The Register

Guidance to Australian public servants says citizens think they know 'what's really going on' Australian government employees have been advised that their social media emissions carry more weight than pronouncements by ministers.…

Privacy and security principles for connected and autonomous vehicles The United Kingdom has published a set of “Key principles of vehicle cyber security for connected and automated vehicles” outlining how auto-makers need to behave if they want computerised cars to hit Blighty's byways and highways.…

NB reports stop flowing, suits don't notice for 3 YEARS... but bank throws devs under bus Australia's Commonwealth Bank has blamed a software update for a money laundering scam that saw criminals send over AU$70m (US$55m, £42.5m) offshore after depositing cash into automatic teller machines.…

FAB grab confab goes bad The Toshiba vs. Western Digital flash foundry scrap has gone up a notch, with the former threatening to cut off the latter's future flash chip supplies.…

'Erroneous policy' upload wound deleted custom apps, IVR menus and custom bling Cisco's admitted to a cloud configuration cockup that's erased customer data.…

Though easy to use, the service's privacy protection isn't fully baked Mozilla has just rolled out an experimental service called Send that allows users to make an encrypted copy of a local file, store it on a remote server, and share it with a single recipient.…

Yeah, try slapping some sanctions on black holes Astronomers have proposed that heavy elements in the universe may have been forged when small, primordial black holes swallowed neutron stars.…

Larry: I don't know about that Earlier this week, El Reg received an unexpected phone call from Google HQ inquiring as to whether we'd be interested in a "color piece" about Google cofounder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page.…

Who's the guy that just got sued for invading privacy? M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E! Disney has been sued in America for allegedly collecting children's personal information without getting parents' approvals.…

He admitted writing software nasty code, Feds allege. Brit's lawyers say he's innocent Marcus Hutchins, the WannaCry ransomware killer and now suspected malware developer, was told by a Las Vegas court on Friday he can be released on bail. He also denied any wrongdoing.…

He admitted writing software nasty code, prosecutors claim Marcus Hutchins, the WannaCry killer and now suspected malware seller, has had his initial court hearing and won't be getting out of jail free, after a Las Vegas court set his bail at $30,000. Handing $3,000 to a bail bondsman will see him able to leave jail.…

Blink and you'd have missed surprise news Analysis Apple has made a huge reversal in its HomeKit smart-home technology, in an effort to keep up with Amazon and Google.…

Quick-thinking preschool teacher clocks, reports fellow passenger's 'vile' messages Two people have been charged with child molestation after their texts allegedly discussing sexually abusing kids were spotted and reported by a preschool teacher. Who was sitting behind one of them. On an airplane. And the messages were in a huge font.…

Service Workers land in WebKit, clearing way for better in-browser applications Analysis About a week after Philadelphia-based web developer Greg Blass pilloried Apple in a widely discussed online post for hindering web development by refusing to embrace Service Workers, the WebKit team, stewards of the open-source layout engine powering Apple's Safari browser, began doing just that.…

Take 'em off the network, docs told, until 2015 patches arrive Hackers can exploit trivial flaws in network-connected Siemens' medical scanners to run arbitrary malicious code on the equipment.…

Bits and bytes from across the industry rounded up in one handy spot Dive into this smorgasbord of lite bites, or light bytes even, of IT storage happenings this first week of August.…

Which is it then? Revenues up but operating losses hit $56m Hadoop-flinger Hortonworks continues to burn through cash, but boss Rob Bearden has said that the biz is on target to cut spending by the end of the year.…

Putting the fault in digital by default The UK government's new website intended to provide financial support for parents has been slammed for experiencing ongoing "technical" problems and outages, leaving parents unable to apply for tax-free support.…

Founders and admen continue their legal fight Snopes creator David Mikkelson has secured half a million dollars to keep the iconic fact-checking website Snopes afloat, thanks to a judge’s ruling in an ongoing court battle.…

Thou shalt not use Chinese flying machines, orders general The US Army appears to have issued a global order banning its units from using drones made by Chinese firm DJI, citing “cyber vulnerabilities”.…

Thou shalt not use Chinese flying machines, orders general The US Army appears to have issued a global order banning its units from using drones made by Chinese firm DJI, citing “cyber vulnerabilities”.…

She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid Durham University has built itself a secondhand supercomputer from recycled parts and beefed up its contribution to DiRAC (distributed research utilising advanced computing), the integrated facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology.…

It actually works – and could foster faster, cheaper science Boffins have built what could be one of the world's smallest working detectors of elusive neutrino particles.…

Ban lifted in UK, France and Ireland as an 'experiment' Google has agreed to let Play Store customers court cruel mistress Lady Luck.…

Win for Big Blue in court showdown over final salaries The Court of Appeal in London, England, has upheld IBM's appeal over the closure of its defined benefit schemes, which guaranteed retired employees a predefined portion of their final salary.…

Come, swim with the sharks Despite predictions of its demise, we've been happily using email in business since it first became widespread more than two decades ago. In many ways it's defined the way we compose, reply or send digital messages. A number of technologies have consolidated and extended it to something that became called "collaboration".…

VMware's event has become the conference of today's refresh cycle, not tomorrow's VMworld 2017 is nearly upon us. The primary event in Las Vegas taking place August 27-31 will be followed by VMware Europe from September 11-14 in Barcelona.…

Soz, SMEs, you can't submit your monthly returns online The taxman's Digital Forms Service, intended to allow small businesses to submit returns online, has been down for maintenance since the beginning of the week, leaving SMEs to return to pen and paper.…

New features? Sorry. Just new colours, because modern monitors give CLIs the blues Microsoft's making over the Windows Console, the tool that throws up a command line interface and which has hung around in Windows long after DOS was sent to the attic and told not to show itself in polite company.…

Replaced everything to no avail, before small talk about the view sorted things out On-Call Salutations dear readers, and congratulations on reaching the last working day of the week, on which The Register runs On-Call, our reader-contributed tales of gigs that get you giggling.…

Finally, Zuck's lot get neural-network-powered translation Facebook’s language translation is now finally powered by several large neural networks.…

Turn your bon mots to meh for the sake of privacy To publish online and remain anonymous, boffins from Bulgaria and Qatar advise being mediocre. And if you can't manage that on your own, they have a technique to make your prose less scintillating.…

Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 could be two rocks for the price of one The New Horizons probe's next destination, Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, looks a bit like a duck.…

Michelle Carter banned from profiting from her story in any medium, ever The sad case of the teenager who committed suicide after being urged to do so in text messages has resulted with a 15-month jail sentence for the woman who sent the messages.…

Plan is to put different functions into VMs to improve security, reduce bill of materials The Automotive Grade Linux has revealed it's going shopping for a hypervisor so that in-car computers can handle lots of different jobs.…

Tech's rich aunts and uncles beg the President not to ditch Entrepreneur Rule A gang of venture capital firms and startup funds has asked the Trump administration to save an immigration rule that allows foreign startup founders to come to the US in order to build their companies.…

Malware used to take down Linux Foundation and make millions A Russian man has been imprisoned for 46 months after admitting to using the Ebury malware to create a massive botnet for fun and profit.…

I'm a bloody idiot, says programmer after failing to turn on two-factor authentication The chap behind Chrome Web Developer, a popular third-party extension that was briefly hijacked to inject ads into browsers, today confirmed he was the victim of a phishing attack.…

Comms watchdog back up to full strength America's broadband watchdog, the FCC, is finally back to its full complement of five commissioners following the confirmations of Brendan Carr and Jessica Rosenworcel by the US Senate.…

IETF draft hopes to balance netizens' needs and corporate interests in future standards The Internet Engineering Task Force is being asked to formally adopt its informal philosophy that when it comes to new standards and protocols, end users' needs must come first.…

Shock as Brit cuffed in Vegas – now he's accused of developing account-draining nasty Marcus Hutchins, the British malware researcher who killed off the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday on suspicion of being a malware writer himself.…

Our customer contract doesn't violate GPLv2, biz insists in defamation lawsuit Updated In late June, noted open-source programmer Bruce Perens warned that using Grsecurity's Linux kernel security could invite legal trouble.…

Oh Danny boy, the typos, the typos are galling A bug in code that generates medical reports could force patients in Ireland to repeat their hospital and clinic scans.…

Chap who stopped malware spread cuffed in Vegas Updated Marcus Hutchins, the unassuming Brit who found and activated the kill switch in the WannaCry ransomware, has been arrested by the FBI in America.…

Star-crossed lovers secretly kicking each other to death Toshiba and Western Digital Corp negotiating makes for bizarre viewing. Billions of dollars are at stake, goodwill is laughably absent and one of the world's best flash production partnerships could be headed down the toilet.…

Virtualises structured data for copies and cloud migration Analysis Database copy virtualiser Delphix has relaunched itself as a Dynamic Data Platform supplier of personal virtualised data environments, covering on-premises and public cloud environments and masking out sensitive data.…

450k folk want a Model 3 – and record revenues won't hurt Tesla has posted its largest ever loss in its latest quarterly financial results, continuing its trend of burning ever greater quantities of cash.…

Subscription licensing, yay! 'Inertia' displacing legacy deployments, boo! Data visualisation firm Tableau has reported a 7 per cent growth in revenue, with execs waxing lyrical about the company’s move to a subscription licensing model.…

Let your children run wild and free 3D Robotics, the American drone company, has thrown open the codebase for its Solo software, in a move interpreted by some as its latest acknowledgement of Chinese rival DJI's dominance.…

The Donald missed out on cameo in crap film franchise to run for White House – reports Donald Trump was reportedly in talks to play the president in the third incarnation of cult sci-fi disaster film Sharknado – until he welched on the deal to run for the real thing.…