The Week in Summary
Micron tears away cloak to reveal its Gen3 Hybrid Memory Cube
SMC Micron has revealed some of the goals – and the manufacturing challenges it faces – for the development of its next-generation "all silicon" Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC).
1
The web needs globally backed, verifiable security standards - says Huawei
Chinese networking hardware behemoth Huawei has issued its second annual cybersecurity white paper and is calling for manufacturers around the world to set up testable security standards that will ensure everyone's reading from the same hymn sheet.
Avert your eyes! Hortonworks mates Hadoop beast with SAS
Hadoop company Hortonworks is teaming up with SAS on a strategic partnership to integrated its analytics platform with SAS's suite of data technologies.
Forget Wi-Fi, boffins get 150Mbps Li-Fi connection from a lightbulb
Scientists in China are reporting great success in replacing traditional Wi-Fi radio traffic with Li-Fi, a system that uses the light signals from a LED lightbulb to provide a line-of-sight data stream.
Apple's top bean counter: New spaceship HQ won't emit 'one atom of carbon'
Vid Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer made a rare press-conference appearance after the Cupertino city council approved Apple Campus 2, extolling the green credentials of his company's 2.8m sq foot, $5bn "spaceship."
No plans for Friday night? There's a pile o' Windows Server ISOs feeling lonely
Now that Windows 8.1, the latest version of Microsoft's client OS, is safely out the door, Redmond has turned its attention to its server family: Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, and the new Windows Intune all reached general availability on Friday.
Microsoft sharpens blade, slashes high-mem cloud prices in Amazon duel
Microsoft has opened up yet another front in its ongoing cloud price war with Amazon by cutting prices of its high-memory servers by as much as 22 percent.
DRAM whammed, thank you ma'am: Kaminario K2 flash bests sib at SPC-1
Kaminario has submitted an SPC-1 benchmark run on its K2 flash array, and it's reached the top.
FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS: Microsoft faces prising XP from Big Biz
Windows versions are a bit like Star Trek movies – every other one tends to be a bit duff. It happened with ME, then XP impressed everyone, then it happened with Vista, then Windows 7 came along – and now we're at Windows 8.1.
America: Land of the free, still home of the BIGGEST spammers on the planet
The US prides itself on being the best at a lot of good things. And, judging by the latest data from security vendor Sophos, America is still the best at spaffing spam in the world.
Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2: Our quick start guide for sysadmins
Sysadmin blog Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 are now officially available. New shiny toys for the kids, but how does a sysadmin license these new products?
MacBook Air fanbois! Your flash drive may be a data-nuking TIME BOMB
If you bought a MacBook Air between June 2012 and June 2013, its flash storage drive may be preparing to crap out – and Apple wants to replace it before it goes south on you.
Google's leaky ship spills new Nexus 5 photos, $349 price tags all over web
Google's next smartphone, the Nexus 5, will apparently be priced $349 just like its predecessor – but it will come with a bigger screen and more pixels to show off the much-heralded KitKat version of Android.
Hey, how'd that guy get to be a BAZILLIONAIRE?
Sysadmin blog Ready to hear about the next IT startup niche? It's an emerging market called "host-based caching", and you might wish to pay attention if you'd like to understand how a few people got stupidly rich a few years from now.
Google's latest Brussels self-abuse proposal needs 'concrete tech'
Agitators in the European Parliament are pressuring Brussels' competition chief to properly market test Google's new round of proposals to the Commission on its alleged abuse of dominance in the search business.
Windows 8.1: Bewildering, square, touchy but WAIT! It has a Start button
Review Windows 8.1 adds a layer of polish to the previous release, Windows 8, and fixes various annoyances. But has Microsoft done enough to rescue its OS against a background of plummeting PC sales and unimpressed customers who want Windows 7 back?
Billionaire Musk vows to turn 007's Lotus Esprit into actual submarine car
The anonymous buyer of the Lotus Esprit submarine car from the James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me has turned out to be none other than billionaire inventor Elon Musk.
Jury smacks Qualcomm for UNLAWFUL TECH in iPhone, Galaxy chips
Wireless comms firm ParkerVision has seen its shares soar today after a jury ruled that chipmaker Qualcomm had infringed its patents in a million-dollar trial over mobile phone chips used in iPhones and Galaxy devices.
SanDisk's so busy adding up its dosh, enterprise PCIe cards slip into 2014
Flash memory biz SanDisk is on a roll with third quarter revenues and income up on both annual and sequential compares.
Fiendish CryptoLocker ransomware: Whatever you do, don't PAY
Vid A fiendishly nasty strain of Windows malware that uses advanced encryption to lock up user files before demanding a ransom is doing the rounds.
Japanese pussies slurp 'meow meow' sex wine
Pics Those cat-lovers among you who fear your beloved feline might feel left out at birthday and Xmas celebrations are directed to this tempting tipple - a brew of Cabernet grape juice, catnip and vitamin C dubbed "Nyan Nyan Nouveau".
What the CUFF? Nokia shows how a smartwatch ought to work
Video Boffins working for Nokia have knocked together a prototype smartwatch with six screens, and patented the ways in which one might use it should such a thing ever become technically practical.
Terminator-style robot busts leg in martial arts demo mishap
Hong Kong University robotics researchers ended up with egg on their faces today when their new $2m walking robot tripped over and broke its leg while trying to strut its funky stuff at its first public performance.
Not so Saucy after all: Ubuntu reveals Mirless Salamander... and what, no Britney?
Review The Ubuntu that Canonical has delivered this autumn is notable for what's missing.
ITU to Europe: One charger for all mobes good. One to rule them ALL? Better
The EU is about to make micro USB charging mandatory on mobile phones, but the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is pushing to extend that regulation to everything handheld, making all electronic gadgets chargeable from the same cable.
Alarming tales: What goes on INSIDE Reg hack's hi-tech bedroom
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Mrs Dabbsy is threatening to decamp to the spare room.
Amateur image-wrangler reveals stitched snap of Saturn's splendour
An amateur image processor has stitched together raw images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft to produce a stunning image of Saturn, seen from above on 10 October.
Got a mobile phone? Then you've got a Trojan problem too
Something wonderful has happened: phones have got smart, but the bad news is they may open the door to those you don’t want to let in.
Last living NEANDERTHALS discovered in JERSEY – boffins
Archaeologists have rediscovered the lost home of the last Neanderthals on the south coast of Jersey, which shows evidence of the last cavemen to live in Northwest Europe.
Extreme ultraviolet litho: Extremely late and can't even save Moore's Law
SMC To save Moore's Law, not only will the semiconductor industry need to move to not-yet-ready-for-prime-time extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), it will also have to make a costly switch from the current 300mm wafer manufacturing standard to 450mm.
Beyond: Two Souls - the game that thinks it's a Hollywood blockbuster
Review Say hello to Jodie Holmes, a woman whose eventful life from infancy to adulthood forms the entirety of Beyond: Two Souls.
'Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination'
Quotw This was the week when Brit sci-fi author Charles Stross published an almighty rant about the omnipotence of Microsoft Word and how the program should just up and die. And being a writer, he's capable of a few good putdowns:
Simplivity shows off VDI configs with Nvidia... Doh! VMware, what are you doing here?
Server virtualisation firm Simplivity has decided that virtual desktop infrastructure is a special use case and has partenered with Nvidia on "plans to provide solutions and reference architectures for new optimised, graphics- and compute-intensive VDI application workloads and cloud infrastructures."
Sketchy Soho denizens get mitts on London superheroes
Pics Vendors are always keen to find appealing ways to attract attention to their products, hosting events that more often than not turn out to be cringingly cheesy. Yet as part of HP’s workstation campaign, drawing upon the talent of Soho’s finest animators to collaborate on a short film project, seems to have hit the right note.
iPhone 5S autopsy shows WHY it can't tell which end is up – dev
Balance problems plaguing the iPhone 5S popped up with the first reviews. But a teardown by Chipworks and the musings of an iOS dev have isolated a likely reason why the steering on that motor racing app is about 5 degrees off.
Snowden: 'I have data on EVERY NSA operation against China'
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed he taught a course in “cyber-counterintelligence” against China and has access to data on every active operation mounted against the People’s Republic by the US spy agency.
Microsoft holds nose, shoves Windows into Android, iOS boxes
Microsoft may not yet be keen for its Office suite to run on rivals' mobile devices, but it has made good on its promise to make Windows accessible on Android and iOS devices.
Twitter will leap into instant-messaging world with new app: report
Twitter is about to add to the world's store of instant messaging apps.
Can't hear the sirens? Knobble evildoers with your massive integer
A scheme to help deaf and hard-of-hearing people call the cops has been named as one of three finalists in a government-sponsored big data competition.
AMD avoids a red-ink-stained quarter for once, market says 'meh'
Perennial chip challenger Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has posted a profit for the third quarter of 2013, a turnaround that has failed to excite investors.
Torrent site isoHunt to close
BitTorrent index isoHunt.com will close next week after it agreed to a settlement the terms of which say it must “permanently cease and desist from directly or indirectly operating or supporting any part of the 'ISOhunt' system”.
Labor names Jason Clare shadow comms spokesbloke
Debate over Australia's National Broadband Network has a new combatant: Jason Clare, member for the western Sydney seat of Blaxland.
Lenovo sniffing BlackBerry's laundry, may purchase: report
Lenovo and BlackBerry have reportedly signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that lets the Chinese concern send in the accountants in order to gain an understanding of whether the beleaguered phone-maker is worthy of an acquisition.
ASTEROID may 'BLOW UP EARTH' in 2032, warns Russian space boss
A freshly discovered asteroid, with the classy name 2013 TV135, has a slight chance of smashing into Earth on August 26, 2032 and ruining everyone's day in a very big way.
So you want to develop for Windows 8.1? Visual Studio 2013 is HERE
Hot on the heels of Windows 8.1, Microsoft has released the latest versions of its flagship Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server developer tools, albeit only to MSDN subscribers for the time being.
Gasp! Facebook's hardware king joins board of ARM server biz Calxeda
Facebook's head of hardware design and supply chain operations has joined the board of directors of Calxeda, a company that specializes in building servers out of ARM processors.
Havana see your bare metal: New OpenStack v8 clinches containerization
Open-source cloud controller OpenStack has gone into its eighth major release bringing with it technologies that should let admins chuck out hypervisors and spin up bare-metal clouds.
Ubuntu 13.10 lands on desktops, servers and (er, some) phones
As had been foretold, Canonical on Thursday announced the release of Ubuntu 13.10 in flavors for desktop PCs, servers, and mobile devices, going as far as to describe the new version as "a milestone in computing history."
US red-tape will drain boffins' brains into China, says crypto-guru Shamir
Cryptographer Adi Shamir – the "S" in the RSA encryption algorithm – says "heavy-handed" bureaucracy has prevented him from attending today's NSA-backed Cryptologic History Symposium.
Google shares surf ad-destroying mobile tsunami to RECORD HIGH
The shift to mobile gadgets is eating into advertising revenue worldwide – but that hasn't stopped ad giant Google reporting whopping sales of $14.89bn, driving its shares to a record high.
A $17.3bn fine, you say? Samsung begs for five-year patent war truce
The European Commission has asked for comments on a proposed deal with Samsung that would see the South Koreans pledging not to take patent lawsuits to court for five years in exchange for avoiding a massive fine.
COFFEE AND DANISH HELL: National ID system cockup forces insecure Java on Danes
A bungled IT upgrade has downed Denmark's universal NemID login system, forcing people to stay on an insecure version of Java if they want to carry out online banking, check their insurance, or retrieve tax return information.
Windows 8.1: Read this BEFORE you update - especially if you've got more than 1 PC
Microsoft is rolling out Windows 8.1 as a free upgrade for all Windows 8 users. But installing the new OS may not be as simple as it sounds, particularly for those with multiple computers to manage or those who installed the earlier Windows 8.1 Preview.
Acronis CEO: Anyone can undercut Amazon. Reg hack: Prove it
Blocks and Files Data backup company Acronis Storage is going to enable cloud storage service providers to undercut Amazon S3 storage pricing, according to its CEO.
LG Display: No one buys TVs any more, but mobe screens? KerCHING
LG Display has reported its highest quarterly profit this year as smartphone screens for mobes like the iPhone continue to prop up poor returns in TV displays.
Enormo US reseller Insight rejigs top bods across rest of world
US-owned reseller Insight is clearing out a chunk of heavy duty sales experience to cut its cloth for leaner trade, say The Channel's sources.
Former Nokia boss Ollila: Stephen Elop was second-choice CEO
Former Nokia boss Jorma Ollila, who made the Finnish company the global leader in mobile phones for a decade, has published his memoirs: Mahdoton menestys ("An Impossible Success").
NSA boss Alexander and deputy to take a hike next year
Comment The head of the NSA and his deputy are both expected to leave the signals intelligence agency over the next six months, unnamed US officials told Reuters.
Apple appoints top Obama legal eagle as antitrust watchdog
High profile attorney Michael Bromwich, fresh from his latest stint as the top US offshore drilling watchdog, has been tapped to serve as Apple's antitrust compliance monitor.
HP cloud overlord backs UK distie Westcoast as it flogs its fluff to small biz
Small biz customers have been bitten by the cloud bug but large enterprises and government types are altogether less open to outsourcing IT or broadcasting their data into the electronic ether.
MPs to review laws on UK spy-snoopery after GCHQ Tempora leaks
Parliament's intelligence services watchdog is to hold an inquiry into whether or not UK surveillance laws need updating in light of Edward Snowden's revelations into GCHQ's activities.
NSA reporter leaves paper for eBay billionaire backed media biz
Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke the NSA surveillance story, is leaving British daily The Guardian to join a mysterious new eBay billionaire-backed publication.
Here comes Windows 8.1! Microsoft grits teeth, pushes upgrade to world
Analysis Microsoft today unleashed Windows 8.1, the version to soothe folks ruffled by the touchscreen-friendly user interface.
eBay warns investors: Don't expect 'em to stuff stockings with our tat
Shares in eBay tumbled in after-hours trading on Wall Street, after the online tat bazaar coughed to a "cautious outlook" for the holiday season in the US.
METEORITES, not MEN, are FROM MARS: NASA rover's shock discovery
A foolproof way of telling whether a given meteorite fallen here on planet Earth is actually from Mars has been developed, courtesy of NASA's nuclear-powered rover Curiosity prowling across the ochre landscape of our planetary neighbour.
Twitter hires Google ad exec: Microblogging? We've heard of it
Twitter has poached a Google ad exec to be its head of retail, as it expands its business in preparation for its IPO.
Ofcom flogs ex-military 4G spectrum, but ONLY the iPhone 5 can use it
A fresh round of 4G spectrum auctions are in the offing as Ofcom proposes selling off surplus military frequencies at 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz, despite the fact that only the iPhone 5 can make any use of it.
Ubisoft's Watch Dogs muzzled by delays
Spooks working at one of Europe's largest defence contractors have warned that the delayed Ubisoft game Watch Dogs could create a whole new generation of hackers.
BSkyB profit knocked by BT footie struggle and O2 broadband costs
BSkyB has felt the pinch from huge operating costs as it continues to battle with its pay-TV archrival BT and absorbs the buyout of O2's consumer broadband network.
Behold, the MONSTER-CLAWED critter and its terrifying SPIDER BRAIN
Pic Boffins have uncovered the earliest known complete central nervous system in a never-before-described water-spider-like creature that prowled the ocean 520 MILLION years ago.
How mystery DDoSers tried to take down Bitcoin exchange with 100Gbps crapflood
Exclusive Web security firm Incapsula helped a Chinese Bitcoin trader to weather a ferocious denial-of-service attack last month when the volume of inbound traffic to the site peaked at 100Gbps.
Man+iPhone versus artificial intelligence: Anki robot racer slot cars
Anki, the racing toy maker clipped together by a band of robotics boffins, will begin selling its iDevice-controlled slot car set Anki Drive in just over five days’ time.
Reg reader's nipper takes felt pens to Vulture 2
We're progressing nicely towards selecting a lively livery for our Vulture 2 spaceplane, although following publication earlier this week of the first batch of reader suggestions, Stelios Zacharias got in touch to insist "my four-year-old can design better than that".
EC: NSA slurps scare you? Europe's clouds are open for business
The European Commission has outlined its aim for the EU to become a "world leading" cloud computing market on matters relating to data protection and security.
Send dosh (insecurely) via email, Jack Dorsey's Square tells punters
Not content with revolutionising shopping as we know it, uber-cool money-transfer outfit Square has launched a peer-to-peer payment system – secured only by an SMTP password.
Do not adjust your set: TV market slows, 'connected TV' grows
Opinion It is always annoying when forecasters fail to forecast disruption: this is probably the most important part of the future to forecast, rather than incremental rises and blips in revenues.
Managing multi-vendor devices with System Centre 2012
Training On 28 November at 11am GMT, we’re broadcasting a live training session to show you one way of solving the business-critical challenge of managing multi-vendor devices. You'll be able to watch it for free from the comfort of your desk/sofa/bed.
Leaky security could scuttle global ship-tracking system
Security researchers have found a major flaw in the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a mandatory tracking system for ships, which could leave the 400,000 vessels currently using it globally wide open to terrorists or pirates.
Free Cocaine giveaway from Russian search engine Yandex
Russia's leading search engine, Yandex, has launched a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering named “Cocaine”.
Indonesia becomes MOST DANGEROUS place on the internet
Indonesia has had the dubious honour of supplanting China as the number one source of attack traffic globally in the second quarter, according to the latest stats from content delivery and security firm Akamai.
Feline OVERLORDS ditch camera-toting human servants, film selfie vids
Not content with taking over the internet, your mind, science, and potentially, your wallet, cats will soon no longer require the aid of their human chattel to film them.
Most 'cloud' traffic never sees the cloud: Cisco
A disconnect seems to be emerging between the technologies vendors believe are important in the cloud, and the way traffic is flowing between cloud data centres.
OpenStack adds F5 as member
F5 Networks has become the latest vendor to sling bling in the direction of the OpenStack Foundation.
Rorschach test suggested as CAPTCHA replacement
A group of boffins from Carnegie Mellon University is proposing that inkblot-style patterns form the basis of a system to replace CAPTHCAs, and is offering an open challenge to see how well it works.
Microsoft saddles up for a ride on Sky Giraffe
Microsoft Ventures, Redmond's entry to the wonderful world of high-risk technology investing, has written its first cheque.
Screw Internet-of-Things: Boffins build Internet-of-Sound UNDERWATER
Scientists at the University of Buffalo (UB) have tested an underwater network that could make internet-like communications across the world's oceans a possibility.
Facebook teenagers can now expose themselves to the entire WORLD
Facebook has once again tweaked its privacy settings, so if your teenagers use the social network, it could be time for you to sit them down for a little talk.
CSIRO unveils new bushfire software and knowledge base
With Australia already embroiled in the earliest-starting fire season in memory, it's pertinent that the CSIRO is working on improving our ability to model and predict bushfire behaviour.
Microsoft plugs Xbox One consoles into its cloud - what could go wrong?
Microsoft is wiring Windows Azure directly into its forthcoming Xbox One games console – giving game developers server-side processing and gamers the chance of cloud brownouts ruining their playtime.
Hadoop 2 stampedes onto world's mega compute clusters
The Apache Software Foundation has branded the data analytics Hadoop platform with version 2 and sent the Elephant-logoed system stampeding out into the wild.
Windows XP folks: At least GOOGLE still loves you ... UNTIL 2015
Updated In a rather shrewd move, Google has said it will provide Chrome updates for Windows XP users for at least a year after Microsoft stops supporting the elderly OS next April.
'Please, steal my phone' TV ads by T-Mobile US slammed by legal eagles
A new ad campaign launched by US wireless carrier T-Mobile has drawn the ire of top prosecutors in two cities, who claim the TV spot is offensive and belittles the problem of smartphone theft.
China, an untapped land of opportunity for the West - EXCEPT IBM
IBM's third-quarter earnings for 2013 missed estimates by a billion dollars, thanks to an ugly environment in China and continuing weakness in the company's hardware division.
Nokia, Indian upstart square up to Google's mighty mapping empire
Google's assumed dominance in online maps is being challenged in India by Nokia's efforts and separately an upstart service in the country. And the outcome of this battle could send tremors throughout the world.
Tech Data names CE director after divisional shake-up
Distie goliath Tech Data (TD) UK has handed company veteran Mark Glasspool the directorship of its consumer electronics division following a summer shake-up.
Hypersonic MEGA METEOR pulled from lake, then Russians drop it
Pic A chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which wounded more than 1,000 people when it exploded over Russia in February, has been found and raised from its resting place 20 metres under in a lake.
Australian politicians 'resisted' debate on new spook powers
Australian politicians from left, right and centre took little interest in new laws designed to help the nation's security forces, according to the nation's former Attorney-General Nicola Roxon.
Database upstart NuoDB 'Blackbirds' spread wings, fly into version 2
Startup NuoDB has released version 2 of its "emergent" database bringing with it greater SQL compatibility and more advanced geo-distribution.
Rich in Philadelphia? Your new phone can be put in your hands TODAY
Lost your phone? Want it replaced in a hurry? If you live in Philadelphia, you can have a new one brought to your doorstep today if you buy it from Verizon Wireless.
Dead Steve Jobs' Apple donut SPACESHIP HQ gets permission to land
Apple's new spaceship-shaped headquarters has been given the go-ahead by Cupertino City Council.
'Spotify for TV' Magine terrifies Euro players with smart TV deals
Magine TV, the Swedish cloud-based OTT service that threatens to blow a hole through European TV, has signed up smart TV makers LG Electronics, Panasonic, and TP Vision (selling Philips TVs).
Sepaton launches super-duper big data-slurping deduper
Sepaton has updated its 16-node deduping disk-to-disk backup mill with hybrid dedupe methods and has planned a capacity jump to 16 petabytes.
Don’t let mobile malware steal your company data
The mobile malware landscape is changing. Standardisation might be a good thing for building ecosystems and making phones more useful, but the emergence of Android and iOS as leaders in the operating-system wars makes life easier for those who would target the data on your corporate devices.
Apple slams brakes on orders of (not so cheap) plasticky iPhone 5C
Apple has told its hardware makers to reduce iPhone 5C production for the fourth quarter – sparking concerns that demand for the handsets may be weaker than expected.
PernixData shows off write-caching, clustering one-trick FVP pony
Virtualising server-side flash biz PernixData's CEO says its FVP VMware hypervisor flash caching software is better than VMware's own flash read cache because it has write caching and clustering, two things that VMware's gear lacks.
'Patent trolling' InterDigital CAN ask ITC to ban Nokia mobes: Supreme Court
Nokia has failed to get the US Supreme Court to rule that the International Trade Commission shouldn't hear cases involving companies whose business only involves patents, despite supporting evidence from Amazon, Red Hat, and HP – and to the delight of InterDigital.
NHS preps spammy mailshots advertising 'BIGGEST medical data grab in HISTORY'
GPs will no longer carry the sole burden of telling patients that their medical records will be shared across the NHS, after it was confirmed today that millions of households in England will receive a leaflet explaining the controversial plan.
US ERP roll out amid a downturn? That's what hit Datatec in H1
A twitchy Datatec today pulled down full-year revenue guidance at the half-way point of fiscal '14 blaming choppy waters around its distie biz Westcon as well as a complex ERP roll out for zapping sales.
OAR-some! 18ft SEA SERPENT discovered DEAD off US coast
Vid A marine boffin has come across a terrifying 18-foot "sea serpent" off the coast of California.
Mac fans: You don't need Windows to get ripped off in tech support scams
"I'll just [tap, tap, runs a ping command] see if you have any antivirus protection. See, all the requests timed out. That is why your computer is working so slow."
Backing up your VMware environment? Don't lose control...
Regcast Is your VMware back up under control? No, we thought not. Virtualisation has achieved many wonderful things - but it has complicated data protection and backup, where organisations see increasing recovery times, a lack of granularity, and inconsistency between back up and disaster recovery regimes.
Violin gangs up with Microsoft: Psst, big biz, want an all-flash Windows Server box?
Flash array front runner Violin Memory can now run Windows Server inside its high-end arrays, giving the server OS access to up to 64TB of NAND with the ability to run all Windows enterprise applications in solid state storage.
Twitter snubs IPOcalypse host Nasdaq in favour of NYSE
Twitter has revealed that it has snubbed the tech-heavy Nasdaq market in favour of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for its IPO.
Speaking in Tech: 'People are gonna vote for BlackBerry just to mess with me'
Podcast Podcast
This week in Speaking in Tech, your hosts Greg Knieriemen and Sarah Vela hold down the fort while Eddie Saipetch parties in Barcelona. They chat about Oracle's white paper, drinking culture in the UK vs the US, VMWare's shock acquisition of Desktone, and whether the WinPhone Lumia is a "dad phone".
Oracle drops shedload of CRITICAL vuln-busting Java patches
Oracle's autumn batch of quarterly updates included no fewer than 127 security fixes, including 51 for Java alone.
How were your hols, cluster kids? Oh, partied, studied... did we mention WE BUILT DRONES
HPC blog Among the five teams who will be defending America’s Big Iron honour at the upcoming Student Cluster Competition (SCC) are a few students who skipped the keg parties to, er, build, fly, program and optimise the performance of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Oracle raids HP enterprise biz to find global channel chief
Oracle has filled the void at the top of its channel organisation after president Mark Hurd raided his previous employer HP by sweet-talking its Americas enterprise boss Rich Geraffo into jumping ship.
All cool kids' phones run ALTERNATIVE alternative custom Android ROM
Android users who want a custom ROM*, but are turned off by Cyanogenmod's attempts to go commercial, now have another option in the form of the newly-launched OmniROM.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3: Once, twice, three times - a Very Large Phone™
Review Laying Dell’s Streak to one side, you can blame Samsung for starting this whole VLP™ business with its 5.3-inch Galaxy Note, which sold in more-than-decent numbers, as much to the surprise of its maker as anyone else, I suspect.
Slip your SIM into a plastic sheath, WIPE international call charges
A sticker slapped onto a SIM card can cut international calls by 98 per cent, and guarantee a 50 per cent saving on business spending, without changing numbers or phones.
Loathed wiggly-word CAPTCHAs morph into 'fun' click-'n'-drag games
A UK startup is trying to make a game out of solving CAPTCHAs*, the ubiquitous but sometimes irritating challenges designed to make sure that a human, rather than a 'bot, is registering for an online service.
Tintri boss returns to techie role, brings in startup-flogger as CEO
Tintri has hired itself a new CEO, with founder Kieran Harty stepping aside from that role to become chief technical officer.
Microsoft: Everyone stop running so the fat kid Win RT can catch up
Analysis Windows Phone has been a success for Microsoft in 2013, thanks almost entirely to very low cost but good value Nokia devices. But the platform itself advances at the pace of a continental shelf on a work-to-rule. Will the latest platform enhancements in GDR3 help?
London's Tech City welcomes first Chinese tenant
London’s Tech City hub has welcomed its first company from mainland Chinese to Silicon Roundabout, with the news that gaming biz Rekoo is setting up its European HQ there.
David Brent's office to host VMware's hybrid cloud
VMware has made good in its promise to bring its vCloud Hybrid Service (VCHS) to blighty, announcing that Slough will be the site for its first European service.
NORKS cyber mayhem cost South Korea £500 MEEELLION
North Korea’s supposed 3,000-strong army of highly trained hackers has caused financial damage to its southern neighbour amounting to over £500 million over the past four years, according to a South Korean lawmaker.
Rumblings: Amazon to chum up with HTC, smartphones in mind
HTC is having another tilt at hanging its fortunes on a big American brand, this time with Amazon.
US parents proclaim 811 'Messiahs'
A US psychologist has warned of the dire consequences of a "stunning rise" in "vanity" names for kids, revealing that no less than 811 "Messiahs" were proclaimed during 2012, joining 243 Princesses, 588 Princes and a whopping 1,423 Kings on the list of newborns.
Bonking boffins say bacon biters won't breed
Swap the breakfast bacon for kippers, gents, because the bad news is that bacon – along with other processed meats – is associated with poor semen quality.
Acronis receives Parallels-o-gram, reveals cloudy backup platform
Acronis' integration with sibling company Parallels is gathering pace, after the former today announced a cloud storage service.
Yahoo! balance! sheet! bulked! by! Alibaba!
Yahoo! has released its third-quarter results, and the numbers aren't pretty.
Android security relies on ZOMBIE CRYPTO, argues infosec pundit
A German researcher is asking why Google is using the “horribly broken” RC4 and MD5 cipher as its first-default for SSL.
Ireland revisits tax laws to cook Apple
The Republic of Ireland has decided to take another look at its status of “tax haven of choice” for the tech sector.
Divorcing ICANN and the US won't break the 'net nor stop the spooks
The Montevideo statement on Internet governance, and Brazil's intervention in the governance debate, has set a cat among the pigeons, by reviving the debate over globalisation of the Internet's core technical administration.
Krzanich: NO new Intel 14nm Broadwell chip for YOU, world, until 2014
One of the biggest tasks that Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has set himself is reconfiguring Chipzilla so that it's quicker to build and deploy new products.
Kids hooked up with free Office subs at Microsoft-addicted schools
Microsoft has announced it will soon give students subscriptions to its cloud-based Office productivity software free of charge – provided, that is, their schools are already paid up.
Give it a wrist, fellas: Sony's back with $200 Android Smartwatch 2
Sony has revealed its second-generation attempt at kickstarting a smartwatch market: a $200 Android-powered wrist-computer.
Apple's Steve Jobs was a SEX-crazed World War II fighter pilot, says ex
Steve Jobs was a sex-mad bully who believed he was a World War II fighter pilot in a previous life, an ex-girlfriend has claimed.
Run a server on your Gb/s Google Fiber? OK, fine, fine ... maybe a small one
In an apparent capitulation to net neutrality supporters, Google has quietly loosened the terms of service of its Google Fiber broadband network to allow customers to run personal servers in some cases.
Snowden's pal Greenwald QUITS Guardian to launch hush-hush news rival
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who made Edward Snowden a household name, has announced that he is leaving his job at the Guardian to launch what he describes as a "momentous new venture."
Telstra plans to keep hands on government BEEELIONS
Telstra has assured shareholders that having gotten one hand on an $11 billion (net present value) payment from the government, the cash will have to be pried from its cold, dead fingers.
Cabinet to be targeted with pro-FTTP ads
With $AUD44,513 in the crowdfunded kitty, the campaigners who plan to buy ads in Australian Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull's local newspaper are now planning a wider assault on politicians' eyeballs.
Is that a failed Outlook security update in your pocket or are you pleased to phish me?
Web criminals have fired off Patch Tuesday-themed phishing emails to trick confused users into handing over their login details.
Intel slumps into mud despite lobbing Internet-of-Things, etc at buyers
Intel has reported modest growth in its financial results for the third quarter of 2013 over the previous three months.
Whodathunkit? Media barons slit own throats in anti-freetard crackdowns
Hollywood could slash piracy rates by simply making its content easily and legally available, rather than trying legal and technological hacks to sustain its current business model.
Can you trust 'NSA-proof' TrueCrypt? Cough up some dough and find out
Security researchers are raising funds to conduct an independent audit of TrueCrypt, the popular disk encryption utility.
Fusion-io flogs mutant array, souped-up software to small biz
Fusion-io has built a hybrid flash and disk drive array, targeted at SMEs, with souped-up software for putting hot data in flash.
Apple's Oct 22 WORLD-SHAKING San Fran party: New iPads or what?
Apple has confirmed rumours of a product rollout event on October 22 in San Francisco, sending invites to lucky journalists this Tuesday morning.
VMware guzzles 'desktop-as-a-service' firm Desktone
VMware has slurped Desktone to add another "as-a-service" offering to its catalogue of virtualisation software.
Twitteratti at NetApp event spill guts over FlashRay's innards
Tweets from a NetApp Insight briefing event showed the company is preparing a replicating, deduping, clustering FlashRay iteration, complete with Glacier-targeting for StorageGRID.
Hong Kong underground gets pay-by-bonk
The Octopus card, used to pay for tubes, buses, ferries and trams in Hong Kong, is now available as an NFC app for download onto an operator SIM, making pay-by-bonk a reality in the Chinese administrative area.
OFT probe: Do small UK firms get fair shake in public sector tenders?
Armed with data provided from suppliers and public sector IT bods, the Office of Fair Trading will now launch a probe into the state of the government tech landscape and whether SMEs are getting a fair share.
SoftBank and GungHo swallow half of Finnish mobile gaming firm
Japan's SoftBank and GungHo Online Entertainment have teamed up to take a controlling stake in Finnish mobile gaming firm Supercell for $1.5bn.
EasyJet website crashes and burns
Barrel-scraping orange airline easyJet is apologising to customers over a "technical" error that has brought down its website worldwide, preventing punters from booking flights or checking in online.
Google's latest ad push gives LONE LAWMAKER the creeps
Google faces little opposition to its plans to plaster ads with user profile names and photos since it announced the move late last week.
Cannabis can CURE CANCER - cheaply and without getting you high
The non-hallucinogenic parts of cannabis seem to be potentially highly effective anti-cancer drugs, according to a new study.
BBC's Clangers returns in £5m 'New Age' remake
The BBC is to remake the classic children's animation programme The Clangers as a hi-tech production with environmental politics at the fore.
Coming soon to Twitter: Inboxes BULGING with DMs from world+dog
Twitter has handed spammers the ability to bombard anyone they choose to follow with direct messages.
Juniper boosts MX capacity and scale to handle mobile data deluge
Hard on the heels of an expanded development agreement with Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) that will see the two companies cooperate on mobile backhaul, encryption, and network address translation (NAT), Juniper Networks has announced a slew of new kit targeting carrier and service provider customers of its MX-series kit.
Expensive blingo-rama iPhone 5S OUTSELLS cheapo-plastic 5C
Apple has sold twice as many units of its golden iPhone 5S as it has of its fruit-flavoured iPhone 5C, according to a research firm.
HGST pushes out bulk storage spinner with 5 power-sipping settings
HGST has produced a bulk storage disk drive that sips power like a miser. It is for the bulk storage of cool data and has five power-using states.
Thousands! of! Yahoo! Mail! users! driven! crazy! by! revamp!
Yahoo! Mail's redesign has not gone over well with users, who are miffed at the Purple Palace's axing of features like tabs and changing how folders work.
Twitter sets up BEELLION-DOLLAR credit line ahead of IPO
Twitter has set up a billion-dollar loan ahead of its initial public offering from a group of big banks.
WhatsApp crypto snafu drops trou on users' privates
Mobile messaging service WhatsApp came for criticism over the robustness of its cryptography last week after a fix for a January security snafu was slammed for not being robust enough.
CEO of Brit fashion bods Burberry lands Apple job for retail, online sales
Apple has drafted in the CEO of high-end Brit faux tartan fashion label Burberry to head up its global retail and online sales biz – a newly created position.
Will you strap on a Google KitKat 4.4 smartwatch this month?
Android could be landing on wrists in its latest incarnation as a smartwatch in just two weeks.
Assange: 'Ecuadorian embassy staff are like my family'
Julian Assange has said that the folks at the Ecuadorian embassy in London he currently calls home are like a family to him and he gets lots of visits from very silly people celebrity supporters.
Now that's real science: CYBORG MONKEYS with PROSTHETIC ARMS
Exciting news on various important science and tech beats today, as we learn that boffins have achieved breakthroughs in the allied fields of brain-chipped monkeys, robotics and cybernetics. To wit, they have been working out how to equip monkeys wielding robot arms with a sense of touch.
Why a Robin Hood tax on filthy rich City types is the very LAST thing needed
Analysis The lovely thing about this year's Nobel Prize in Economics is that it entirely borks the case for a Robin Hood Tax - a levy on the financial sector's transactions, in other words.
PLEASE let us build Fruit Loop Central, Apple begs Cupertino City
Apple has launched a last-minute charm offensive in Cupertino ahead of a council vote which will decide whether it can build a super-massive “fruit loop” headquarters in the city.
I'll call for UK law shakeup to cuff global web crime lords - new top cyber cop
The head of the computer security branch of Blighty's new National Crime Agency has said British laws need to be improved in order to combat today's online criminals.
Price rises and power cuts by 2016? Thank the EU's energy policy
The closure of nearly two thirds of Europe's gas-fired power generation facilities by 2016 will lead to regional price hikes and make outages inevitable, Cap Gemini has warned.
Let police track you through your mobe - it's for your OWN GOOD
Two thirds of emergency calls are made from mobile phones, many of them from people who don't know where they are, and Ofcom wants to know if we should be tracking their locations.
Oz bookshop to deliver by drone
An Australian university textbook rental outfit called Zookal has promised to deliver its wares by drone.
Oracle says open source has no place in military apps
Oracle has popped out a white paper that may well turn some heads, because it contains robust criticism of open source software.
Gates, Zuckerberg to deliver free coding lesson
Code.org, the organisation that believes “every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer programming” has signed up Microsoft Bill Gates and Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg to teach programming.
Snowden's email provider Lavabit flows again to let users retrieve data
Lavabit, the secure email service which shut down after pressure from the US government to access customer emails, is back up for a brief window during which users can change passwords and recover lost data.
Google refunds two dollars for cop jobs ad on biker website
Google will reportedly refund two Australian dollars – that's $US1.89 or £1.19 – after an ad placed by Victoria Police appeared on the website of the Mongols motorcycle club.
Mellanox targets Fibre Channel with 56 Gbps FDR InfiniBand
Mellanox is confidently predicting the slow death of Fibre Channel, as it rips the wrapping paper off a 56 Gbps FDR InfiniBand solution it says offers ten times faster live migration of Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual machines.
German researchers claim 100 Gbps wireless transmission record
German researchers are claiming a world record, using a 237.5 GHz carrier and photonic mixing to achieve a 100 Gbps wireless link.
Diamonds are forever POURING down on Jupiter, Saturn - boffins
Storms on Saturn and Jupiter form hailstones of pure diamond, according to a paper published for the 45th meeting of the American Astronomical Association.
So you want to be a solar racer? You'll need a laptop and some string
World Solar Challenge On Sunday, Mark Winterbottom, Jamie Whincupp and Craig Lowndes stood on the podium after Australia's epic Bathurst 1000 race and waxed lyrical about the importance of their teams, and well they might: nobody driving against any kind of competition, whether race or challenge, goes far without their team.
Yahoo! To! Switch! On! Webmail! Crypto! By! Default! Next! Year!
Following in the footsteps of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, Yahoo! has said that it will make SSL encryption the default for all users of its Yahoo! Mail service beginning in January.
Snowden: NSA whacks US in the WALLET, slurps millions of contacts books
The National Security Agency is hurting the US economy with its "dragnet" surveillance, says uber-leaker Edward Snowden.
D-Link: Oops! We'll slam shut that router backdoor by end of month
D-Link has promised to close its routers' backdoors by Hallowe'en, following revelations that many of its consumer-grade devices accept unauthenticated access to its admin Web page.
Smile for the cops! Sexy Snapchat selfies' self-destruct scrubbed by search warrants
Privacy experts have been warning for some time that images shared using self-destructing-photo service Snapchat may not be as stalker-proof as expected. Now the company has revealed that users shouldn't assume their snaps are off-limits to the police, either.
Reselling mutant cloud parts from IBM? There's now an app for that
IBM is pitching new software and server gear for use in public, private and public-private hybrid cloud computing environments. The tech titan has announced PureSystem updates plus stuff about Power, System x and technical computing.
Crowdsourced campaign scoops $AUD40k for pro-FTTP NBN ads
A crowdsourced campaign that aims to buy advertisements calling for Australia's national broadband network (NBN) to stick with its original fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) plan has soared past its $AUD15,000 funding target and now has a war chest of over $40,000 to splash.
Logicalis swallows Jersey-based iConsult
Logicalis Group has devoured Jersey-based hosted-services minnow iConsult for an undisclosed sum.
BlackBerry's AD BLITZ: Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated
BlackBerry is taking out full-page adverts in 30 newspapers across nine countries - to reassure everyone that it hasn't flatlined, not yet anyway.
Netflix: OK, cable giants, who wants our PIPE stuffed in their BOX?
Streaming-media titan Netflix is reportedly looking to smooth relations with major US cable companies and convince them to make Netflix content available via next-generation TV set-top boxes.
Windows Phone 8 INFLATED by Microsoft ... to satisfy lonely phablets
Microsoft has revealed a third update for Windows Phone 8 that is supposed to make the mobile operating system easier to use on beefy smartphones with six-inch screens.
Ex-Valve engineers raise begging bowl for 3D holographic-like goggles
Two former engineers from gaming giant Valve have launched a fundraiser for an ambitious holographic-like augmented-reality display technology.
Privacy is still important to us, says upstart Onavo after Facebook gobble
Facebook has acquired mobile analytics app maker Onavo, bagging its first office in Israel as part of the deal.
Sorry fanbois, no supersize Apple fondleslabs for you
A well known Apple soothsayer has predicted that the fruity firm is cooking up a cheaper iMac, a new size of Macbook and a fondleslab armed with higher-resolution display.
Problems at Home: Facebook opens alpha testing to world+dog
Facebook is recruiting adventurous fanbois willing to become alpha testers for the next version of its Android client.
Reboot the formula: F1 and FIFA tweaked for another year
Game Theory FIFA and F1 in the same review packed column – why, it must be nearly Christmas! Elsewhere we go dungeon crawling with Dragon’s Crown and get soaked through to the skin in Rain.
Wikileaks FAILS to start Twitter bitchfight with Guardian hack
Wikileaks is engaged in a Twitter spat with Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, accusing him of profiting from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks to the paper.
Amazon offers slice-and-dice hunks of cloud
Amazon is trying to cure cloud punters of buyer's remorse by making it easier for them to chop and change the instances they've acquired from its hulking cloud.
Luxembourgeois data protection watchdog probes Microsoft in Skype PRISM complaint
Microsoft is co-operating with regulators in Skype’s home country of Luxembourg over its possible participation in the NSA’s PRISM program, a spokesperson has confirmed.
Jawohl! Vodafone gets nod for £6.5bn Kabel Deutschland slurp
Vodafone now owns just over three quarters of Kabel Deutschland, following a shareholder meeting which approved the British operator's takeover of the German telco, creating a one-stop-shop for continental consumers.
Island-hopping Beardy Branson: I'm dodging rain, not taxes
Richard Branson has denied that he lives on his Caribbean private island for tax reasons, after a report over the weekend branded him "tax exile".
Osborne to China: Keep watching Downton and we'll gloss over Huawei security worries
Chancellor George Osborne has said the British government will happily let a state-owned Chinese firm manage Britain's communications infrastructure – as long as the People's Republic keeps on watching hit British telly series Downton Abbey.
Laptops Snowden took to Hong Kong and Russia 'just a decoy'
The four laptops NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden took with him when he fled America for Hong Kong were nothing but a diversion, according to an ex-CIA official who met Snowden in Russia last week.
Oracle brass past and present tapped for Microsoft CEO - report
Two Oracle execs past and present have joined the list of top industry chiefs who’ve been approached to become the next Steve Ballmer.
Reg readers rise to Vulture 2 paintjob challenge
Fans of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission have outdone themselves in offering suggestions as to just how we should paint our magnificent Vulture 2 spaceplane.
Students schlep from afar to join the quest for international HPC glory
SCC'13 Three teams of students will be jetting in from overseas to enter this year's Student Cluster Competition, due to kick off on November 18 at the annual SC13 Supercomputing Conference.</p?
Custom ringback tones: Coming to your next contract mobe?
Ringback tones, which replace the ringing tone one hears while waiting for a phonecall to be connected, are about to explode back into fashion, if vendor OnMobile is to be believed.
Tape never died, it was just resting
Once upon a time, you could find tape drives everywhere. Even home offices used DAT, QIC and other small tape cartridge formats to do backups. In the days when having a hard disk as large as 500MB seriously impressed people, tape was pretty much the only economical way to make a copy of your data.
Facebook throws servers on their back in HOT TUBS of OIL
Exclusive Facebook is dunking its servers in gloop in a salt shed in Oregon so it can overclock their processors, The Register has learned.
Tape rocks for storage - if you don't need to, um, access your data
Storagebod Watching the SpectraLogic announcements from afar and getting involved in a conversation about tape on Twitter has really brought home the ambivalent relationship I have with tape; it is a huge part of my professional life but if it could be expunged from my environment, I’d be more than happy.
TAT-1: Call the cable guy, all I see is a beautiful beach
Geek's Guide to Britain A cabled telegram first crossed the Atlantic in 1858, but it took almost a century for voice calls to follow, being carried by the TAT-1 Cable which landed at Oban in Scotland, where we went along to see it.
On the road with an IT ball-gazer: Forget big data, the future of tech is the 'social enterprise'
Comment I spend a great deal of my time out on the road visiting tech firms and tech buyers. By default I spend a lot of time sitting in the back of cars being driven to and from offices and airports.
Hey banks: Use Win XP after deadline? You'll PAY if card data's snaffled
Banks that use the Windows XP operating system will face a risk to their compliance with payment card data security rules if they continue to operate the software after Microsoft withdraws its extended support services, a US regulatory body has warned.
Foxconn 'fesses up to labour breaches: Made students work long hours
Taiwan based Apple-assembling firm Foxconn has admitted overworking its interns by making them work night shifts and overtime - even though the work is "voluntary".
Name-squatter fails to flog @roma Twitter handle to City of Rome
Rome's authorities are totally uninterested in owning the Twitter account @Roma as their city's official voice in cyberspace, despite the council currently making do with the clunky @romacapitaleTW account instead.
MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross
British science fiction author Charles Stross has published a mighty rant on the subject of Microsoft Word, which he is attempting to will out of existence.
Brazil whacks PRISM with secure email plan
A week after joining a consortium calling for the USA's currently cold, dead, fingers to be pried off the internet's internal machinery, Brazil has announced that it will develop a secure e-mail system to try and protect its government-level communications against American spying.
McDonalds tells fatties to SUPERSIZE THEIR BRAINS
Fast food chains used to be criticised for packing their grub full of e-numbers, but now McDonalds has resorted to packaging its nosh alongside e-books in a bid to shrug off its unhealthy reputation.
Murdoch calls for world+dog to 'expose' Google
Rupert Murdoch, the Mr Burns dotty uncle of media barondom chairman of media conglomerate News Limited, has darkly hinted that …
VMware offers free certification exams for failures
VMware has made a new offer: fail one of its certifications and it will spring for another exam at the low, low, price of zero units of currency, provided your home currency is the Australian or New Zealand Dollars, the Indian Rupee, Japanese Yen or Korean Won.
Boffins build BEELLION-YEAR storage medium
Dutch and German boffins have proposed a write-once-read-many storage medium they say should survive for a million years and may be readable after a billion.
Leaping SpaceX GRASSHOPPER ROCKET jumps 2,500ft, lands safely
Elon Musk's Grasshooper vehicle has inched a little closer to becoming a viable VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertical landing) rocket, last week completing its highest flight to date.
Microsoft sells out of MSN Australia
Microsoft has sold its share of Mi9, the Australian incarnation of the Microsoft Network.
Google peered through Glass during solar race
World Solar Challenge Vulture South is preparing a round-up of the 2013 World Solar Challenge and in the process something interesting has come up: Google.
Kiwi 'ccountancy cloud collects colossal cash casket
New Zealand software-as-a-service (SaaS) accounting software Xero has announced an injection of $NZD180m in funding, much of it it from US-based venture capitalists.
Control panel backdoor found in D-Link home routers
A group of embedded-device hackers has turned up a vulnerability in D-Link consumer-grade products that provides unauthenticated access to the units' admin interfaces.
