The Register

Station commander issues suitably withering response The whodunnit over the hole in one of the International Space Station's Soyuz lifeboats took a lurch for the surreal this week as reports in Russian media suggested a US astronaut may have deliberately drilled it so the crew could return home.…

Type declarations? What wizardry is this? As Ignite gets ever closer, Microsoft has unleashed a Release Candidate of the latest version of its jumped-up JavaScript, TypeScript.…

Join us in November to find out Events If you want to know how the likes of the BBC, Rovio and the financial sector have benefited from the next wave in cloud technology, you should join us in November at Serverless Computing London.…

Patched flaw hard to exploit, but serious once you get there, warn infoseccers Details of a locally exploitable but kernel-level flaw in Webroot's SecureAnywhere macOS security software were revealed yesterday, months after the bug was patched.…

No deal still 'unlikely' insists Whitehall. But here's some grim guidance anyway Nestled among the mass publication of no-deal guidance yesterday was the UK government's vision for the future of the Brit satellite and space programmes if the country falls out of the EU with no pact in March.…

Did our hero get the accolades he deserved? Did he @£$% On Call Friday is here again, bringing with it the ferreting for loose change to pay the beer bill – and, of course, On Call, our weekly column in which readers tell us how they dealt with a tech support drama.…

Expect things to stay much as they are Analysis The great techno-utopian fantasy for years has been that eSIMs will destroy mobile networks' lock on customers – allowing real-time switching. The phone would tune into the best signal.…

... and displayed the results for everyone to see Something for the Weekend, Sir? Tech-enhanced tourism can be tough on your testicles.…

No concessions, no compromises – it's the only way Comment The enterprise is filling up with devices. Gone are the days when the only IT kit our staff used was phones, printers, scanners, desktop PCs, and servers that were bought, configured, installed, and maintained by our IT team.…

Hardware hackers bring cold boot attacks out of the deep freeze Video If you can steal someone's laptop, leave it switched on in sleep mode, crack it open, hook up some electronics to alter settings in the BIOS firmware, restart it, and boot into a custom program... you can swipe crypto keys and other secrets from the system.…

Of course, it's huge sun flares, Chinese spying, or ALIENS The mysterious shutdown and evacuation of a solar research laboratory, tucked away in a forest in New Mexico, USA, has sent the internet abuzz with a flurry of conspiracy theories.…

Infection gives you the runs – and the ability to produce power Scientists have discovered that a type of stomach bug contracted from unpasteurized dairy or raw meat can produce electricity.…

I was born in 1518... we mean.. machine learning-driven caching speedup Qumulo says improvements in its QF2 software means its products will run faster – 20 per cent faster than Dell EMC Isilon boxes by one measure.…

Ya, we're in the hybrid cloud, data management game now Near-hyperconverged system startup Datrium has gained $60m in D-round funding.…

Near-doubling of video workflow streaming speed Quantum is near-doubling StorNext speed by using Excelero’s NVMESH to provide faster data access than it’s capable of providing on its own.…

Low-end SAN/DAS boxen aimed at smaller biz Dell EMC's new PowerVault ME4 Series has been tailored for small and medium businesses – apparently installable in 15 minutes, configurable in 15 more, and usable as either SAN array or direct-attached PowerEdge server storage.…

Plans to open source app, server-side code-fixing tool Facebook may have to hire people to police the content coursing through its social network, but software looks to be sufficient to hunt down bugs in its mobile app code.…

GAO report on tribal land may open up rigged system A report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has confirmed what others have reported for years: that official data on internet access across the country greatly over estimates availability and competition.…

Bloke copped to $25m spear-phishing shenanigans A Nigerian scumbag will be spending the next five years in an American clink after pleading guilty to operating an email phishing scam targeting businesses around the world.…

Campaign to rid programming of hurtful words finds a sequel in noSQL database project The open-source Redis database, like the Python programming language, is moving away from using the technical terms "master" and "slave" in its documentation and API – to the extent that's possible without breaking things.…

Famous seven dirty little words allowed in .us addresses NSFW The US government has conceded that you can indeed fuck Nazis on the internet.…

Potty pay-offs earn Dodd a year and eight months in slammer The former head of IT for the US city of Detroit will spend the next 20 months behind bars for taking bribes while he was in office.…

Just wait till 400Gbps Ethernet boxen start shifting... Juniper Networks' chief beancounter has told world+dog that he has a cunning "strategic" plan that explains precisely why both revenues and profits have been slipping downwards at the US networking kit firm.…

Why don't I feel terribly reassured? Seaside selfies from Spain may be a thing of the past if the UK waves buh-bye to Brussels without a Brexit deal.…

Fancies slipping automated marketing software biz into its portfolio Adobe, the developer of software clouds for creative types, is reportedly locked in talks to buy marketing software-as-a-service slinger Marketo.…

Reports of $2m kickback for deal with water ministry SAP faces further investigations as part of the corruption scandal that has tainted its South African operation, amid reports of a $2m kickback paid for a state contract with the firm.…

Setting up joint-venture to sell into Middle Kingdom NetApp has cut an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) deal with Lenovo, and nabbed itself a new, ready-made global channel.…

Data adequacy won't be assessed till after departure The UK government has told companies to start drawing up standard contractural clauses for data transfers in case of a no-deal Brexit.…

Devs left bored to Tiers while Entity Framework flies out into the Cosmos Microsoft flung out updates to more of its development tech last night. It's almost as though there's a big conference coming up.…

No, sir, we didn't spill beer on the laptop, sir! The US government has provided an online training course on insider threats.…

Oversight insufficient, slurping indiscriminate The UK government breached human rights rules by failing to ensure proper oversight of its mass surveillance programmes, according to the European Court of Human Rights.…

Public sector money crew wants a head of networks just in time for Brexit HM Revenue and Customs is hiring a head of networks, for those who fancy a real pre-Brexit IT challenge.…

Join us next month at MCubed Events Even if news coverage of machine learning and AI leaves you wondering whether to laugh or cry, you know these technologies are going to profoundly change your organisation as either you adopt them or your partners and rivals do.…

Insider builds sometimes just don't work. Who knew? Windows Insiders eager to get their hands on next year's Microsoft OS were reminded last night that living on the bleeding edge can have its downsides, as the update consumed RAM at a prodigious rate for some before falling over.…

Love it or hate it, you can opt out at any time – but, y'know, we really hope you like it Today's the day we flip the switch, and make our new homepage design live – with an opt-out for those still unsure of the layout.…

Apple kills SE, sends top tier to £1,500 Analysis So. The £1,000 iPhone X was not an aberration – Apple wants it to be the new normal. A grand is the new "mid-range".…

Tune in to our webinar to head off the risks Webcast The future of DevOps is all about speeding up software development and deployment, aided by cloud-based infrastructure, RESTful APIs and open-source software.…

I/O, I/O, it's off to to work we go Despite being a “mainly Mac” person for a long time, I’ve used a Thinkpad X series for writing for 15 years now - and the device has played different roles over the years. At one time, it was the only genuine portable I’d trust on a trip.…

Buys IP inc website and trademark of gadget souk Exclusive Irascible Dragons’ Den celebrity tycoon Peter Jones has scooped up the Maplin Electronics trading name, The Reg can reveal.…

Startup upstarts shake yet more cash from investor tree Container software startup Sysdig has followed up its new CEO hire with a $68.5m D-round of funding, taking total cash raised to $121.5m - it is one of a trio of emerging tech outfits to this week agree cash injections.…

What's in your wallet? Definitely not a password manager Capital One is facing criticism for using policies on its banking website that prevent the use of password managers.…

I won't be back Say what you like about Brussels bureaucrats, they are fearless when it comes to preventing the extinction of the human race by killer robots.…

Software maker and allies demand regulatory strike on behavioral advertising Privacy-focused browser maker Brave has filed complaints with British and Irish data protection authorities seeking an end to the online sharing of protected data by advertising firms like Google.…

Is it a hashtag? Is it a web address? Is it art? You gotta draw a line somewhere Pics Scientists have discovered, tucked inside a cave in South Africa, the oldest drawing yet, made around 73,000 years ago. And it looks suspiciously like a worldwide web address.…

Sure, go ahead, take our jobs – oooh, we're really scared Dealing with chatbots and virtual assistants can be so frustrating that it’s normal for humans to start getting snarky.…

iPhone XS, XS Max and XR coming soon, and Apple Watch gets a major update Apple on Wednesday held its annual mobile device pageant at its Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino to acquaint the fascinated with its latest fondleslabs, phones and wrist wraps.…

Feedify's whack-a-mole with MageCart malware miscreants A Javascript library hosted by Feedify and used by e-commerce websites globally has been repeatedly infected this week to potentially siphon off countless victims' bank card details to crooks.…

As the licensing terms change, your 'purchase' can vanish Remember when you decided to buy, rather than rent, that movie online? We have some bad news for you – you didn't.…

Computers nerfed with naff packets during Scottish college's Freshers week The University of Edinburgh has gone offline from what appears to be a massive distributed denial-of-service attack on the campus network.…

Quelle surprise, they also know digital skills are important but don't run training programmes... Government digital initiatives are limping behind other industries – and the public sector is more likely to outsource for help, according to analyst firm Gartner.…