The Register

Watson? Down! WebSphere? Down! VMs? Now charged by the minute! IBM has cut the price of cloud services three times in a week.…

Plan could reduce the number of central server operators Internet overseer ICANN is considering a self-managed governance model for the world's Domain Name System root servers – and one of the outcomes could be a reduction in the number of root servers.…

Hurrah! Now we can have a security panic about a violent game instead of a moral panic! Free third-person slaughter-fest Fortnite has attracted over 100 million players but many of them are falling foul to malware attacks as they try to beat other players.…

Alleged perp's apology to watchdog chairman didn't work A Californian man is accused of threatening the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai and his family, over the decision to rescind net neutrality rules in the US.…

Two blokes charged by SEC settle out of court America's financial watchdog, the SEC, has accused two men of illegally banking $1.4m by selling shares in the bafflingly renamed "blockchain" startup UBI Blockchain.…

Doesn't help that its latest phone – the U12+ – basically sucks Smartphone manufacturer HTC will slash almost a quarter of its employees in an effort to become profitable.…

Telco faces shareholder revolt over outgoing CEO's bonus It doesn’t look to be smooth sailing for British Telecom’s outgoing boss, Gavin Patterson, as a recommendation to reject his bonus has arrived in time for the next shareholder meeting.…

You wouldn't think so Once thought to be one of the most contagious design features on a smartphone, the spread of the "Notch" appears to have been contained.…

Nation mourns stop motion classics hero Peter Firmin, co-creator of The Clangers, has died aged 89. Firmin also designed the puppet Basil Brush and Bagpuss.…

Traffic-fiddling malware may have met its match Clean-up efforts to respond to the VPNFilter malware have accelerated with the release of a free check-up tool.…

Five-year private ownership period to end in Q4, according to paperwork sent to the SEC Dell Technologies Inc is proposing to become a publicly traded corporation again, according to a filing lodged with America's financial regulator the SEC this morning.…

Cloud support busters? If you can find a human at the end of a number A sysadmin given just three days to respond to the threatened deletion of a mission-critical system has prompted a vigorous debate about the quality of cloud support.…

Hopes to slow plummet by flinging off, er, profitable bits SUSE, a 25-year veteran of the Linux world, has been acquired by private equity outfit EQT after less than four years in the hands of former owner Micro Focus.…

Lakes of data, buckets of quantum. IntelliMouse?! It's 7 days in Seattle Seven days is a long time in the Microsoft world, although possibly not long enough to complete an April 2018 Update of Windows 10. This week brought both good and bad news from the bowels of Redmond.…

... platter baby, round round The spinning rust of storage whirls the players around again and again – even the flashy and cloudy sorts who supply kit with no moving parts. When it comes to some of this industry's variables – supply, demand, partnerships and advances in tech – events dear boy, events happen.…

Folk stung for Nominet fees, biz promises to cover the costs UK domain registrar Namecheap has admitted that some customers have been unable transfer or register domains, but passed the buck to its supplier Enom.…

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ support arrives in Alpine 3.8.0 and Raspbian gets an update for newbies Owners of dimunitive Raspberry Pi computers rejoice! Alpine has emitted version 3.8.0 of its super light Linux distribution, with some special attention given to the latest iteration of the hardware.…

So what did our reader turn off? And what was it running? Oh dear … Who, me? Hello? Anyone there? We understand that plenty of you in the northern hemisphere might not bother this week. For those of you who are still working, welcome to another instalment of “Who, me?”, The Register’s confessional column in which readers reveal their worst mistakes.…

Ancient protocol's key vulnerability is fixable Among the many problems that exist in the venerable Network Time Protocol is its vulnerability to timing attacks: turning servers into time-travellers can play all kinds of havoc with important systems.…

Some new directors have ties to Chinese elite, government Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor ZTE last week complied with US President Donald Trump's demand that it appoint a new board.…

UCS and HyperFlex owners at risk of outages thanks to faulty firmware Cisco’s issued a Field Notice warning that its USC servers and hyperconverged HyperFlex kit could be brought low by disk drive firmware.…

By swallowing VMware tracking stock, but seemingly not VMware itself Dell is about to reveal a plan to go public again, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Wall Street Journal.…

Casualties include posh food store Fortnum & Mason, Australian voter data Spanish Web form and survey company Typeform has announced a data breach dating back to May, when someone gained access to one of the company's backup files.…

White boxes bash Cisco, Android peer-to-peer speeds up and more net news Roundup Did you ever wish you had a half-a-gigabit-per-second connection you could fire up anytime, at zero cost? You can, it turns out – but only between paired Android phones.…

Including DeepMind code, and Donald Duck's robo-cousin Roundup Welcome to this week's AI roundup – a mix of news and links beyond what we've already published this week.…

And NSA can't stop slurping your phone records Roundup This week we dealt with buggered bookies, trouble at Ticketmaster, and a compromised Linux build from Gentoo.…

Giant grinning cartoon-like Tamagotchi thing built by Airbus, IBM blasts up into orbit The International Space Station will get its first AI-powered friend-droid by next week, after it was bundled into a Dragon capsule and launched into orbit aboard a Space X Falcon Rocket on Friday.…

Scumbag combusts his own leg with instant karma creepshot fail A pervert in Wisconsin, USA, surrendered himself to the cops after a plan to secretly take photos under women's skirts blew up in his face, er, ankle.…

Right to view, delete personal info is here – and you'll be amazed to hear why the privacy law passed so fast Analysis California has become the first state in the US to pass a data privacy law – with governor Jerry Brown signing the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 into law on Thursday.…

Infosec wizards show how spies can snoop on website traffic, redirect browsers over 4G Boffins have demonstrated how intelligence agencies and well-resourced hackers can potentially spy on people – by studying and meddling with mobile data flying over the airwaves.…

You will obey! You will obey! You will obey! You will obey! Nine tenths of us pathetic meatbags are just itching for a benevolent AI to take charge of our affairs and make all the big decisions.…

Follows Google with in-place hardware upgrade – kinda Older readers may recall an era where large computer firms shipped their systems with next year's upgrades already in place. In exchange for a large sum of money, a service technician would come round, open the box, and flick a switch.…

UN privacy expert: Britain no longer a privacy joke, but has more to do The UK's surveillance regime is no longer "worse than scary" – but there are still a number of imperfections, the UN special rapporteur on the right to privacy has said.…

Telefónica's hippy wing promises credit drain refunds Telefónica's self-service mobile operator Giffgaff has said it will refund users after a billing cock-up.…

OK, that's an interesting strategy +Comment Western Digital has pushed out JBOD, primary and secondary object arrays, putting it into direct competition with its storage array supplier customers.…

China star asked for a muckle, got a mickle. Will it be enough? Xiaomi, the hugely hyped Chinese tech company, raised less money than it wanted in a private placement this week – the biggest Middle Kingdom IPO since Alibaba in 2014.…

Analytics firm aims to raise $193m on Nasdaq Data analytics biz Domo is to go public today with the aim of raising just under $200m, which if realised would value the company at less than a quarter of estimates in previous funding rounds.…

Currency fluctuation and rising component costs fingered If there is something missing on this sunny Friday, it could well be a collective yearning among Reg readers to know how HP Ink Inc is faring in the UK. Fear not, for we have the latest financials.…

Consumers attempt to block chip flinger's attempt to block sale of devices without their kit Consumers have come to the rescue of plucky little Apple in its ongoing stand-off with Qualcomm over patent infringements.…

Three stripes and you're out Adidas warned late on Thursday that hackers may have lifted customer data from its US website.…

Surgical investment pays off for performance in three UK cities Vodafone earned a fine for its rotten customer service, but it can now claim bragging rights as the best data network in three cities, as well as the lowest overall latency and ping rates on 4G.…

MPs: Fraudsters still damaging public purse and businesses The UK taxman has been told to crack down on online traders that aren't paying their fair share of VAT when they sell on sites like Amazon and eBay.…

DeepMind's 'Demis Hassabis is an individual' – Ministry of Fun Google is not advising the British government on AI, the Ministry of Fun assured this week, following the appointment of Google's Demis Hassabis as an advisor on AI.…

Standing on a dusty highway, waving my nozzle in the breeze Something for the Weekend, Sir? Mi dispiace, non parlo italiano.…

Tell us, what should the source shack be called post-Redmondisation? Poll In all the furore around the acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft, no one has asked the obvious question: what should the service be called after its Redmondisation?…

Um, which hardware would that be, then? Analysis The EU has declared its intention to build exascale computing capability "on mainly European hardware".…

The cybercriminal's cash cow and the marketer's machine Special report Digital ad fraud is potentially lucrative, difficult to detect, and getting worse.…

If someone asks you why you’re working in a secure area, get your answer straight! On-Call Welcome once more to On-Call, The Register’s Friday foolishness in which readers recount tales of tech support jobs that went pear-shaped.…

Angry, irascible, but oh so talented New Wave author Obit Harlan Ellison, the legendary science fiction author who kickstarted the 1970s "New Wave" of science fiction has died in his sleep at the age of 84 at his home in Los Angeles.…

Blood-scanning radar could be built into a smartwatch AI may help people with diabetes monitor their blood sugar levels without puncturing their own skin, according to a research from the University of Waterloo.…