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GPU powerhouse reportedly throws down $7bn for networker Ethernet and InfiniBand networker Mellanox has reportedly received a $7bn acquisition bid from GPU powerhouse Nvidia.…

Industry and free software folk alike condemn proposals EU plans to ban the sale of user-moddable radio frequency devices – like phones and routers – have provoked widespread condemnation from across the political bloc.…

Businesses slow to detect, report data leaks pre-GDPR Businesses waited an average of three weeks after discovering a data breach to report it to the watchdog before GDPR came into force, with many waiting until the end of week to 'fess up.…

Techie's 'oops' moment goes unnoticed due to massive bills Who, Me? Our warmest of wishes to you all on this fine Monday. Let us provide you with some of El Reg’s finest word sustenance, with this week’s Who, Me?…

BS as in 'behavior sequenced', or 'bland speech'... If you were terrified by the news that "Elon Musk-backed scientists created an AI text generator that was too dangerous to release" then here’s something that may soothe your fears.…

Boffins find pros-for-hire no better at writing secure code than compsci beginners Freelance developers hired to implement password-based security systems do so about as effectively as computer science students, which is to say not very well at all.…

...and AI worker quits over killer robot plans Roundup Hello, here's a quick recap on all the latest AI-related news beyond what we've already reported this week.…

And they may be injected into your body one day Video Millions of tiny moving robots, each as small as the width of an average human hair, can be crafted from a four-inch silicon wafer, according to new research.…

Tired: Booth babes. Wired: Floof babes. Expired: Conference hall carpets Roundup This week we had an NSA reverse-engineering toolkit released at the RSA Conference, a buffer bashed aboard British Airways, big trouble brewing for Citrix, plus much more.…

Sum of a ditch! Bloke demands $75,000 after road prang Installing broadband fiber is a complex and expensive activity, though it may have got a little bit more so, for Google at least, following a lawsuit in America.…

Another quango? Really? 'It's deliberately not that,' says Lord The world's tech titans have been warned that none are too big nor too international to be regulated on UK soil – though, Blighty's government must stop taking a piecemeal approach and ensure existing laws are effectively enforced.…

'They’ve bulldozed rivals, used our private info for profit' ... yes, yes, but could she actually tackle giants as prez? Analysis US presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has vowed that if elected she would break up Amazon, Google, and Facebook, accusing the internet giants of abusing their market power.…

'This is a gigantic amalgamation of data all in one place' expert tells El Reg An unprotected MongoDB database belonging to a marketing tech company exposed up to 809 million email addresses, phone numbers, business leads, and bits of personal information to the public internet, it emerged yesterday.…

Remote-desktop giant 'among more than 200 govt agencies, oil, gas, tech corps' hit by gang Updated Citrix today warned its customers that foreign hackers romped through its internal company network and stole corporate secrets.…

3D glasses required... or you can try squinting at the screen The New Horizons scientists have released a fresh 3D image of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 – also known as Ultima Thule.…

Canonical will keep Trusty Tahr fixes flowing... for a fee Canonical has made good on its promise to keep on patching the venerable 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) version of the Ubuntu operating system as it emitted updated installation media.…

Latest storage tracker's out The latest quarterly storage systems tracker from industry analyst IDC revealed that hyperconverged uptake did not dent SAN and filer sales, although overall revenue for the sector saw a decent uptick.…

And you don't need to know what we're spending your billions on. Got that? The British government has rejected Parliamentary calls for greater ministerial control over the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), an arm of secretive spy agency GCHQ.…

...As NetApp is all too happy to explain Sponsored AI is perhaps more important to the financial services sector than any other. As an industry built on data, where the right information at the right time can potentially make or lose millions, any extra analytical edge that a bank, insurance or investment company can gain is highly valuable.…

Cuddly Earth to stay in orbit. For now. SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft safely returned to the Earth today, dropping into the Atlantic Ocean following a successful mission to the International Space Station (ISS).…

Microsoft now only 200 million short of that tricky first billion Microsoft has confirmed that the company is still quite some way shy of its first billion Windows 10 users.…

Outage hits websites, apps, international payments French bank BNP Paribas's systems have been down for more than 24 hours in its home nation, with customers complaining they can't transfer money or access the website or app.…

Vulnerable kit can immobilise motors and even unlock doors Researchers have discovered that "smart" alarms can allow thieves to remotely kill your engine at speed, unlock car doors and even tamper with cruise control speed.…

Hello? Is this thing on? Good news, everyone! Now you can shout "Hello? Can you hear me?" at Skype on the web just as if you were using the app.…

Building to nowhere Analysis The UK's four big mobile network operators dropped in on Whitehall yesterday to plead their case for taller masts and other policy tweaks. With the public thirsting for better data, but derailing attempts to improve it, they're treading a delicate line.…

Stern words to sites that deny access if users reject trackers Take-it-or-leave-it cookie walls don't comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, the Dutch data protection authority has said.…

Researcher's stumbling on bug was risky to say the least A cybersecurity professor has insisted he was not hunting for a vulnerability when he found a denial-of-service bug on an in-flight entertainment screen during a long-haul flight. His findings could affect a number of airliners running Thales-made equipment.…

Ah, nice move, Big Red – but what's the plan for next year? Oracle's UK tentacle has reported a 103 per cent increase in revenues after making tweaks to its financial reporting – a much needed boost following a slump in the previous year.…

Confuse those cyber attacks by placing a bucket of water on every floor Something for the Weekend, Sir? It's important – and responsible – to use adequate protection. My own helmet, for example, is wrapped in tin foil.…

Chap does a lot of travel, zero work for penny-pinching customer On Call Gather round, readers, as we have a good root in our On Call mailbag for this week’s tale, fresh from one of your fellow techies.…

Panic, flee, cry – or just update Windows for fsck's sake A new malware strain tapped into GitHub posts and Slack channels to siphon precious data from infected Windows PCs, it is claimed.…

Still looks slim thank to Spanx-like dark matter NASA and the European Space Agency have teamed up to attempt to answer what seems like an impossible question: what is the mass of the Milky Way?…

Wham bam, thank you, MRAM Samsung this week claimed it is mass-producing and commercially shipping embedded magnetic RAM (eMRAM) to replace EEPROM, SRAM, and NAND memories in embedded electronics.…

Now Homeland Security committee sticks the boot in Credit-rating monitor Equifax ignored years of warnings and red flags before it was thoroughly ransacked in 2017 by hackers, who made off with the personal information of roughly 150 million Americans, Brits, and Canadians, according to another congressional probe.…

How agents tracked down half-inched Surface Pro slabtops to eBay store An IT contractor for a US government fraud and abuse watchdog pleaded guilty on Thursday to stealing 16 US government computers.…

Privacy, encryption, vaccines, fake news, er, Messenger themes, uh, emojis? We have obtained a transcript of a secret crisis meeting held last week between top executives at Facebook, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, hammering out a corporate response to the social network's non-stop rollercoaster of scandals. We present it here unedited.…

Democrats launch new legislation that won't pass, but will cause months of argument Analysis Here we go again. As promised, Congressional Democrats introduced legislation that would restore America's net neutrality rules, which were overturned by Ajit Pai's FCC, claiming the proposed law would "save the internet."…

This is the crypto-exchange that said only dead boss could unlock $137m in wallets When Gerald Cotten, CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died late last year, we were told no one at his company knew how to access the offline digital wallets storing his customers' digital dosh.…

Plummeting chip prices are collateral damage from ongoing Intel CPU shortage The cost of DRAM chips has seen its largest decline in nearly eight years, as global prices fell by nearly 30 per cent.…

Plus: Security sandbox escape vuln in 32-bit Windows 7 boxes exploited Updated If Google Chrome is bugging you to update it right now, please stop what you're doing, and get that upgrade.…

Bonzer Arm update SoCs it to 'em Raspberry Pi fans rejoice! Support for another of the diminutive computers has been added to the next version of Linux Kernel, 5.1.…

Makes a nice change from restructuring and layoffs Veritas has said it will buy privately held analytics biz Aptare for an undisclosed amount.…

How to wind up your opponents 101: Refuse to engage The adtech industry was unable to muster even a single speaker to fill a 10-minute slot to discuss the security implications of programmatic advertising at a much-anticipated event yesterday.…

OK, whatever you say China's Meizu has disowned its crowdfunded project to create a button-less and port-less smartphone as a daft publicity stunt.…

At last: a Trump innovation we can all get behind Comment US prez Donald J Trump may not leave a wholesome legacy behind him, but one of POTUS's more useful innovations was showcased yesterday: the revival of the occupational surname.…

Faint hopes of a Visual Studio 2019 treat dashed on the rocks of 'late 2019' A third preview of .NET Core 3 has hit, along with the news that, no, the framework isn't going to feature in the upcoming Visual Studio 2019 until the second half of this year at the earliest.…

Oof. Crop of vulns include remote code execution as root Cisco has published patches for a plethora of problems with its products, including vulns that could trigger denial-of-service conditions – and a sneaky one that "could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges".…

Big Red details 5G plans Vodafone played down 5G expectations as it elaborated on its own 5G plans today - and warned that interference over Huawei by Government would retard the UK’s mobile network leadership.…

Owner finds out the hard way after group of townsfolk decide venue is a 'house of ill repute' To the whimsically Arthurian-named town of Lostwithiel in Cornwall, England, where the owner of a wine bar has found himself defending his biz in the local media against claims that it looks more like a bordello.…

'I want to explain why it was necessary' Java has a problem – the language and platform is evolving faster than ever, but many developers are stuck on the five-year-old Java 8.…