The Week in Summary
Fan of FBI cosplay? Enjoy freaking out your neighbors? Have we got the eBay auction for you
A rather unusual auction on eBay could appeal to aspiring spies and X‑Files fantasists alike.
The Italian Jobs: Bloke thrown in the cooler for touting Apple knockoffs
A scammer who imported fake iPods, iPads, iPhones, and Sony hardware worth $15m into America was today sent down for 37 months.
Intel is upset that Qualcomm is treating it like Intel treated AMD for years and years
Intel has backed Apple in the iGiant's almighty scrap with Qualcomm – which is trying to ban sales of iPhones and iPads in America.
DeepMind says it's given AI an imagination. Let's take a closer look at that
Google's AI boutique, DeepMind, known for dispelling human delusions of intellectual superiority by soundly beating the world's top Go players with computer code, has found that instilling its software agents with something like imagination helps them learn better.
China censors drop the soap operas, sitcoms
Analysis
A disturbing trend toward ever-greater censorship in China has seemingly crossed a line with the banning and blocking... well, fun, basically.
Andy Rubin's overhyped and underdelivered Essential phone out 'in a few weeks'
After months of hype and missed deadlines, it seems as though Andy Rubin's new smartphone might actually make it onto the market.
Silicon Valley IT biz boss cops to lying about Cisco H-1B jobs
The owner of a Silicon Valley tech consulting biz has pled guilty to making up job offers in order to obtain US H-1B visas for overseas workers.
Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook blow massive amounts lobbying Trump administration
Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are finding the Trump Administration a very expensive prospect, at least according to their newly released lobbying figures.
Pull on yer wellies and let's wade through the week's storage news
A mudslide of storage news has mired Vulture Central and we're up to our waists in it. Alas, this seems to be becoming a weekly occurrence. We waded through it, sorted it out, tidied it up, and mopped the floors.
Legal boffins poke holes in EU lawmaker's ePrivacy proposals
The European Commission's proposed ePrivacy law needs significant amendments, particularly on location tracking and keeping people's communications confidential, according to an in-depth study.
What is this – some kind of flashy, 3-bit consumer SSD? Eh, Seagate?
Seagate has a new line of Nytro consumer SSDs coming using 3-bits/cell flash.
But how does our ransomware make you feel?
Ransomware crooks have become skilled psychological manipulators in their attempts to fleece victims of file-encrypting malware.
Why you'll never make really big money as an AI dev
Among the stupider things I said in the 1980s was a comment about Artificial Intelligence, including neural nets - or perceptrons as we called them back then - saying we needed "maybe a processor that worked at a hundred megahertz and literally gigabytes of storage".
I've got a verbal govt contract for Hyperloop, claims His Muskiness
The world's best business self-publicist since Richard Branson reckons he has been given a "verbal contract" to build an unrealistic high-speed tube train system across America.
Vodafone reports sliding revenues but customers don't hate them as much
Vodafone's UK reputation is improving thanks to network improvements, the company said, pointing to a higher net promoter score as it revealed its results today.
Dump X of your crew, DXC Technologies UK told. Hundreds face axe AGAIN
Exclusive
Less than four months after DXC Technologies was created and the Frankenfirm is already embarking on a second round of jobs cuts, with hundreds of frontline support techies earmarked for the chop.
Shut up and take my money! AI luminaries go gooey for Graphcore's smart chip tech
Bristolian AI chip startup Graphcore has had a fast B-round 12 months after its $32m A-round funding was first revealed.
Volterman 'super wallet': The worst crowdsource video pitch of all time?
Do you need a "smart" wallet with a built in front-facing camera and GPS? Of course you don't. Not even with a built-in Wi-Fi hotspot? Well, enough people do to make a success of an Indiegogo project promising just that.
Virgin Media broadband latency headaches still not fixed six months on
Latency issues with Intel's Puma 6, used in gigabit broadband modems, have yet to be resolved for Virgin Media customers using the UK company's superhub 3.
Reg reader turns Geek's Guides to Britain into Geek's Map of Britain
A forward-thinking Reg reader has put the entirety of our Geeks’ Guide series onto a Google Map, for your navigational and geographically organised reading pleasure.
Ten new tech terms I learnt this summer: Do you know them all?
Something for the Weekend, Sir?
I'll never forget the day I found my children looking at Spam for the first time. My son was particularly perplexed, asking: "Is that what I think it is?"
You can't DevOps everything, kids. Off the shelf kit especially
Comment
Hey, psst. Come over here, I have a secret to tell you. My fellow DevOps hoodwinkers would cement-shoe me for saying so, but you don't always need to do the DevOps. In fact, in many cases, it's likely a waste of effort. Let's start walking this way, briskly, now – I think I see some pink and chromatic blue fade-tipped Thought Lords and Ladies coming down the hallway towards us. They look like they're ready to do a blameful pre-mortem.
The lady (or man) vanishes: The thorny issue of GDPR coding
Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now less than a year away, coming into effect in May 2018, and any legal or compliance department worth its salary should already have been making waves about what it means for your organisation.
User filed fake trouble tickets to take helpful sysadmin to lunches
On-Call
Hey, hey, it's Friday! Which means frolicsome weekend fun is just a day away … if you can survive work and this week's instalment of On-Call, The Register's weekly column in which we recount readers stories of jobs gone weird.
Boffins back bubbles for better bonding with beautiful belongings
To mark and track 3D printed objects, boffins propose injecting them with air.
Q. What's today's top language? A. Python... no, wait, Java... no, C
Among developers, Python is the most popular programming language, followed by C, Java, C++, and JavaScript; among employers, Java is the most sought after, followed by C, Python, C++, and JavaScript.
Burglary, robbery, kidnapping and a shoot-out over… a domain name?!
A home break-in that resulted in two men being shot – one of whom was later charged with burglary, robbery and kidnapping – was the result of a domain name dispute, cops have said.
Moneysupermarket fined £80,000 for spamming seven million customers
Price-comparison darling Moneysupermarket.com has been fined £80,000 for sending 7.1 million emails to customers who had opted out of receiving direct marketing emails.
Authorities go hard on coffee maker for stiff Viagra-powered brew
How's this for a stiff one to start the day? We now go live to America, where watchdogs have recalled a batch of coffee for containing an active ingredient very similar to Viagra.
Microsoft finally allows hosted desktops on multi-tenant hardware
Microsoft's dispensed with a licensing oddity that saw it prohibit hosted virtual desktops running on multi-tenanted hardware.
Bluetooth makes a mesh of itself with new spec
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has released the spec for Bluetooth Mesh, a many-to-many extension of the technology.
ServiceNow stops over in Jakarta in its journey to AI-land
ServiceNow's Jakarta release went live on Thursday, bringing with it plenty of new toys for IT departments and hints of artificially intelligent things to come.
They say we're too mean to Microsoft. Well, how about this... Redmond just had a stonking year. And only 8% tax. Whee!
In its final quarter of its fiscal 2017, Microsoft more than doubled its profits, saw massive cloud growth, and managed to get a rebate from US taxpayers at the same time.
So, FCC, how about that massive DDoS? Hello? Hello...? You still there?
Updated
America's broadband watchdog, the FCC, has declined to share any more details on the cyber-assault that apparently downed its website shortly after it announced its intent to kill net neutrality.
US Homeland Sec boss has snazzy new laptop bomb scanning tech – but admits he doesn't know what it's called
Flying into America? Don't worry about that crackdown on laptops and similar gear in your carry-on luggage. It's no longer happening. No, instead, the US has something else up its sleeve.
Alphabay shutdown: Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do? Not use your Hotmail...
Analysis
The alleged owner of dark-web marketplace AlphaBay was tracked down by FBI because he was stupid enough to include his real Hotmail address in the content management system used to run the site.
Death to strap-ons, says Intel, yet thrusts its little AI stick into us all
Intel, having accepted the inevitable, has dropped out of the wearables and fitness band game, and canned the teams working on that strap-on tech.
Second one this month: Another code bootcamp decamps to graveyard
The Iron Yard, a four-year-old coding bootcamp based in South Carolina, USA, said on Thursday that it is shutting its doors.
UK uni warns students of phishers trying to nick their tuition fees
Foreign students looking to experience the stochastic joys of a year at Newcastle University in England are being warned that phishers are after their cash – using an unusually well-crafted attack.
Huawei reckons it can strong ARM its way into AI world with new chips
Chinese systems colossus Huawei claims it is developing chips optimized for artificial-intelligence tasks.
Toshiba's spat with WDC over chip biz is now a song of strife and ire
Toshiba regained a right to lock WDC (SanDisk) employees from their joint-venture fab in Yokkaichi, Japan, reversing WDC's court-obtained Temporary Restraining Order, which was won earlier this month.
White boxer is a white racker: Supermicro touts Rack Scale Design
Building servers, switches and storage are a good racket for ODM Supermicro but building Vblock-like rack scale systems is an even better one.
Cops harpoon two dark net whales in megabust: AlphaBay and Hansa
Two of the largest dark net marketplaces - AlphaBay and Hansa - have been shut down following an international police operation.
Just look at our cloud sales, beams profit-sapped SAP
SAP has reported revenues of €5.8bn in the quarter ending June 30, up 10 per cent on the previous year’s figure.
The eyes have IT: TSB to roll out iris-scanning tech for mobile banking
TSB has announced plans to roll out iris-scanning technology for its mobile banking app from September.
Uber, Twitter's legal eagles gather to wring claws about bro culture
Lawyers from Uber and Twitter spoke about ways to curb "bro culture" in the male-dominated world of Silicon Valley at an annual judicial conference this week.
UK households hit by 1.8m computer misuse offences in a year
The number of incidents of computer misuse in England and Wales reached 1.8 million in the year up to March 2015, according to official crime statistics released today.
NHS trusts splashed £260m on PCs in last four years
In the last four years, NHS Trusts have spent £260m on 401,084 new PCs, at an average cost of £650.54 a box, according to Freedom of Information responses.
This is why old Windows Phones won't run PC apps
Thanks to Qualcomm, x86 support is coming to Windows 10 ARM phones and tablets - but not to older Lumia devices. In a webcast, Joe Belfiore, these days the corporate VP in the OS Group at Microsoft, has explained why.
'Coke dealer' called us after his stash was stolen – cops
A man called the cops to report that cash and a bag of Colombian marching powder stashed in his car had been nicked, police arrest documents have revealed.
Feature snatcher Microsoft tweaks OneDrive
Neither Apple nor Microsoft has a great history with their cloud graveyards consumer cloud file systems, tripping up users with frequent strategy lurches and abandoning features over the years.
UK mobile number porting creaks: Arcane system shows its age
Comment
Problems with the way the UK has implemented mobile phone call routing are emerging as an architecture designed for a small volume of calls struggles under the weight of usage.
No one still thinks iOS is invulnerable to malware, right? Well, knock it off
The comforting notion that iOS devices are immune to malicious code attacks has taken a knock following the release of a new study by mobile security firm Skycure.
HMS Frigatey Mcfrigateface given her official name
The first of the Royal Navy's new Type 26 frigates has been named HMS Glasgow, recycling the name for the fourth time in the last 100 years.
Oracle's FS1 storage array fades into cloud like tears in rain
+Comment
Oracle is refocusing its FS1 storage array into its own public cloud away from on-premises sales.
Yeah, WannaCry hit Windows, but what about the WannaCry of apps?
WannaCrypt crippled 230,000 Windows PCs internationally, hitting unpatched Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 and computers still running Microsoft's seriously old Windows XP, though the latter wasn't responsible for its spread.
Breathless F-35 pilots to get oxygen boost via algorithm tweak
The oxygen deprivation problems that choked F-35 pilots will be fixed through a software update, according to US reports – with the UK's handful of F-35B jets also in line for the fix.
House of Lords to probe AI data slurping
How technology giants own and use your data will be a focus for our noble and learned friends on the new House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
We're all saved. From the killer AI. We can live. Thanks to the IEEE
Amid renewed calls to regulate AI before it wipes humanity from the planet, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has rolled out a standards project to guide how AI agents handle data, part of a broader effort to ensure AI will act ethically.
UK.gov watchdog didn't red flag any IT projects. And that alone should be a red flag to everyone
Analysis
The BBC’s release of its top earners’ salaries this week stirred up both long-time detractors of Auntie and dyed-in-the-wool supporters.
Crazy bug of the week: Gnome Files' .MSI parser runs evil VBScripts
Gnome developers, take a bow: a bug in your image thumbnailer has opened up a (not too scary, thankfully) hole for script injection.
Europe's 'one patent court to rule them all' vision may be destroyed by EPO shenanigans
The freeze on long-held plans to approve a single patent court for Europe is a result of the actions of the president of the European Patent Office, according to German media reports.
Remember that Citadel bank-slurping malware? Its main man was just jailed for five years
Russian programmer Mark Vartanyan has been sentenced to five years in US federal prison for developing and spreading the Citadel malware that stole $500m (£383m) from bank accounts around the world.
Why can't you install Windows 10 Creators Update on your old Atom netbook? Because Intel stopped loving you
Microsoft has blamed Intel for the sad trail of low-end PCs left out of the Windows 10 Creators Update rollouts.
Deutsche Telekom G.fast demo pushes G.Fast faster, further
Deutsche Telekom and ADTRAN have showed off an emerging G.Fast technology called cDTA which, along with 212 MHz carrier spectrum, ramps system performance well into the gigabit range.
Mozilla hoping to open source voice samples for future AI devs
Mozilla has decided speech recognition should be open source, and has launched a project to achieve just that, Project Common Voice.
Dahua cameras stung by Web interface bug
Chinese camera-maker Dahua has flicked out a patch to fix a possible remote code execution vulnerability in its Web admin interface.
$30 million below Parity: Ethereum wallet bug fingered in mass heist
A vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum wallet software has been exploited by thieves to rob victims on a massive scale.
'We hold the high ground' says Qualcomm boss as profits crater
Qualcomm is remaining optimistic despite another miserable financial quarter, worsened by the ongoing legal war with Apple.
Quantum crypto upstart QuintessenceLabs hopes to cut the cord
With AU$3.26m from Australia's government, quantum crypto outfit QuintessenceLabs has set to work getting the fibre out of its diet, and instead running quantum key exchange over free space.
Apple hurls out patches for dozens of security holes in iOS, macOS
Apple has today released patches addressing roughly four dozen exploitable security vulnerabilities in iOS, macOS, and WatchOS.
'Millions of IoT gizmos' wide open to hijackers after devs drop gSOAP
Security researchers investigating internet-connected video cameras have uncovered a bug that could conceivably leave millions of devices open to easy pwnage.
Apple's 'KGB level of secrecy' harms its AI projects – but don't worry, it's started a blog
Analysis
Continuing its campaign to court AI boffins, traditionally tight-lipped Apple has tiptoed further toward engagement with the outside world through the publication of its first research blog.
Amazon may still get .amazon despite govt opposition – thanks to a classic ICANN cockup
Special report
Amazon may still get hold of its namesake top-level domain .amazon after an independent review panel lambasted the decision by DNS overseer ICANN to deny its application.
.. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. .- -. / .-. . .- -.. / - .... .. ... then a US Navy fondleslab just put you out of a job
For over a hundred years, navies around the world have messaged each other at the speed of light – signal lamp light.
Factories counter-punch Qualcomm in the gut as Apple eggs them on
Updated
The four electronics factories sued by Qualcomm for not paying licensing fees have lodged their own countersuit with the backing of Apple.
Who the funk is Hive-IO? It's where Atlantis assets have buzzed off to
Hive-IO has bought certain assets of Atlantis Computing, a struggling supplier of VDI and hyperconverged infrastructure software, for undisclosed financial terms.
Head in the clouds? Apparently there's now space on Oracle's sales team
Oracle is continuing to head into the cloud, kicking off another recruitment drive for 1,000 fluffy white services sales people – but the news comes amid talk of reorganisation and layoffs elsewhere.
190 Cray employees hosed down with shower of pink slippery
Supercomputer supplier Cray is giving 190 employees the elbow in a restructuring exercise to cut operating costs.
NAND then there was a second growth quarter... IBM reports flash surge
Analysis
IBM's systems segment brought in $1.7bn, 10 per cent down year-on-year. Systems hardware was $1.3bn with operating systems software at $400m.
Reborn Nokia phones biz loses its head
The boss of HMD Global, the company reviving Nokia-branded phones, quit unexpectedly today.
Stop all news – it's time for us plebs to be told about BBC paycheques!
Comment
The BBC is trembling with excitement following the enforced publication of the annual salaries of on-screen stars earning more than £150,000 at the tax-funded broadcaster.
Hortonworks reshuffles C-suite, gets third COO in 12 months
Hortonworks has ditched its second chief operating office in less than a year as part of a C-suite reshuffle that saw share prices drop.
Contain(er) your enthusiasm, nerds: Docker-backed OCI runtime spec hits 1.0
The Open Container Initiative, an attempt by Docker and other container tech companies to build standards and consensus for container technology, on Wednesday plans to release the initial version of its runtime and image specifications.
School of card knocks: Russophone criminals offered online courses in credit card fraud
Cyber crime lords have come up with a new money-spinner – Russian-language e-learning courses geared towards teaching the skills necessary to rip off consumers and card companies.
Segway hoverboard hijack hack could make hipsters eat pavement
The latest two-wheel transporter toy from Segway was disturbingly easy to hack, with miscreants requiring just seconds to take control of a vehicle, we're told.
Speaking in Tech: We NEED to do a [insert buzzword] project!
Podcast
Podcast
This week Amy is joined by Ed and Melissa with special guest Michael Coté, director of technical marketing at Pivotal. Together they discuss IoT's turn to stink, more douchebags, AI takeovers, the rise of the content providers and zombies.
Tapping the Bank of Mum and Dad: Why your Netflix subscription is poised to rise (again)
Analysis
If Silicon Valley still does one thing better than anybody else, it's propping up profitless corporations, just like the Bank of Mum and Dad. Gulf states pour money into Premier League teams, but not on anything like the scale of Uber and Netflix, two examples of capital-swallowing money pits.
IBM signs up for EU Cloud Code of Conduct, opens four data centres
IBM has signed up to an EU Cloud Provider Code of Conduct initiative and is announcing four new data centres in the UK, Australia and Silicon Valley for the IBM Cloud.
TalkTalk posts 3% sales drop, says Openreach should walk the WalkWalk
TalkTalk's sales dropped by 3 per cent in its first quarter, with an extra 20,000 new customers failing to offset the drop.
China's 'future-proof' crypto: We talk to firm behind crazy quantum key distribution network
Two hundred local government employees across the capital of China's eastern Shandong province will soon be encrypting messages with keys that are "impossible" to crack.
Targeted, custom ransomware menace rears its ugly head
Attackers are manually deploying ransomware directly into target networks to maximise the damage and potential payout.
We'll hit THAT 95% Sigfox coverage target using telly aerials, says WND-UK
WND‑UK – the “who they?” firm that boasted it will deliver more Sigfox Internet of Things network coverage than there is 4G coverage across the UK mainland – says it will achieve this by putting IoT aerials on people’s homes.
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3, 4G: Tube comms trials for emergency crews
Transport for London has tentatively started testing 4G on the Tube for emergency services. TfL's CTO said he was not "absolutely confident" it would be complete by January, 2019, however.
Disneyland to become wretched hive of scum and villainy
Disney has revealed plans to create a wretched hive of scum and villainy adjacent to one of its theme parks.
Google Cloud plays GTA in Snowball fight with AWS
Google's started a Snowball fight with Amazon Web Services by announcing a “Transfer Appliance” to get data out of your data centre and into its cloud.
Watson AI panned, 5¼ years of sales decline ... Does IBM now stand for Inferior Biz Model?
Analysis
If there's one thing you can give IBM credit for, it's Big Blue's ability to put on a brave face. Not only has its Watson offering been skewered by Wall Street analysts, it's also just reported its 21st straight quarter of revenue decline.
Australia releases MH370 sea floor data but search is still off
Geoscience Australia, the nation's agency for recording and sharing geographic and geological data, has released the first tranche of data captured during the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
Solaris, Java have vulns that let users run riot
Oracle's emitted its quarterly patch dump. As usual it's a whopper, with 308 security fixes to consider.
SQL Server 2017's first rc lands and – yes! – it runs on Linux
Microsoft's long, gentle embrace of Linux continues with the first release candidate of SQL Server 2017.
Rapid7 slurps security orchestration biz Komand
Rapid7 is the latest vendor to jump on the orchestration and automation bandwagon, announcing it's buying upstart outfit Komand to plump out its range.
Nutanix CEO smacks down VMware exec over claim it's a new Enron
The ongoing spat between VMware and Nutanix has flared again, with the latter company's CEO Dheeeraj Pandey hitting Twitter to smack down Lee Caswell, Virtzilla's veep for Products, Storage and Availability.
Let's harden Internet crypto so quantum computers can't crack it
In case someone manages to make a general purpose quantum computer one day, a group of IETF authors have put forward a proposal to harden Internet key exchange.
Foxtel choked on 65,000 new sign-ups to watch Game of Thrones
Australian pay TV broadcaster Foxtel has explained why it couldn't broadcast the new season Game of Thrones without trouble: more than 60,000 new subscribers swamped its systems.
Guess who's here to tell us we're all totally wrong about net neutrality? Of course, it's Comcast
Analysis
Comcast has barreled into the fight over net neutrality by arguing that the current rules impose "onerous" regulations and "substantial costs that undermine investment."
Iranian duo charged with hacking US missile simulation software biz
Two Iranian nationals have been charged with hacking a US defense technology maker to steal and sell its rocketry simulation software.
Google G-Suite spotted erecting stiff member vetting tool
Stung by phishing attacks aimed at G Suite users earlier this year, Google has armored its cloud with extra security layers.
It's A-OK for FBI agents to silence web giants, says appeals court
Gagging orders in the FBI's National Security Letters are all above board and constitutional, a California court has ruled.
Now your boss can tear you a new Glasshole: Google's techno-specs reborn as biz gear
Google Glass, the Chocolate Factory's shotgun wedding between technology and fashion, debuted to great fanfare on skydivers at Google IO 2012, launched with timidity in May, 2014 and collapsed under the weight of ridicule and naive expectations in January, 2015.
China's censorship cyber-missiles shoot down pics flying through WhatsApp, chat apps
China has expanded its censorship tools to strip out images from chat messages in transit through its networks.
Don't let this snap-drag-on: Qualcomm waves white flag to Apple
The CEO of Qualcomm says he hopes to settle his company's licensing dispute with Apple out of court.
CoinDash crowdfunding hack further dents trust in crypto-trading world
More than $7m was stolen by hackers on Monday from folks investing in a cryptocurrency startup.
The Lord saw that man was wicked and sent a flood of storage news
Another storage news flood has been washing over us. In between the waves we caught our breath and penned this catch-up.
One-quarter of UK.gov IT projects at high risk of failure
One-quarter of the UK government’s major IT programmes worth a total lifetime cost of £8bn are at high risk of failure, according to a Register analysis of the major project watchdog's annual report of 143 government programmes worth over £455bn.
Me-ow! Ruski tech titan Yandex open-sources ML library CatBoost
Russia's tech behemoth Yandex has open-sourced its first machine learning library, CatBoost.
Air, sea drones put through their paces on Solent testing range
More roboats and autonomous flying machines will be tested around the Solent after a consortium of companies was handed £1.5m to set up a drone test range.
UK government's war on e-cigs is over
Comment
The government has said that the persecution of the users of e-cigarette technology should stop. The Department of Health today outlined a Five Year Tobacco Control plan for England with the goal that the proportion of the population who smoke tobacco products should fall to 12 per cent by 2022, down from 15.5 per cent today.
Hypervisor kid Scale Computing ups hyperconverged smarts
Entry-level and mid-market KVM-hypervisor-based Scale Computing has upped its HCIA game with dual CPU systems and a tripled disk capacity product.
Global Switch suffers uptime blips at London Docklands DC
Irritated customers of data centre operators Global Switch are complaining about repeated power outages at the firm’s London Docklands data centre.
UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren
Ads depicting manchildren incapable of carrying out basic household tasks, and women in the role of Stepford Wives clearing up their mess, are to be banned in a crackdown by the Advertising Standards Authority.
Machine learning, Javascript and search? We’ve expanded our agenda
Events
Early bird tickets for MCubed disappear in under two weeks, so you should act now if you want to get up to speed on how to use machine learning and AI in real business, and save hundreds into the bargain.
Gartner's Magic Quadrant flashes up pure flash array-pusher prize-plucker. It's Pure
Rickety rectangle house Gartner has promoted Pure Storage to the top of the all-flash array pack in its latest Solid-State Array (SSA) Magic Quadrant, and yanked Kaminario into the leaders' quadrant for the first time.
Insurers claim cyber calamities could cost more than Hurricane Sandy
Analysis
A study aiming to raise the profile of cyber insurance claims that cloud outages and ransomware outbreaks on the WannaCry scale could cost companies $81.7bn – more than natural disasters like 2012's Hurricane Sandy. That's an awful lot of money, but wait – before you fish out the wallet – how did the authors arrive at these numbers?
Android-ocalypse postponed: Jide withdraws Remix OS from consumer frontline
So Remix OS won’t be “eating the world” after all. Parent company Jide, founded by ex-Googlers, is repositioning itself as an enterprise vendor, and says its Android-for-PCs (which also runs on cheap ARM hardware) will no longer be sold to consumers any more.
5G is not just a radio: Welcome to the fibre-tastic new mobile world
Analysis
When an executive from Nokia, of all companies, said 5G was as much about fibre as wireless, it was clear this was going to be different from previous mobile standards generations. 5G will not be driven by mobile broadband speeds as 4G was.
Another Brexit cliff edge: UK.gov warned over data flows to EU
The UK is risking a security and trade "cliff edge" if it doesn't secure an arrangement that allows data transfer with the European Union to continue after Brexit, a report has said.
Why the Kubernetes Kids can't hurt Bezos' Amazon beast
Kubernetes may be the hawtest thing in container orchestration, but Redmonk analyst James Governor has a different label for it: the "Anyone but Amazon" club. It's an interesting name for a club that includes, ironically, Amazon, but as AWS continues its march to enterprise IT domination, Kubernetes increasingly looks like a rallying cry for erstwhile enemies to combine against a common foe.
Thanks for U-turning on biz-killing ban, Ofcom – now cough up, say GSM gateway bods
A former GSM gateway operator is threatening to reactivate a £20m legal claim against Ofcom after the UK regulator's past policies killed his company, according to documents seen by The Register.
Openreach asks UK what it thinks about 10 million 'full fibre' connections
Openreach has launched a consultation seeking input from industry to create "full fibre" broadband in Blighty - part of its new cuddly, collaborative approach post legal separation from BT.
Vendors rush to call everything AI even if it isn't, or doesn't help
Many enterprise software vendors “are focused on the goal of simply building and marketing an AI-based product rather than identifying use cases and the business value to customers.”
Hot HoloLens models 'shafted by Microsoft'
Microsoft and Jonathan Plumb, program manager at Microsoft Studios, have been sued by Jennifer Kelly, founder of Seattle modeling agency Genesis Industries.
Security robot falls into pond after failing to spot stairs or water
A security robot tasked with patrolling an office building in Washington DC has instead driven itself into a water feature.
John McAfee plans to destroy Google. Details? Ummm...
Having tilted at the US presidency without success, John McAfee has picked his last next big windmill: Google.
NASA whistles up electron noise from the Van Allen belt
NASA boffins in charge of the agency's Van Allen Belt mission have recorded audio-frequency noise made by energetic electrons emitting what's known as “whistler waves”.
Dow Jones index – of customers, not prices – leaks from AWS repo
Dow Jones has emulated Verizon by saving various internal databases (including Wall Street Journal subscribers) in the cloud without properly securing it.
Buzzword buzzkill: Cloud, AI, IoT and edge work in a real product
Artificial intelligence, the internet of things and edge computing are 2017's inescapable buzzwords, and cloud probably has that role for the entire decade. So imagine The Register's surprise when we learned all three are working together in a product you can put to work today.
Dell and Intel see off IBM and POWER to win new Australian super
Dell has won the gig to build Australia's newest supercomputer.
The curious case of a Tesla smash, Autopilot blamed, and the driver's next-day U-turn
On Saturday evening, a Tesla Model S skidded off the road in central Minnesota, in America's Midwest, and ended up on its roof in a swamp.
FreeRADIUS fragged by fuzzer – by invitation – and fifteen fails found
The folks over at FreeRADIUS took a look at Guido Vranken's work with OpenSSL, liked what they saw, asked him to fuzz the famous login/security server ... and then didn't like what they saw.
US laptops-on-planes ban now applies to just one airport, ends soon
The United States' ban on laptops being carried into airliner cabins is all-but-over, after the nation's Transport Security Administration reduced its list of dodgy airports to just one and signalled that destination awaits inspection before also disappearing from its list.
2017: The FBI alerts parents to dangers of Internet of Sh*t toys
The FBI issued a warning Monday advising parents to carefully check internet-connected toys for possible privacy and security concerns.
Russia launches non-TERRIFYING satellite that focuses Sun's solar rays onto Earth
Skywatchers are going to see a new light in the heavens this week after the successful launch of the Russian satellite Mayak this past weekend.
Dev to El Reg: Making web pages pretty is harder than building crypto
+Comment
An Australian computer scientist working in Thailand has offered his contribution to Australia's cryptography debate by creating a public-key crypto demonstrator in less than a day, using public APIs and JavaScript.
Apache says 'no' to Facebook code libraries
The Apache Foundation has declared that none of its new software projects can include Facebook's booby-trapped BSD-licensed code.
Stop this crazy crusade! Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon scold FCC over net neutrality
The world's largest internet companies lambasted the FCC in a formal filing today, telling America's telecom regulator to kill its plans to ditch net neutrality rules.
AI bots will kill us all! Or at least may seriously inconvenience humans
Analysis
Elon Musk – the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink, not to mention co-chairman of OpenAI and founder of The Boring Company – is once again warning that artificial intelligence threatens humanity.
Ew! HTC jams pop-up adverts into people's smartphone keyboards
HTC, which needs all the love it can get these days, has enraged its customers by bunging adverts into the onscreen keyboard on its phones.
The Atari retro games box is real… sort of
Atari has continued its teaser-trailer approach to what is purported to be a retro version of its classic games console.
Cisco plugs command-injection hole in WebEx Chrome, Firefox plugins
Cisco has patched its Chrome and Firefox WebEx plugins to kill a bug that allows evil webpages to execute commands on computers.
Forgotten your Myspace password? Just a name, username, DoB will get you in – and into anyone else's, too
Myspace's account recovery process is hopelessly flawed, according to a security researcher.
Juicy fine for Bradford firm after it blurts one million spam texts
Bradford-based loans company Provident Personal Credit has been fined £80,000 for squeezing out almost a million nuisance texts.
Google must cough up contact info for 8,000 employees in gender discrimination case
Google has been ordered to hand over personal details of 8,000 employees as part of an ongoing US Labor Department investigation into equal pay.
Western Digital wins California court skirmish against Toshiba
A California court has told Toshiba not to transfer its flash memory joint venture interests to anyone else without advance notice to WDC subsidiary SanDisk, so that the issue is preserved for arbitration.
Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in
The timelord of Doctor Who, a man since 1963, will be portrayed by a woman – actress Jodie Whittaker – for the first time.
Flash firm Kaminario lays off half of UK team
Kaminario has left UK sales in the hands of an sales engineer and a chief technology officer following the redundancy of more than half of the local staff, a number of sources have told The Register.
Presto crypto: IBM releases gruntier, faster Z14 mainframe
IBM has launched its latest, newest, biggest, baddest mainframe, the z14 system.
Jesus walks away after 7,000lb pipe van incident
Jesus has miraculously survived a great weight from the heavens that should have crushed him to death, according to Florida TV.
Media mogul Murdoch's 'Sky dataset' swallow poses 'grave threat'
The proposed £11.7bn takeover of Sky by Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox is a "grave threat" to the democratic process, members of the UK's House of Lords have claimed.
Nearly three-quarters of convicted TV Licence non-payers are women
Nearly three-quarters of TV Licensing criminal convictions in the UK last year were secured against women, according to data gathered by an anti-Telly Tax campaigner.
Facebook users pwnd by phone with account recovery vulnerability
Facebook account recovery using pre-registered mobile numbers is poorly implemented and open to abuse, according to critic James Martindale.
UK.gov snaps on rubber gloves, prepares for mandatory porn checks
The government is poised to usher in mandatory porn checks this week, with reports it will require users to provide details from a credit card to prove they are over 18.
The hidden horse power driving Machine Learning models
Machine Learning is becoming the only real available method to perform many modern computational tasks in near real time. Machine Vision, speech recognition and natural language processing have all proved difficult to crack without ML techniques.
UK.gov embraces Oracle's cloud: Pragmatism or defeatism?
Analysis
Oracle recently launched its dedicated Government Cloud in the UK - duly wheeling out the Home Office as an example of an early adopter. But to what extent are its new services just vendor lock-in under a cloudwash veneer or a change for the better?
Brit neural net pioneer just revolutionised speech recognition all over again
Profile
One of the pioneers of making what's called "machine learning" work in the real world is on the comeback trail.
Radiohead hides ZX Spectrum proggie in OK Computer re-release
Rock deities Radiohead have snuck a program for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum into a re-release of their seminal 1997 album “OK Computer”.
Redis releases respectable revision, tiptoes through tricky political terminology
Redis, the moderately popular in-memory open-source database has just hit its 4.0.0 milestone, to the delight of some.
Three Microsoft Outlook patches unpatched, users left to DIY
Microsoft has withdrawn at least three of the patches released at the end of June and early July, but left it to users to find out for themselves.
SAP rips and replaces South African bosses amid corruption probe
SAP has installed an acting managing director and acting chief financial officer at its scandal-hit South Africa subsidiary.
Google unleashes 20m lab-created blood-thirsty freaks on a city. And this is a good thing, it says
Google’s healthcare arm Verily announced just before the weekend it will release twenty million sterile male mosquitoes into the wild, in Fresno County, California.
Ashley Madison throws US$11.2m on the bed to mop up leak affair
Dating site for cheaters Ashley Madison has thrown US$11.2 million on the bed to make its 2015 data leak go away.
Linus Torvalds may have damned systemd with faint praise
Linux 4.13 is under way. Linus Torvalds pulled one of his semi-surprises by announcing release candidate one on Saturday, rather than issuing his usual Sunday evening missive.
Burglary in mind? Easy, just pwn the home alarm
It's Monday, and infosec-watchers are showing their age by calling internet of things security disclosures “a broken record”. This time, it's a home security system that's remotely p0wnable.
Microsoft reveals first Windows Server Insider Build
Microsoft's revealed the first fruits of its plan to deliver twice-yearly updates to Windows Server by revealing the first-ever Insider build of the OS.
DARPA's robot sat-fixing program survives sueball strike
Aerospace company Orbital ATK has failed in a legal bid to halt a DARPA contract for robotic satellite maintenance devices and will instead see if the White House can help it to bring the work to the private sector.
Multi-gig broadband spec passes interop test at Verizon
Verizon is ramping up its multi-gigabit optical broadband work with interop tests for its implementation of the OpenOMCI specification.
IETF moves meeting from USA to Canada to dodge Trump travel ban
The Internet Engineering Task Force has taken the rare (and possibly costly) decision to relocate an upcoming meeting out of America.
