The Register

Satya's on several cloud nines – as in, billions of dollars Microsoft's boss Satya Nadella march into the cloud seems to be paying off for the Windows 10 and Office 365 giant: on Thursday, the biz announced its sales for Q3 2018 jumped 16 per cent.…

Amazon fixes up app security hole affecting always-listening Echo assistants Amazon has shored up a security weakness in its technology to stop apps for Alexa-powered Echo personal assistants from secretly eavesdropping on folks.…

Think Java code-completion on steriods Code boffins at Rice University in Texas have developed a system called Bayou to partially automate the writing of Java code with the help of deep-learning algorithms and training data sampled from GitHub.…

British computer case crafter dies after cancer battle Rick Dickinson, designer of Britain's iconic ZX Spectrum and ZX81 personal computers, has died following a lengthy battle with cancer.…

Gravitational lensing may help NASA kit see some real golden oldies Researchers hope that NASA's budgetary-challenged James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may score some good fortune with a boost from galactic alignment.…

Chinese whispers suggest a big Patch Tuesday download Windows 10 Springwatch is headed for a fourth week, with the troubled update rumoured to have a name and possibly a release date.…

But analysts say ditch your stock as opex set to blow up Edison Research analyst Richard Windsor thinks you should sell Facebook stock – despite the social media octopus posting record numbers.…

Software-defined storage meets single SKU-ery Open-source software house Red Hat has jumped into bed with Supermicro to produce a single system combining its storage software with the server maker's hardware.…

MacBook owners demand recall over cruddy keyboard Mac laptop owners are experiencing frequent failures with the delicate "butterfly switch" keyboards introduced three years ago and included on its "TouchBar" MacBook Pro models two years ago.…

Nordic Nasdaq knocked as deleterious decibels crashed servers It's a bit rich when a fire prevention system designed to protect a data centre kills its servers, but that's what happened when inert gas was injected into a Nasdaq Digiplex bit barn in Sweden.…

And comic book fandom fanned the flames Movie franchises generally follow the law of diminishing returns. Christopher Reeve’s iconic first turn as Superman made $170m more than his second and a positively heroic $500m more than his fourth.…

Small operator starts LTE building following spectrum splurge O2 is enlarging its 4G footprint across Blighty to an extra 1,000 sites, after splurging £205m gobbling up all the available LTE spectrum at Ofcom's recent auction.…

Nice camera, and Android without OEM crapware, though Special Report Much has happened since Google unveiled the Pixel 2 before Christmas, when it was instantly crowned the best cameraphone on the market. Like the magic fairy, Google has activated the phone's previously dormant Visual Core chip, speeding up HDR+ images and machine learning routines.…

Plus: CEO waives overdraft fees to keep customers on side In the midst of its six-day online banking meltdown, which is showing no sign of letting up, TSB has hauled in the systems integration big gun or as it is otherwise known, IBM.…

Plus: Why NVMe over Ethernet can be a, er, ROCE'y road ... Interview NVMe storage networking (NVMe-oF or NVME over fabrics) promises to radically cut the latency of access to external block storage compared to iSCSI and Fibre Channel.…

Zero justification under current or planned data law for actions of Home Office Comment It's probably a given that – with the European Union's GDPR now weeks away – you're sick to the back teeth of hearing, reading and talking about data protection.…

Intel says no Analysis A team of scientists from China have asserted that 3D XPoint is essentially phase-change memory, which manufacturers Intel and Micron have not publicly admitted.…

The gargantuan blob could be creating the largest megastructure in the universe Astronomers have spotted a whopping 14 galaxies on the verge of merging to create what could be the densest and most massive galactic cluster in the universe.…

Taming Things leaky, sneaky, or creepy Princeton boffins have taken a small step towards defending consumer-level IoT users from snooping, with what they call the IoT Inspector project.…

Firmware updates pushed out to up to 400,000 subscribers A security vulnerability has been found in Brit broadband biz Hyperoptic's home routers that exposes tens of thousands of its subscribers to hackers.…

Six Bitcoiners cuffed for electricity heist Chinese media is reporting the seizure of 600 Bitcoin miners in the northern municipality of Tianjin, on the grounds of electricity theft.…

In 53 quadrillion miles, take the next exit right at V354 Cephei The European Space Agency (ESA) has emitted a huge dump of data from its Gaia mission to 3D map the Milky Way.…

How many letters in AMD? Wow, what a coincidence. Same number of quarters of straight sales growth AMD CEO Lisa Su was in ebullient form on Wednesday when her company reported better-than-expected growth in the first quarter of 2018, and forecast a strong year for the chip design firm.…

Let's take a peek at your cosmic Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria Students and eggheads are designing a futuristic spaceship from an empty asteroid shell capable of housing astronaut crews as they slowly move between stars on trips that could last hundreds of years.…

Plus: Xen admins – you need to get patching your patches, too If you're not up-to-date with your Intel CPU Meltdown patches for Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2, get busy with that, because exploit code for Microsoft's own-goal flaw is available.…

Let us pour you some of this CloudSpin juice, upstart says Secondary storage hyperconverger Cohesity has extended its on-premises appliance products range with software now running in AWS and Azure, and able to spin up backed-up VMs direct in the two cloudy places.…

Punters less amused by inbox-clearing glitch A gremlin within the spam filters in Microsoft's Office 365 today caused the cloud-based service to toss all incoming emails into the junk folder.…

Web scrubber accused of ignoring obligation to mitigate misuse of its code Netsweeper, a maker of online-content-filtering software in Canada, has been called out for allowing its tools to aid internet censorship.…

Three-day outage sparked by bungled software rollout for data-center gear A botched network switch firmware update caused school IT systems to fall over in the US state of Washington, it is claimed.…

Alaska and California moving forward, Colorado not so much Efforts to impose net neutrality protections before federal rules are repealed are taking place across the US, but are currently very hit-and-miss as the big ISPs swing lobbying dollars against them.…

Open letter throws heavy shade on social network's research initiative Facebook’s API lock-down will hurt legitimate researchers and damage scrutiny of social networks, a group of boffins have warned.…

Third flaw fix in a month evokes déjà vu After scrambling to patch a critical vulnerability late last month, Drupal is at it again.…

Experts complain of shoddy tech specs and personal attacks Two new encryption algorithms developed by the NSA have been rejected by an international standards body amid accusations of threatening behavior.…

E-waste activist's appeal fails as Redmond scores a win PC reseller Eric Lundgren will spend up to 15 months behind bars after a US Court of Appeals upheld his sentence on charges of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and criminal copyright infringement.…

Redmond unleashes DMCA barrage on ElDewrito team Microsoft has come down hard on ElDewrito, a community-made mod for the cancelled Halo Online, lobbing DMCA takedown notices and sending its legal team to have a "brief conversation" with the modders.…

Eggheads craft skeleton cards to unlock doors in global chains Infosec outfit F-Secure has uncovered security vulnerabilities in a hotel keycard system that can be exploited by miscreants to break into rooms across the globe.…

Web banking still down for half of customers In the latest update from TSB about its continued web wobbles, the British bank has told us that while it knows everything is working, punters might not realise that fact because... internet banking still isn't entirely working.…

Webstresser.org taken down by Europol plod and chums Cops yesterday cuffed IT admins behind the "world’s biggest DDoS marketplace", webstresser.org, Europol confirmed today.…

Are you a hoopy frood? Today, 25 April, marks exactly one month until a truly momentous milestone - but an exclusive El Reg analysis* has revealed that as many as 42 organisations are not yet full of froods.…

As toys fly from prams over post-Brexit access to sat system, UK.gov is reminded: You agreed to this The furore over Britain's potential loss of access to Europe's Galileo satellite system post-Brexit turned up a notch this week – as a report blamed British officials' iffy approach to negotiations.…

Life sentence for inventor who lured journalist aboard crowdfunded vessel The Danish submarine innovator who murdered journalist Kim Wall has been handed a life sentence by a Copenhagen court.…

Users report creaky systems, load balancer errors Embattled bank TSB has claimed its IT systems are now "up and running" – despite many users still reporting they can’t get into their accounts.…

You've got to use your time much more wisely if you want to stay employed Research Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, the fourth industrial revolution – we’re hearing a lot about how technology is going to automate everything and render whole cohorts of fleshy, fallible and inefficient humans surplus to needs.…

But that doesn't mean it's spilling all your beans, data audit finds Chinese drone firm DJI is pushing back against claims it quietly beams user data back to the homeland by releasing the results of an audit it paid for – which found the DJI Go 4 app indeed sends some data to Hong Kong.…

Acquisition for undisclosed sum latest in Big Red's foray into marketing Oracle has bought a UK biz that claims to help firms avoid putting their ads next to dodgy images or content – just as the marketing tech industry faces increased scrutiny and uncertainty.…

Continuous Lifecycle puts real business at heart of the agenda If you’re ever wondered whether traditional companies are at a disadvantage when it comes to exploiting the latest software development and deployment strategies, you should get yourself down to Continuous Lifecycle London in three weeks time.…

Think tank reckons public sector has over 1,000 contracts The British government has received a grilling over its exposure to 1,000 plus Capita contracts, following a pre-tax loss of £515m reported by the outsourcing giant yesterday.…

Gizmo ideal for diagnosing disease in remote areas Researchers have come up with an optical gadget which, when attached to a smartphone, can check samples for 12 infectious diseases at once.…

Spear and LeComber stumbled on the thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display 40 years ago Every time you use a smartphone, glance at your smart watch, fire up a computer, watch TV or endure a PowerPoint presentation, you experience a little bit of Dundee.…

Didn't realise IT was only thing were supposed to refurbish A dastardly duo running IT recycling businesses that pilfered nearly £145,000 in VAT and laundered cash for a gang of fraudsters face years behind bars, HMRC confirmed today.…