The Register

NHSX: UK.gov's new tech, data and digital quango The UK government has plans for another health quango that will not only oversee data, digital and tech procurement but have an "open door" policy with the IT industry.…

Procurement heads fail to finalise specs for replacement deal, extend current agreement with DXC Technology The Ministry of Defence is set to prolong the British armed forces' payroll, HR, and pensions admin contract with DXC Technology by half a year – because the military's procurement team has run out of time to find a replacement.…

The alternative being memorizing a bunch of really long unique passphrases A bunch of infosec bods are taking some of the most popular password managers to task after an audit revealed some mildly annoying, non-world-ending security shortcomings.…

J0207 is estimated to be a mere three-billion years old and just 145 light years away Pic An amateur astronomer has discovered the oldest-known white dwarf star, sitting 145 light years away from Earth in the Capricornus constellation.…

As ICO goes on fact-finding missions over 'concerns' about security, transparency Privacy warriors have filed fresh evidence in their ongoing battle against real-time web ad exchange systems, which campaigners claim trample over Europe's data protection laws.…

15 gallons of uranium ore left in the visitors' center for 18 years Grand Canyon visitors may have been exposed to tiny amounts of bonus radiation from buckets of uranium ore bafflingly placed in the National Park’s museum for nearly 20 years.…

Oracle's legal warship drops out of warp, on impulse power for now A fierce legal battle over the Pentagon's $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud IT deal was put on ice by a judge Tuesday – after the Department of Defense (DoD) vowed to probe itself regarding the contract.…

Fresh harassment allegations hit biz that insists diversity numbers are trade secret Oracle, facing US government charges that it discriminated against women by paying them less than male colleagues, has been sued yet again for gender and age discrimination by a former sales rep.…

Meanwhile: Commissioner celebrates forcing ISP to remove abusive content ban A bipartisan group of US senators are trying to force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to face up to the reality that its statistics for broadband speeds across America aren't worth squat.…

Sm... ck m... glitch up: Coprocess... has nasty... USB ...oun... outp... rruption... roblem Audio professionals are complaining that the T2 security coprocessor in new Apple Mac models causes annoying audible glitches when using USB-connected recording gear.…

Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb code can't handle much, but hey, it now runs in a browser In preparation for next month's 30th anniversary of the proposal that gave us the world wide web, boffins at the behest of CERN have recreated the world's first web browser, and made it accessible as a modern web page.…

Europeans can't find any evidence of Chinese spying German is expected to snub US pressure to cut Huawei out of its next-generation 5G networks, rejecting claims that the Chinese manufacturer is a security risk.…

ReRAM seeks artificial help Crossbar, developer of Resistive RAM (ReRAM) chips, is setting up an AI consortium to help counter, er, resistance to the technology, speed up its adoption, and hopefully outrun Intel's Optane.…

Go on, flash storage bandits – spill your guts Pure Storage will introduce a shiny new backup box - dubbed ObjectEngine - from as early as next month to pinch sales from veterans including EMC-owned sectoral kingpin Data Domain.…

Bounty bonanza balloons and beguiles Social code storage biz GitHub, now a ward of Microsoft, on Tuesday divulged plans to make itself more attractive to hackers by flashing larger sums of cash and offering better indemnity.…

Who do you think you are? Paris-based code botherer CAST Software said today it would buddy up with Software Heritage to tackle the sometimes tricky task of identifying the provenance of open-source code in modern projects.…

Newly funded firm competes with NetApp, other on-premises filers Wannabe killer of on-premises NAS boxen Nasuni has just wolfed down $25m in funding to spread its message and open up new offices.…

Spared court costs as he reveals £120-a-week income "Mr Love, you're not the victim in this. You brought this on yourself; you're the victim of your own decisions," District Judge Margot Coleman told accused hacker Lauri Love in court today as she refused to return computers seized from him by the National Crime Agency.…

Global sales up 4% but North America element down 25% Eugene Kaspersky's security biz saw turnover crash by a quarter in North America following the US government's decision to remove the antivirus software from federal systems.…

Была́ не была́ Big data analytics outfit Splunk will no longer be big in Russia after the company confirmed plans to stop selling its wares there.…

Optimised function wrangling aims to make AWS's Lambda look like a Lada Interview Israel-based serverless specialist Nuweba has slurped $4.8m of seed funding from investors keen on the company's bold claims that its tech runs at 10 times the speed of the competition.…

We need to get our house in order first, prez tells press Samsung has launched TV ads featuring its foldable phone – but its rival chaebol isn't so keen.…

And it's still a better love story than Twilight Conundrum. You're working on a burning trash pile of a '90s TV show and need some spooky, mysterious language to lorem ipsum into a book of supposedly occult nature. Which tongue has a suitable enough clusterfuck of vowels to make the prop look like it's about to summon Yog-Sothoth?…

Christopher Egan has had enough of giving evidence Ill-fated British software company Autonomy's one-time US sales chief is reluctant to testify in person against former CEO Mike Lynch, the High Court in London heard yesterday morning.…

Anyone here keen to build tool to get 'right support' for sick, disabled? The UK's Department for Work and Pensions is drawing up plans for an internal service that allows it to automate slurps of medical data on claimants to dole out health-related benefits.…

Isn't it ironic, don't you think? It is ironic that Oracle, which normally tries to make class-action suits "disappear into arbitration", is now taking an anti-arbitration stance in a pay dispute, a judge in San Francisco said late last week.…

If only Slack would go down too, we could get some work done Updated Microsoft's collaborative Slack-alike, Teams, is having a difficult start to the week, with users unable to log in to share their hopes, dreams and Word documents with their co-workers.…

UK Space spends £18m on internet sat tech Roundup While NASA finally gave up on the Opportunity Rover, a UK-built space harpoon was fired last week, much to the annoyance of one ex-Shuttle bigwig... and earlier today, the UK agreed to fling money at satellite tech.…

The combined might of Reg readers can do better than SAPpy McSAPface German ERP giant SAP has finally latched on to the name-our-thing stunt commonly used to drum up interest in gritters, offering punters the chance to brand Munich's new sports arena.…

UK court told firm wants Sushovan Hussain on stand in case he's handed jail time HPE wants Sushovan Hussain, convicted ex-CFO of infamous British software company Autonomy, to give evidence in HPE's UK lawsuit against former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch before his own potential US prison sentence.…

How is there so much villainy wrapped up in one generation? When was the last time you appreciated a sundial? I'll give you a mo...…

Monero? When is this – 2017? Roundup Yet more Linux love seeped into Windows 10 over the past week, while admins buffed their rings in readiness for servicing changes and miscreants crept around the Microsoft Store.…

Second time lucky? Readers, we asked you what materials we should use to construct homebrew gadget Project Alias – which deafens smart speakers – and a whopping 40 per cent of you demanded Lego.…

China, Russia, Israel and the US floated as potential culprits Australia's prime minister has blamed a "sophisticated state actor" for a hack on the country's parliament and some of its prominent political parties.…

Born in a storm of snow, killed off in a blizzard of TCP/IP: The Bulletin Board System While large chunks of the US used this year's Snowmageddon to binge on streaming TV or tweet selfies with snowmen, take a moment to remember the Great Blizzard of 1978, which led to the first Bulletin Board Service (BBS) taking to the phone lines 41 years ago.…

Na-nana-nana-nana-nana..nanana...nanana.... nana nana* Tech titans like Facebook, itself described as a "digital gangster", continually fail to address the risks their platforms pose to democracy – so the British government should regulate, MPs have said.…

Seems to us like you would remember an incident like that... Who, Me? Gather round, dear readers, for a priceless story in this week's column for techies' mishaps.…

While browsers have got their act together, any other apps interpreting user-supplied code need to be aware of this Google security researchers have analyzed the impact of the data-leaking Spectre vulnerabilities afflicting today's processor cores, and concluded software alone cannot prevent exploitation.…

Don't panic, we're not all doomed – well, except Nvidia, perhaps Roundup Here's a summary of what's been going on in the world of machine-learning, beyond what we've already covered, to kick start your week...…

Standby for a 'we woz haxx0ed' email from one of these sites this week... Roundup Let's kickstart your Monday with some lovely juicy computer security and screwups news, beyond what we reported last week.…

Revised proposals attempt to address worries over Manifest v3 API changes Google has proposed changes to its Chrome Extension renovation plan that answer some but not all of the concerns its Manifest v3 technical specification.…

And said lifeforms include us humans on Earth If you’re living in Earth's southern hemisphere, chances are you may be able to see some of the stars in a newly identified cosmic river that's flowed through the Milky Way for hundreds of millions of years.…

Lawyers clean up after games biz settles with homeowners sick of zombie players Pokemon Go will soon let people ban its virtual pets from around their houses following a legal settlement with homeowners fed up with zombie kids.…

'I didn’t buy a gun, I built the gun'... Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+P lands Texas man in the slammer A Texas fella banned from owning firearms is now behind bars for trying to 3D print a gun for himself.…

Yet it's still whining that New York City didn't offer enough for HQ2 Amazon's pre-tax profits more than tripled last year to an extraordinary $11.2bn but, for a second year running, the web giant has paid not a single cent in US federal taxes.…

Address gate criteria, conflicts of interest – then we can play Oracle is pushing America's Court of Federal Claims to rule in its favour and issue a judgment saying the Pentagon erred in its decision to offer its $10bn cloud contract to a single vendor.…

Romantic Redmondians pick 14 February to announce April go date for the code wrangler Devs seeking the perfect gift for that special someone were thrown a lifeline yesterday, with the announcement of Visual Studio 2019's launch date and a fresh preview of the development toolset.…

Dead probe swinging around Ceres wins Swigert Award Less than a year after NASA's Dawn mission sent its last squawk back to Earth, the probe is to receive the Space Foundation's 2019 John L "Jack" Swigert Jr. Award for Space Exploration.…

WannaCry? You will do BBC "sister" medical drama shows Holby City and the venerable Casualty from which it sprang have announced that they are teaming up for a two-part "cyberattack special". NHS techies, stop sniggering at the back!…

Bill Gates' bridge chum's firm buys Red Hat stock Oracle's share prices took a buffeting last night after it was revealed billionaire Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway had ditched its $2.1bn stake in Big Red.…