The Register

Non-compete legal battle Two file sync 'n' sharers are at war. Google-backed Egnyte is suing Citrix for unfair competition and Citrix is counter-suing Egnyte for unfair trade practices, among other things.…

They were totally just about to tell us everything Previously Google has contracted major brand OEMs to produce Nexus and Pixel phones using fairly standard off-the-shelf parts. But a teardown of Google's pricey new flagship reveals the company's first homegrown system on a chip – and it's currently idle.…

Justice committee backs ePrivacy proposals by narrow majority European legislation that aims to put over-the-top services on a level pegging with their more traditional telecoms counterparts, and gives users more rights over websites tracking them, has been approved by a committee of MEPs.…

Hate code? Love lists? Microsoft's got you covered In a move that will delight factory workers developers everywhere, Microsoft has added more graphical user interface features to Azure Data Factory V2.…

Pushing out the big guns to compete with Samsung – and each other The latest exec hires show the way the wind is blowing at Cohesity, Micron and WDC.…

Can decades-old databases uphold national security? The clunky technology underpinning Blighty's border control leaves the UK in concerning position post-Brexit, a National Audit Office report has found.…

Lightcycle creator on the classic sci-fi film as it turns 35 Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, Aliens, TimeCop, Johnny Mnemonic and Elysium all benefitted from the design magic of Syd Mead.…

OS boffins chat to Reg as part of National Map Reading Week More than a decade ago, boffins at the Ordnance Survey began working on augmented reality. Now consumer mobile tech has caught up and the agency has launched an AR tool for the man on the street and the woman in the hills.…

Call for papers closes today – get your skates on Events We're chuffed, delighted and excited to announce that our first keynote for Continuous Lifecycle will be Agile development pioneer Dr Linda Rising.…

'It's more dramatic than climate change' "Insects are at the bottom of the ecosystem," the lead author of a study into a massive decrease in collected insects told The Reg. Their loss, he added, is "likely to collapse the entire pyramid".…

Transport for Greater Manchester says silly thing in reply to sensible FoI request Updated Transport for Greater Manchester, the northern city's transport authority, has refused to publish its ticket prices on the basis that telling the public how much they have to pay for riding the trams would "prejudice the Metrolink service".…

Insubordination in the face of impossible fads Comment What’s the point of being a developer ? My experience of being one taught me that it isn’t primarily the coding – it’s actually much more important than that.…

Interaction with legacy systems but not all think it's a good idea Using Ethereum's programming language Solidity, a dev has controversially written code for making data authentication signatures with the insecure SHA-1 cryptographic hash function.…

Staff will be folded into January acquisition AppDynamics Creaking hardware dinosaur Cisco is to gobble machine-learning upstart Perspica to beef up its analytical muscle at the performance management AppDynamics division.…

Citizens Advice finds over-65s most likely to be stung Folk with mobiles on Vodafone, EE and Three are being stung by an average £22 per month for staying on their contracts after their handsets have been paid off, according to Citizens Advice.…

Watch the client eat (smallish) steak as you munch on bread roll In the pursuit of ways to further squeeze its overheads, DXC Technologies has issued a fresh directive to the troops by further clipping travel costs and capping client entertainment.…

You've got to admit, Canonical has guts For the first time in recent memory, there are some very big changes in the latest release of Ubuntu: 17.10. And it's not all to do with going, er, GNOME.…

Spend the money on freezing your brain Something for the Weekend, Sir? Flee! Flee! It’s the return of the frozen heads!…

Canuck NSA/GCHQ equivalent open-sources 'Assemblyline', to make us all as safe as Canada Canada's Communications Security Establishment has open-sourced its own malware detection tool.…

It needed an oil change, natch, and the mainframes didn't mind ON-CALL Another week is coming to an end and that means it's time for On-Call, The Register's Friday column in which we share readers' stories of being asked to do the unthinkable to satisfy the incorrigible.…

Also some security stuff, too Microsoft's latest major Windows 10 release prides itself on keeping out those who want to meddle with your code, be they malicious hackers or lazy gamers looking for an easy leg up.…

An attempt was made Google is offering cash to those who can find, exploit and report bugs in its Android apps, or similarly hack other programs in its Play Store.…

Clarifies axe fell only on new applicants, not existing users, after fanatical disappointment Rackspace has ended a program under which it offered “generous discounts on hosting for more than 150 OSS projects and communities”, but flubbed the announcement.…

You may want to resist current plans to discharge a base on the surface Vid Strong solar eruptions may be blasting the Martian moon Phobos with an avalanche of electrically charged particles, charging parts of it to hundreds of volts, and hampering attempts to land on and study the alien landscape.…

Company also plans 'consolidation' of product lines, locations and languages HPE has quit the business of providing custom servers to big cloud operators.…

No-find-no-fee search to cover area recommended by new analyses of likely landing spot Malaysia has struck a deal with US Company Ocean Infinity to resume the search for missing airliner MH370.…

Mind the gap The US is starting to fall well behind China in terms of the speed at which organizations are alerted to reported security vulnerabilities, according to a study out this week by threat intel biz Recorded Future.…

With fewer meteors, lower radiation and better weather, this is a nice place for a colony Japan's lunar orbiter has found a long, deep tunnel under the Moon's surface.…

Hang on? Isn't Big Blue betting the company on a clever cloud? Yup. It is. Sigh Back in September, IBM was left red-faced when its global load balancer and reverse DNS services fell over for 21 hours.…

Clashing threads put in their place by RacerD In Facebook's advertising business, a race condition might be construed as an ethnic descriptor used to prevent purchased ads from being displayed to a particular racial group.…

Cruz missile targets iPhone head honcho for pulling software from shelves at Middle KIngdom's behest A pair of senior US Senators are calling out Apple CEO Tim Cook for what they call "enabling the Chinese government's censorship and surveillance of the internet."…

Some may even glimpse the ring Attention, inhabitants of the northern hemisphere of our fragile home world. You're about to get one of the best peeks at Uranus in years – because the strange alien planet will reach opposition with the Sun and be at the closest point in its orbit to Earth.…

Election security is national security, says senator as US law shakeup proposed Facebook and Google, along with other online publishers, may soon be required in the US to disclose funding for paid political ads.…

Judge rules in battle over seizure of overseas Gmail files Google and the US government are quarreling over just how much money the Chocolate Factory must pay in daily fines while it appeals against a search warrant for email held overseas.…

Town has an API, but no cars Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs venture has chosen Toronto as its urban laboratory – one in which humans may ultimately be optional.…

Expert's protip: 'Hope is not an investment strategy' If you threw money at the blockchain startup Tezos during its $232m initial coin offering fundraising round in July, here's something you can learn for future investments.…

Tribe has sovereign immunity to legal challenges A Native American tribe in New York is going after Microsoft and Amazon for infringing its patents.…

Q3 profits and revenues up but execs grilled over cloudy future Enterprise giant SAP has reported an increase in both revenues and operating profits for the latest quarter – but execs were forced to explain a slowdown in cloud bookings.…

Macs, iOS cheaper in long run – that means trouble Comment While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella trots the world plugging his book on “transformation”, some of the biggest enterprises in the world are “transforming” themselves ... away from Microsoft.…

US and China in the firing line Lenovo is laying off a little more than 1,000 employees with the majority of heads set to roll in the US and China.…

Another extraordinary performance from the 'tech company' Comment Performance art company Magic Leap has astonished and wowed critics with its latest outing: a $500m funding round.…

Also slags off BT, backs Ofcom, keeps mum on Liberty tie-up "Basically the message is Vodafone is back," says UK chief executive Nick Jeffrey, a message he's so eager to convey at a breakfast briefing hosted by the company that it almost sounds as if the lady doth protest too much.…

On-premises Microsoft cloud gets 14G servers for more oomph Dell is updating its AzureStack offering with the latest 14th generation PowerEdge servers.…

Reg Lecture reveals what it is, where to find it Events If you've ever wondered who really controls today's upside-down, digital-soaked world, you should really join us next month when we consider "The Secrets of Power in the Digital Age".…

Industry age bias a source of constant worry Almost half of tech workers in the US, like Hollywood stars, live in constant fear that age will end their careers, according to a new poll.…

Only to be mysteriously restored hours later The YouTube account of the researcher behind the KRACK WPA2 Wi-Fi vulnerability was restored early on Thursday hours after it was shut down for violating "community guidelines".…

Positioning it as 'World Series' of yachting Oracle CTO Larry Ellison is reportedly launching his own world boat racing title – just months after his team was spanked at this year’s America’s Cup.…

Qumulo, HGST, StorageCraft move in, crack open craft beers In Gartner's perennial game of musical chairs, otherwise known as its annual magic quadrant exercise, the latest object storage square ushers three in and one out.…

Administrator blames credit insurance cuts, online rivals for collapse Misco UK has laid off 300 staff, as expected, after ceasing to trade and appointing administrative receiver FRP Advisory to pick through the ashes of the loss-making business.…

New law defines who pays if your auto auto prangs itself Tinkering with your future driverless car's software and failing to install safety-critical updates will invalidate your insurance, under a newly proposed British law.…