The Register

And those old programs don't have a great track record When Vulture South read the Australian government's new National Innovation and Science Agenda, especially ”Embracing The Digital Age section on school education's contribution to innovation, we were struck by how some of its tactics seemed familiar.…

Another telco signs on for net neutrality end-run Verizon is reportedly looking to roll out a controversial data plan some believe violates net neutrality principles.…

FBI chief and deputy CTO bring issue back to the table Just a few weeks after the US government effectively conceded defeat in its efforts to force tech companies to introduce backdoors into their software, the issue is being pulled back onto the table.…

Deep learning mindgrab war hots up Four years after Facebook open sourced its data center hardware with the Open Compute Project, the company has done it again with a server built for deep learning neural networks.…

Branding nightmare if UK actually withdraws from EU HP Enterprise Hewlett Packard Enterprise has cut the ribbons on its EU-wide tech-as-a-service market stall Cloud28 - let’s hope the UK doesn’t vote to pull itself out of the union, necessitating a name change.…

Server-side JavaScript giant pitches in Its business future might be uncertain, but Yahoo! has committed (technologically at least) to a project pushing server-side JavaScript.…

Grant Caley to play Babelfish between users, sales teams The chief-techie-shaped hole at the top of NetApp’s UK ops is no more: the hard-pressed storage giant has plucked veteran engineer Grant Caley and pinned the Principal Technology Officer’s badge to his lapel.…

Open Container Initiative gets formalised An open-source project for vendor-neutral containers has come to life.…

We’re ‘proactively taking security measures’ - WP Engine WordPress hosting outfit WP Engine has confessed to a security breach, prompting it to reset 30,000 customers' passwords.…

Bogus propaganda websites punt malware to likely marks Security researchers have uncovered a seven year-long malware campaign against Latin America.…

Operator's Dutch wing wants €115m from a perplexed KPN Vodafone has initiated legal proceedings against Netherlands-based telco KPN, with the claim that the latter's business practices have affected competition and consumer choice in the country.…

Future channel for firm's SSDs and HDDs Seagate is pushing out OEM products from its eyrie atop Dot Hill.…

Platform plays aren't taken lightly SAP’s all-or-nothing HANA is experiencing a Hadoop moment in the enterprise, with adoption of the business giant’s in-memory database layer being held back because customers either can't afford it or can't establish a business case for it.…

A Starr idea: Faster access to files Comment The idea of a hybrid flash tape cartridge was floated by SpectraLogic CTO Matt Starr in a conversation yesterday.…

Narrowcasting and the battle of the robots Comment Rejoice! The BBC boffins can customise their broadcasts to suit your prejudices.…

Not really a good idea Pirate music wannabe Aurous has shut down, barely three months after first surfacing. Billed in Vice as “BitTorrent Music for your Dad”, and described as a “Popcorn Time for music”, the outfit, whose sole proprietor was Andrew Sampson, has agreed to pay damages of $3m.…

GDS had all the power, none of the responsibility, says PAC Senior UK government officials were hauled in front of MPs yesterday to defend their deeply "dysfunctional" and "childish" behaviour, which contributed to the botched £215m Common Agricultural Policy IT system, and up to £180m in EU fines.…

You get what you pay for Analysis I usually tend to look at technology from a technical point of view, but when in the field talking to end users it often turns out they bought it for the same reason it was pitched ... only to realise later that actually they like it for totally different reasons.…

Azure management move One-time server foes Microsoft and Red Hat have come a step closer on the emerging platform of cloud.…

Number of new problems rising, says Symantec The number of iOS threats discovered this year has more than doubled, from three in 2014 to seven so far in 2015, according to Symantec, with jailbroken devices being the focus of the majority of threats.…

Festive puzzler promises cryptographic and charity payload The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's signals intelligence organisation, has revealed its Christmas card.…

Ransomware targets old Flash versions, says Trend Micro The Independent has become the latest big-name publisher to serve malware.…

Much coming and going aboard orbiting outpost Crew aboard the International Space Station are preparing for a busy run-up to Christmas, with a Cygnus space truck to unload, three new residents due to arrive next week, followed by a Russian resupply mission slated to launch to the orbiting outpost shortly after.…

Graceful migration would help the other three billion Facebook has broken ranks with the world's major browser vendors, asking that the ancient SHA-1 has algorithm go out with a whimper rather than a bang.…

Dawn's happy snaps also hint at underground water ice When the Dawn mission's first photographs arrived from Ceres, everyone from scientist to conspiracist got excited about the bright spots. Now, scientists say the spots are a kind of salt that hint at subsurface water ice on the object.…

MAC/PHY specs released, plugfest in the pipeline A year after its launch, the NBase-T 2.5 / 5 Gbps Ethernet alliance's 802.3bz IEEE specification is drawing closer to reality.…

Huge number of vulnerable products November's high-profile Java deserialisation bug has bitten Cisco, with the company announcing vulnerabilities across the board in its huge product line.…

Craig Wright, the model of the Aussie 'entrepreneur' It's more than a little odd seeing the world hail their libertarian hero, mourn that he was "arrested for inventing Bitcoin” (as is being claimed on Twitter), and find that he ate government money like a horse.…

Half-baked code a feast for attackers because Thing-builders are hopeless Kiwicon American hardware hackers have ruined Christmas cooks ups across Australia, revealing gaping and pwnable vulnerabilities in Internet-connected barbecues.…

Researchers watch the watchmen Some of the biggest names in the security software business have been compromised by a serious flaw that could allow a hacker to use the commercial security code to infiltrate computers.…

Resort chain promises to lock down customer info Hotel chain Wyndham Resorts has agreed to settle its long-running case with the FTC over its handling of customer data.…

Shoddy authentication checks let stolen, expired credit cards be loaded on payment gadgets Kiwicon Criminals can empty stolen credit cards with new-found stealth using payment gadget Coin, thanks to the device's weak and pwnable authentication checks.…

Don't be jealous, Siri. It's just an App Not content to have Cortana controlling Windows Mobile, Microsoft has released a toned-down version of its personal assistant tool for iOS and Android handsets.…

Belated visitor will skim 400km above planet's surface The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released the first photographs of Venus taken by its much-delayed Akatsuki planetary probe.…

OS X, iOS, Safari, pretty much everything anyone still buys has been patched Apple has joined the likes of Microsoft and Adobe in releasing patches for dozens of security holes in its products.…

It's like cars on the road. No, it's like guests in your house The head of the China's Cyberspace Administration has again been playing down censorship concerns ahead of a global internet governance meeting in the country.…

Subscriber-only album releases incoming, says report Spotify has reportedly been considering a major policy change to its music-streaming service, by allowing big name artists to release albums on the platform only to paying customers.…

Blow-dried rabble-rouser even less popular than Phil Collins Updated Enraged British citizens in their thousands are rushing to sign an e-petition demanding US presidential wannabe and blow-dried rabble-rouser Donald Trump be barred from darkening the UK's doors.…

No admission of malfeasance either way Sophos has settled a patent infringement lawsuit with US competitor Fortinet, in a case that also involved allegations of staff poaching.…

Thou shalt report thy breaches – but to who, exactly? After five hours of negotiations on 7 December, members of the European Parliament and Council finally settled on the wording of the EU's Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive.…

Purple Palace plans to chuck other assets out the door instead In Brief Yahoo! has backed away from plans to cut loose its remaining multi-billion-dollar stake in Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.…

But no QoS mandate for ISPs. What was the point again? Content producers will be ordered to allow Eurocrats to watch football when they’re staying in Brussels, Eurocrats announced today. It falls short of the hints that the EU Commission would introduce a new pan-European copyright code – which got some slacktivists so excited a year ago.…

At least someone's putting their money where their mouth is IBM has won funding from the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) programme to develop its quantum computer research, despite ongoing concerns about the technology's practical application.…

Or at least try and persuade it to disrupt your tech, a bit

SaaSy playa hikes IPO price by double digits Investor hunger to grab a slice of Atlassian has led the Aussie-turned-Brit-based software-as-a-service developer to upgrade its IPO price range by double digits, valuing the business at $4.1bn.…

Just add it to the aquisition pile, on top of Gravitant IBM has slurped up video services company Clearleap for an undisclosed pile of cash, part of Big Blue's ongoing moves to reinvent itself as a cloudy player.…

Lose the beard – no more Artisanal ops, please Puppet Labs has strung its platform that little bit closer to Microsoft and climbed up the infrastructure stack as it pushes out the latest version of its Enterprise platform…

Do they like coding? Or play with computers a lot? The National Crime Agency (NCA) yesterday launched a campaign targeting "the UK's youngest cybercriminals", which – despite what was a genuine attempt to connect with both technically inclined youngsters and their Luddite parents – prompted ridicule and disbelief.…