The Register

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.…

45 days of 'WAKE UP' calls to be shouted at teenage rover As skies clear over NASA's stricken Mars Rover, the clock has begun ticking for Opportunity to call home.…

Preview 2 of 15.9 promises speed, stability and new APIs Microsoft has served up a second preview of the next version of its Visual Studio 2017 product with new toys for UWP and C++ devs.…

Department at high risk of failure in case of no deal The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs isn't ready for a no-deal Brexit, and hasn't ensured new IT systems will be capable of dealing with future demand, the UK's spending watchdog has warned.…

Windows 10 preview build app suggestions attract internet's ire Microsoft really wants you to use Edge in the latest Windows Insider builds, and the software giant is not afraid to let you know it.…

Firm helps self with own disaster recovery A misconfigured server at data recovery and backup firm Veeam exposed millions of email addresses.…

Ex-home sec suggests we get a tutorial on clearing cookies Ex-home secretary Amber Rudd has shrugged off years of concerns about ID cards and called for a state-backed system based on NHS numbers – on the grounds that people already hand over masses of info to private firms.…

He's gotta be strong, he's gotta be fast, and he's gotta bring up the website Online accounting outfit Xero, whose website suggests "reliable data" as a reason for using its wares, took some time out today to the distress of its customers.…

Pipe down, Michael Stipe, we want tech's precious rock star We're digging into rare earth minerals with The Register's next Lecture in October.…

Have you ever been told that you're SaaSy? What sector of tech is forecast to grow fatter than the Slovakian economy or Elon Musk’s ego in 2018? The cloud. Global spending on the fluffy white stuff is predicted by mystics at Gartner to reach $175.8bn this year.…

Aberdeen and Peterborough to follow in Vodafone scheme Lucky Milton Keynes. The UK's modernist fantasy town is finally set to reap the fruits of Vodafone's partnership with wholesaler CityFibre, announced last November.…

Big Red's free educational curriculum gets 2018 reboot Not content with foisting buzzwords on customers, Oracle is now pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning at students.…

SMB built in from ChromeOS 70. At its best without passwords. Oops Google’s Chrome OS tanks crept a little further along Microsoft’s manicured Enterprise lawns with hints that Windows file share support will arrive out-of-the-box in an upcoming version of Chrome OS.…

Learn the ins and outs of the latest scams and cons Promo Worried about today’s IT dangers and how they will affect your organisation? Cybersecurity firm Sophos is inviting IT professionals to a free “See the Future” event in London on Tuesday, 9 October.…

Researchers able to clone fob and nick motor in seconds Boffins have sprung the bonnet on the weak crypto behind the keyless entry system in Tesla's Model S car.…

It's all about YouTube Special Report Today's vote on Article 13 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market in European Parliament has turned into a knife-edge referendum on whether European institutions can deal with Californian exceptionalism.…

Why aren't more people lining up to fight with a mouse, keyboard and gun? Parliament’s influential Public Accounts (PAC) Committee reckons UK Armed Forces need to recruit more digitally able folk to halt a widening skills gap, warning the military does not have a "coherent plan" to do so.…

Suddenly, corps in a rush to fess up to e-break-ins Analysis If Equifax's mother-of-all-security-disasters last year underlined one thing, it was that big companies think they can weather just about anything cybercriminals – and regulators – can throw at them.…

Nerd out over bizarre ultrasonic fluid dynamics Video Fluid dynamics is weird. Physicists have reverse engineered the popping of a bubble and managed to keep it levitated just by using the power of sound.…

You had one job, Precision 40 Have you noticed that your big expensive Cisco TelePresence unit seems like it needs a pair of glasses? You're not alone.…

Thou shalt not use sync speeds instead of throughput speeds, decrees Brit watchdog Vodafone was today slapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for quoting router sync speeds instead of throughput speeds in its advertising following a complaint from rival BT.…

Game dev platform looks to expand its virtual horizons Unity Technologies on Monday released version 0.5 of its ML-Agents toolkit to make its Unity 3D game development platform better suited for developing and training autonomous agent code via machine learning.…

Monopoly or competition? Guess which one is winning A group of 17 consumer and civil rights groups have launched a new coalition aimed at countering efforts by Big Cable to siphon off funds for rural broadband into their already deep pockets.…

Too smart? There's also an old-fashioned image file RCE Admins will again be working overtime as Microsoft and Adobe have posted their monthly scheduled security updates for September.…

Watch John Oliver magically transforming into Stephen Colbert Videos Using AI to make fake videos look as realistic as possible is all the rage at the moment.…

Programming language bites its tongue to be more inclusive Python creator Guido van Rossum retired as "benevolent dictator for life" in July, but like Michael Corleone in The Godfather III, he's been pulled back in to resolve a debate about politically incorrect language.…

Syncing company dumps storage wrangling subscription, infuriates customers Streaming biz Plex has dumped its cloud-based media wrangling service, prompting users to dump its subscription service.…

Vulnerability still open to all despite multiple fixes A privilege escalation flaw in McAfee's True Key software remains open to exploitation despite multiple attempts to patch it.…

Our 5G is bigger and better than theirs, promise Ericsson, Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T It may not exist yet but the mobile phone industry is determined to let everyone knows that when it does, their 5G is going to be the best.…

Chief exec warns Prez Trump's proposed soaring import charges will hit biz, customers Cisco chief exec Chuck Robbins has warned that a US-China trade war over tariffs could lead to price rises for Switchzilla’s networking kit.…

Prosecutors rub their hands with glee British Airways faces a £500m lawsuit over its recent mega-breach that exposed payment card details of 380,000 customers.…

Tune in now to hear from Carbon Black Promo New research from Carbon Black shows that a staggering 92 per cent of UK businesses have been breached in the past year and nearly half of companies have reported falling victim to multiple breaches.…

The Pi has got its HAT on. Hip hip hip... oh dear People are reporting problems with the newly released Power Over Ethernet adaptor for the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, with non-functional USB ports causing much anguished wailing.…

10 million IOPS, half a petabyte, one U – hella fast Analysis Supermicro's latest Samsung ruler-based thin storage server can cough up 10 million IOPS, has a 20GB/sec throughput and 576TB capacity, which is all very well, but its Intel ruler one can provide 13 million IOPS, 52GB/sec and a whole petabyte.…

Skype also does MMS. Your Phone also does photos. Neither talks to iOS Skype demonstrated that it does indeed exist as a separate entity within Microsoft by bringing SMS functionality to its Insiders a week after something similar was flung out to Windows Insiders.…

Out of the frying pan into the... frying pan Hard-pressed outsourcing biz Capita was today selected by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to manage the Gas Safe Register (GSR) for five years, including overseeing the competence of engineers listed.…

Gartner's rollercoaster trundles into exciting world of data management Gartner has turned its annual Hype Cycling gaze upon data management and found that – shock – expectations of Blockchain remain hopelessly inflated.…

Ancient tech – but it isn't so bad Loyal Android Wear users are dismayed that the first new Qualcomm silicon for smartwatches in three years uses ancient technology – and won't offer the gains in performance they were hoping for.…

Airline yet to reveal breach's cause Security experts are debating the cause of the British Airways mega-breach, with external scripts on its payment systems emerging as a prime suspect in the hack.…

UK.gov pats self on back in response to MPs' report on data-driven decision-making The UK government has tentatively accepted calls from MPs to monetise public sector data – but would rather brag about existing efforts to encourage responsible use of algorithms.…

Distro emerges blinking after 8-year hibernation What were you doing in 2010? The Space Shuttles were still flying, Toy Story 3 ruled the cinemas, and Apple released its very first iPad. Oh, and Linux distro Elive locked down its last stable build. Until now.…

Let them eat phish In late August, Microsoft announced a free service that arguably reveals more about the future of the email business and its struggles with security than several years' worth of earnest press releases.…

Who knows if the signals are signs of extaterrestrial activity? AI is helping astronomers spot fast radio bursts, a mysterious class of signal emitted from a new type of object very rarely found in space that boffins are still trying to classify.…

Nvidia waxes lyrical about 5G and GeForce Now leveling the playing field for gamers It's a fact of life for gamers: If you want to be able to compete, you need the best hardware to give you an edge.…

Machine-learning software taught how to pick up things it hasn't seen before Video A trio of researchers have trained a robot that can pick up new objects it hasn’t seen before.…

Egghead says Apple has yet to patch spoofing vulnerability A security researcher has disclosed a flaw that could be used to spoof website addresses in either Edge or Safari.…

Marketing data collection opens potential security nightmare Netgear has irked some security pros by demanding people register accounts before they can use a mobile app to control their Orbi mesh routers.…

Word shifting code shares Silicon Valley male chauvinism Google Translate is used by over 200 million people daily and, according to boffins from Brazil, its AI-powered tongue twisting tends to deliver sexist results.…

Bug allows malicious scripts to run even with protections active Bug broker Zerodium has released word of a flaw in the Tor browser that would potentially allow an attack site to bypass security protections and execute malicious code in the supposedly secure internet system.…