The Register

Plus, why is Kaspersky Lab getting into chess? Roundup What a week it has been: we had the creation of a new government agency, a meltdown flashback, and of course, Patch Tuesday.…

Measurement nerds enter the 21st century As incredible as it may seem, until this week the definitive measurement of a kilogram was a cylinder made of an alloy comprising 90 per cent platinum and 10 per cent iridium sat under a glass dome in a room in Paris.…

We never meant to make that widely public which is why we made a public FAQ for it Microsoft was, and maybe still is, considering injecting targeted adverts into the Windows 10 Mail app.…

El Reg drills into banned technology with Freedom-of-Info request The US Department of Defense's "do not buy" list of foreign software and equipment turns out to be about as long as the list of bug-free Windows releases or privacy-focused Facebook apps.…

AWS comes up with blanket policies to smother public-facing cloud silos Amazon Web Services is taking steps to halt the epidemic of data leaks caused by the S3 cloud buckets it hosts from being accidentally left wide open to the internet by customers.…

Ex-Oracle man gets top job as another experienced woman exec quits web ads titan Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene has quit the online ads giant, and will be replaced by ex-Oracle executive Thomas Kurian.…

Telemetry data slurp broke the law, Dutch govt eggheads say Microsoft broke Euro privacy rules by carrying out the "large scale and covert" gathering of private data through its Office apps.…

Final update of beloved development adding ARM64 Microsoft devs rejoice! A new version of Visual Studio 2017 has arrived replete with fixes, tweaks and ARM64 support.…

Also: Huawei cloud lands in Africa, Nokia OpenStack, Cisco Nexus BIOS bugs Riverbed made two announcements covering its SteelHead SD-WAN solution this week – a bunch of enhancements, and subscription pricing options.…

Sells 'intelligent' chassis, removable drive magazine, StorNext base station Quantum has stepped sideways into the autonomous vehicle testing market with a data logging system integrated with its StorNext multi-tiered workflow file management product.…

Hold on Redmond, don't light those fireworks yet, the dominance will be shortlived…

As shareholders sign off on Big Red's big pay packet for first time in seven years Oracle is to slurp up software-defined WAN provider Talari Networks for an undisclosed sum.…

Even Softbank balked at these tethered terrors Google's parent company Alphabet has closed down its biped robot maker Schaft after failing to find a buyer.…

Routine file about accused crim suddenly mentions WikiLeaker's name An apparent cut-and-paste error has revealed that American prosecutors may have already filed criminal charges against cupboard-dwelling WikiLeaks fugitive Julian Assange.…

$1.4bn match made in heaven BlackBerry has made its biggest acquisition ever, spending over half of its cash pile to bolster its threat detection unit.…

Gangs Matrix led to 'multiple and serious' breaches of data protection rules, says watchdog…

Guess what happens? Stockholders thaw to idea of cashing in Dell Technologies has upped the buy price for Class V stock to win support from shareholders that threatened to block the proposed transaction and hinder the company’s return to the US stock market.…

First UK conviction for reckless UAV flying A Russian-speaking man from Cambridgeshire has become the first person in the UK to be convicted of illegally flying a drone beneath a police helicopter during a search operation.…

EE: We're sorry, Ofcom. Virgin: Why, that's... unjustified and disproportionate!…

Not the best at anything, but a solid, great value performer…

Swipe – open toilet door – and swipe again Something for the Weekend, Sir? "Work out loud," my prospective new employer tells me, adding that "we are a team, not a family". Sister Sledge need not apply.…

Chinese fabber YMTC has cunning tech catch-up plan China's Yangtze Memory Technology (YMTC) aims to leapfrog 96-layer NAND and move straight to the production of 128-layer flash in 2020, according to a report.…

Says company that sells switching services Millions of Britons unwilling to be parted from their urban broadband and not-too-shabby mobile phone reception are shunning rural living, according to a survey.…

Dusts off unused 'paperweights' to save data entry program On Call Dust yourselves off, dear readers, it’s Friday once more and time for On Call, our weekly column of reader’s technical triumphs.…

Six weeks after first release of build 1809, and Redmond still can't get it right…

Mislabelled signal raised rover fans' hopes, just for a while Space-fans pricked up their Twitter-ears today, when just for a few minutes it looked like the little lost rover Opportunity had woken up.…

I see the red team and I want it painted black Australia's government's crypto-busting legislation risks blocking security research, a leading Internet policy boffin has warned.…

Ongoing Bitcoin woes left the channel holding all the cards, and that's not a good thing…

Sudden changes to FCC document raise eyebrows Analysis There's a new battle brewing in Washington DC and for once it's not between Democrats and Republicans, but over who gets to decide the policies for a new trillion-dollar market: The internet in space.…

CEO insists Chinese spy chip bombshell 'impossible'…