The Register

April Fools' Day deadline set HP Inc has terminated a mobile data service that bundled free data with select laptops, tablets and 2-in-1s.…

Social networks have too much power, says web daddy, and their profit motive means they won't act for the good of all Sir Timothy Berners-Lee has used the 29th anniversary of the publication of his proposal for an "information management" system that became the world-wide web to warn his creation is in peril.…

The right to be forgiven will soon be more important than the right to be forgotten A colleague recently excused himself from a meeting because he had to go and judge a robotics contest.…

Don't ask your staff to write scripts at beer O'clock on Friday afternoon Who, me? Welcome to the eighth edition of "Who, me?", the column in which Reg readers confess to moments at which they messed things up but good.…

Attacks tapering, as experts argue over 'kill switch' DDoS attacks taking advantage of ill-advised use of memcached have begun to decline, either because sysadmins are securing the process, or because people are using a potentially-troublesome “kill switch”.…

Rather than face a combined BroadQual, Chipzilla may break out the cheque book Intel is reportedly so discomfited by the prospect of a combined Broadcom and Qualcomm that it will consider buying Broadcom to stop the transaction.…

Researchers unmask trade in code-signing certs There's a flourishing trade in illicit code-signing certificates, and even extended validation certificates can be purchased for a few thousand dollars.…

Faster fibre will help networks cope with the Netflix effect Late last week, CableLabs launched another bandwidth-boosting project, this time designed to sweat more gigabits-per-second out of the optical leg of cable networks.…

Batteries suck, chargers suck, monitoring sucks: surely we can do better than this In February, developer and open source software advocate Eric S Raymond ranted that the Uninterruptible Power Supply market was overdue for open source disruption, and touched so many nerves around the world that the rant has become a project.…

Oh, and an amusing story about an AI medical chatbot Roundup Hello, here’s this week’s AI roundup. There is new code to play around with for those interested in machine learning and space, a model that predicts hilarious search trends for sex site YouPorn, and another funny story about an ostensibly intelligent medical chatbot in New Zealand.…

Bad news: It's only a patent filing and may never actually be made An Apple patent application has surfaced that should give hope to frustrated MacBook owners everywhere.…

And rising car thefts suggest the criminals are taking advantage Cars are getting smarter every year but their increasing computational power isn’t being backed up by good IT security practices – hacking them is child’s play.…

Shock revelation: criminals prove to be untrustworthy Paying off a ransomware demand is a great way to end up losing both your money and your files.…

Advanced router code has been in circulation for six years If you’re trying to hack an organization then pwning the sysadmin's machine gives you the keys to the kingdom, and an advanced malware writer has found a clever way to do just that.…

Federal regulator furious to discover untrackable mini-satellites in space The space-disaster movie Gravity – where an escalating wave of space debris wipes out a space station and shuttle – now looks like a slightly more plausible scenario.…

Sandvine insists report is inaccurate and misleading Internet users in Turkey, Egypt and Syria who attempted to download legitimate Windows applications have been redirected to nation-state spyware through deep-packet inspection boxes placed on telecom networks in Turkey and Egypt, according to a report issued Friday by security research group Citizen Lab.…

Finance troll gets seven years for securities fraud Former finance and pharmaceutical exec Martin Shkreli has been ordered to spend the next seven years in prison.…

Promised unveiling later this month could give form to vaporware console The reboot of the classic Atari games console is back on, with prototypes to be displayed at the Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco later this month.…

Rules created in isolation will drive AI makers to operate in areas without restraint European policymakers have asked for help unravelling the "patchwork" of ethical and societal challenges as the use of artificial intelligence increases.…

Continental electric clocks go TITSUP* Electric timekeepers in Europe have been losing minutes due to power frequency deviations arising from a dispute between Serbia and Kosovo.…

Branded vendors made hay while sun shone Gartner's Q4 server sales count has confirmed a shipment boom took place as hyperscalers, cloud buyers and on-premise all dug deep to freshen their infrastructure.…

Better LTE for bumpkins wedged into mobe operators' bids Ofcom has today proposed placing new coverage obligations on mobile operators for 4G services as part of their winning 5G spectrum bids.…

UK.gov gives in, publishes after 2-year legal spat After a two-year legal battle, the UK government's Department for Work and Pensions has capitulated – and released a series of embarrassing assessments of its disastrous Universal Credit programme.…

Fat lot of good an injunction will do against unknown cybercrims British shipping company Clarkson plc has obtained an injunction against hackers who broke into its IT systems, slurped a load of data and then tried to blackmail the business.…

Voulez-vous acheter le hotspot pour le shagging en plein air? The "world's first 100 per cent swingers camping ground" has been put up for sale because "we are tired", its pensioner owners have said.…

Risk of app's vid demo falls under spotlight Exclusive NHS Digital has opened an inquiry after patients' personal information was revealed during a live-streamed research session for a new app.…

Is the industry out of ideas? "Smartphone sales are starting to decline at an accelerating rate," a market analyst has declared. In a pessimistic note, Jeff Johnston of Arthur Wood Research blames feature ennui.…

Transparency doc on spooks data slurping released The Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office, the body tasked with watching UK spooks, has revealed how it will decide whether to approve snooping warrants authorised by government.…

PCI compliance? Yep, we've heard of it too A UK government agency has disputed complaints from security pros that its website involved in the processing of driving licence applications is insecure and otherwise unfit for purpose.…

First it giveth then it taketh away Big-hearted Microsoft has confirmed pending changes that will make it easier for charities to use its cloud services but will hike prices for anyone daring to use its on-premises wares.…

You’ve got a week to grab your CLL18 Earlybird tickets If you want to soak up the knowledge of 40 odd bona fide DevOps, Containers, Serverless and Agile experts - and save a packet - you’ve got a week left to take advantage of our extended early bird offer for Continuous Lifecycle London.…

Dr Frankenstein had it all sewn up, you know Something for the Weekend, Sir? "My pages have come alive!" accused one from my pod of guinea pigs, unfeasibly.…

That'll go down well with full-time Sir Humphreys.. The vast majority of IT contractors believe they should receive employment benefits, such as sick pay and holiday leave, if they are to be classed within the IR35 tax clampdown.…

What's new and what to expect Qcon "How you deploy Java, how you get access to updates and patches is all changing. Although Oracle has told people about this, they haven't been shouting about it," Azul Systems CTO Simon Ritter told attendees at QCon, a developer conference under way in London.…

Gateways to close on May 15th, leaving you almost ten whole weeks to rebuild integrations One of the virtues of cult messaging app Slack was its gateways allowing integration with the venerable IRC and XMPP messaging protocols.…

And the user believed him, too, for a while On-Call Welcome once more to On-Call, our Friday rummage though readers' recollections of tech support jobs that produced odd endings.…

Why, yes, junior, now that Intel's released new models for mainstream PCs Intel's launched new and low-ish end versions of its Optane solid state disks based on 3D XPoint non-volatile memory.…

Which is just-about an admission Win 10 is a mess Microsoft has confirmed Windows 10 S will be a "mode" available in all versions of Windows, and added a prediction it'll be used by a "majority" of users.…

MAC randomisation, indoor location, TLS-by-default and more coming to next 'Droid Poll Google's revealed the stuff it's added to the next version of Android, which for now is known only as "P" while the world waits for it to earn a confectionery-related name.…

Chalk one up for the infosec nerds: Arbor founder takes top uni post Carnegie Mellon University has named computer science professor and Arbor Networks founder Farnam Jahanian as its new president.…

Gas giant's atmosphere is not for the faint hearted The stripy bands on Jupiter are made from roaring winds that penetrate deep below its surface and circle round the entire planet.…

Judge double taps class-action complaint against Google's vid emporium Google has had a class-action lawsuit in the US over last year's changes to its AdSense advertising system thrown out of court.…

Missouri attorney general Hawley hopes to tap into ire against Silicon Valley In another sign that anti-tech sentiment is rising in the United States, the Attorney General of Missouri is using his stance against Google as a platform to run for a Senate seat this November.…

EMC on naughty step as 4Q18 revenues slump 11 per cent in a year Dell had a reasonable fourth 2018 quarter in all areas but one – storage. Yes, EMC let the house down with an 11 per cent drop in revenues year-on-year.…

Presumably while singing 'takedowns from Amsterdam' The takedown of the Hansa dark web marketplace, done live on national TV by Dutch police, was possible because officers had been running the site themselves – and on Thursday they detailed how they did it.…

Australia the 'vanguard', perhaps with new smallbiz products to make it sensible Cisco's going to have a crack at direct sales online.…

Haptic feedback controllers promise to put people in touch with virtual worlds At least two crucial ingredients are missing from virtual and augmented reality: revenue and a sense of touch.…

Mormons miffed by mammary missive The Utah State Bar is investigating how a picture of a topless woman appeared in an email sent to all its members earlier this week.…

Right to Repair Act in case your phone becomes atrocious A California lawmaker is pushing a new law that would force electronics makers to allow customers to repair devices themselves.…

New paper explains why we can't handle the truth False news spreads faster and reaches more people than the truth on Twitter and humans are more to blame than bots, according to a paper published in Science on Thursday.…