The Register

'Idiot? You're calling me a f*cking idiot?!' Who, Me? Once again, Monday has put an end to the weekend's fun – and Who, Me? is tagging along, as always.…

And more from the world of machine learning Roundup Here's a quick summary of recent AI news to kickstart your week beyond what we've already reported.…

Requirement threatens to break the bank To prevent a data grabbing snafu along the lines of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google is asking developers who use sensitive Gmail APIs to pay for a security audit that proves their apps play by the rules.…

Better to drink plenty of water, we reckon Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer, as the old saying goes. Well it isn’t true, it doesn’t matter what order you down your drinks, you’ll be hungover all the same.…

All your extra bits and bytes of this week's infosec news in less than 5 minutes Roundup Here's a summary of more infosec news beyond what we've already reported this week – enjoy.…

It's something to do with the Mexican border wall Analysis When the Democrats took over the House of Representatives in America, one of the first things that the House Energy and Commerce Committee did was call a hearing on net neutrality. We had a familiar feeling of dread at the time.…

Arkansas is looking good, Kentucky not so much Analysis In what could prove to be an important turning point in the rollout of fiber across the US, this week the Arkansas congressional committee voted to repeal their state's prohibition on municipal broadband.…

'No evidence that any data has been accessed time' say Australian officials as fingers pointed at foreign spies The Australian Parliament has reset all passwords on the parliamentary computing network following an unspecified security incident.…

Publisher will take a long hard look, make sure it's not on a sticky wicket... OK, OK, enough National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc (AMI) today denied it blackmailed Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos by threatening to leak his nude selfies if he didn't play ball.…

Workaround needed if you suddenly run into trouble with latest Linux OS update While the Redmond executioner was bringing the axe down on the neck of Azure Party Clusters, an Ubuntu security update has done the same to the Azure cloud's Service Fabric Linux Clusters.…

Snooping court says police kit can be covert surveillance tool Police's body-worn cams can be covert surveillance tools, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has said.…

A bit last-decade, but there are improvements – and it's free! While Microsoft was upending the scorn bucket on its own productivity tools, The Document Foundation shoved out an update of LibreOffice, replete with user interface tweaks and improved Office compatibility.…

'We're hiring thousands' for digi revolution... yes, we've cut 14k in last year. Don't compare y-o-y, urges CEO, it's about q-o-q DXC Technology's trigger-happy CEO mentioned the word "hire" or "hiring" 27 times during last night's conference with financial analysts. It's almost as if Mike Lawrie was trying to make a point. As for his use of the term "digital" – he uttered it a full 78 occasions.…

Backup biz slurps security firm for $618.5m Online backup service Carbonite has inked a deal to buy Webroot for over half a billion dollars to help it fling cloud-based endpoint security at smaller biz.…

We're not convinced 'people who want to harm kids will follow the kid, not the watch' is a great comeback Kids' smartwatch-pusher Enox, whose Safe-KID-One watch was pulled by the European Commission, has hit back against the bad PR – with some rather unusual arguments.…

Microsoft: We know what we said then, listen to what we're saying now Oddly enough, for the second time this week, Microsoft has been spotted telling the world that its software is, er, not very good.…

Chap slapped with harassment warning, sacked from UK mobile network A staffer at BT Group's EE has been accused of using his employee access to peek at his ex's account details and change her phone number to spy on her texts.…

'Normally you'd have reams of documentation... all they have is one page' The UK taxman has been slammed for a lack of transparency over the assessment of its tool to check contractors' tax status amid claims it has not retained full records of testing.…

Not a euphemism. I really did this Something for the Weekend, Sir? I spent this week on the floor.…

Bug appears to hate tunes released this year A bug has music lovers with a Google Play subscription stumped – devices won't cast music from 2019 to connected speakers.…

Also: Well done, Squirrels, you've got your Commercial Astronaut badge Roundup Over the past two Earth days, NASA released pics of China's Moon lander, SpaceX saw a Falcon delay to its Crew Dragon and the UK failed to name the ExoMars rover Rover McRoverface.…

If someone asks for their data, you give it to them, scolds ICO A Buckinghamshire housing developer has been forced to pay up £1,500 after ignoring a person's request for information the company held on them.…

'Never assume soon means less than lifetime of Universe... in software' On Call It's the end of the working week - for most of us. Time to kick back, brew a morning cuppa and delve into this week's On Call, our weekly readers' column of tech traumas.…

Astroboffins haven't seen anything quite like it Astronomers are scratching their heads after discovering a protostellar disk around a young star containing a whopping amount of salts.…

Let us copy your snippets, or say goodbye to revenue Google is warning publishers that online visitor traffic – which drives ad revenue – could plummet as much as 45 per cent if the contentious Copyright Directive being considered by European lawmakers goes forward.…

David Pecker picked a pic of billionaire's pickled pecker Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos today published an extraordinary open letter claiming National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc (AMI) is trying to blackmail him by threatening to leak purloined pics of the billionaire's "semi-erect manhood."…

Privacy advocates stunned that explicit rules ignored, blame head of FCC Analysis US lawmakers have again called for an investigation into cell networks after it emerged that they have been selling specially protected user location data intended only for emergency services.…

Something something dark, billowing cloud computing: Massive multi-hour outage across US, and it's still down Wells Fargo customers have been unable to access their online bank accounts for more than seven hours today – after smoke knackered one of its data centers.…

Patch your iThings – there are at least two holes being exploited right now in the wild Apple on Wednesday removed the vestigial "Do Not Track" (DNT) privacy technology from Preview Release 75 of its macOS Safari browser, and buried the corpse without ceremony. DNT is also missing from mobile Safari 12.1 in the soon-to-be released iOS 12.2.…

How do you solve a problem like compliance? Microsoft has continued to buff its open-source halo by signing up to the OpenChain Project, which is aimed at simplifying the plethora of licences floating around the open-source community.…

Big Red claims Labor Dept has 'secret pact' with private plaintiff's lawyers Oracle has accused the US Department of Labor (DoL) of bringing new claims into a pay discrimination suit because it knows its original case against the Silicon Valley corp will fail, and of "coordinating" with the lawyers for plaintiffs in a civil case.…

Change reversed while forum probes how many affected Parent gabfest platform Mumsnet has reported a data security breach that it claimed happened amid a "software change" en route to migrating services to the cloud.…

There's life in the old Silicon Glen yet Though Texas Instruments has finally pulled out of its wafer fabrication plant in Greenock, Scotland, all is not lost for the 300 folk employed there – fellow US firm Diodes Inc has stepped in with a £50m buyout offer.…

Holster the chainsaw, Big Blue kit designed to know if tree's a crowd for overhead cables Not satisfied with trimming headcount, IBM has turned its gaze to chopping trees that might interfere with power lines.…

As for the Big 4 UK mobile firms, there's a first mover disadvantage The UK's Ministry of Fun* has introduced draft legislation enabling UK operators to charge roaming fees for calls and data inside the EU, should the UK crash out of the EU (and the larger EEA) next month.…

Rail fails to keep up with 4G As well as the traditional New Year's price hikes, UK rail commuters face an additional humiliation – data speeds aren't increasing as fast as they might.…

Eye-pleasing graphics to match eye-watering pricing Well-heeled Brits can now slide their sticky fingers over the screen of Microsoft's flagship deskslab, the Surface Studio 2.…

Marks & Sparks marketeers decide straight-up innuendo's what you want for Valentine's Dependable British pants*-seller Marks & Spencer is desperately seeking social media virality as it faces plummeting sales figures, and has decided the best way is to tread the thoroughly British route of innuendo.…

Get with the times, Grandad! Microsoft has decided to demonstrate the worth of its flagship Office 365 subscription by pitting it against its flagship Office 2019 product in a bizzaro productivity face-off.…

Social Network will appeal – for the people of Germany Germany's competition watchdog has imposed "far-reaching" restrictions on Facebook's data slurping and sharing – a decision that the Social Network unsurprisingly plans to appeal.…

No payment info, but users' names, locations, email addies etc all 'lost' Trakt, the makers of an app that monitors users' TV programme and movie viewing habits, has 'fessed up to falling victim to a PHP exploit more than four years ago that resulted in data leakage.…

Mug hoarder identified at Vulture Central Shortages at hipster hangout WeWork have left its occupants without their afternoon brews after an "ongoing UK/Ireland-wide mug deficit" was announced.…

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain Chrome developers are trying ease the browser's demands on CPU resources.…

What's next? Arithme-ticks? The common honeybee is clever enough to do simple arithmetic, according to research published on Wednesday.…

Kepler 107c is way too beefy for its own good Astronomers believe they may have uncovered the first tantalizing evidence of two exoplanets that have smashed into one another, according to new research.…

Popular glue coding language sticks to everything The Python programming language is now used more for data science than web development, according to a new survey.…

Cupertino's tight-wads called out by fella who found password, private key leak Vid The bloke who found a password-spaffing bug in macOS says he won't divulge details on the flaw to Apple until the tech titan agrees to properly compensate vulnerability researchers.…

O(1)? More like O(h) n(O)! Proto-boffins' info leaks out An errant email leaked academic information on every student at the Cal Poly Pomona College of Science, in California.…

Malicious Bluetooth signals, too, it looks like Google has emitted security fixes for Android that should be installed, should you get the chance, as they can be potentially exploited to hijack devices.…

If anyone's seen Ed Sweeney recently, please let us know Updated You may not have heard of the Heard and McDonald Islands – it's one of the most remote places on the planet just north of Antarctica – but thanks to one of the quirks of the internet you are able to own a piece of it. Or at least you were.…