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Was it even a real mine, or a Ponzi scheme, ponder former users Hackers appear to have stolen the entire user database of cloud-based Bitcoin mining outfit Cloudminr.io and are offering to sell 79,267 accounts including passwords for a single Bitcoin.…

A WAN with a plan can make SaaS look like it's on-prem, suggests Equinix Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has been spruiked as all about you, an internet connection, and software running in a super-secure bit barn somewhere.…

Still too small to be a planet, even though Eris was measured in error As astro-boffins prepare themselves for the arrival of data from New Horizons' nearest approach in its Pluto fly-by, the little probe has already revised opinion about how big/small the planet/dwarf planet really is.…

Better plan on downloading it ... or just skip it The big picture of how Microsoft plans to debut Windows 10 for its customers remains murky, but more details are starting to emerge, courtesy of the software giant's hardware partners.…

Flash is bad, but not so bad devs will bother with HTML5, so send in the killbits Newly-minted Facebook security chief Alex Stamos has called for Adobe Flash to be taken out behind the shed by a shotgun-wielding world.…

Lots of important tools get no developer love, which makes Linux a bit more risky The Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative has completed its first-pass survey of the Linux toolset, and is highlighting which tools are most at risk.…

Not a prince among ‘em The US Department of Justice has successfully extradited six Nigerians from South Africa to face charges of running a series of scams against gullible Americans over the past 14 years.…

Shocker: Games company not so big on piracy Nintendo has demanded GitHub take down a JavaScript-powered Game Boy Advance emulator. An outrage against perfectly legal software? No. The emulator was apparently bundled with more than three dozen copies of copyright-protected game titles.…

Plus $1,000 in installation and activation fees, plus TV costs Google's stated aim of bringing some competition into the US broadband market has led to an interesting offer from Comcast – it'll double the Chocolate Factory's connection speed for more than four times the monthly cost.…

Meanwhile countries sue for the right to snoop Hacked snoopware maker Hacking Team says it will continue its operations as soon as possible – and claims the huge source-code leak it suffered didn’t get all of the company's crown jewels.…

Fibre passes more than a million homes, just before it's killed off Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has jumped the gun on nbn's annual report, trumpeting that the company has exceeded its June 2015 performance targets.…

'Clear exemptions' sought for researchers caught in crypto export net One hundred and eighty-four angry cryptologists have signed a letter appealing for Australia's Department of Defence to grant researchers and teachers specific exemption to the country's amended laws that crack-down on crypto and exploit trading.…

Guidance to carriers says crypto's a must, but storage and physical security details scanty Service providers caught up in Australia's data retention scheme will have to encrypt customer information, but that's about as much guidance as the Attorney-General's Department offers.…

Pretty much all the paydirt goes to Cupertino these days, says analyst Apple single-handedly accounted for nine-tenths of smartphone profits in the first months of 2015, beancounters claim.…

iGiant expands control-freak tendencies into smarthomes, forcing hardware redesigns Wondering where all the Apple HomeKit products are? Well, here's an explanation: Apple is forcing internet-of-things companies to fit Apple-certified chips and firmware in their gadgets if they are to work with the HomeKit platform.…

Rules they didn't actually own their shares after all Dell has successfully whittled away at a lawsuit brought against it by major shareholders who think Michael Dell's 2013 buyout of the firm came with too small a price tag.…

Pokemon co-programmer dies of cancer, aged 55 Obit Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata died late last week after a battle with cancer.…

September 1 ship date is off, no new date in sight Microsoft has run into a few hurdles in its manufacturing process for its Surface Hub wall-mounted touchscreen and as a result, it now says it won't be able to ship them when it initially thought it could.…

Because the fun won’t start until the evening On Tuesday morning at 0449 PDT (1149 UTC), the New Horizons space probe will make mankind’s first visit to Pluto, and there will be much rejoicing; but we won’t actually know if the mission is a success until much later in the day.…

Firm remains silent on future of 1.2 million Chinese employees Apple manufacturer Foxconn reckons it will create one million jobs in India by 2020 – nearly the entire number of its current Chinese workforce – according to reports.…

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.…