The Register

Also cunning crimes use machine learning to steal cash Roundup Hello, here's a list of all this week's AI and machine learning related news beyond what we've already covered. Facebook has turned off automatic facial recognition for its users and the US Department of Defense wants to hire an ethicist to, you know, develop AI for good, of course.…

Come join us at our Serverless Computing London conference this November Event Serverless Computing London hits Westminster again this November, and if you’re a charity or similar non-profit, we’d love for you to join us.…

Cyber-assistant taught to duck sensitive topics Apple has programmed its Siri voice assistant to avoid politically charged subjects, and deflect or duck questions that require its AI to take a stand on issues, it emerged this week.…

400k+ volunteer computer crack tough three-cubes problem Mathematicians have finally cracked the sum-of-three-cubes problem for the geek-friendly number 42.…

Nation braces for bad news after last-minute comms blackout India's mission to the Lunar South Pole, known as Chandrayaan 2, suffered a setback early Saturday morning Bengaluru (Bangalore) time, when the spacecraft's Vikram Lander stopped communicating during its descent to the Moon's surface.…

Brits gobsmacked and Microsoft launches probe after cyber-bazaar's avatar switched to X-rated snap NSFW (ish) eBay UK customers got an unexpected eyeful this week – after a busty topless model bafflingly appeared in some of the online tat souk's emails.…

Integration may lead to more smartphones with faster cellular broadband (networks permitting) IFA 2019 Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung were at the IFA consumer tech marketing fest in Germany this week to publicly tear the wraps off their upcoming mobile system-on-chips with built-in 5G modems. This integration means a load of forthcoming phones and gadgets using these processors will come with 5G support as standard, in theory.…

They paid us before we paid them, said Gary Szukalski Autonomy trial A former Filetek sales and marketing man has told London's High Court that the firm received money from Autonomy before paying it back as part of reciprocal deals.…

Some Insiders are more equal than others (sorry, Release Preview) Microsoft has attempted to clear the murky waters of its Windows Insider programme by stowing its virtual coin toss for those on the Slow Ring.…

Hey nurses, it's not like you've got anything else to do The NHS is seeking nurses and health care professionals to become social media "influencers" to promote its app.…

MoD tech accelerator asks industry, is this idea possible? The Royal Navy's (RN) tech innovation tentacle wants clever folk to come up with entirely autonomous ways of dropping new missiles into its warships' hungry silos.…

Desktop layout suite granted 2019 reboot With a nostalgic twinkle in its corporate eye, Microsoft has emitted a Windows 10 version of its venerable PowerToys suite.…

Openreach network targeted for second time in 2 weeks Thieves have stolen 500 metres of Openreach's copper cable in Cambridgeshire, leaving thousands of people without broadband or a working telephone.…

Win a wee sample of Mackmyra's Azure-addled stuff Swedish distillery Mackmyra has released a whisky infused with the goodness of AI. Keen to reinforce workplace stereotypes, The Register went to check it out.…

Install incoming update to avoid having your boxes hijacked The widely used Exim email server software is due to be patched today to close a critical security flaw that can be exploited to potentially gain root-level access to the machine.…

Email got easier. Ordinary mail got worse Something for the Weekend, Sir? I was only trying to collect a package from the counter. No, officer, I don't know why the post office is littered with broken glass. And teeth.…

Facebook London AI chief and uni prof Sebastien Riedel talks to us ahead of MCubed conference keynote Interview Natural language processing, or NLP for short, is one of the key research areas of artificial intelligence, and has had a major boost in the last couple of years.…

Senior exec carries can for screwup in supplies, missing rev targets for 3 quarters Exclusive HP Inc has bid farewell to EMEA president Nick Lazaridis amid the collapse of the supplies business - historically the company's cash cow.…

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a CD? Is it a CD? On Call Welcome to On Call, our weekly dip into the seemingly bottomless pool of user, er, difficulties, told by the unfortunates who are sat at the other end of the telephone.…

Dacorum Borough Council wants decorum in town centre A newly introduced Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in the Hertfordshire town of Hemel Hempstead has managed to lump the relatively harmless pastime of cycling in with publicly relieving oneself.…

0.833 femtometers also happens to be how close we are to losing our minds The positively charged proton sitting inside the nuclei of atoms has a radius smaller than a trillionth of a millimeter, according to a paper published in Science on Thursday.…

Oh, so you can just do that? That's possible? Restoring from clean, good backups after an infection? Who knew? The City of New Bedford, in Massachusetts, has found a way to deal with ransomware without paying: shoring up defenses, restoring from backups, and rebuilding systems.…

Mayor apologizes, joins privacy watchdogs in probing use of technology in bustling corner of UK capital London cops have admitted they gave photos of people to a property developer to use in a facial-recognition system in the heart of the UK capital.…

Except one – a 'your phone is now my phone' bug reported months ago and still not fixed Google this week emitted the September edition of its monthly Android security updates – and has left at least one known vulnerability unpatched. Also, in case you missed it, the web giant started rolling out Android 10 a few days ago.…

It's 2019 and, like, duh, insecurity comes as standard Concerned parents who strap GPS trackers to their kids to keep tabs on the youngsters may be inadvertently putting their offspring in danger. Hundreds of thousands of the gizmos ship with pathetic security, including a default password of 123456, allowing them to be potentially monitored by strangers, it is claimed.…

Firebrand in town to give Redmond a GNU lease of life Photo When a frantic group of paranormal researchers were trying to convince the Mayor of New York of the impending apocalypse depicted in the 1984 flick Ghostbusters, they described the situation as a disaster of Biblical proportions.…

And the holy spirit, NVMe-oF? Comment The amount of data being collected and held in systems is – yes, we know – increasing, as organisations generate and store data for real-time or post-real-time analysis.…

Dodgy dealing in a mobile phone shop? What kind of a world? The City of New York is suing T-Mobile US, alleging that it is unfairly exploiting people with its "Metro by T-Mobile" brand – its no-contract, pre-pay service.…

Atlassian would love it if you joined its glorious cloudy future Recent entrant to the billion-dollar collaboration club Atlassian is to unleash a free version of the Jira issue-tracking system amid a shake-up of its cloud pricing plans.…

Canada and EMEA see growth. As for the rest of the world... "The bigger they are, the harder they fall" seems an appropriate phrase to describe the predicament facing server vendors. Following a record 2018, almost of all the major manufacturers recorded slimmer numbers in Q2.…

Gently, mind – it's rather expensive IFA2019 Samsung is showing its remade Galaxy Fold 5G mobile at IFA, under way in Berlin, and we got a short hands-on.…

Guess it's time to put down the crisps and get off the couch, Gav ... The former boss of BT, Gavin Patterson, is to join US software giant Salesforce offering "strategic guidance" to its European business.…

7% of new cars run on batteries compared to 3% in Europe Electric cars are failing to take the world by storm, although sales remain strong in China even though its government subsidies for driving a 'leccy were recently reduced.…

Orchestrating Movere purchase in the Dark? Microsoft has snapped up cloud migration specialists, Movere, in its efforts to smooth the path for customers to Azure.…

Seven years from noob to pro The UK Armed Forces' privatised pilot training system is taking nearly seven years to turn new recruits into frontline-ready aviators, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).…

Mobile biz is a mess, but we're sticking to revenue guidance The gods of mobile sales continue to frown on Dixons Carphone as the loss-making unit reported another quarter of shrinkage.…

European data sharing confined to underused Interpol database Brit law enforcement bodies will no longer have access to 79 million alerts about potential criminals or persons of interest if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, a Parliamentary committee has heard.…

Gaming chairs, gaming phones, gaming laptops – and some delightful feather-light ones IFA 2019 It was press day one at the annual consumer electronics megafest, IFA, in Berlin, when PC vendors Acer and Asus unveiled their latest hardware, from impossibly light and fast laptops to heavyweight monsters.…

SF-based continuous delivery outfit says soz Software testing and delivery company CircleCI has apologised for exposing user data to the world and its dog.…

My terrifying childhood with the man who made the Time Lords great Obit Long before I read John Wyndham's dystopian horror stories The Day of The Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, I snatched terrifying glimpses of Terrance Dicks' work in the Doctor Who episodes, "Terror of the Autons" (1971) and "The Sea Devils" (1972).…

We chat to Scale Computing to dig deep through the hype and buzzwords Webcast As organisations see their volume of data grow at an ever-faster rate, many find themselves struggling to manage this avalanche of information, not just securely but without incurring exorbitant costs.…

FFS! Updated Yahoo!, it appears, is still a thing. Unless it's Thursday morning, in which case it isn't.…

Battle with Microsoft not letting up Slack shares got hammered last night in its maiden results after listing on the NYSE in June, despite the collab company beating analyst forecasts for second quarter sales.…

Solitary floater Amid the doom 'n' gloom of Brexit, you can always count on the UK's illustrious local press to focus on the real stories and champion the little guy.…

What we know, plus potential ways to make that data flow Feature Restricted imports of medicines and fresh food, panic buying and civil disorder. These are a few potential impacts of the no-deal Brexit in a recent leaked Cabinet Office paper. Transferring personal data from most European countries to the UK possibly becoming illegal at 11pm on 31 October? Didn't even make the list.…

Our prejudices rub off on our computer pals, sadly The biggest and most powerful text-generating AI models today associate black and gay people with negative qualities, according to a study fresh out of America.…

US Space Command launches probe – wait, is that the sound of a black helicopt A loud boom heard over the US state of New York on Labor Day could have been the result of a fireball arriving from space... or a military jet thundering through the skies... or something else, according to the American Meteor Society.…

One moron down, two to go The script kiddie at the center of the Satori botnet case has pleaded guilty.…

Ad giant gets slap on the wrist, promises not to do it again Google, fighting a desperate battle to provide privacy that's not so private it blinds targeted advertising, has agreed to provide actual privacy, but only to those watching videos aimed at children.…

Our ads? Stomping on people's privacy? Never! Not us! sobs search giant Brave, the maker of a Chromium-based browser with a focus on privacy, claims advertising giant Google flouts Europe's data protection rules by effectively leaking netizens' web browsing activities to advertisers.…