The Register

Printed electronics makes the perfect fake fingerprint Boffins from Michigan State University have loaded up an inkjet printer with cartridges designed for printing electronic circuits, and used the output to fool smartphone fingerprint sensors.…

Warns Java may not see 30th birthday if 'corporate drones' prevail Java evangelist Reza Rahman has left Oracle, to help save Java.…

'We apologise for the inconvenience' If you were a Synata user, you are no more: the company's been Borged by the Borg, and all accounts closed down.…

World's richest man does his fourth ask-me-anything Q&A, leaves web scratching its head One of the things about being the world's richest man and also one of the most famous is that people tend to be interested in the minutiae of your life and in just about every thought you express.…

Is this the final death knell for president Benoît Battistelli? Staff at the European Patent Office (EPO) have voted overwhelmingly to strike for a third time in a direct challenge to EPO president Benoît Battistelli.…

So update your software – now! Patch Tuesday Microsoft has published the March edition of its monthly security updates, addressing security flaws in Internet Explorer, Edge and Windows, while Adobe has issued updates for Digital Editions, Acrobat and Reader.…

It's the Big T's usual play: own the network, build services, insist integration delivers a better experience Australia's dominant carrier Telstra has sniffed the software-defined winds and decided to label some services as software-defined networking (SDN), with Cisco's help.…

Sales crushed, losses strain the floorboards, and where exactly is the exit? Well, we were expecting diminished revenues and growing losses – and storage biz Imation didn't pull off any last-minute surprises.…

That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has suspended its Identity Protection PIN tool, designed to safeguard people at risk from identity theft, because scammers are using it for identity theft.…

More Inception than legal argument at this point The US Department of Justice has appealed a decision by a New York judge to refuse the FBI access to an iPhone: one part in a wider legal battle between law enforcement and Apple.…

On the bright side, there's a twist A couple of crooks planted a GPS tracking device on a gambler's car so they could follow him home and rob him at gunpoint.…

We do Linux. We do Java. Second surprise in a week from the Windows company Microsoft is joining the Eclipse Foundation as a Solutions Member, according to an announcement today at the EclipseCon event in Reston, Virginia.…

No bling, just minimal surfaces. Apps, though... Review The Linux world is full of spin-offs, clones and branded distros. The most famous lineage is Mint, based on Ubuntu, which is in turn based on Debian. What's less common is entirely new distros, starting from zero and building their own stack.…

The path's clear for Loon, the stratospheric data slurper With Facebook’s Free Basics out of the way, Google has a free hand at capturing personal data from Indians who aren’t on the internet.…

ProLianting database and analytics apps faster with flashed DIMMs Analysis Meg Whitman dropped a pair of teasers in the latest earnings call, with a new hyperconverged appliance mentioned plus a persistent memory game-changer. What is that?…

Five per cent across the board Oracle’s database customers are set for a five per cent price hike in the UK.…

This means cops' face recog tech is mostly unregulated Police use of facial recognition technology continues unregulated and unguided as the Home Office has still failed to deliver its biometrics strategy, ahead of an official report due to be published on Friday.…

An out-stretched arm slowly disappears... Response to the critical web-crypto-blasting DROWN vulnerability in SSL/TLS by cloud services has been much slower than the frantic patching witnessed when the Heartbleed vulnerability surfaced two years ago.…

Supplier is the latest big name to get a slice of the outsourcing The Metropolitan Police has inked a £86m deal with Accenture to manage its applications, the latest contract award in the force's plan to shave £200m from its IT budget over the next three years by carving up its existing Capgemini contract.…

Mighty polyethylene orb eyes ultra-long flight record NASA is gearing up for the fourth launch of its high-altitude, heavy-lift super pressure balloon (SPB) tech, which involves hosting a 1,025kg payload aloft under a helium-filled "pumpkin-shaped, football stadium-size balloon" crafted from "22-acres of polyethylene film - similar to a sandwich bag, but stronger".…

Containers aren't persistent. Our thingy is, promises firm MapR has announced new security enhancements for its big data customers, as well as bringing in a services layer for enterprises tinkering with Docker.…

10GB/sec? Not too bad, even for an SSD Seagate is going to demonstrate a 10GB/sec PCI flash card that spews out bits like a fire hose on steroids at the coming Open Compute Project Summit.…

Database giant opens up APIs to analytics hardware accelerators Oracle will today release, in its words, "a free and open API and developer kit" for the hardware-accelerated SQL-crunching engines in its Sparc M7 processors. You can register to grab the goodies, here.…

Could it be? Yup, rumours of an M10 are doing the rounds Very few phone leaks are accidents, and a spate of teasers of HTC’s next flagship suggest a launch next month.…

It’s probably already happened, but you just haven't seen it... Technology moves quickly, not just in legitimate business, but in the cybercriminal world too. Advanced attack tools are now available on the black market, lowering the barrier to entry for the average online lowlife. They are happy to target large and small organizations alike, and they only have to be lucky once.…

ZX Spectrum retro gaming console a big Indiegogo hit Sir Clive Sinclair has tin-rattled his way to a wallet-bulging £300,000 towards production of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+, just three weeks after launching his Indiegogo fundraising campaign.…

Free webinar series from the folks at Sophos Promo Registration is open for Security SOS Week, a short series of live webinars each featuring Sophos expert IT security practitioners. The events range from protecting your business against social engineering to embracing the Internet of Things without letting crooks into your network. You can find out more and sign-up at Security SOS Week, but in the meantime here is a handy synopsis for you.…

I am a millionaire. You're a selfish consumer. He's a filthy capitalist pig Big Money has poisoned the utopia of the sharing economy, says the millionaire supermodel and “social entrepreneur” Lily Cole.…

The PC is here to stay – but it has lots of little friends now We may not be in the post-PC age, but we’re definitely in the ‘plus everything else’ era. A gaggle of new mobile devices has gathered to join the PC, and it’s making things more complex for IT administrators. Smart phones were already heavily in the enterprise, and now, tablets are gaining traction too. How can they cut through the management headache?…

Director tells MIT that all must cooperate in response to crims' use of ciphers Robert Hannigan, director of GCHQ, told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that there was an ethical problem presented by encryption and it was necessary for industry's technical experts to help them work out a solution on its use by criminals.…

Los educadores honran a la legendaria misión del Playmonauta Nos complace informar a nuestros lectores de que nuestra ya legendaria misión PARIS (Paper Aircraft Released Into Space) ha aparecido en un libro de texto en español, en el que de forma amena se cuenta a los niños la extravagante aventura estratosférica de nuestro Playmonauta.…

Article 76 & Recital 112 of the GDPR should keep data controllers 'honest' Those concerned with data protection and privacy have their work cut out in the UK.…

'Left wing groups' blamed A final vote by the European Parliament on a proposed directive allowing the transfer of passenger name records (PNR) from airlines to EU countries has been delayed by "left wing groups", Reuters has reported.…

New delivery address: my place Security researcher Jose Carlos Norte says trucks, buses, and vans using Telematics Gateway Unit are exposed on security-search engine Shodan allowing hackers to alter routes and probe speed and location.…

Architect for failure, sure, but know that it will never be easy QCon London At the QCon Developer conference underway in London, William Hill's R&D Engineering Lead Gavin Stevenson told attendees that they should celebrate IT failures.…

Big Red's veteran support staff aren't happy about changes they're being asked to wear Oracle's remaining experienced support staff have been asked to assist the company's more recent support hires, sources familiar with the matter have told The Register.…

Step 1. Simply take over a victim's mobile phone number NatWest is tightening up its internet banking systems after security shortcomings were exposed by journalists.…

Password resets could be brute-forced Facebook has slung US$15,000 in the direction of Anand Prakesh for discovering a serious bug on its beta servers.…

Robber clobbered but catching carder is harder A Romanian carder arrested for using malware to plunder US$217,000 (£152,164, A$290,888) from ATMs has cut their way out of a Bucharest prison and escaped custody.…

Choose-your-own-adventure must be solved before entry to the Gates of Google. Or yours Google's decided that the first-phase questionnaire it uses to vet vendors might be useful to the rest of the world.…

10Gbps is tooooo light. 40 Gbps is toooo expensive. Is Mellanox just right? Enterprises are starting to roll 25 Gbps Ethernet into their data centres, and Mellanox is using this week's Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit in San Jose to plant its flag in the emerging market.…

Sino-US trade tensions rising again The US government is accusing Chinese vendor ZTE of using a complex scheme of subsidiaries to get around Iranian sanctions, and has therefore slapped export controls on the company.…

Former Australian treasurer's back-of-envelope math says world's missed BEELLIONS Former Australian federal treasurer from the 1990s Peter Costello reckons the world passed up on a huge revenue source when it decided not to tax the Internet.…

Lockheed-Martin promises patched code will soar this month The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has run into yet another software bug, according to a report in IHS Jane's Defense Weekly.…

Cable fault lies 98 km from Tassie coast, company says Basslink has announced that it has nailed down the location of its cable break and is about to start repairs. The company says the break is about 98 km from the Tasmanian coast.…

Always check the headers Storage drive biz Seagate is lousy at keeping its own data safe: it accidentally handed over the crown jewels of its employees' private information to persons unknown.…

If you pay this company $1 a day you can read what we said Comment When does determination become stupidity? We're about to find out with the launch of slander-as-a-service app Peeple.…

Good news if you've got a Nexus, otherwise you're at risk Another month, another patching cycle for Android. Google's mobile OS has picked up seven critical patches, ten classed as high priority, and a pair of moderately important fixes.…

Embrace, extend ... DROP? Microsoft has ported its SQL Server software to Linux and has promised to release it in full by next year.…