The Register

我们将以4,000公里/小时的速度送货 Video Elon Musk might have popularized the idea of a Hyperloop transport system, but the Chinese have taken up the idea and plan to make it better – with 4,000km/h (2,485mi/h) bullet trains planned for the Middle Kingdom.…

Swarms of fire ants now just the second-nastiest thing floating around Houston With much of Houston, Texas, still under water from flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, scammers are running robocall operations aimed at residents of the storm-ravaged area.…

Bitcoin isn't money, so money laundering laws shouldn't apply Spooked by prosecutions of Bitcoin sellers and pending money laundering rules, The Bitcoin Foundation on Tuesday said the cryptocurrency isn't really money and asked lawmakers to investigate the Department of Justice's pursuit of merchants selling it.…

Beware of geeks bearing Cobian RAT gifts Those looking on the dark web for malware capable of hijacking computers might have thought they were getting a bargain when a free trojan appeared on various online souks over the past few months.…

If you won't open up conversations, we'll make it a law, says Sessions' #2 The deputy US Attorney General said he wants legislators to force technology companies to decrypt people's private conversations.…

Everyone loves it! Everyone hates it! FCC will do whatever it wants anyway The latest comment period on the effort to kill off America's net neutrality rules has closed – and the circus has officially reopened for business.…

Oh look, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is being revived Uncle Sam's intelligence agencies have embarked on the next stage of their plan to retain spying powers over US citizens: getting Donald Trump onboard.…

And this is the agency that wants to regulate the internet A laughably insecure comment system has left US comms watchdog the FCC open to malware attack, and the agency doesn't seem to know what to do about it.…

Pink slips are en route, say staff Oracle is starting layoffs that will hit its hardware division, The Register has learned.…

Norbert Blum says his proposed solution doesn't work Computer science boffin Norbert Blum has acknowledged that his P≠NP proof is incorrect, as a number of experts anticipated.…

iPhone charging and backup base unit also on cards WDC has the highest-capacity microSDXC card at 400GB – pumping up mobile device storage space – and has launched a natty little iPhone charger that backs up the phone’s data.…

Compute-assisted DataStream Micro Arrays are no more Exclusive Compute-assisted storage array startup Coho Data has shut up shop.…

'Don't think of it as a watch' IFA Samsung has put its smartwatch on a diet in a bid to maintain dwindling market interest in the once-hot device category.…

Do we believe their PR or an anti-spytech activist? The Metropolitan Police has denied that use of its dubious facial recognition technology at the Notting Hill Carnival in London led to someone being wrongfully arrested.…

Not a universal home data store, but it's close +Comment WDC has released a home NAS that syncs with devices for storing, streaming and sharing wherever there's an internet connection.…

Two workshops added to MCubed agenda Events If you want to get deep and hands-on with machine learning, you'll be chuffed to know that we’ve added two more cracking workshops to our lineup at MCubed.…

Fed-up citizens join fictional opposition in their hundreds The former Soviet republic of Belarus has declared war on an imaginary country that exists within its own borders.…

Compact revived with flagship CPU IFA Sony has been saving its powder for the giant IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, where it's finally updated its phone range. Having used March's MWC event as more of a demo showcase, it's been a long wait for punters loyal to the Sony brand.…

Care requirements database held details of 3,000 service users on passwordless portal A UK council has been fined £70,000 for leaving vulnerable people's personal information exposed online for five years.…

'Key European markets'? C'mon, just tell us already LG today duly unveiled the strongest contender this year to swipe Samsung's Android crown – but still won't say if it's committed to releasing the phone in the UK.…

Building bad practices in ML can turn out awkward It is half a century since the days when London B&Bs would welcome guests with notices stating "No Irish, no blacks, no dogs." Twenty years since, as marketing manager for a major UK financial institution, I had to inform our underwriting department that adding "Does not apply to disabled persons" to an ad for motor insurance was no longer legal.…

Complaint states Bezos' empire did 'too little, too late' A couple has sued Amazon for allegedly selling them and others faulty solar eclipse glasses that damaged their eyesight.…

Good intentions dashed by weary admin's ad hoc Wi-Fi, hotel's wack-ass data storage Nearly half of global organisations fail to comply with the security standards laid out by the Payment Cards Industry (PCI) to ensure customer payment data is protected, according to a new report.…

New web crawler from TSignal doesn't care who you are Developers are working on a privacy-focused search engine that goes beyond the likes of DuckDuckGo.…

Crap software may be caused by poor requirements and test case design Study Keeping up with time pressures is hard enough if you are in the software development game. Delivering quickly while meeting requirements and maintaining quality has never been easy.…

Project wants to make ISPs accountable for cybercrime A new project aims to mitigate cybercrime by making it in the economic and business interests of ISPs and telcos to clean up the internet.…

CEO Milligan has reshaped firm upwards and outwards Analysis Western Digital Corporation under CEO Steve Milligan's rule is becoming an aggressively expanding chips, disks, systems and cloud storage business. It's trying to buy Toshiba's flash foundry joint-venture interest and has just announced it's buying storage array-maker Tegile and personal cloud storage provider Upthere. What is Milligan up to?…

But if it's genuinely anonymised, heck, go crazy The world – well, Europe at least – is going potty about the impending new General Data Protection Regulation. If I signed up to every data protection seminar invitation in my inbox I'd have no hours left in the day to work... or drink or sleep, for that matter. So it's easy to forget that data protection legislation has existed for donkeys' years already – as hinted at by the existence of legislation such as the UK's Data Protection Act 1984. Yes, GDPR has some interesting new stuff in it, but the core principles of giving legal protection to people's Personally Identifiable Information (PII) have existed for some considerable time already.…

Industry fears more pie in face over new It film The imminent release of a new film adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel It has caused upset in the world of professional clowning.…

Now just $169 if you're willing to lose the hi-tech look Nest has launched a low-cost version of its famous smart thermostat aimed at the mid-market and priced at $169.…

AV company forces litigator to pay to drop its own case Security house Kaspersky Lab scored an impressive legal win that saw it not only beat a patent troll, but actually collect money from the plaintiff in the process.…

Says biggest surprise is lack of surprises, and PCs won't surprise again VMWORLD 2017 Michael Dell has declared himself better-than-satisfied with the performance of Dell Technologies, a week out from the first anniversary of the acquisition of EMC.…

IoT security helper is vulnerable to attacks by malicious peers ARM's "mbed TLS" software can be tricked into an authentication bypass and needs a patch.…

Due to expire in 2017, subsidy gets two-year reprieve It's not quite a “robot tax”, but South Korea appears to be sufficiently worried about the impact of automation on its workforce to consider withdrawing tax breaks for manufacturers that buy “robots”.…

VMs across US, Europe and Asia all unable to “connect to backends” Google Cloud's load balancers have suffered a lengthy connectivity problem.…

This could be how Justin Bieber's bare butt popped out Instagram is blaming a bug in its API for the partial breach of verified users' accounts.…

LOGO owners on alert Siemens has plugged a man-in-the-middle vulnerability in its LOGO!8 BM FS-05 industrial automation hardware – but a second remains unpatched.…

At least it doesn't require a bleeding-edge PC and costly goggles Google on Tuesday released a preview of its augmented reality toolkit, although the company acknowledged that only a small portion of Android's installed base will be able to use the software.…

Ex-cop in child abuse case approaching 2 years in the clink The US government is fighting to keep a former police officer in prison because he claims not to be able to remember the code to decrypt two hard drives under investigation.…

Fast method gives researchers more time to answer bigger questions about our Universe A group of physicists has trained an artificial neural network to analyze gravitational lensing images ten million times faster than normal computational methods.…

Welcome to the new America at the New America Foundation The firing of a high-profile academic has spun a spotlight onto one of the public policy world's best-known dirty secrets: Google's use of donations to stymie criticism of its business.…

Can't we all just be Uber-alles? A Florida cloud computing provider named Uber Operations is suing its dial-a-ride namesake for trademark infringement.…

Amazon, Microsoft agree to complete each other Analysis To encourage people to demand more of their software-based assistants, Amazon and Microsoft plan to link their respective voice-based helpers – Alexa and Cortana – so they can talk to one another.…

Gazer opens Windows onto diplomatic secrets A highly advanced piece of malware, dubbed Gazer, has been found in embassies and consulates across Eastern Europe.…

Rival hyperconverged vendor Maxta says someone pinched its pins and silenced its stand Scandal has struck VMworld 2017 this week: hyperconverged software vendor Maxta says someone stole marketing material in which it was less than kind to Nutanix.…

But, but, but they gave them to us for free, says tech boss The woman responsible for a catastrophic decision to equip New York police officers with Windows smartphones, all of which are now being dumped, has doubled-down on her idiocy.…

L-ion kings to cough up profits – it's the circuit, er, circle of life Three battery manufacturers agreed to settle a lawsuit that claimed they conspired to fix the price of lithium-ion battery cells for more than a decade.…

Wherever VMware's customers go, we shall also go Veeam now backs up VMware Cloud data on Amazon Web Services (AWS).…

Many duplicates in River City-rivalling data spill A spambot operation has leaked 711 million email addresses in a massive data breach.…

Sounds smelly – but it's a signpost to what they're hoping to achieve Comment China has claimed it is developing a gas turbine-powered long-range delivery drone that can carry loads of up to 200kg.…