoms regulator Ofcom will not release details of its proposals for greater structural separation of Openreach and BT until the end of the year.…

Beelzebub's boot firmly planted in middle of hamlet's High Street Outraged villagers in Bucks have forced the local council to ditch plans to shift a millennia-old boulder they believe was originally part of the Devil’s foot.…

You never know, dear... A proportion of very high frequency (VHF) wireless spectrum will be reserved for future use by Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices, the UK telecoms regulator has announced.…

Native apps are soooooo 2015, says BlackBerry, and web apps are the new black Facebook isn't abandoning BlackBerry after all, throwing the ailing mobility outfit a bone in the form of a web application.…

'Attackers can't just use one exploit to pwn a billion devices' says Square's security lead Black Hat Asia Android's diverse and oft un-patched ecosystem is a strength, not a weakness. So says says Dino Dai Zovi, security lead at mobile payments outfit Square, because he feels diversity makes criminal hackers work harder.…

Something tugged un-named rock out of line. Maybe something way beyond Pluto The long-controversial notion that there's an as-yet-undiscovered “ninth planet*” has had a boost from the best kind of science: a prediction of its effects, borne out by observation.…

Your data centre shouldn't need a 24/7/365 emergency support contract It's very easy to forget that buying kit for your infrastructure is just the first step on a long, long road. It's also easy to forget that everyone keeps their infrastructure kit going for years longer than their accountants depreciate it: we've all got something in the comms room that's still clinging to life.…

Decent vSphere clients are like buses: none for ages, then two at once! vAdmins are having a great March: first VMware released vSphere 6.o update 2, with a new HTML 5 host management interface. And now it's released an HTML 5 interface for vCenter.…

Team will conduct OCO, CNE and ISR to stop SNAFUs on MCEN and ODIN The United States Marine Corps has launched a hacking support unit.…

Hey kids! Now you can write your own bodgy bot! So this is what @TayAndYou was supposed to be about: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has used his keynote at the Build conference to launch an open source chatbot framework.…

Unisys' ClearPath and OS2200 are yours for the downloading and running under Windows Unisys's ClearPath colosso-servers may have finally moved from the weirdness of CMOS to the mundanity x86, but the servers and their operating systems still remain rather exotic and therefore not the kind of thing the curious often get to prod.…

The Register's free consulting desk says: if it runs on Windows XP, fire it into the sun Consider this a reminder that end-of-life software doesn't get patches: researchers have turned up more than 1,400 vulnerabilities in a widespread automatic drug dispensing system from CareFusion, because old units are still running Windows XP.…

Counter-rotating propellors to cancel noise, simulate speech or flash lights to warn of landing Amazon has filed a fascinating patent for automated aerial vehicle (AAV) technology.…

Tech giant to lose 900 staff in Germany IBM's ongoing “remix” of its staff has bitten again, with fresh layoffs announced in the US and Europe.…

APX-West finally green-lit as Telstra, Singtel sign on for consortium build by 2018 SubPartners' APX-West cable from Perth to Singapore will finally go ahead, after the company changed its business model to a consortium build.…

Firepower devices might let attackers through A URL sanitisation bug has Cisco pushing a patch for its Firepower system software.…

It's not privacy versus security; it's security versus more security Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has put out a call to arms to digital rights activists, asking them to join in a SOPA-style effort to defeat upcoming efforts to weaken encryption.…

December deal will officially go into effect The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has signed off a settlement with Oracle over its handling of Java SE updates.…

Still director and CDW shareholder, but says goodbye to daily ops Exclusive The brand swap isn't the only major change happening at the London-based Kelway – company founder and CEO Phil Doye is stepping down from daily operational duties, El Chan can reveal.…

1789 law proves a pain for Apple and Google The FBI's promise that the San Bernardino iPhone case was a one-off is looking a tad hollow after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found another 63 ongoing cases of the government using an ancient law to enforce unlocking.…

Windows 10 improves, but a cloud API steals the show BUILD 2016 Microsoft has announced an "anniversary update" to Windows 10, set for release this summer. The first release appeared in July 2015.…

Battery packs in 39 models vulnerable to combusting, warns CPSC Toshiba is recalling the battery packs in 39 notebook models over fears they could be prone to catching fire.…

Tech giant president encourages/gently chides RightsCon audience Microsoft's president and chief legal officer Brad Smith wants to let the politicians decide, when it comes to the tricky balance between privacy, security and technology.…

Communicates less than a kid in college The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has received two brief transmission bursts from its tumbling space telescope Hitomi that show the telescope isn't a total write-off.…

Retailer bans sales of dangerous connectors Amazon.com is now prohibiting sellers from offering the kind of USB-C cables that could fry your notebook.…

'An almost surreal endorsement by Microsoft on the importance of open source' BUILD2016 Microsoft is bringing the Linux Bash shell command line to Windows 10, running as a native Ubuntu binary on a Windows subsystem.…

And it's got a nasty surprise in store if you try and kill it Malware targeting embedded devices such as routers rather than computers is doing the rounds.…

Chinese hardware and geography boost for open source storage SW supplier Lenovo and Nexenta are developing combined System X X86 server/DAS/NexentaStor software offerings, joint go-to-market strategies, and Lenovo service and support.…

Elastic promises superior search for open sourcers Graph-database-style relationship mapping has been added to an offspring of the Elasticsearch open-source search engine.…

Also, biz should be scared of industrial spies, not hackers A former FBI investigator who helped expose Soviet double agent Robert Hanssen warns that enterprises should give up worrying about hackers, “who are now the good guys”, and be more worried about spies.…

Süddeutsche Zeitung comes off worst as court rules acceptable ads policy is A-OK Adblock Plus has won another legal challenge in Germany against a daily newspaper which claimed its “acceptable ads” policy broke the law.…

The short answer? No. But this is do-able People want to be able to do their job from wherever they happen to be. It's understandable – if you don't need to be in an office chained to your desk then why not work somewhere more convenient? Let's look at five ways to make this achievable.…

Five mundane missions in April alone It's a sad fact that mighty rocket launches have become so run-of-the-mill - the occasional entertaining fireworks display excepted - that the public hardly give them a second glance.…

Take your pound of flesh, help the taxman slurp his £500bn milkshake HMRC is poised to take on new suppliers next month to replace its mega £10bn Aspire IT contract with Capgemini and Fujitsu – the system underpinning £500bn of annual tax revenues.…

Brits settled invaded Down Under, screwed primitive complex and diverse societies The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has provoked a bit of a rumpus Down Under with its handy Indigenous Terminology guide, which "clarifies appropriate language use for the history, society, naming, culture and classifications of Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander people".…

Hon Hai hooks up with alternative to flattening mobe markets Chinese iPhone assembler Foxconn is to swallow Japanese monitor biz Sharp for ¥389bn (£2.5bn) – around £625m less than it had previously been willing to cough up.…

You'll never guess how much it costs In its latest move confirming the company's ascension to deity-level entrepreneurship, Google is now selling public data back to the public through its BigQuery analytics engine.…

More numbers come out from behind the kimono We can tell you a few more juicy details about Pure's coming high-end array, and we're deducing that SolidFire has a product capacity refresh coming.…

Brags about smoking weed, gets into positive feedback tweet loop Despite the internet having already proven why we can't have nice things, Microsoft's notoriously racist AI chatbot Tay seems to have appeared online again – only to have her plug pulled a second time.…

Plus Pure Storage vs EMC superheroes ... live from the storage woodshed

Nice vid of Soyuz prepped for tomorrow's ISS resupply launch The Russian space agency Roscosmos has released a nice video of the roll-out and raising of the Soyuz-2-1a launcher which is poised to lift an unmanned supply vehicle to the International Space Station.…

Flaws not fully patched in latest versions, says researcher Code dive Apple's rootless security mechanism in OS X can be evaded even in the latest version of the operating system, according to a top researcher.…

Jump into the data lake and paddle around Blighty-based utilities multinational Centrica has announced a partnership with Hortonworks to support its efforts with big data; much to Hortonworks' delight.…

So soz, says blogger who accidentally sparked Global Viral Outrage FrenzyBMW has sent Terence Eden a DVD containing GPL-licenced code used in its electric i3 model .…