The Register

Got a few quid and want to launch a lawsuit? Now is a good time Comment Infamous online cesspit Twitter may have unintentionally made itself easier to sue for the things users write on its site, following recently announced changes to its "blue tick" verification system.…

Storage-class memory Nirvana 1.0 could be a 2019 event, says our man Analysis Storage-class memory (SCM), in the shape of Optane, is already here and, with Samsung's Z-SSD, set to become available for use by servers. What does this mean and when will it actually happen?…

Beyond world domination Part Two In Part One we described how, after 10 years, Android was uncannily similar to Windows after 20 years.…

Company badly forked up after promising secure 'stable digital currency equivalent' Bitcoin outfit “Tether” has reported a US$31m BitBuck BitHeist.…

Out-of-shape ‘Oumuamua only looks like a starship, right? It's official: the Asteroid 1I/2017 U1, aka "‘Oumuamua", which screamed through the solar system in October 2017 is an interstellar object. And a very strange one at that.…

RCE? Check. Clear passwords? Check. Interfere with print jobs? Check Sysadmins have been advised to watch for a coming HP printer firmware update that will plug a remote code execution vulnerability (among others) in its MFP-586 and the M553 printers.…

According to these here estimates, anyway Samsung increased its market share in the NAND supply world in the third quarter of the year, analysts reckon. According to TrendForce's latest estimates, the suppliers' overall flash shipments for Q3 2017 looked like this:…

Carrier tries to speed networking innovation with 'Disaggregated Network Operating System' AT&T has launched an audacious attempt to push the networking industry towards software-defined networking and white-box hardware.…

Six billion bucks does the trick, now let's see what kind of kit they build together The rumours were right: Marvell has formally announced it will buy Cavium, for around six billion US dollars, and plans to emerge as an “Infrastructure Solutions Powerhouse”.…

Boffins beware: random samples are therefore useless for research Given that code sharing is a big part of the GitHub mission, it should come at no surprise that the platform stores a lot of duplicated code: 70 per cent, a study has found.…

The problem's still there in Windows 10, so prepare for code re-use attacks A Carnegie-Mellon CERT researcher has discovered the Microsoft broke some use-cases for its Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR), designed to block code-reuse attacks.…

The rest of us just get a 0.04% improvement in EC2 reliability, to a guaranteed 99.99% Amazon Web Services has launched a Secret Region – which we know about because the CIA has endorsed it.…

'We don't care, in fact look at this letter about how little we care. Really. Please look at it' AT&T says it is not worried about the possibility of a US government lawsuit derailing its attempts to acquire Time-Warner.…

Bugs can be exploited to extract info, potentially insert rootkits Intel today admitted its Management Engine (ME), Server Platform Services (SPS), and Trusted Execution Engine (TXE) are vulnerable to multiple worrying security flaws, based on the findings of external security experts.…

Here we go again… Texas Rangers have obtained a search warrant for the contents of a blood-splattered iPhone SE belonging to gunman Devin Kelley who killed 26 people in a murder-suicide at a church.…

Super Cali goes – oh no, wait, this is Colorado Colorado watchdogs today hit Uber subsidiary Rasier with an $8.9m fine for allowing drivers with felony convictions and/or major moving violations to pick up folks using the ride-hailing app.…

Tempest in a teapot scalds FOSS world Special report Two organizations founded to help and support developers of free and open-source software have locked horns in public, betraying a long-running quarrel rumbling mostly behind the scenes.…

Link to fake TSB site canned after we help raise alarm Microsoft has axed a Bing search result advert that masqueraded as a legit online banking website – but was in fact a sophisticated phishing operation.…

Hands up, whose parents are listening in on this class? The German telecoms regulator has banned the sale of children's smartwatches that allow users to secretly listen in on nearby conversations.…

No. 10 promises billions (in a few years), doesn't address Horizon 2020 The government has announced an extra £2.3bn in research and development investment by 2021/22, ahead of the Budget this week.…

Want to consolidate fragmented market Cable giant Liberty Global has inked a deal with MXC Capital, an AIM-listed tech investor, to create a buy-and-build IT services business that sells to UK SMEs.…

DVLA could bring in £15m from fine-wielding corporates The UK government is driving towards a sale of up to 6 million vehicle records to private parking firms, according to a transport lobby group.…

Clueless freelancers and the productivity puzzle Nathan Barley, the insufferable "self-facilitating media node" of Charlie Brooker's TV series, may be a prime culprit for Britain's lack of productivity growth.…

Why bother paying, ask some law-abiding operators The Civil Aviation Authority is threatening already squeezed British commercial drone operators with another licence fee hike from April, piling another 40 per cent onto their costs.…

In 18 months, Switchzilla has established itself in hyperconverged market +Comment After 18 months of selling, some 2,000 customers are travelling along the Cisco HCIA highway.…

This time, the flagship challenger gets it right Review OnePlus has settled into the groove of releasing two flagships a year, and this Christmas-time 5T reiteration may well piss off the fans who bought the OnePlus 5 released in the summer. It's better all round, sports the 6-inch 18:9 OLED that's a genuine flagship display... and it's the same price as before. So £499 buys you some absurd specs: 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and £449 6GB/64GB.…

It’s almost as if it doesn’t have a great track record on patient info and IT projects... The UK government has been advised against a hasty shift of vital data sets from one quango to another as it aims to centralise medical data collection and management.…

Weakens WD position on blocking flash biz sale Beleaguered Toshiba, facing a Tokyo stock exchange deadline, has planned a $5.4bn share issue to avoid a delisting threat.…

'We naturally regret the human error that led to the mistake' For reasons unknown, on Sunday The Independent "live streamed" footage from space that was more than two years old.…

*No, mate. Just no* New model throws spanner in exoplanet debate A new physical model has added more support to the theory that the large exoplanet 55 Cancri e has an Earthlike atmosphere.…

Students allegedly screened for wealth, tendency to give money Twenty-four British universities are being probed by the Information Commissioner's Office after being accused of using their ex-students' data to target those most likely to be extra alma to their mater.…

Who are the RecoverX rivals again? Nice gig +Comment Distributed database protector Datos IO has added fractional backup and recovery so you can restore the data you want faster.…

Look! A pic that's not a metaphor Security researchers have warned that it might be possible to destabilise a container ship by manipulating the vessel stowage plan or "Bay Plan".…

If you take the Apple shaped pill, you'll see things different(ly) Apple fanbois being fanbois, Apple's new iPhone X isn’t "super expensive" but rather "totally worth it". Or, as chief executive Tim Cook styled it, "a value price... for the technology you’re getting".…

Shafting economy, more like... A draft Bill intended to close the loopholes on so-called "gig economy" employment practices has been published today by the the Work and Pensions and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committees.…

'Shape memory alloys' mean tires can roll over sharp objects without permanently deforming NASA has developed chainmail tires with a memory and thinks they'll do the trick for future rovers.…

Open Web Application Security Project updated 'top-ten risks' lands on Monday, but we found a late, late draft The Open Web Application Security Project will on Monday, US time, reveal its annual analysis of web application risks, but The Register has sniffed out the final draft of the report and can report that it has found familiar attacks top its charts, but exotic exploits are on the rise.…

Chipmakers could merge to take on BroadQual, Toshiba says its PCs aren't for sale While you relaxed over the weekend, financiers and execs were busy doing deals, or hosing them down.…

Group Co-founded by City of London Police promises 'no snooping on your requests' The Global Cyber Alliance has given the world a new free Domain Name Service resolver, and advanced it as offering unusually strong security and privacy features.…

Bleichenbacher, the name that always chills cryptographers' blood If you're an F5 BIG-IP sysadmin, get patching: there's a bug in the company's RSA implementation that can give an attacker access to encrypted messages.…

Researchers watch publishers watching you, ignore privacy settings, run over mere HTTP Researchers working on browser fingerprinting found themselves distracted by a much more serious privacy breach: analytical scripts siphoning off masses of user interactions.…

Linux Lord fires up over proposal to secure Linux by shutting down wonky processes Linux overlord Linus Torvalds has offered some very choice words about different approaches security, during a discussion about whitelisting features proposed for version 4.15 of the Linux kernel.…

Regulators happy. Now investors get to see if buying Fibre Channel was a good idea Broadcom has completed its acquisition of Brocade.…

Open/R distributed router software goes open source, with Juniper, Arista aboard Facebook has sent another shiver running up Cisco's spine, by releasing the code it uses for packet routing.…

Custom big data bundles for Australia's Telstra pop up on product death list Vulture South last week spotted an oddity in this Cisco end of sale announcement for “Cisco Select UCS Server Accessories”.…

nbn™ financials, the speed scandal, and 'what millennials like part 1,096' NBN Week Australia's National Broadband Network “speed scandal” was in the news again last week, as nbn™, the company building and operating the network, suggested it should publish its internal speed data to resolve the issue.…

NSF approves plan to keep Puerto Rico facility operational after hurricane trashed it The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has approved a plan to keep the famous Arecibo Observatory running after it was severely damaged by Hurricane Maria.…

Sir Jony's nosey speakers delayed until 2018 Apple will fail to deliver its HomePod internet-connected speakers in time for the Christmas shopping season.…

And this one is… not in favor of snooping on Americans, whoa The battle over a controversial US government spying program has intensified – with a fourth piece of legislation tackling the surveillance introduced to Congress on Friday.…

You've got the authority, big boy, CTIA tells Pai... And such strong arms The stomach-churning love-fest between the American cable industry and FCC Ajit Pai continues apace with Big Cable now pillow talking the federal regulator into how to prevent individual US states forming their own net neutrality protections.…