The Register

Once a hit with drug entrepreneurs, though its algos had been weeding them out When Intersection first announced it was bringing LinkNYC's smart billboard technology to the UK in 2016, it promised to drag the humble telephone booth into the 21st century.…

The IAU brandishes 112 new names for the star systems and its exoplanets to celebrate its 100 year anniversary On Tuesday the International Astronomical Union announced the names of 112 exoplanets and their parent stars, with names selected from 112 different countries here on Earth.…

Turns out even with the luxury and protection of billions of dollars, you still can't take any criticism Stung by an article mulling Amazon Web Services' market dominance on Monday, AWS VP Andi Gutmans fired back, complaining the reporter ignored flattering comments from AWS partners – and that "AWS is 'strip-mining' open source is silly and off-base."…

'Divisive and humiliating' terms are bad as the N-word, uni lecturer argues Labeling super-smart people with terms like nerd, geek, or boffin is hate speech, and should be punishable as such, argues lecturer and Harley-Street psychotherapist Dr Sonja Falck.…

Non-profit says seizure-inducing posts were a deliberate attempt at harm The Epilepsy Foundation said this week it will report to the cops any and all tweets seemingly engineered to trigger seizures.…

Techie allegedly fed secret financial info to buddies ahead of public release A now-former Palo Alto Networks IT administrator illegally exploited his employer's confidential financial figures to line his pockets with stock-market profits, it is claimed.…

You need stability concerns? Here’s some stability concerns, say DNS gurus at Packet Clearing House The sale of the .org registry to a for-profit private equity firm would have “a disastrous effect on stability,” a DNS specialist has warned.…

Web giant claims she broke rules with pro-union popup code – fellow techies reckon that's rubbish Google on Friday fired security engineer Kathryn Spiers after she created a Chrome popup notification reminding her colleagues that they have the "right to participate in protected concerted activities."…

Just another, oh, $1.675bn to go to defend systems, it is estimated US lawmakers have formally earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars for an election security overhaul.…

FTC gives out a wrist slap, lets it continue doing the exact same thing If you were one of the millions of people that signed up with Unrollme to cut down on the emails from outfits you once bought a product from, we have some bad news for you: it has been storing and selling your data.…

'I'm not dead!' insists doomed OS. It will be soon Microsoft unloaded some festive cheer on the last remaining Windows Phone user by apparently extending the life of the doomed platform for another few weeks.…

Anything less than the latest version of Outlook to be blocked soon The clock is ticking for businesses using what Google defines as a "less secure app" (LSA) to access services like its G Suite mail, calendar and contacts. New accounts will be blocked from using LSAs from June 15 2020, and all access will be disabled on February 15 2021.…

First OTT apps nick their SMS revenue, now this... In 2019, few handsets come with the same level of network lock-ins that were endemic in the 2000s and earlier. Despite that, many networks — including BT and Vodafone — persist in this practice, limiting consumer choice and freedom.…

'Turns out that leaving the Cabinet is harder than leaving the EU' - former MP Nicky Morgan's reappointment to the UK's Cabinet as secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) is controversial because only her peerage made it possible: she stood down as an MP in October.…

Say cheese, Cupertino, you've got a repairability score of 9 DIY repair site iFixit has announced the results of its teardown of the 2019 Mac Pro – the latest eye-wateringly priced, professional-oriented computer from fruit-branded-biz-turned- kitchenware supplier, Apple.…

Big Blue leaves Swift server workgroup, future of Kitura server app framework uncertain An announcement to the Swift forums indicates IBM is discontinuing its work on server-side Swift. IBM team leader Ian Partridge and technical architect Chris Bailey are leaving the Swift server workgroup.…

Birdsong, traffic sounds... Bueller? Bueller? It's hard, isn't it — plugging in kit? You've got to grab the item in question, find a charger, and then give it a bit of USB-C. Wouldn't it be simpler if your gadgets just magically charged themselves, using the abundant energy provided by the Sun's rays?…

Fast Ring fans to get code 'no longer matched to a specific Windows 10 release' Mixed news for Windows Insiders today as the window for jumping to the Slow Ring slammed shut amid promises of minty fresh code for those on Fast (but don't ask for which version of Windows, m'kay?)…

Singing songs around the bonfire of billions and other stories Roundup A fair bit happened in the world of space this week, with NASA showing off its mighty booster as Boeing looked set to end 2019 with a jaunt to the International Space Station.…

Old world vendors should club together, form new biz called 'Screwed by Cloud' Hyperscale operators accounted for a whopping third of the $38bn spent on data centre kit and software during the first nine months of 2019 – indicative of the buying power the largest cloud builders wield over legacy tech makers.…

Good news for Check Point; less so for blabbermouths with regrets Security investigators say they have uncovered a vulnerability in WhatsApp that will gladden the heart of anyone who's ever wondered how to permanently wipe that incriminating group chat.…

Until you step on one... The National Museum of Computing got a helping hand from some Lego-curating volunteers last week to get ready for post-Christmas activities.…

Getting tooled up for future crimes The Metropolitan Police Service dispatched more than 4,000 staff to attend so-called "cyber" training courses over the past two years.…

Games streamer sued for streaming games, but not the electronic kind Internet TV network Twitch, which lets anyone stream stuff from video games to programming, is being sued for allegedly illegally streaming English Premier League matches in Russia.…

And you thought it was just ICANN and the Internet Society having a bad month Comment The organization responsible for allocating internet addresses across Africa has yet again become embroiled in scandal, this time over long-standing claims of corruption.…

It's the first bit of evidence that confirms carbon born in ancient stars spreads throughout space For the first time, astronomers have stumbled across ancient, ginormous clouds of carbon ions, stretching more than 30,000 light-years across and enveloping young galaxies.…

That kill-everyone-onboard flaw that was supposed to be fixed by now? Yep, still an issue Boeing said on Monday that it plans to temporarily suspend the production of its 737 Max jets next month to focus on clearing out the 400 or so aircraft currently grounded in storage.…

Habana joins the ranks of runaway successes Movidius and Nervana Intel has snapped up AI accelerator chip designer Habana Labs for a hefty $2bn to bolster its efforts in bringing Chipzilla-flavored machine-learning tech to cloud platforms and big biz.…

Woke tech giants sued for 'knowingly benefiting from ... the cruel and brutal use of young children' Google-parent Alphabet, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla have been accused of "knowingly benefiting from and aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to mine cobalt," a key component of the lithium-ion batteries that these companies obtain from suppliers like Glencore, Umicore, and Huayou Cobalt to power their products.…

Investors to crack open a cold one if exhumation request successful A group of aggrieved crypto-coin investors want to exhume the corpse of a digital money exchange boss in a bid to find their missing millions.…

Board 'upset', eh, amid claims PFYs sacked after discovery Updated The head of Canada’s .ca internet registry is under fire following allegations multiple IT staffers were axed after a porn stash was apparently discovered on his iMac and reported to HR.…

Feds are not amused A Wells Fargo employee is accused of stealing bank vault deposits – and posting pictures of the alleged purloined loot on Instagram and Facebook.…

The feature was originally ditched over quality control issues During the heady beta days of Android 10, Google showed off a feature that would allow users to automatically activate Dark Mode depending on the time of day. Sadly, despite an enthusiastic reception, it never made it into the finished product, due to several technical hurdles.…

IRC-for-millennials biz shrugs: Yeah, we might fix that later Security researchers have uncovered a flaw in messaging app Slack that allows a file shared in a private channel to be viewed by anyone in that workspace – even guests.…

'Unfortunately local storage was missed off the list of files migrated' A change to the location of profile data in Chrome 79 on Android, the new version rolling out now, means that applications using the WebView component lose data stored locally.…

Things you don't do with Elasticsearch dbs, number 1: Put them on the web Exclusive Infosec researchers have uncovered a data breach affecting 1.3TB of web server log entries held by Chinese e-commerce website LightInTheBox.com.…

Poor entropy in embedded devices leading to weaker certificates: study A preponderance of weak keys is leaving IoT devices at risk of being hacked, and the problem won't be an easy one to solve.…

Maintainer: 'Most companies were reluctant to support the project their product depends on because it is available for free' Interview In May this year, users of popular open source project FUSE for macOS noticed the source code for the latest update was missing. The project had become closed source and was no longer free for commercial use. But as The Reg discovered when we had a talk with its maintainer, there was a very good reason for that – and it's not a good look for the many companies that used it.…

Also: Office 365 goes Swiss and Visual Studio for Mac gains scaffolding Roundup Microsoft has had a busy week, from hammering the final nail in the coffin of its previous mobile strategy to unveiling a black monolith of an overpowered games console. Today's roundup takes a look at what you might have missed in all the excitement.…

Season's not much of a miracle for under-pressure workers, says union Amazon Germany is facing potential strike action at a bunch of its logistics hubs, but is reassuring punters that they will still get their packages in time for Christmas.…

Your quick catch-up on neural-net news Roundup It's nearly the end of the year, and if you're not bored of AI yet, here's more bits and bytes for you to consume.…

Your quick summary of infosec news beyond everything else we've reported Roundup Here's your Register security roundup of infosec news about stuff that's unfit for production but fit for print.…

Gone fishing for power – with a coat hanger Who, Me? Monday has arrived, and with it another tale to send administrators scurrying for their event logs, and engineers reaching for the coat hanger. Yes, it's Who, Me?…

Catch up with public sector developments and more Promo If you missed this year's re:Invent – the annual Amazon Web Services cloud-computing mega-conference held in Las Vegas at the beginning of December – you can catch up with some of the highlights in London, England, on 22 January.…

Scammer and pals blew the cash on cosmetic surgery, jewelry, swanky pads, flash motors A 73-year-old fraudster has been sentenced to four years in prison for conspiracy to defraud – after bilking investors out of $2.3m (£1.7m) by convincing them that they were investing in a sure-fire winner: caffeine-infused chocolates for the tech sector.…

...So consider rerouting your journey through that Scientists have discovered a dangerous hotspot in Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts that spews so-called “killer electrons” that can knacker satellites and spacecraft.…

Car smash-and-grab ends with loss of payroll details for 20,000 employees Facebook has lost a copy of the personal details of 29,000 of its employees after hard drives containing unencrypted payroll information were stolen from an employee's car.…

Pending tariffs on notebooks, phones, monitors shelved as super powers strike 'prelimary' deal Chinese officials have announced a preliminary agreement on phase one of negotiations with the United States - and of course US President Trump has leapt onto his favourite digital soap box to add his cents worth.…

Launch opportunities per year now over 130. Actually launched in 2019: 6 Peter Beck, boss of upstart small-sat flinger Rocket Lab, gave himself an early Christmas present this week as he declared the company's second launch complex, this time in the US, operational.…

Probably a better investment than WeWork If you thought the service at your local Starbucks was robotic and impersonal, you might want to give Softbank’s newest Tokyo cafe a miss. Working alongside the company’s meatbag workers are a small army of Softbank Robotics’ droids, who’ll help serve and entertain the punters, and will even clean up after them.…