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Yet more revelations emerge from email trove Security researchers are linking malware sent to anti-communist activists in Vietnam to controversial commercial spyware firm Hacking Team.…

Just $2.9bn expected for its fourth fiscal 2015 quarter Just like QLogic, Seagate sales figures have taken a dive along with the PC sales downturn, and it's had to issue preliminary results to warn the market.…

But, erm, nobody uses it anyway, so… Universal Credit staff will strike for two days next week over "increasingly oppressive" working conditions and unusable IT, the Public and Commercial Services trade union has confirmed, following a vote late week.…

Roboboffins punt ExoMars Rover-based droid into ARGOS challenge The European Space Agency has announced that a robot, building upon its ExoMars Rover, is bidding to win a place on oil and gas production rigs around the world, to work in remote and hazardous environments.…

Hortonworks and Haswell also get in on the act Teradata has updated its Hadoop appliance with support for Cloudera Hadoop as well as Hortonworks' distribution, and given it a Haswell go-faster booster – and all this on top of a widening of the configuration options.…

We drew focus from Slipknot. Our mistake Concerns regarding the secret use of facial recognition technology at the recent Download Festival were absolutely spot on, said surveillance camera commissioner Tony Porter, speaking at the Security Twenty 15 conference last week.…

Top astroboffins brief El Reg on space, storage and thin interstellar pipe Part I NASA's Pluto-passing podule, New Horizons, is now within a million miles of its freezeworld target.…

One-time Tory party chairman asks charity to hand over documents Exclusive Former Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps, who lost his Cabinet seat after allegations sourced from Wikimedia UK were widely publicised during the 2015 General Election campaign, has filed a request under the Data Protection Act to find out what the organisation knows and wrote about him.…

That's just wizard. Chinese giant heads for the Emerald Isle Chinese kit maker Huawei has snapped up the software-defined networking division of Irish software outfit Amartus.…

So it IS global warming melting it – just not the way they mean Geothermal heating - from within the Earth, not the air or sea - beneath the much-studied West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been measured for the first time, and been found to be "surprisingly high".…

Supermicro scores again, bringing massive compute power to bear Numascale's non-universal memory architecture has been used to build a 324-CPU system with 108 Supermicro servers sharing a single system image and 20.7TB of memory – scoring a winning McCalpin STREAM benchmark.…

Firm sends us impenetrable managementese, we decipher it Is WD killing off its Arkeia backup product?…

Point-and-click API wizard for mobile backend services Amazon announced new developer tools and services at its AWS Summit in New York yesterday.…

Four minute load time? That's half a GP's appointment slot! After finally staggering to its feet the woes surrounding the NHS's £131m gaffe-tastic e-Referrals system have continued, sources have told the Register, with more outages and a growing list of unresolved problems appearing in the past week.…

UK govt 'committed to making directors account for their actions' The director of now-dissolved mobile phone dealer Fima Consulting has been disqualified from managing a limited company for 13 years over his part in a £1m VAT scam, according to a UK government press release.…

'Irrelevant to Google's compensation philosophy' Fancy the idea of working for Google? If so, you also need to drop the idea of negotiating your salary package: that's according to former principal recruiter for Google Engineering, Bob See.…

New 'double dynamo' theory added to solar/carbon debate Astronomers working in the years 1645 to 1715 observed rather fewer sunspots than they were accustomed to seeing. Once they'd finished saying their prayers, and arguing over whether to say them in Latin or their national tongue, they could then scratch their results onto vellum before picking off some medicinal leeches they used to ward off any nasty colds brought on by the years of unusually cold temperatures that accompanied the sunspot slump.…

I'll have a 12-incher with the lot, hold the p0wnage

Chanteuse apologises after tonguing rings in shop Police are investigating pop chanteuse Ariana Grande for attempted doughnut/donut-licking in a US store.…

No Flash, no Java makes web a dull, but safer, place Trend Micro has issued predictable-but-sensible advice that Java should be switched off, because there's a zero-day being exploited in the wild.…

You're a long way from home Vid A bunch of volcanologists working near the Solomon Islands has turned up a find that left them “freaking out”: a seldom-seen variety of Pacific sleeper shark just about living in a volcano.…

If at first you don't succeed, keep it (your credit card) in your pants Microsoft looks like it's made its “second shot” free certification exam offer just about permanent.…

Hopes for release from solitary Carl Mark Force, the Drug Enforcement Agency officer who in June took a plea bargain for misconduct during the Silk Road investigation, will lose a bunch of currency, both real and virtual.…

Bile duct cancer claims popular exec who presided over Wii and Game Boy Advance II hits Popular Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has died aged 55.…

If it threatens security, China reserves the right to switch off networks China is able to shut off internet access during major 'social security incidents' and has granted its Cyberspace Administration agency wider decision making powers under a draft law published this month.…

New Horizons probe finds grander canyon than ours and 60km dent The New Horizons mission has turned its attention to Charon, one of Pluto's five known moons, and found it's copped some colossal cosmic collisions and may also possess a rich inner life.…

Defence mobile, spookery, cyber-sec on the auction block Airbus is reportedly considering selling its public safety radio business, with Alcatel-Lucent and Thales apparently interested in writing a cheque to obtain the operation.…

iOS 9 and El Capitan will try to drive traffic to v6 hosts With the latest public betas of iOS 9 and the already-patched “El Capitan” OS X 10.11, Apple is leaning further towards IPv6.…

Huge attack pre-planned by foreign gov, claims Vincenzetti The boss of Italian spyware vendor Hacking Team has spoken for the first time about the mass hack on the beleaguered company's data – which has exposed severe software security holes and gifted terrorists with zero-day exploits.…

Earth gets final glimpse of dwarf's far side FOR DECADES Astroboffins remain baffled by Pluto's four dark spots captured in images buzzed back to Earth from NASA's New Horizons probe as it dashes towards its dwarf planet target.…

Hawaiian-Japanese canned pork fusion cuisine? You must be joking Those of you of delicate culinary sensibilities would do well to look away now as we present for your wobbly dining pleasure the highly improbable Hawaiian-Japanese canned pork fusion cuisine that is Spam musubi.…

Turn-based strategy for the mapless in motion Review Cycling an unknown route can be tricky. Either you have to keep stopping to check the map app in your pocket or, if you have your smartphone strapped to your handlebars, you have to take your eyes off the road in order to peer the screen. You also have to decide whether to leave it on for the whole journey, running the battery down, or stop and turn it on when you reach a junction.…

Plus: 'Ta for the help, Wendy. Here's a gnarled-up old dino in your name' QuoTW This was the week of Linux desktops, 3D-printed combustive robot bums and massive data leaks. Again.…

25 days of refugee sex and guns in odd places On-Call Jim Thompson got in touch with The Register about the mother of all On-Call stories, recalling the time he received a message asking him to come back to New Orleans because a storm called “Hurricane Katrina” was on its way and looked bad.…

A look in the ledgers of Trotter & Worstall Independent Traders Worstall @ the Weekend So I was a little surprised to be told by The Guardian that corporate welfare in the UK is, by a conservative estimation (obviously not a Conservative one, for it would be doing the victory dance if this were true) some £93bn a year.…

Adobe vows to patch serious PC hijack bugs Updated Two more serious security holes in Adobe Flash that let miscreants hijack vulnerable computers have emerged from the leaked Hacking Team files – and crooks are apparently already exploiting at least one of them to infect machines.…

Bloodied, battered Redmond dropkicks MSN lifestyle mobe guff, too Seeing as Microsoft's axe has been sharpened in recent days, the company has now decided to swing it at some unpopular apps including its cloudy, pic-stitching Photosynth product.…

E-minus three days until New Horizons' closest flyby of remote ice-world Excited astroboffins over at NASA have published yet another image of remote dwarf planet Pluto – this time with a bit of geology thrown in.…

Toronto2015.org lawyers appear confused by this internet thingy The organisers of the Pan American Games in Toronto, which start this week, require that people seek formal permission to link to its website at toronto2015.org.…

'Hot, hot, titchy electronic gizmos? We got this' A graphene-based film could help to cool down overheating microelectronic devices, scientists have claimed in a new study.…

Yet another feature for ad biz Twitter has updated its snappy video-sharing app Vine with an HD-quality option for Apple iOS users.…

Perfect iPad add-on for the holiday season, or what? Product Round-Up Steve Jobs famously said of tablets: ‘If you see a stylus, they blew it.’ Any digital artist handed an iPad, however, will start looking for the stylus, as will anyone who wants to scribble quick diagrams. And thus an after-market was born. Indeed, more so for iOS than Android, if the choices beyond the cheapest offerings are anything to go by.…

Crossover jack of all trades Vulture at the Wheel A sporty SUV seems like an oxymoron, but from the moment you get into the Juke it feels like a great combination of two themes. Here is a practical car which punches above its weight in desirability.…

Oh no you did-unt The University of Oxford has gone all medieval over some dot-com domain names, insisting that it be handed control of oxfordcollegeirl.com and oxfordcollegesc.com due to rights dating back to 1214 A.D.…

No, his post 1920s work, you fool Something for the Weekend, Sir? A minicab driver is cross with me. As we swing around the tidy little streets of 60s-built suburbia, none of which look familiar, he fixes me in his rear-view mirror and snarls: “Don’t you know where you live?”…

Furious Flems case founders on facts, we're told The four founders of the Pirate Bay have been cleared of copyright infringement in a Belgian court – after it was found that they couldn’t be held responsible for the site after selling it in 2006, it is reported.…

Firefox OS mobe maker calls it a day Spanish smartphone startup Geeksphone is winding down operations and will not pursue any future mobile phone projects.…

Judge tells kid to get a life A Canadian teenager who spent a year harassing women gamers and their families has been sentenced to 16 months in a youth prison and eight months' probation after admitting 23 charges.…