The Register

Low-power ultra-narrowband network for your street, ma'am? Who at one time hasn't wanted to install a low-power ultra-narrowband radio network in embedded objects all over the neighbourhood? Perhaps you wanted to keep an eye on the local badgers? Well, badgers look out: it's now become easier to do so.…

We can't see the Arm in having a little tinker Enthusiasts with time and hardware on their hands have a few extra options for the weekend. One committed group of Linux fans has got Ubuntu working on a Windows Arm laptop, while Pi fans have made it easier to bring full Windows 10 to the diminutive computer.…

Heal thyself Fancy that. Days after Apple suspended Facebook and Google for abusing Apple's enterprise developer privileges, Apple has been found to be permitting dozens of dubious apps to misuse its enterprise certificates.…

Trusts to choose between secure email providers (not just Accenture's NHSmail) The NHS, in England at least, will email patients directly rather than rely on snail mail, and organisations will be free to look beyond Accenture's NHSmail to send e-missives, under proposals from health secretary Matt Hancock.…

It's about fighting fires, not starting them, right defence bods? The British military has commissioned a hackathon to develop drone swarms – while claiming that it's definitely not about developing dual-use military tech.…

iFixit pays tribute to 'beacon of light' for the fixers of the world Obit John Haynes, creator of the Haynes Manual and at least partly responsible for the skinned knuckles of enthusiastic amateur car repairers around the world, has tightened his last bolt and headed off to the great workshop in the sky aged 80.…

US states mull 'work verification' laws, shaped by work verification biz Special report Anyone working on a substantial contract with the US state of New Jersey could soon be required to install software that captures the screen and tracks keystrokes – to verify all hours billed are legit.…

Oh snap. UK netizens better hope they don't have twitchy mouse-click finger It will be an offence to view terrorist material online just once – and could incur a prison sentence of up to 15 years – under new UK laws.…

Hole puncher, hole puncher... where's headphone jack? Leave out the notch, add hole for snap flash... With Huawei breathing down its neck, Samsung had planned to unveil its flagship just ahead of Mobile World Congress, the firm's usual stage for its launch.…

The theme tune is still like a sonic screwdriver to the eardrum It seems the Chinese authorities were wise to be concerned about the rise of Peppa Pig, as reports have surfaced of American poppets adopting the squeaky English accent of the petite cartoon porker.…

Plain language questions, automated data prep promised in first release of 2019 Natural-language loving data visualisation firm Tableau has emitted its latest release, which includes a plain language question tool, developed after its 2017 slurpage of startup ClearGraph.…

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Don't ask these models Analysis Neural networks trained for image recognition tend to identify objects based on their texture rather than shape, more so than humans, according to this latest research.…

Hefty load from Microsoft, Adobe, with special guest star Cisco Patch Tuesday Microsoft and Adobe have teamed up to give users and sysadmins plenty of work to do this week.…

Public safety versus profit A law proposed in Texas would make it illegal for mobile networks in the US state to throttle internet connectivity during an emergency.…

Class action lawsuit over component sparks legal fight Cisco is fighting its own side's lawyers to get a bigger share of a component price-fixing payout, in the latest unedifying class-action legal battle in tech land.…

Nav gadgets will be Gah, Properly Screwed if you don't or can't update firmware Older satnavs and such devices won't be able to use America's Global Positioning System properly after April 6 unless they've been suitably updated or designed to handle a looming epoch rollover.…

The 'VF' now stands for 'virtually f*cked' A hacker wiped every server and backup of VFEmail this week in a "catastrophic" attack, according to the webmail service.…

In Putin's Russia, internet logs off from you Russia is reportedly preparing to turn its internet into a nationwide intranet to thwart hacking attacks and similar aggression from the West.…

Oh, bother! Users can't bear the thought of censorship Condé-Nast-stablemate forum Reddit has slurped another $300m in a round of funding led by Chinese giant Tencent.…

An Arts Council for news? A UK government-backed review has decided against a punitive tax on Google and Facebook – but called for competition authorities to investigate their core business. It also wants a new news quango.…

UK Police Forces on Microsoft's platform have some new toys in their arsenal Britain's criminals must be quaking in their boots after hearing the news that tools to help UK plod solve crimes have been added to Microsoft's Azure cloud.…

Steve Hilton claims his boss fired him without just cause to avoid $20m severance payday A former DXC Technology exec veep sacked last summer refuses to go quietly: Steve Hilton has accused his ex-boss, CEO Mike Lawrie, of having a "toxic" management style that he claimed involved "verbally abusing" underlings.…

Document skirts around 'the fundamental issues involved' The UK government's 27-page blueprint to use biometrics "in no way did justice to the fundamental issues involved" in cops' increasing use of the tech, the chair of the Commons science committee has said.…

UK's Huawei handlers are proud of themselves The Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) has a giant banner hanging outside declaring its purpose to the world.…

90 days without a refuel The Ordnance Survey reckons it has succeeded where Google and Facebook failed, with the launch of a solar-powered drone fleet that will hover permanently high above Blighty.…

Imag-I-Nation Technologies (no, not that one) fesses up to breach affecting thousands A company that develops and supports software for consumer reports and background checks has admitted to exposing thousands of people's information to an unknown hacker.…

We bid farewell to the best kind of 16-bit hustler... Obit Dr Bernard L Peuto, the architect of the Zilog Z-8000 chip, has died.…

Complexity of project no excuse to do nothing, chides review The UK's National Health Service has been warned to plan tech investments carefully, address data governance and quality concerns, and boost staff training to ensure IT benefits rather than harms patients.…

...He's just a poor backup of a workload running virtually ♪ If you're wondering whether it's possible to protect vSphere virtual machines with no on-premises agents, arrays, appliances or software – and friend, who isn't? – here's something potentially for you.…

Huge hole hints at home world taking a pounding Pics, video Scientists believe they may have found a second meteorite impact crater lurking under ice sheets on Greenland.…

Ah, wait, the other kind of artificial President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday kickstarting the American AI Initiative, a strategic plan to keep the nation ahead of its competitors in artificial intelligence.…

Handy for smuggling expensive zero-days onto targets and executing them Updated Security researchers have found that Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) don't live up to their name. In fact, we're told, they can be used to hide pieces of nasty malware that can silently masquerade as normal applications.…

US govt State Dept boss Mike Pompeo: We'll shut you out if you're using kit from Chinese maker US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says his department may punish countries that purchase hardware from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.…

Dubsmash, Armor Games, 500px, Whitepages, ShareThis, and more said to be up for grabs for $$$s in BTC Exclusive Some 617 million online account details stolen from 16 hacked websites are on sale from today on the dark web, according to the data trove's seller.…

Oil, gas, maritime systems affected by latest bug findings Companies running a popular brand of industrial Ethernet switch are being advised to update their firmware ASAP following a series of bug disclosures.…

Seven-year battle could be finally coming to an end A seven-year fight over the introduction of .amazon top-level domains may finally be resolved this week with crunch talks in Brazil.…

'Doomsday scenario' unless devops crowd walks this way Aleksa Sarai, a senior software engineer at SUSE Linux GmbH, has disclosed a serious vulnerability affecting runc, the default container runtime for Docker, containerd, Podman, and CRI-O.…

Bonkers dust world colonization that was never going to happen definitely isn't going to happen The group trying to crowdfund a plan to colonization of Mars that was declared suicidal has shuttered its shop front.…

Accused hacker can write Reg headlines. Who knew? Lauri Love will find out whether he is getting his computers back from the National Crime Agency on 19 February, a judge ruled today.…

Plus: Cygnus freighter to spray more sats across the heavens As Elon Musk crowed over the performance of SpaceX's Raptor engine and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus departed the International Space Station (ISS), debris watchers were ruing the 10th anniversary of the first accidental hypervelocity satellite collision.…

Oh and by the way, there's a consulting reorg on the way Brand new Teradata CEO Oliver Ratzesberger wouldn't be drawn on headcount reduction in the legacy data warehouser's consulting group, but admitted realignments will be made to bag "megadata" customers.…

JESUS MOOOOOOOM The relationship between mother and son is a strange one. Sigmund Freud's "Oedipus complex" made all of psychology awkward, and mums haven't helped by cherishing and coddling their perfect little boys well into adulthood.…

Western Digital hard drive also among the spoils Accused computer hacker Lauri Love is in court today arguing with the National Crime Agency over whether the British government agency should return PCs they seized from him.…

JavaScript emulator gains audio support and proper '90s Doom The JavaScript incarnation of Windows 95 received a version bump last week, giving those trapped in the snow or stuck in the office a lunchtime of delight listening to the bleeps and bloops of yesteryear.…

Lad Media, The Lead Expert don't look so 'expert' now The bosses of lead-generation firms Lad Media and The Lead Experts have been slapped with four and six-year bans on forming companies respectively after they fell foul of direct marketing laws.…

Eben Upton talks to El Reg about hopes, dreams and solid starts The first Pi shop has opened its doors in Cambridge and, if the first weekend of trading is anything to go by, has done rather well.…

Latest data dribble from distant New Horizons reveals things are strange out there NASA's New Horizons probe mission has once again given boffins something exciting to think about. New data sent back to Earth has meant they'll need to rework our understanding about the shape of 2014 MU69 (aka Ultima Thule).…

But you'll love our sticker scheme... right? Interview The EU has not seen evidence that Huawei poses a threat to its internal markets – and says that even if it had, blocking the controversial Chinese company's products is up to EU member nations, not the political bloc.…

New Windows 10 build and Small Basic turns 1.0 Roundup Last week the headlines were dominated by Microsoft seemingly putting the boot into its own productivity suites and bashing its elderly browser. But of course there was plenty else afoot within the sphere of Redmond.…

NAS-ty: Strange activity sinkholes antivirus update checks Network attached storage maker QNAP's customers have reported being hit by a mystery issue that disables software updates by hijacking entries in host machines' hosts file.…