The Register

Smart contracts language easy to use and create exploits with An Ethereum-backed contest has revealed a few new tricks for disguising malware as the harmless code the network uses to transfer and manipulate funds: digital smart contracts.…

Inside ITP, Safari's third-party cookie zapper Can the world's biggest tech company tame the Wild West of the digital ad industry as its data slurping becomes ever more intrusive? Since Facebook and Google are essentially colluding with behavioural data collection, and Microsoft has given up the fight for user privacy, few companies have Apple's means or incentive. But for Apple, privacy doesn't hit its bottom line, and might even increase it.…

That could mean 40,000 drivers out of work Uber's application for a new licence in the capital has been rejected, in a shock move by Transport for London today which said the firm is not "fit and proper" to hold a licence.…

All part of CEO Whitman's 'long-term ops and financial blueprint' Hewlett Packard Enterprise is about to release the trap door again with 5,000 employees, or almost 10 per cent of its workforce, expected to fall through it.…

Two other big brands, Sky and BT, also in the naughty corner Beleaguered ISP TalkTalk has once again been named worst ISP in a biannual survey of providers by consumer charity Which?…

Revenues are up, but NoSQL firm still burning through cash Oracle-chaser MongoDB has filed to go public, with its accounts revealing it made a net loss of almost $90m in the year ended January 31, 2017.…

The security week in review Roundup As ever, it's been a doozy of a week for cybersecurity, or lack thereof. The Equifax saga just keeps giving, the SEC admitted it was thoroughly pwned, and Slack doesn't bother to sign its Linux versions. We do spoil you so, Reg readers. And that was only yesterday. Here's the rest of the week's shenanigans we didn't get round to.…

Just install the trial software on 1,000 PCs and I'll be on my way Something for the Weekend, Sir? "I'm sorry, who are you again?"…

In 2018 'MAREA' will move ads and Azure from USA to Spain at 160 terabits per second Construction of Microsoft and Facebook's jointly-funded submarine cable has ended.…

Sysadmin hated making it look so easy, but didn't mind being a hero for saving a payroll run On-Call Can you feel it? The weekend's just over the horizon, so it's time for On-Call, The Register's Friday column in which we share readers' tales of literally incredible jobs that produced improbable feats of sysadminnery.…

Company has trove of 2,000 patents and won't enforce any of them if you licence right Red Hat says it has amassed over 2,000 patents and won't enforce them if the technologies they describe are used in properly-licensed open-source software.…

Surprise – a thumbs up to private info flying over the Pond The much-heralded first review of the EU‑US Privacy Shield Framework that governs the flow of personal information across the Atlantic has concluded – and would you believe it? Representatives of the EU and US think it's doing fine.…

Backup appliance sales go off a cliff, traditional array vendors just aren't growing Sales of purpose-built backup appliances have dropped markedly, with year-on-year dips of 16.2 per cent by revenue and 14.9 per cent by capacity, according to analyst firm IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker for 2017's second quarter.…

Bio-boffins urge Red Planet life search to hunt for weird metal Scientists hoping to discover evidence of life on Mars should search for vanadium, a metallic element, according to a paper published in Astrobiology this month.…

Now that all the unpleasantness is behind us, let us code Java SE 9 and Java EE 8 have arrived.…

The Borg assimilates the infrastructure-as-code message Cisco has announced that UCS Director will ascend into the cloud as part of a new infrastructure management service named “Intersight”.…

He's now facing 10 years in prison for act of spite An IT contractor is facing a possible decade behind bars in America for planting a ticking "destructive" time bomb in US military systems.…

US watchdog raps breach-of-contract brats for retracted transacts Defunct mobile app company Pact broke its pact with customers to pay them promised cash incentives, US trade watchdog the FTC said on Thursday.…

DDoS blocker well on its way to nuking Blackbird Tech in patent showdown Cloudflare says its efforts to wipe out a patent troll using prior art have already yielded more than a dozen examples.…

With all their hockey hullabaloo, and that crazy payout too A CA$5.7m IBM contract to update payroll systems for the Canadian government has turned into a CA$185m boondoggle for the Great White North. That's $4.62m and $150m in US currency, respectively.…

Politicians want to know what happened with those fake accounts and advertising dollars They may still view themselves as open purveyors of free speech, but increasingly social media giants are being pulled into the US Senate's investigation of Russian interference in the American presidential elections.…

Image-recognition system posited as reporting tool Mining social networks for every scrap of information about our online lives is now common practice for marketers, academics, government agencies, and so on.…

Kiss your Microsoft email goodbye, for now, if you update Apple's latest version of iOS, namely version 11, struggles or flat-out fails to connect to Microsoft Office and Exchange mailboxes. That's a rather annoying pain for anyone working in a typical Windows-based work environment.…

Or maybe hold money from online transactions. Either way, we're getting our damn cash More details have emerged on the various plans being considered by European governments to force internet giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon to pay more in taxes, including a levy on internet ads and even withholding money for online transactions.…

Builds yanked offline for a week in bug riddle Citrix has temporarily suspended its NetScaler downloads due to an unspecified, and possibly security-related, issue.…

You have to get shafted before you can sue, says court A lawsuit brought against the hacker-ransacked Office of Personnel Management on behalf of US federal employees has been killed.…

EDGAR database a veritable goldmine of financial tips The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has admitted that hackers broke into its corporate filling system last year.…

Some of these buggers are adept at handling the mundane It's the age of the chatbot. The chatbot revolution is coming. Unless it isn't.…

Pair takes aim at $20bn analytics market California-based self-service data biz Trifacta has today launched its Google-friendly data preparation service into public beta.…

Chocolate Factory pushing enterprises' corporate settings right out of the box Google has said it will begin allowing its enterprise customers to purchase pre-configured Android smartphones and other devices that will ship with corporate policies and settings already in place.…

Dictators' favourite spyware is working at the top, says report A surveillance campaign utilising a new variant of FinFisher, the infamous spyware also known as FinSpy, has been tracked by security researchers.…

Intel and Microsoft have been working together to ease the pain Sponsored Windows 10 means a major shift in how IT operations should perceive and manage Windows and their hardware estate. The most significant is the move away from Big Bang version launches in favour of a subscription model with much more frequent updates.…

There is life after the Borg... in social media management platforms apparently Outgoing Cisco executive chairman John Chambers is to join the board of directors on social media management outfit Sprinklr, no doubt the first of many non-exec roles the former Switchzilla boss will hold.…

It's for the grater good After Caerphilly considering its position, Quebec's French-language watchdog has decided it doesn't give edam about its linguistic ban on using "anglicisms" such as "grilled cheese", a move that has been welcomed as gouda news.…

Tim on the social media team will need a new job You'd have thought that Equifax staff would be on their toes ever since the megahack that exposed the private data of over 143 million Americans but the corporation's social media certainly haven't got the message.…

You're an algorithms company, Larry! Analysis Google is placing a "Big Bet" on consumer hardware, the company screams in a new blog post. Presumably this time it really means it.…

But elsewhere FEAR and UNCERTAINTY reigns. Ahhh! Brexit could hand Ofcom more powers to intervene in the retail telecoms markets while simultaneously creating uncertainty over mobile roaming charges, according to a wide-ranging discussion paper.…

China's Google also updated its open-source autonomous vehicle software A joint investment venture backed by China's Baidu is offering 10 billion yuan (£1.1bn) for 100 autonomous driving projects anywhere in the world.…

Things still gloomy after profit warning and restructure At the halfway point of a turnaround year for listing outsourcing ship Capita, the vital statistics are still moving in the wrong direction with top and bottom line slipping and major contract challenges noted.…

Kludge takes shine off ever-improving Watch Analysis Just as the Apple Watch was set to go mainstream, bugs and poor design choices have taken the shine off the latest version of the hardware.…

Mists? Mellowness? Not at these talks... Lectures If mists and mellow fruitfulness aren't your thing, celebrate Autumn by joining us for a pair of hard-hitting Register lectures which examine some of the pricklier issues dogging the digital world.…

Twisting minds, smashing dreams Puppet has rolled out the corporate playbook and turned puppet master for another automation company.…

Easyleads applies to be struck off after investigation The Information Commissioner's Office is claiming another big win after fining marketing firm Easyleads Ltd £260,000 for being a royal pain in the ass – or, more specifically, for making 16.7 million automated marketing calls.…

No digital signature on hipster collab app means it's easy to make dangerous fakes Slack is distributing open Linux-based versions of its technology that are not digitally signed, contrary to industry best practice.…

Roles yet to be filled Two senior top brass at UK telecoms provider O2 have stepped down amid a period of major transition for the mobile operator.…

Librem 5 will run only open-source code, PureOS and feature radio kill switch The GNOME Foundation has backed efforts to create a "freedom-oriented" smartphone that protects users' privacy and runs only open-source software.…

Research suggests maybe the heavy ones should spend less time over people Being hit in the head by a drone won't necessarily end in decapitation. Thanks to aeronautical boffins, we know now that there is a range of possible outcomes.…

Parts-maker Delphi wants BlackBerry-mobiles on the road in 2019 As BlackBerry's handset business died an increasingly rapid death, execs told The Register that the company had a fabulous operating system and secure messaging to fall back on.…

Gives two-fingered salute to IBM designers for forcing us to use three-fingered salute Bill Gates has said that if he had his time again, he would not have chosen CTRL-ALT-DEL as the keypress to interrupt a PC's operations.…

Japanese company sells memory biz to private equity and WD flings sueballs to stop it Toshiba has picked a Japanese-American consortium assembled by Bain Capital Private Equity as the buyer of its memory business. Jilted suitor Western Digital has immediately tried to stop the transaction happening.…