The Register

Senators call for grilling of cable companies over merger A group of US Senators is asking broadband watchdog the FCC to mull over their concerns about the proposed $78bn merger between Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable.…

Backdooring OS is too hard, too dangerous, and a slippery slope, new motion claims Apple has filed a motion to effectively bin an earlier court order forcing it to help the FBI break into a San Bernardino killer's iPhone.…

Dublin warrant case is a fight for trust, says Brad Smith Microsoft today badgered the US House Judiciary Committee for changes to the law following Europe's safe harbor collapse and Redmond's data center search warrant battle.…

Jersey unsure why lines always crummy in Philadelphia Verizon is taking heat in two US states over reports its cable lines have become dangerously neglected.…

Determined efforts underway to defuse ticking timebomb In an effort to defuse increasing tensions at the European Patent Office (EPO), trade unions will for the first time be given legal status at the organization.…

Patches due to land on March 1 Developers behind the widely used OpenSSL encryption library have warned that they will issue fixes for a mix of bugs next Tuesday (1 March).…

Bigger dedupe appliances and cleverer software Dell has added new deduping appliances and updated its Rapid Recovery (AppAssure) and NetVault (Quest) backup software, showing no signs of portfolio retrenchment in the face of the oncoming EMC merger.…

Perhaps we could add the CEO's charity work to that too Three things in this life are certain: death, taxes, and SaaSy player Salesforce reporting losses. And so it has come to pass that another quarter has gone by and CEO Marc Benioff’s biz is still finding ways to burn cash.…

CEO (Winston Churchill's grandson) says plan has 'survived first enemy contact' Outsourcer Serco has stemmed the flow of its haemorrhaging profits, posting a loss of £69.4m in 2015, down from £991m last year.…

Forrest Knight made fake reports to justify himself A copper from Sussex has been kicked off the force after using his police privileges to snoop on his estranged, and subsequently divorced, wife.…

Rugged mobe wows industry's great and good. Rule Britannia! MWC16 When’s the last time a British company won Best Product at Mobile World Congress? In fact it was yesterday - but few people realise how British this product actually is.…

Web idealist tips micropayments at ad-shifters An open-source browser capable of blocking annoying mobile ads is available for download from the Apple and Google stores.…

'You may be looking at the last UN whistleblowers ever to come forward' lawmakers told The US House Foreign Affairs joint sub-committee in Washington heard evidence of continued bizarre and allegedly illegal behaviour by Francis Gurry, the boss of the UN's patent body.…

Study finds it's not just CDNs to blame for anti-privacy drive Computer scientists have documented how a large and growing number of websites discriminate against people who browse them using Tor.…

Giving shiny-happy UK 'digital' sector survey the digit Opinion It was ironic that this month’s crowing Tech Nation report, which wrongly claimed the UK digital sector “was growing 32 per cent faster than the rest of the economy,” almost coincided with the total collapse of one of the sector’s biggest – and loudest – stars, Powa Technologies.…

Airline techies 'at risk' of redundo to protest over plan to contract Tata Consultancy Techies working at British Airways are staging a protest at the airline's corporate HQ over plans to outsource and offshore work to Tata Consultancy Services.…

Dev and ops top M&A/IPO prediction charts Enjoy those scrappy IOT and DevOps startups while you can, as many will not be able to resist the siren call of cash rich traditional vendors or the stock market this year, 451 Research has predicted.…

A cool one point three BEELLION smackers IBM has revealed it shelled out $1.309bn for Cleversafe and its object storage software in October last year.…

Two shot and three cuffed in flatulent fracas An exchange of air biscuits between two men prompted a shoot-out between rival Spanish Roma clans in the city of Torrent, Valencia, on Sunday night, which left three cuffed and four injured, two of them with bullet wounds.…

Use VMware's tech to virtualise networking gear MWC16 EMC wants traditional and new communications service providers to use a single network function virtualisation scheme to introduce new services layered on the existing telecoms infrastructure.…

Only kidding. But it is a world domination plan, y'know As we know, Hell froze over a while ago: Red Hat and Microsoft are now friends. The latest chapter saw Red Hat point its newly acquired Ansible IT automation technologies towards networks, clouds and Windows environments, because who wouldn’t want a slice of the Azure pie now that Microsoft loves Linux?…

Adding DRAM persistence enables safe cache writes Applications will run faster when SuperMicro servers are fitted with Netlist NV4 non-volatile DIMMs, the firm says.…

Court must maintain brand owners' rights - expert The Court of Appeal in London must maintain the right of brand owners to obtain website blocking orders against internet service providers as a means of enforcing their trade mark rights against infringers, an expert has said.…

Go on. Have a guess what the law professors will say Berec, the EU’s uber telecom regulator, is asking academics sympathetic to pre-emptive regulatory intervention for their expert advice on how member states should write their net neutrality rules.…

Developer hunts down critics, flings sueball Comment Enigma Software is suing Bleeping Computer for false advertising, defamation, and related claims because of what the latter characterises as a bad review posted about its software, SpyHunter.…

Just for education? Yeah, right Scientists at the University of Sussex, UK, have developed computer software that monitors the movements of the user to tell if they are bored with what's on the screen.…

Tells BT to open up network to rivals Communications regulator Ofcom has shied away from recommending spinning off BT's Openreach, instead saying BT must open up its network to competitors and reform Openreach.…

PC and printer biz CEO blames Microsoft's operating system for dismal first quarter HP Ink – the PC and printers half of the Hewlett-Packard split – has blamed Windows 10 for a ho-hum quarter of declining sales.…

A dozen facilities fall as humble dropped USB sticks lead to network ruin. Security researchers have exploited notoriously porous hospital networks to gain access to, and tamper with, critical medical equipment in attacks they say could put lives in danger.…

What are the ten largest cities with female mayors? For the first time, machines can answer Aliens have invaded! They threaten to destroy the Earth, unless we can answer a simple question: What are the ten largest cities on the planet with female mayors?…

Remember the Nokia devices acquisition? That went well. Not Analysis Microsoft is acquiring Xamarin, a move which goes to the heart of the company's new mobile strategy.…

You're kidding, Nissan. Please tell us you're kidding. Oh … What started as a live demonstration with a student during a training conference has turned to scarlet-faced embarrassment for Nissan: its Leaf 'leccy shopping carts cars come with an unsecured app for checking the charge state and operating the air-con.…

Researcher who found the flaws will reveal crim-friendly details in three weeks Palo Alto Networks has revealed four new nasties, one of which can allow remote code execution and DDOS attacks on its boxen, and given users until March 16th to patch them.…

Conservatives join forces in hoisting crypto-hating flag Australia's major political parties have slapped down a motion by the Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam to acknowledge the need for strong encryption.…

ARM servers advanced as just the thing for dense NFV bit barns MWC16 Among the new phones, chargers, VR headsets and big-booth-photo-shoots* that dominated the Mobile World Congress media agenda this week, there's also been a slew of network function virtualisation (NFV) announcements.…

BMC blames automation for new round of 'bet you've got rogue servers somewhere' anxiety BMC's betting that despite decades of lecturing about the importance of accurate inventories of your servers and networks, you haven't learned the lesson and are still losing tin and VMs in your bit barns.…

Some in the IEEE reckon it'd be a good idea, before your toaster burns more than bread The Internet toaster that's browning your crumpets, talking to its home servers, and participating in a ransomware-distributing botnet should get the kind of cyber-safety testing that it gets for physical safety.…

Andreessen Horowitz lures mightily influential network virtualisation figure Martin Casado is leaving VMware to join venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.…

Let's hope the ADF gets the best security pros, 'cause there won't be many of them The Australian government has revealed its Defence White Paper and it seems most of the AU$25 billion discussed in the context of all-the-cybers is going to be spent on drones.…

Abandoned Penguinista builds can't link up with newer clients, according to gripes Linux users are piling on Microsoft after the long-neglected Skype client on the open-source OS suddenly lost the ability to join calls from other versions of the software.…

Donald Trump's America is already with us Comment Long before its customer service rep Talia Jane wrote a blog post about how her monthly wage wasn't enough to live on, Yelp has enjoyed a reputation for unethical behavior.…

Embrace, extend, eat Microsoft has bought its long-time partner Xamarin for an undisclosed sum.…

* Probably not you, though Google has announced that its Fiber gigabit internet service will finally be arriving in San Francisco.…

Boston Dynamics reveals your next machine overlord Vid The next generation of humanoid robots has been unveiled by bot-building Google-stablemate Boston Dynamics. The 'droid boffins have been showing off their latest creation's moves – and its ability to recover from puny human attacks.…

State's top lawyer brands allegations 'outrageous' Oracle claims Oregon's attorney general leaked confidential court-protected company documents amid a bitter battle over a disastrous healthcare insurance portal.…

Still no room for long-fabled 'budget handset' in Cupertino's lineup, according to analyst Apple is likely more than six months away from announcing anything about the next line of iPhones, but that isn't stopping industry analysts from predicting how the rumored handsets could fare in the market.…

That means you, internet biz folk MWC16 The Next Generation Mobile Network (NGMN) group of mobile operators wants companies from other industries to join its club and help design 5G networks.…

President refuses to accept censure from oversight council The European Patent Office (EPO) is heading toward a full meltdown, with its president reportedly refusing to accept an official censure over his recent actions.…