The Register

Eight months sound like enough? No? Welcome back from the summer. Feeling refreshed? Good, now let’s talk General Data Protection Regulation from the European Union, due to swing into effect on May 25, 2018. You now have eight months to get your data infrastructure, tech policies and related procedures ship-shape. Not feeing so refreshed now, are you?…

Don't agree to new terms? No salary or bonuses for you Frankenfirm DXC Technologies is proposing to kill off the final salary pension scheme for former EDS staff and will refuse to fund pay rises and bonuses to those affected who do not sign over to the new package.…

Carry on, X-IO: Suitcase-sized Axellio for the edge computing crowd X-IO has devised a portable Axellio all-flash server/storage system that you can take on an airline, with the flash in the overhead locker and the main enclosure in checked luggage in the hold.…

The inevitable kick in the arse Promo Two much-publicised ransomware attacks earlier this year, including one on the NHS, have raised the profile of the ransomware menace that hangs over businesses of all sizes.…

Backscatter boffins get Things talking over kilometres One of the favoured low-power radio techniques in Internet of Things research is “backscatter communications”: the transmitter sends a signal to a Thing, and the Thing modulates its data onto the reflection, and that's then decoded by a receiver.…

Distributed cloud company now working on Ryzens that warm your shower French cloud concern Qarnot wants to use AMD processors to heat water.…

Just landed on the Moon and fancy a drink? Step on up Scientists have created the first map that traces the water content on the surface of the Moon, in the hopes that it may come in handy for astronauts searching for drinking water or fuel.…

Electronics resurgence program gets US$75 million more for 2018 The United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to find the electronics industry's next iteration of Moore's Law and has loaded up a US$75 million defibrillator to jolt industry into making it happen.…

Kuiper-belt-bound craft needs a few weeks of tweaks to prepare for Space Duck 2.0 The New Horizons probe has successfully ended its five-month hibernation and resumed chats with its mission controllers.…

Sigh. Admins of free AWS instances just didn't tick the right boxes. Lazily-configured software has again created a security incident, this time resulting in 4,000 instances of open source analytics and search tool Elasticsearch inadvertently running PoS-stealing malware.…

Says this will send you to 'Trellotopia'. Seriously. Who writes this stuff? Trello has figured out that there's life beyond the confines of a browser, so has created desktop apps for MacOS and Windows.…

Apache Struts was popped, but company had at least TWO MONTHS to fix it Equifax has revealed that the cause of its massive data breach was flaw it should have patched weeks before it was attacked.…

Enterprises can lock down Telemetry a little more Microsoft's taken another small step towards addressing those worried about Windows 10's impact on their privacy by adding more controls over what apps can do in the Creators Update of the OS.…

说下次你是俄国人 The Trump administration has blocked the purchase of a US semiconductor company by a Chinese investment firm, citing national security concerns.…

Plan to dehumanize shopping taken as threat to beloved mom-and-pop stores A startup called Bodega AI, facing an unanticipated Twitter tempest, has rushed to reassure people that it isn't out to kick mom-and-pop stores to the curb.…

Nope, not over the securities fraud, or the drug price hike Martin Shkreli, the obnoxious smirking hedge fund manager nicknamed Pharma Bro, is going to jail after a series of Facebook posts convinced a judge that he's a menace to society.…

Senator Wyden not happy with continued obfuscation The director of national intelligence (DNI) has refused to say whether US spying agencies are using legislation specifically intended to cover only foreigners in order to spy on American citizens.…

Cupertino Idiot Tax gets a $50 increase to cover chip charges Apple has raised the price on much of its iPad Pro tablet line.…

Scientists reignite the idea of water-bearing asteroids bringing oceans to Earth Scientists have found evidence that there may be ground ice on Vesta, the brightest asteroid visible from Earth.…

Hard drive hound ready for duty Sniffer dogs have been used to detect drugs and explosives for years, but now Delaware police have a new type of K-9 – one trained to sniff out hard drives and electronic storage devices.…

Hold our beers, Equifax Experian and Annual Credit Report.com – an organization set up by Equifax, Experian and Transunion to meet US consumer finance regulations – left themselves exposed to a serious vulnerability in Apache Struts earlier this year.…

Sorry bros, you'll have to tell it to the jury – and give us the Stroz Report too Uber has lost a pair of appeals at the center of its ongoing trade secrets case with the Alphabet-owned Waymo Inc.…

Government departments have 90 days to rip and replace Despite pending legislation to ban US federal government offices from using Kaspersky Lab security software, Homeland Security has issued a Binding Operational Directive demanding that the products be removed within 90 days.…

Claims of sweat resistance and durability are lies, litigious customers contend Apple pitches its Powerbeats headphones to the public with images of celebrated athletes and ad copy insisting that the devices are durable and sweat resistant.…

Searching your phone should require a warrant, says lawsuit The US Department of Homeland Security is being sued by 11 travellers who had their smartphones and laptops seized and searched at the US border.…

AR Scorpii was the first white dwarf pulsar to be found Scientists trying to crack the mystery behind the fastest-pulsating white dwarf have found that its brightness levels change over a timescale of decades.…

Lord Scriven says UK.gov response 'not worth the paper it is printed on' The use of 20 million facial images by the police "has said gone far beyond using them for custody purposes", according to the Biometric Commissioners’ annual report.…

West London techie trio spurred into action for homeless youngsters A trio of plucky Reg fans from Shepherd’s bush are braving the mean streets of London next month to raise money for Byte Night - and you should really join them.…

Yes, we meant specifications... and think up a name, would you? Oracle has named the Eclipse Foundation as the new host for Java Enterprise Edition, but said the platform won’t get to keep its name.…

That's part one sorted. Now, who's supplying the sharks? The Dragonfire laser cannon consortium has unveiled a fullsize mockup of its shipborne blaster at the Defence and Security Exhibition International arms fair in London.…

Months of patient work by American cops went into this Five “bikini baristas” have been charged with prostitution after a lengthy undercover police investigation revealed the women were serving drive-through customers while only wearing their smalls.…

Matt Hancock uses speech on the internet to pontificate about liberalism... Digital minister Matt Hancock has confirmed that the Data Protection Bill will be published tomorrow, in a speech promising internet laws "based on liberal and not libertarian values" that "cherish freedom yet prevent harm to others".…

iPhoneX feature receives stony-faced reaction from security buffs Security watchers have given Apple’s introduction of facial recognition technology a cautious welcome.…

Samsung has little to fear Comment You may or may not know that the phrase "industrial revolution" was coined by a Frenchman.…

Plus: The podcast says goodbye to The Reg

Last major data deal between EU and third country took 4 years The UK is risking a data economy worth £240bn if it doesn’t secure a “simple” transition deal that minimises disruption of data flows after Brexit, the Confederation of British Industry will warn today.…

Cause, accountability, responsibility When the Knightscope K5 surveillance bot fell into the pond at an office complex in Washington, DC, last month, it wasn’t the first time the company’s Future of Security machines had come a cropper.…

Come and bite the hand that feeds Are you pondering a career in technology journalism? We've got good news for you in that case – El Reg is hiring an intern to work on our London newsdesk.…

It's not like we sell to the Feds, so go ahead and ban us! Kaspersky Lab has laughed off attempts to have its wares banned from US government computers by saying it hardly sold to the Feds anyway.…

Which is why its cameras will stop snapping a day before it smacks into Saturn Space is nasty and sending data across 83 light-minutes of it isn't easy, so the Cassini probe's death dive into the clouds of Saturn will be an instruments-only affair undocumented by photographs.…

BTC isn't explicitly covered by sanctions and Kim could launder it into useful currencies North Korea appears to have commenced online attacks aimed at acquiring Bitcoin so it can evade sanctions.…

Chocolate Factory unwraps developer style guide, squibs the thorny ISO date debate If you want to write developer documentation like a Google hotshot, you'd better kill “kill”, junk “jank” and unlearn “learnings”.…

Crack a Galaxy or bash Bixby and score US$20k to $200k Samsung's mobile limb has become the latest major vendor to launch a bug bounty program, and within its tight rules, it offers a tasty maximum prize of US$200,000.…

Lasers are too pricy, so we're using BLINKENLIGHTS instead As low-cost satellites become more common, researchers are turning their attention to improving their communications capabilities without adding crushing costs.…

US safety regulator finds computer in fatal Tesla crash could have intervened earlier America's National Transport Safety Bureau (NTSB) has decided that late Tesla-driver Joshua Brown was responsible for the crash he died in, but that Tesla's Autopilot contributed by (at the time) allowing him to ignore the road for too long.…

Everything hip is new again Slack has re-invented some stuff Lotus Notes did 20 years ago and declared it will make you more productive.…

This might be the rare case of a bug you don't want patched SAP admins, there's an e-mail system bug that could give your HR department headaches, by blocking peoples from registering their e-mail with its E-Recruiting system.…

Boffins reveal code for turning cow pies into cash The US government wants you to use its software, and if you're into manure, so much the better.…

Radio jets beamed from gigantic black holes are still a mystery Physicists have managed to analyze the hidden "tails" swirling around quasars in supermassive black holes by using a combination of radio telescopes and the Gaia space observatory.…

Cupertino's choice just about wraps it up for the Airfuel Alliance Apple's keynote may be good news for fans of its products, but it must have made grim listening for members of the Airfuel Alliance.…