The Register

So much for that grilling The US Senate's commerce committee basically gave executives from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube a back-rub at a hearing on Wednesday morning.…

Your daily dose of digital depression Usenix Enigma It has been nearly seven years since Google introduced two-factor authentication for Gmail accounts, but virtually no one is using it.…

This language is wired for sound Usenix Enigma HTML5 is a boon for unscrupulous web advertising networks, which can use the markup language's features to build up detailed fingerprints of individual netizens without their knowledge or consent.…

Bill McDermott admits hub was seen as a 'channel to promote corporate messages' CEO Bill McDermott has pledged to improve the SAP Community network previously slammed by members for offering a crap user experience and being another mechanism to push marketing messages.…

CEO Patrick Dennis has his work cut out Comment There's a new president and CEO at Quantum, with the board hoping for a dose of Patrick Dennis magic to fire up the company and return it to growth and profits.…

CEO, CFO in crosshairs after shareholder 'losses' AMD stands accused of "artificially inflating" its stock price by not making public a CPU design flaw the tech world now knows as Spectre, according to a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of investors.…

Prez Macron expected to agree loan when he meets PM The French government will agree to lend the UK its most famous memento of the Norman conquest of England after Blighty leaves the EU.…

Customer details spilled to boyfriend A former Santander bank manager has pleaded guilty to £15,000 worth of computer misuse crimes after her boyfriend talked her into giving him illicitly obtained customer information.…

Flouts doctors' guidelines, doesn't properly balance public interests, MPs told The UK health service's NHS Digital has been accused of operating to a "lower standard of confidentiality" than rest of NHS, in a heated hearing about a deal that requires patient info to be handed over for immigration enforcement.…

Blogger records 7-8% toll on read IOPS The widely used ZFS file system software is slowed down in both read IOPS and throughput by Intel CPU microcode fixes for the Spectre processor design flaws, one set of numbers suggests.…

Firm slapped for 'blatantly ignoring telemarketing laws' A company that made 75 million nuisance calls in just four months has been handed a £350,000 fine from the UK's data protection watchdog.…

UK telcos continue appeal to lower spectrum cap UK comms regulator Ofcom is cracking ahead with plans for the forthcoming spectrum auction - despite further delays posed by Three's Court of Appeal challenge.…

Software-centric business model to reach disruptive industry price point Kaminario has announced it will leave the hardware business, and said Tech Data will build the certified appliance hardware needed to run its software.…

More people have skillz, but not in fields that need them The UK government's "muddled" attempt to boost skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) risks wasting taxpayers' money, according to a report by the National Audit Office today.…

NVMe over Fabrics shows its razor sharp performance teeth NVMe-over-Fabrics fanboy startup E8 has whupped other suppliers' behinds with a SPEC SFS2014 filer benchmark.…

Does it run in VMs, containers, systems running external code? Just. Patch. It Analysis A growing consensus among storage hardware appliance vendors is that, since they don't run external software on their hardware, they don't need to stick performance-hindering patches into their operating systems.…

Turns out they are a top target for phishers Usenix Enigma Gig economy workers – the fancy new way to describe short-term freelance serfs like Uber drivers and Deliveroo riders – are well in the sights of hackers.…

The fight for our public space Special Report Behind the mostly fake "battle" about driverless cars (conventional versus autonomous is the one that captures all the headlines), there are several much more important scraps. One is over the future of the city: will a city be built around machines or people? How much will pedestrians have to sacrifice for the driverless car to succeed?…

With built-in web servers. Yup, you read that right Heathrow Airport is to get new air traffic control radio systems with a surprising amount of internet connectivity baked into them.…

Carillion scandal part of a long tradition of big supplier addiction The scandal around Carillion has put the UK government's addiction to outsourcing in the spotlight. Yet it is a practice that has been going on for many decades - not least in public sector IT.…

Also, don't get the BOFH to publicly smack them with a LART Usenix Enigma It's frustrating getting users to keep information and systems secure on a daily basis. However, don't try any smart gimmicks – particularly offering wedges of cash or other prizes for good behavior.…

Version 6.4 brings the NSX GUI to the vSphere client VMware’s made no secret of its ambitions for its NSX network virtualization product, which it thinks has the potential to be bigger than server virtualization as organisations start to spread resources out across multiple clouds and on-premises bit barn.…

More than 500,000 users stung A security researcher has claimed that half a million Chrome users have been hit by four malicious browser extensions pushing click and SEO fraud.…

Multiplexing-over-UDP idea has hit the standards track, but is mostly ignored Google's contribution to Internet standards, the fast-than-TCP thanks to multiplexing QUIC protocol, has yet to extend much beyond the Chocolate Factory, according to a German report into its adoption.…

Brings in designers to apply a new coat of UI before world thinks it looks too shabby to run Now that the open source email client Thunderbird is sleeping in a separate bed from Mozilla, the project has called on outside help for a UI redesign.…

Good news – assuming software-defined storage is still viable after Meltdown/Spectre Microsoft’s released a new Windows Server Insider Preview Build – number 17074, to be precise – and the most notable new bits are in the Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) software-defined storage code.…

South America, Europe and Asia get pipes, DCs for Finland, Honkers and Hollywood Google has made more investments in submarine cables, sinking money into three due to come online in 2019.…

Nice tech, but shame on Microsoft, Alibaba's spinners Analysis Researchers from Microsoft and Chinese cyber-souk Alibaba separately claimed this week that their artificially intelligent software is as good as, if not better than, humans at understanding the written word.…

No active exploits, but crashes are happening in the wild Back in 2000, a bug crept into the Internet Systems Corporation's BIND server, and it lay unnoticed until now.…

Attorneys General go to court to rescue internet protections Twenty-two US State Attorneys General filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to undo the Federal Communications Commission's rejection of net neutrality in America.…

Nobody gets 100 Mbps, so nobody buys 100 Mbps, so nobody needs 100 Mbps. QED Australia's federal government yesterday tabled its response to recommendations put by the parliamentary committee on the National Broadband Network, and has mostly rejected its recommendations.…

Medics say they couldn't wait for backups to be pulled as ransomware ransacked kit A US hospital paid extortionists roughly $60,000 to end a ransomware outbreak that forced staff to use pencil-and-paper records.…

Big Red finally delivers patches for its x86 boxes – and 230-plus other problems Oracle has told users of its SPARC-powered platforms that they have the Spectre processor bug.…

Who's up for warrantless surveillance? Updated A number of US senators from both sides of the aisle have said they will filibuster an effort to approve the continuation of a controversial American government spying program.…

This is a work of fiction, says engineer's lawyer The engineer at the center of a massive self-driving car lawsuit – brought by Google-stablemate Waymo against Uber – neglects his kids, is wildly disorganized, and has a large selection of bondage gear, his former nanny has sensationally alleged.…

Micro patch rejuvenates abandoned Office add-on Microsoft Equation Editor was sentenced to death on January 9, 2018 at the age of 17, when a software update from Redmond removed five files necessary for the application to function.…

Sophisticated nasty also able to listen in based on location Mobile malware strain Skygofree may be the most advanced Android-infecting nasties ever, antivirus-flinger Kaspersky Lab has warned.…

Peter Madsen ruled fit to stand trial, but denies allegation Danish submariner Peter Madsen has today been charged with the murder of journalist Kim Wall.…

But don't worry, it got €4m budget boost this year The Irish Data Protection Commissioner has forked out almost €2m in the long legal battle involving Facebook and privacy activist Max Schrems, according to reports.…

UK govt's air prang watchdog publishes first UAV incident of the year A pilot flying a 3D Robotics Solo drone let his autonomous aircraft fly itself into a crane that some inconsiderate person erected on a building site.…

Man from Pru tears up £722m deal five years ahead of time Financial services slinger Prudential is to kick Capita to the curb, cutting short a 15-year mega deal and switching the administration of its life and pension policies to Tata Consultancy Services.…

ICO to investigate allegations of driver delivering side order of creepy A customer of takeaway delivery firm Just Eat has alleged a driver from an eatery used her phone number to ask her for a date.…

Geddit? Analysis Xiaomi's rush to go public is as much a sign of a speculative bubble as Bitcoin mania. Will it have a happy ending?…

Staff got until 26 January to load bullets on employment gun DXC Technologies' employees still reluctant to upload their "skill profile" onto a company database they fear will be used in the next big redundancy rounds yesterday got a ticking off from top brass.…

'I could very well have been bitten in a sensitive place, if you know what I mean' A lucky Frenchman has narrowly avoided having his todger bitten by a python that crawled up his U-bend.…

Researchers: Code designed to hit Linux devices A new variant of the notorious Mirai malware is exploiting kit with ARC processors.…

Wow, this is incredib- BLEEUUURGHGHGH Put on a virtual reality headset and it's hard to believe that your visual system is being stretched beyond its limit. Individual pixels are still visible and the narrow field of view makes it feel like you're wearing ski googles.…

Reg readers point the finger at ambiguous requirements Research "Agile development" can mean different things to different people. To some it's about easing up on traditional rigour, and even legitimising a quick-and-dirty approach to getting stuff out of the door. To others it's about implementing a different kind of rigour, in order to bust project backlogs in a more robust manner, and generally keep up with constantly changing business demands.…

Gartner predicts buyers ready to splash 4.5% more cash globally in 2018 Listless IT spend in Europe is dragging down the pace of global recovery, according to the latest prediction from entrail-prodders Gartner.…

DRS still letting the armed forces down big time A defence minister has told Parliament that Capita’s pisspoor Defence Recruiting System (DRS) has “glitches”, following reports from The Register giving a glimpse inside the shambolic system.…