The Register

Austin Thompson, 23, cops to $95,000 worth of damage The man accused over DDoS-bombing several online games hosts in 2013 and 2014 has entered a guilty plea under a deal with US authorities.…

It looks like you're trying to run a rail service. Do you want some help with that? Window admins rejoice! It isn’t just you that can’t get Office 2010 to uninstall silently. The mighty brains behind the UK railways have had just as much trouble.…

MP falls for PC support scam While fraudsters traditionally prey on the gullible and feeble-minded, their wicked ways have ensnared British Labour MP Diane Abbott.…

'Lesser-known' names escape public scrutiny, claims Privacy International Privacy International (PI) has filed complaints of "systematic infringements" of data protection law by seven info-sucking companies that it says find it too easy to fly under the radar.…

Look out for traffic to and from these IP addresses and ports Once again, a hundred thousand or more home routers have been press-ganged into a spam-spewing botnet, this time via Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).…

FAB, Lady Penelope NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has kept its cool, successfully surviving sweltering temperatures to reach its first close encounter with the Sun, coming within 15 million miles of the solar surface.…

The good news? Nobody appears to have lost any Bitcoin, says Gate.io This week's hijacking of StatCounter's JavaScript to swipe Bitcoins from a crypto-coin exchange was the result of a web cache poisoning attack, apparently.…

Chinese mid-tier phone-makers, 5G hype to the rescue Breaking up is expensive: losing Apple as a customer meant Qualcomm missed out on 50 million cellular modem chipset sales for the latest batch of iPhones, and slipped into a net loss for its fiscal 2018. However, the chip designer insisted the worst is over.…

But at what point do advertised capacity specs become misleading? Analysis A US district judge has dismissed a false advertising lawsuit against Apple that tried to take the iGiant to task for its bloated mobile operating system.…

Videographer stung after app nukes '$250k' of footage Adobe is being sued after Premiere Pro unexpectedly deleted a snapper's valuable media files.…

Software goliath says it's all about diversity ... and the bit about retaliation isn't true Microsoft and two men have been sued by a woman who claims that, during her time at the company, she was sexually attacked, discriminated against, and unfairly fired.…

Rogue managers can seize control of web shops A vulnerability in the WooCommerce online store platform, used by over four million vendors, can be exploited to hijack WordPress installations hosting the software.…

Tenth Circuit wins lawsuit lottery over terrible policy Six lawsuits filed against controversial new 5G rules drawn up by America's communications watchdog have been bundled into one, and will be heard at the Tenth Circuit of Appeals.…

The monster workhorse with price tag to match El Reg's editorial team does not typically cheerlead any tech, we are dispassionate observers sat at the side of the industry's sales super highway. Or something like that. The latest offer from Dell, however, was too tempting to ignore.…

Google: Hey, it'd mean more if there was global agreement European efforts to implement a digital sales tax have stalled after Ireland, Sweden and Denmark yesterday stood firm in their refusal to approve measures aimed at scraping more cash in from tech giants.…

Ex-Chipzilla exec may have told staff, 'Stick with me, this time next year we'll be millionaires' Former Intel boss Brian Krzanich who split from Chipzilla months ago – after a past fling with a fellow employee came to light – is to head up a business that sells tech to dealerships.…

Firm: We know you wanna chat, guys, but Zuck won't Friend you What’s the old saying – misery loves company? Well, it's certainly true for British MPs and their efforts to grill Mark Zuckerberg, as another three parliaments have been added to Facebook’s group snub list.…

Ooh... and council tax too! Again! UK capital borough is truly spoiled People of the City of Westminster will continue to have their council tax collected and housing benefit managed by Capita for up to another decade, the outsourcing badass confirmed today.…

Heavily read-optimised QLC flash drive leads the charge Micron has started shipping its 2.5-inch 5210 ION flash drive, positioning it as a 10,000rpm disk drive replacement offering much better read access performance for more or less the same price.…

ICO's second report into data analytics in campaigning lands with a thud Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, universities and political parties are all in the dog house as the UK's data protection watchdog condemned a "disturbing disregard" for personal privacy across the system.…

Hey Cortana, where's your VP? Javier Soltero, head honcho of Microsoft's Cortana business, has stepped down.…

Bug hunter rages at wearisome disclosure process An infosec researcher has expressed his frustration with disclosure processes by going public with a zero-day in VirtualBox, Oracle's open-source hypervisor.…

Yes, the one where El Reg won the open justice verdict... Aria PC has lost its appeal against a previous legal ruling that the reseller took part in a VAT carousel fraud to the tune of £750k – though its MD insists the firm will appeal the ruling again.…

FTC antitrust lawsuit due for trial next year A US district judge has made a preliminary ruling that Qualcomm is obliged to license its technologies to its rivals.…

Will it increase capacity in a tuned-in MAMR? Toshiba, the third-placed disk drive maker behind Seagate and Western Digital, shipped 23.4 million units from its factories in 2018's third quarter.…

Chipzilla more like Tyrannosaurus Rekt AMD said on Tuesday it's going to roll out a 7nm 64-core second-generation Epyc server processor, dubbed Rome, in 2019.…

Taxpayers splash £100m+ to save doomed agency Picture the scene. A father is returning home to his family, his face etched with anxiety, and darkened by shame. The family sits expectantly around an empty dinner table.…

If yes, wow, you're well ahead of the game Backgrounder Recent headlines have been full of IT security breaches at major corporations, such as the theft of customer data from British Airways in September 2018. Yet, smaller companies should not believe that they fly beneath the radar of attackers.…

Maybe time to put down that Bitcoin-mining rig and pick up that spade? Cryptocurrencies require as much, if not more, energy to mine as precious metals like copper, gold or platinum, according to some latest calculations.…

Ancient light source may last trillions of years before dying Astronomers claim to have found the oldest star yet discovered – a 13.5-billion-year-old sun hovering on the edges of our Milky Way, according to a new study.…

BlackBox IronPhones' IronChat app convos intercepted Dutch police claim to have snooped on more than a quarter of a million encrypted messages sent between alleged miscreants using BlackBox IronPhones.…

Profit stalls, sales downward, jobs off-shored, cuts deepen The turmoil that has engulfed DXC Technologies was all part of the plan. That's the line chairman, president, and CEO Mike Lawrie took in a conference call discussing his company's latest financial results on Tuesday.…

Advisory issued over yet another critical security vulnerability The Apache Foundation is urging developers to update their Struts 2 installations and projects using the code – after a critical security flaw was found in a key component of the framework.…

Modern data-fetching scheme could become industry standard GraphQL, a query language for APIs that was on the verge of being shunned last year over software license concerns, has bounced back and landed in the arms of the Linux Foundation.…

Gate.io exchange believed to be target of embedded attack One of the top traffic metrics websites on the internet is apparently being used by criminals to steal Bitcoins from a currency exchange.…

Where the one place in the world you don't want your computer to fail? It's never a nice feeling with your computer keels over, wiping out work, sometimes requiring hours of maintenance and basically ruining your day.…

Social networks played key role in genocide says UN, Amnesty Late Monday afternoon, about the same time the FBI warned about Russia and other countries using social media to influence the US midterm elections, Facebook quietly released a report showing the company's platform was used to foment violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar.…

Trump-heralded deal proving to be an expensive mistake Electronics manufacturer Foxconn has denied that it is planning to import Chinese workers into America for its controversial new factory in Wisconsin.…

In the market for a MacBook Air, eh Linus? The knickers of the Linux world have become ever so twisty over the last few days as Penguinistas fell foul of the security hardware in their pricey Apple hardware.…

Bank fesses up: Hackers made off with folks' personal details HSBC has admitted miscreants have probably made off with personal details of thousands of its online-banking customers.…

Microsoft man opens three-day newfangled shithouse expo Bill Gates' obsession with all things faecal continued apace on Tuesday as the billionaire philanthropist took to a Beijing stage armed only with a fierce determination to improve global sanitation. And a jar of poo.…

To the death? Not necessarily, but the gloves are off As the world's boffins prepare to carve up the airwaves again next year, the mobile industry has stepped up the lobbying war over spectrum, fearing a crushing 5G disappointment.…

QA? We've heard of it It isn't just Microsoft that has QA issues – so does Apple. The Cupertino giant withdrew a watchOS update that bricked the Apple Watch 4 last week, and has now rushed out a replacement containing things that don't work yet which Apple probably didn't want you to see.…

Though you get what you pay for, mostly Brit consumers get a broadband bargain, but pay for it with poorer performance than other European countries.…

This is all about 'digital', gonna be so digital you could cut yourself on our services In a lurch towards “digitising” ops as part of the “transformation” scheme launched months ago, Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) today said it is creating 2,000 roles to beef up its “leading-edge digital banking” services.…

Fireworks night has been and gone. Microsoft stayed home The leaves on the trees are turning golden, a chill is in the air, and while the Windows 10 October 2018 Update remains locked in the fireworks tin, there seems to be movement for its sibling, Windows Server 2019.…

De-crewed? More like de-orbit if the ISS had to wait for Orion It was another busy week in space as Russia notched up a second Soyuz success, China conducted its 32nd launch of the year and NASA awaited the arrival of its first service module for Orion.…

Oh, and some exam boards might need to offer paper-based tests due to schools' crap IT kit Students starting GCSE computer science in 2020 may be assessed by exams only, amid concerns about schools' IT kit, burdens on teachers and malpractice in non-exam tests.…

Tax efficient biz makes 1.73 pre-tax profit % on £1.508bn local sales in fiscal '18 Salesforce's European limb last year coughed £5m in tax to the UK government - the business is registered in Blighty - as it made a 1.73 pre-tax profit percentage on a turnover of £1.51bn.…

Finds orgs sent marketing emails promoting each other without consent The Information Commissioner’s Office plans to slap fines totalling £135,000 on Leave.EU and Brexiteer Arron Banks’ insurance biz Eldon for “serious” breaches of direct marketing laws.…