The Register

Hang on vendors, it is going to get bumpy until we hit the new bottom Very few if any ever thought Windows 10 would truly reinvigorate the PC industry, and they were right - IDC has pulled down forecasts on traditional device sales for 2016.…

Except it's all, er, not quite ready yet. Come back later The government has awarded 1,261 suppliers a place on its 'Digital Outcomes and Specialists' framework – intended to help mandarins better use SMEs in their efforts to become more digital.…

Biometrics Commissioner is not impressed Police employees have been hacking the Police National Computer to unlawfully retain suspects' biometric data, it has emerged.…

If the money won't come to you, go to where the money is Storagebod I imagine there was a sharp intake of breath as Microsoft announced SQL Server for Linux, quickly followed by a checking of dates.…

Next stop: the Red Planet The European Space Agency's (ESA) ExoMars mission roared aloft from Baikonur Cosmodrome this morning atop a Proton-M rocket.…

All that and world peace, too. It's easy ... right? Software applications and their development, management, orchestration, administration, maintenance and general wellbeing have moved to the web. Okay don’t write in just yet, those are just the opening credits.…

Machine, rebuild thyself This Damn War My first proper job was at the university at which I'd been studying; when I graduated in Computing Science there were a couple of tech support jobs going and I managed to bag one of them. I started as the Unix guy (these were the days when SunOS was still SunOS – the Solaris name was yet to come) but later on I gravitated into Mac support.…

Theresa stahp, what r u doing Theresa? IPB Only 12 per cent of the British public believe the Home Secretary has “adequately explained the impact of the Investigatory Powers Bill to the UK public and presented a balanced argument for its introduction”.…

This couldn't happen to your kid who did the Hour of Code, promises CEO Code.org, the not-for-profit attempting to teach the world to code in perfect harmony, has 'fessed up to a flaw on its site that exposed volunteers' email addresses.…

A talking Wikipedia? Yes please, say the visually-impaired Wikipedia wants users' help to get its articles read out to visually-impaired users.…

Chancellor plans for world domination of robo-car caper if trials avoid bingles The United Kingdom's annual budget is delivered this week and chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne has let it be known that it will include extensive trials of driverless cars.…

Not everyone has Spotify, or the download allowance to use it Here's an oddity: LG has launched a smartphone with a built-in DAB+ broadcast digital radio.…

Why else would Redmond use security updates for 'more approachable' nagging? When Microsoft let slip that it had snuck some new Windows 10 upgrade nagware into a security patch, we asked Redmond to explain just what the offending patch was about.…

San Miguel left with bitter taste in mouth after collapse of talks with Australian telco An attempt by Filipino giant San Miguel Corporation to create a mobile phone business has gone flat.…

In 2014, Redmond reckoned Bitcoin was the future. It once also said that about Zune Back in November 2014 Microsoft announced that it had struck a deal with an outfit called Bitpay that would let it accept Bitcoin in the Windows Store.…

And they're still cheaper than looking for attacks manually Nullcon Automated vulnerability scanners turn up mostly false positives, but even the wild goose chase that results can be cheaper for businesses than manual processes, according to NCC Group security engineer Clint Gibler.…

Bipartisan startup love is no way to foster anything, never mind innovation Comment Neither of Australia's parties of government has a useful policy or plan for the technology portfolios beyond an attachment to buzzwords and a wish to emulate Silicon Valley.…

Bet you didn't see that last one coming as part of ongoing 'Product Prioritization' Yahoo! has announced it will kill more products.…

You should control you computer … except when we feel political says AdBlock CEO AdBlock has replaced blocked ads with ads it wants you to see.…

CSO of payroll outfit ADP says until suits understand tech, we're all doomed Nullcon The chief security officer of payroll giant ADP says his executive peers will need to become technical if they want to have a future in the industry.…

Reveals plan to build real-time cloudy analytics – just like Nimble's had for ages If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then VMware has just told the world that Nimble Storage is a really great company.…

Proof-of-concept gets shiny sharp new teeth. Nullcon Hacker Craig Smith has designed an attack whereby a car bearing malicious code could infect computers used in mechanics' workshops. The workshop computers emerge capable of infecting nearly any other vehicle that arrives for service.…

Fuzzing and Driller all killer, no filler Nullcon A team of researchers are battling to trouser the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's US$2m prize to build a system that aims to best human offensive and defensive security personnel at exploitation discovery and patching.…

Broadband users limp along Cable ship the Ile de Re has made its first cut to the Basslink electrical cable, and residents of the Australian state of Tasmanians have been plunged back to the era when only one telco (Australia's dominant player Telstra) provided Internet backhaul to the mainland.…

Brit hit with 'fraud scam' writ A UK bloke living in America has been indicted by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for allegedly running a multi-million-dollar online fraud operation.…

Project Improv makes hacking IoT gear a patriotic duty The US Military Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is asking the American public to put on its collective black hat and find new ways to turn everyday technology into weapons of online destruction.…

Back doors, skeleton keys, just make it happen, nerds SXSW Amid the row between Apple and the FBI over the unlocking of a mass murderer's iPhone, President Barack Obama has told the tech world to suck it up and do what the Feds want.…

Everyone's waiting for the crash Silicon Valley startups are facing a tough quarter as funders wait to see if a tech crash is on its way.…

Reusable rockets also look good to go back up SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell has confirmed that the company's much-delayed Falcon Heavy rocket will blast off from Cape Canaveral in November.…

Feds have changed the way they use info from the NSA but can't say how or why Comment The murky world of surveillance turned a little more Kafkaesque this week. The FBI has quietly changed the rules on how it uses data collected by the NSA under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.…

Regulator hopes to smother broadband providers in privacy-protecting rules FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has proposed new rules that would bring ISPs in line with general data privacy laws and give citizens the right to opt out of their personal information being shared commercially.…

Major OEM deal could be signed by end of March Analysis During the Violin Memory quarterly results earnings call on Thursday, CEO Kevin DeNuccio talked about his company's strategic review with investment banker Jefferies LLC.…

Wi-Fi boxes will be locked down to stop folks installing software on their own hardware Network gear maker TP-Link will no longer allow people to install customized firmware on its Wi-Fi routers in the US – and the FCC is to blame.…

Hackers leave 'tips when running a security company' memo Updated Staminus Communications – a US web hosting biz that specializes in protecting sites from distributed denial-of-service attacks – is recovering after hackers ransacked its servers and leaked customer credit card numbers.…

Full fat build for open-source OS could be a long time coming Microsoft's decision to bring SQL Server 2016 to Linux caused a bit of a stir this week.…

A nice and cold pint of machine learning for a warm winter's day Hewlett Packard Enterprise is now flogging more than 60 machine learning APIs and services on a new cloud-based big data platform.…

Promises to help you with your storage, er, diet too HPE, involved in frenetic storage activities, has launched three new arrays: a hybrid StoreServ, and single and multi-node StoreOnce deduplicating backup to disk systems.…

MitM vuln in software updater plugged Users ought to upgrade following the discovery of a flaw in Samsung’s software update tool that opens the door to man-in-the-middle attacks.…

$40k seed funding begets neat little workstation The Precision line of Dell’s one-time skunkworks Ubuntu developer PCs, Project Sputnik, has hit worldwide availability.…

Ex-CEO: We won the battle, so, you know ... bygones Nearly two decades after calling Linux a “cancer” Steve Ballmer has changed his stance, though he's been careful not to back down or apologise over his pronouncements of the past.…

Successful test of NASA's first Space Launch System RS-25 flight engine NASA has successfully tested the first RS-25 flight engine, destined to power the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS).…

Complexity = statistical snafus, says Professor Bean Clunky IT systems at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have contributed to inaccurate reporting of economic growth, according to an independent review of UK economic statistics.…

It's a lot, right? Loads deleted before cops investigate. Feel better? The British plod is not only holding onto the biometrics data of 7,800 subjects of counter-terrorism investigations – most of whom have never been charged with an offence – it is also losing information on some suspects before they've been assessed as a national security risk, the Biometrics Commissioner revealed today.…

Q: When can you ignore a High Court ruling? A: When you're a police employee The Home Office has been warned that its delays in addressing police use of facial recognition technology on innocent people's custody photographs risks inviting a legal challenge.…

New York Federal Reserve: Um, do you really want to send that much to these guys? Cybercrooks looted more than $80m from Bangladesh’s central bank in one of the largest known bank robberies in history.…

Sun shines in Germany, outlook unsettled in UK in 2015 Computacenter's centre of gravity shifted eastwards in 2015, as the mega reseller’s German operation fired on all cylinders while its UK box-shifting business sputtered.…

It's for your own good, don't you know Italy has tabled Europe’s first, and most ambitious, legislation to tax and regulate internet platforms in the so-called “sharing economy”.…

German company doesn't go into detail, though Exclusive SAP, Europe’s largest native software firm, boasting annual revenue of 20.8bn euros, has come out in favour of Britain remaining a member of the EU.…

Diminutive 'R-Kade Zero' hits Kickstarter A group of Brit geeks has hit Kickstarter with the R-Kade Zero - a diminutive piece of gaming kit based on the Raspberry Pi Zero.…