The Register

When science reality is more interesting than science fiction Astronomers have discovered the universe’s most powerful winds: driven by supermassive black holes, they ripple across interstellar space bulldozing through material in galaxies, and are known as quasar tsunamis, we're told.…

You may want to check what you're actually teaching your neural networks in future Boffins in Germany have devised a technique to subvert neural network frameworks so they misidentify images without any telltale signs of tampering.…

It's not like you can snoop on anyone right now anyway, right? Proof-of-concept exploit code has emerged for last month's data-leaking KrØØk vulnerability present in a billion-plus Wi-Fi-connected devices and computers.…

Pair join Netflix to turn it down for what? Connectivity stability Amazon Prime Video and Google's YouTube have joined Netflix in dialing down their video stream quality in the European Union, Switzerland, and the UK for 30 days to preserve internet stability during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Criminal scum use pandemic as golden business opportunity British police are saying coronavirus-related fraud reports have spiked by 400 per cent over the past six weeks as the COVID-19 illness continues its inexorable march through humanity.…

Implements 'touchless deliveries' for 'leccy car-buyers Electric car maker Tesla has been forced to suspend production at two of its main production sites, as state authorities in the US impose restrictions on economic activity in a bid to stem the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Caution - Windows Insider builds may bork your PCs (just like ours) Microsoft celebrated its Teams success with a fresh build of Windows 10 that was so light on features that chief product officer Panos Panay felt the urge to tease on other upcoming toys.…

Though hopefully the rush for kit will have subsided by then The people of Great Britain will soon be able to get their hands on Huawei sub-brand Honor's latest ultrabook – the Magicbook 14.…

Scary idea, but can work if IT bods are there to hold their hands It has been the subject of hype and overblown expectations, but that is not set to dampen investment in robotic process automation – the idea that simple software “robot” can carry out annoying admin tasks. But as organisations begin to understand how best to exploit RPA, IT departments will be finding a new role.…

Eventually, 'customers will stop buying and start preserving capital' Notebooks are flying off the shelves like hot cakes, or perhaps more appropriately bog paper, as Brits barricade themselves at home to rest, work and play in an effort to avoid catching COVID-19.…

Where's the Wichita Lineman when you need him? Bork!Bork!Bork! The Reg skips lightly across the Atlantic to bring you premium Bork, fresh from the US of A in The Register's mercifully occasional series of computers behaving badly.…

Customers on-premises with perpetual licences 'don't have a good story' for remote working Working from home and want to access your PC at work? The best solution may cost thousands in additional Microsoft licensing costs.…

Already sin-binned it in 2018, will keep it around in extended support until 2021, and is way behind Chrome Firefox has decided it’s time to burn the browser’s FTP connections.…

Facebook's popular frontend framework can't escape its heritage After several months of debate, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has decided to modernize the front-end interface used by Wikipedia and other projects by adopting the Vue.js JavaScript framework, a choice that remains controversial.…

But did our hero break 'Circle rules? On Call Well, that was quite the week wasn't it? Perhaps Friday should start (rather than end) with a stiff drink. The Register's On Call feature is on hand to kick things off.…

Looks like you'll have to stream Derry Girls in lower resolution for a bit Netflix will reduce the quality of its streaming videos in Europe in response to the European Commission's request on Thursday that streaming services and telecom operators throttle their data streams to avoid overloading the internet.…

False positive rates, we've heard of them The AI community is attempting to tackle the coronavirus pandemic using all sorts of algorithms in its toolbox. As such, it's coming up with ways to predict the virus’ protein structure, crunch through thousands of science papers, and now, er, detecting coughs.…

Microsoft extends support because right now we have better things to do with our lives than upgrade Windows Microsoft will extend the support life of Windows 10 1709’s Enterprise, Education, and IoT Enterprise editions, because right now we’ve all got better things to do than upgrade Windows.…

Urges ‘extreme caution’ if you DIY and reminds you ‘Never spray any liquids directly onto or into any product’ Dell has developed guidance for cleaning its data centre products, on the off-chance you feel like giving them a once-over during these complicated times.…

But only for a progress update document, as Feds recommend 30-month stretch after reaching a deal on theft of IP that made its way to Uber Former Google exec Anthony Levandowski has agreed to plead guilty to pinching secrets about Google’s self-driving car tech and sharing them with Uber.…

As humans stay put at home, fossil fuel consumption levels decline As the world scrambles to mitigate the novel global coronavirus pandemic, there is at least one silver lining among the upheaval: air pollution has dropped.…

Switchzilla says remote networking gear has a grab-bag of holes Cisco has issued a series of security updates for its SD-WAN and Webex software, just when they're most needed.…

Bet you never thought you'd see a 5G Nokia The cancellation of Mobile World Congress might have derailed HMD Global's launch plans, but the Espoo-based licensor of the iconic Nokia marque has nonetheless unveiled three new smartphones. Arguably the most exciting is the Nokia 8.3 5G.…

Artists variously known as Pawn Storm and APT28 are still at it The Russian hacking crew known variously as APT28, Fancy Bear and Pawn Storm has been targeting defence companies with Middle Eastern outposts, according to Trend Micro.…

The budget feature phone that reminds you of Ministry of Sound sounds and football fighting Brits... maybe The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic was the bane of any mid-2000s commuter, used primarily by tracksuit-wearing hooligans to blast out head-thumping Ministry of Sound tunes to other weary bus-goers.…

Coronavirus advice to become free to view even if you're out of credit Britain's mobile networks are to offer free access to online NHS pages about the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the UK government has declared.…

How do you model for 'closed' indefinitely? As the UK's parents prepare to take kids to school for the last time tomorrow, education tech supplier RM told the London Stock Exchange it anticipates a "material impact on trading".…

UK's National Health Service given free access during the crisis Updated Keeping fingers crossed that its Slack-for-suits platform, Teams, would survive the week, Microsoft today confirmed a slew of a new toys for its corporate collaboration baby.…

ERP giant targets unified master data management and data model Nearly eight years after buying Ariba, SAP is integrating the UI, data management and analytics across its business applications and procurement software.…

Don't take their word for it. Governments need to up their security game, says security firm Updated Ransomware operators of DoppelPaymer and Maze malware stated that they will not target medical organisations during the current pandemic.…

Oh to be at the mercy of tech buyers at AWS, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Tencent, Alibaba... we could go on It was a pleasing end to 2019 for server makers, a community whose sales ledgers list from feast to famine depending on the whims of cloud builders' data centre centre expansion activities in any given quarter.…

Aimed at Facebook-eschewing free software types Purism has dropped the veil on the latest computer in its privacy-focused lineup – a small form-factor PC designed for space-conscious free software enthusiasts.…

Guillermo Rauch: 'One of the biggest performance issues that we see today is to do with advertising' Interview Guillermo Rauch, creator of the Next.js framework for building React applications, spoke to The Register about the just-released Next.js 9.3 and its hybrid approach to web application development.…

Audit finds that error could actually mean less data flows to boffins because space agency may not be able to afford downloads NASA needs 215 more petabytes of storage by the year 2025, and expects Amazon Web Services to provide the bulk of that capacity. However, the space agency didn’t realize this would cost it plenty in cloud egress charges. As in, it will have to pay as scientists download its data.…

After all, if the Supreme Court rules the right way, this could be a bonanza Oracle this week released JDK 14, its reference implementation of the Java 14 specification. Java, Big Red claims, continues to be the most preferred programming language among software developers.…

A match made in heaven or hell? Reader survey We hear a lot these days about IT automation. Yet whether it's labelled intelligent infrastructure, AIOps, self-driving IT, or even private cloud, the aim is the same.…

Still, could be worse, Bono might starting singing about COVID-19. Oh Kindly old Atlassian is making cloud-based versions of Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Core free for teams of up to ten people.…

Watch how layers of photon rings reveal things like spin and mass Vid Scientists may be able to calculate a black hole’s mass and rotation from photographs alone one day, according to research published in Science Advances.…

Government CIO promises they don’t record location, just change of location Hong Kong has made it mandatory for all new arrivals to wear an “electronic wristband” that links to a smartphone to provide location-tracking services, so that authorities can be sure they’re observing COVID-19 quarantine requirements. And the city-state insists its privacy commissioner has signed off on the idea because it “does not pose privacy concerns.”…

21 percent growth sees FY '19 revenue hit US$54bn, just a billion or so behind LG and Facebook Chinese internet titan Tencent has revealed its Q4 2019 and full year 2019 results, and the numbers are lovely.…

COVID-19 raises risk of software bugs due to staff schedule shifts Google has suspended Chrome browser updates after failing to release Chrome 81 on Tuesday.…

Tour operator used job in America as cover while acting as a data mule for Beijing, stealing secrets from biz An American citizen will spend the next four or so years behind bars in the US for smuggling corporate secrets out of the states to his spymasters in China.…

Elsewhere, Geek Squad still sending out techies to elderly people's homes Tesla CEO Elon Musk said employees should continue working at the automaker's Fremont factory despite the site falling under the San Francisco Bay Area's strict near-lockdown order.…

Genuine Integrity doesn't exactly live up to its name A little more than a week after forgoing March's Patch Tuesday hullabaloo, Adobe has emitted fixes for dozens of security flaws in its applications.…

Pat Hanrahan, Ed Catmull split $1m for their graphics work Two founders of animation powerhouse Pixar have won the 2019 ACM AM Turing Award, with a $1m prize, for their pioneering work on 3D graphics.…

Reviews mixed as mobile software hits GA GitHub's mobile app for developers and other team members working on projects in GitHub repositories is now generally available for users of iOS and Android.…

Scissor switches in, plus a silicon upgrade As predicted, Apple is steadily purging its laptop line of the fault-prone butterfly keyboard, which infuriated punters and genius bar techies alike.…

No neural networks here, though, only decision tree algos Machine-learning algorithms may help scientists develop a warning system capable of preventing fusion reactor meltdowns in the future.…

Version numbering reaches double figures with GA lurking around the corner In a week that saw confirmation that Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 would have its kernel pulled from the base Windows 10 image, another preview of Windows Terminal put in an appearance.…

Falcon 9? Falcon 8 more like, as booster takes an unplanned bath SpaceX has lofted another set of Starlink satellites despite an in-flight engine failure, although those hoping to watch a booster landing were disappointed as the veteran Falcon 9 first stage took a dunking.…