The Register

Send nudes plz... for the purposes of training this machine-learning software NSFW Artificially intelligent software is used more and more to automatically detect and ban nude images on social networks and similar sites. However, today's algorithms and models aren't perfect at clocking racy snaps, and a lot of content moderation still falls to humans.…

Russia's Fancy Bear crew caught gearing up for mid-terms Microsoft says it has already uncovered evidence of Russian government-backed hacking gangs attempting to interfere in the 2018 US mid-term elections.…

Credential stuffing is rampant – so try not to reuse the same password on every site, eh? Up to 90 per cent of the average online retailer's login traffic is generated by cybercriminals trying their luck with credential stuffing attacks, Shape Security estimated in its latest Credential Spill Report.…

GDPR put a gun to their heads Allowing developers to siphon millions of netizens' personal information didn't work out so well for Facebook, given the Cambridge Analytica affair.…

In detail: The threats facing America's computer networks The US Department of Justice (DOJ) this week released the first report from its Cyber Digital Task Force – which was set up in February to advise the government on strengthening its online defenses.…

Snooping on the built-in cam? Remotely controlling it? Well, that sucks *ba-dum tsh* Vulnerabilities in a range of robot vacuum cleaners allow miscreants to access the gadgets' camera, and remote-control the gizmos.…

It's make-your-mind-up time Comment Two contradictory ideas run through statements by Microsoft executives this week.…

MoneyTaker lives up to its name Hackers stole almost $1m from a Russian bank earlier this month after breaching its network via an outdated router.…

Most of their core apps were already in the cloud anyway Financial software flinger Intuit is binning its biggest data centre and plonking its corporate backends onto AWS – in another win for the public cloud's biggest player.…

He who controls supplies controls... eh, not much Four years ago at the height of smartwatch hype, it was the most desirable mineral in the world. The tech superpowers jostled to obtain supplies of the material, just as the superpowers jostled to secure their nitrate supplies* ahead of the First World War.…

'Limited assurance' that there is no risk to national security A UK government-run oversight board has expressed misgivings about the security of telecoms kit from Chinese firm Huawei.…

That's not my department say, er... Intel, Apple and Dell ♫ Owners of laptops fitted with Intel's Core i9 high-performance processor, including computers made by Apple and Dell, are finding that the machines slow down compared to the pace of older models.…

Fewer desktop versions shifted but industrial devices fly There was a lull after the 3D printer sales storm in 2017 as shipments of personal/desktop boxes declined in the first quarter of this year for the first time, according to distributor stats.…

If you're expecting Tizens, Fires or alt-droids to flower, don't hold your breath Comment The European Commission wants to see a thousand Android forks bloom as the result of its decision yesterday to demand remedies from Google for its anti-competitive conduct on mobile.…

How to get in free – or for cheap – at the Great British Beer Festival Competition The fine people at CAMRA are also fans of The Register, and are giving away both free and half-price tickets for possibly one of the greatest show on Earth: the incredible Great British Beer Festival at Olympia next month.…

Devising complex new passwords is character-building Something for the Weekend, Sir? Try as I might, it won't go in.…

Concerns whether legal system will be fair after reforms UK Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has told HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) that it has "much to learn" as it ploughs on with its ambitious £1.2bn court digitisation project.…

Find out at Mcubed...and save cash now Events If you’re looking for practical advice on what machine learning and AI can do for businesses like yours, you should secure your place at MCubed, our three-day exploration of all of the above, in October.…

Dirty doctor’s dodgy diagnosis defeated. Plus a new chapter for On-Call On-Call Welcome once more to On-Call, in which Register readers share their stories of silly tech support incidents.…

First case of solar suckage Scientists believe they have captured direct evidence of a star feasting on its own planets for the first time.…

Earn $$$s reporting flaws even if you're too busy or bored Do you love Firefox, Linux, and the internet? Are you interested in earning money from the comfort of your own home? Are you OK with a special flavor of Firefox quietly gobbling up memory in a hunt for exploitable security bugs?…

Satya's got sunshine on a cloudy day Microsoft has closed out a massive fiscal 2018 that saw the Redmond giant lay claim to more than $110bn in total revenue.…

Faster than human boffins, and hopefully more reliable Machine learning can help robots perform chemistry experiments faster than fleshy boffins, according to research published in Nature.…

Enterprise is the new green among programming retreats Galvanize – a for-profit tech training biz headquartered in Denver, USA – said today it plans to acquire Hack Reactor, a San Francisco-based code bootcamp provider, for an undisclosed sum.…

Smooth body with a perky top note and a hint of cesium-137 for post-2011 vintages Savants reckon radiation released by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear kerfuffle has made its way into California's wine.…

No one can agree on how it's calculated Analysis What do data durability numbers mean? Azure brags 12 and even 16 nines durability, while Amazon S3, Google Cloud Platform and Backblaze tout 11 nines. What does this mean?…

Moscow's agents used one-time pads, er, two times – ой! Efforts by British boffins to thwart Russian cryptographic cyphers in the 1920s and 1930s have been declassified, providing fascinating insights into an obscure part of the history of code breaking.…

Moscow's agents used one-time pads, er, two times – ой! Efforts by British boffins to thwart Russian cryptographic cyphers in the 1920s and 1930s have been declassified, providing fascinating insights into an obscure part of the history of code breaking.…

Venerable PC maker emits bunch of graphics powerhouses Demonstrating that there is still life in the old dog, HP Inc has ripped the covers off a line-up of workstations aimed squarely at users seeking a lot more oomph from a smaller form-factor.…

We're even short 'moderately specialist' types ... A cross-sector alliance incorporating leading UK organisations has been created in response to government plans to develop a national professional body for cybersecurity.…

Researcher: Well, I think you'll find.... Adobe has attempted to play down the significance of a vulnerability in its internal systems.…

Switchzilla's share price dipped following rumor of direct rivalry Network hardware makers can rest easy: the tech titan that is Amazon Web Services isn't going to be selling switches any time soon, which will likely be music to the ears of current AWS supplier Cisco.…

Sky, TalkTalk and M24Seven all withered in the heat this week As the big red ball in the sky continued to shine on the UK, internet providers decided to have a bit of a lie-down, with Sky, TalkTalk and leased line specialist M24Seven all taking a turn on the sun-lounger.…

Unpaid former staff will get something... eventually Liquidators were today appointed to squeeze Tintri UK for whatever cash they can get out of the fallen business.…

Stop me if you've heard this one before There are rumblings that Azure is having capacity issues once again, with customers in the UK South region reporting problems getting new VMs provisioned.…

Stuck on the ground awaiting a load sheet? Here's why Exclusive The British Airways IT system failure that caused the grounding of flights around the world yesterday was caused by an outage at third-party travel tech supplier Amadeus.…

Phew! Water shortage scare not so, er, scary now it is? The water wells across parts of England* may be running dry but Southern Water has kept the taps running on its long running managed service deal with Capita, extending the contacts initially by five years for £30m.…

Networks the wind beneath Börje Ekholm's wings Ericsson has dodged a loss for the first time in two years, after 18 months under the strict regime imposed by CEO Börje Ekholm, who took the reins at the vendor at the start of 2017.…

Auto-failover for Azure SQL Database when things wobble Microsoft continued its drive to encourage SQL Server customers to move their precious data to its cloudy towers with the announcement that long-term retention and automatic failover had finally hit the big time.…

Earlybird tickets take off in August If you like simplifying your infrastructure, saving money, and beating deadlines, you’ll want to know that you’ve got just one month to save hundreds of pounds on tickets for Serverless Computing London.…

Has loss-making UK arm plumbed its final network? Dimension Data Advanced Infrastructure (DDAI) will not be providing network plumbing to the construction industry again – at least in its current guise – because the business is in administration.…

Says firm's airliners designed with security foremost in mind Airbus's UK infosec chief, Ian Goslin, has said that cyber-attack attribution is a matter for "nation states" – and has questioned whether some critical national infrastructure companies are taking the infosec threat seriously.…

Venerable Linux distro still keeping it clean, after all these years Slackware, the oldest Linux distribution still being maintained, has turned 25 this week, making many an enthusiast wonder where all those years went.…

Leap seconds issue solved, but without segmented smearing Microsoft Windows Server 2019, coming later this year, will include UTC-compliant leap second support, both for added and subtracted time. But there will be no smearing.…

Thousands of researchers sign pledge to not develop lethal AI Hundreds of organisations and thousands of techies, including Elon Musk, Demis Hassabis from Google's DeepMind, and the head of the Chocolate Factory's AI lab Jeff Dean have promised never to support the development of autonomous weapons.…

Brass hats seek more control over technology and research Australia’s research and university communities have united against what they see as Department of Defence overreach: the brass-hats want greater powers to control international collaboration.…

Twenty-five bugs writhing on the netops floor this week Cisco has emitted 25 product security advisories – with four critical bugs flattened in its service provider-oriented Cisco Policy Suite.…

Check your OEMs for patches In case you missed it, Chipzilla has gone public with more patches for the Intel Management Engine.…

Cloud and security big winners in Q2 while Cognitive sags IBM is touting the growth in its "strategic imperatives" business lineup with helping its revenues once again gain over the year-ago quarter.…

Cloud and security big winners in Q2, while Cognitive sags IBM is touting the growth in its 'strategic imperatives' business lineup with helping its revenues once again gain over the year-ago quarter.…