TheRegister
Au my bog: Bloke, 66, on bail after 'solid-gold' crapper called 'America' stolen from stately home
Blenheim Palace was forced to close its doors on Saturday following the theft of a solid-gold loo – a piece of art called "America".…
Has outsourcing public-sector IT worked? The Institute for Government seems to think so, kinda
The outsourcing of government IT projects has largely worked, according to a cornflake-spluttering report by the Institute for Government.…
COBOL: Five little letters that if put on a CV would ensure stable income for many a greybeard coder
COBOL is celebrating 60 years since its specifications were signed off. Darling of Y2K consultants, the language is rapidly approaching pensionable age, but many a greybeard owes their career to it.…
Pushing Verify in Brexit plans more about saving troubled project
Analysis The Government Digital Service's troubled identity system Verify has been at the heart of a controversial plan to supposedly track users online in the run-up to Brexit. However, its unlikely role in Brexit preparations may be more about GDS finding an excuse to save the moribund platform than anything more sinister.…
Justice served: There is no escape from the long server log of the law
Who, Me? Bid farewell to the weekend and a cheery hello to work with a tale of a near-cuffing in our regular Who, Me? column.…
You all know why you should encrypt your cloud data – now learn where and how…
Promo You know it makes sense to go to the cloud, and you know it makes sense to encrypt your data. But just what should you be encrypting - and where? And what’s the most efficient way of carrying it out, and managing your encryption strategy in the future?…
Two years ago, 123-Reg and NamesCo decided to register millions of .uk domains for customers without asking them. They just got the auto-renewal bills...
Colin McDermott was surprised this week to receive an invoice from the UK’s largest domain name registrar, 123-Reg, auto-billing him £11.99 for a domain name he never ordered.…
Wake me up before you Gogo ... so I can jump out: Kenyan MP takes on aeroplane flatulence
While Kenyan politicians discussed possible amendments to safety protocols on commercial flights this week, one delivered an impassioned plea.…
Magnetic cockroaches, dirty money, wombat poo and posties' balls: It's the Ig Nobels 2019
The Annals of Improbable Research held its annual award-giving ceremony – the Ig Nobel Prize – on Thursday night at Harvard's Sanders Theatre, and the entries were as worthy as ever.…
Time for another cuppa then? Tea-drinkers have better brains, say boffins with even better brains
Researchers from the National University of Singapore have found that drinking tea regularly really is good for you, especially your brain. They say they have also discovered why.…
700km on a single charge: Mercedes says it's in it for the long run
In the same week that the motoring industry discovered the Tesla Model 3 was the UK's third most popular car purchase, Mercedes-Benz unveiled an electric supercar at the Frankfurt Motor Show with high expectations, and probably no little relief.…
Now that's what we're Tolkien about: You need one storage system to rule them all and in the darkness bind them
Backgrounder One of the tech industry’s longest running quests is developing the notion of a single source of truth within organizations. That is, no matter who or where you are within a business, when it comes to running the numbers or making a decision, your applications are accessing the same information as everybody else internally. No out of date, duplicated, or otherwise imperfect copies.…
MIT boffins turn black up to 11 with carbon nanotubes that absorb 99.96% of light
Carbon nanotubes have peculiar properties. Not only do they have the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any known substance they can also absorb the most light, making them the blackest material yet.…
OK, peons, we'll obey the law and let you talk about politics and pay packets, says Google
Google has agreed to settle two complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board by former employees who claim the company fired them from engaging in lawfully protected workplace speech.…
Malwarebytes back to square one as appeals court rules blocking rival antivirus maker isn't on
Malwarebytes will have to head back to court to justify a decision to block its rival’s antivirus services after an appeals court threw out the security shop's legal justification.…
Whoa, bot wars: As cybercrooks add more AI to their arsenal, the goodies will have to too
Infosec techies should prepare to both fend off AI attacks and welcome the technology into their armoury of tools, reckons Trend Micro's director of cybercrime research.…
Consumer ransomware insurance? You could be painting a target on us all for avaricious crims
Fire, theft, flood – and now cyber attack. Customers of a Californian biz offering payouts of up to $50,000 in case your cat videos get Wannacry’d but experts worry it could make the problem worse.…
Tut – you wait a lifetime for an interstellar object and then two come at once
ESA scientists are studying an object that has all the hallmarks of being another entity from outside our Solar System, making it the second to be spotted after 2017's cigar-shaped interstellar comet.…
Wall Street analyst slashes HP Inc's share rating amid mounting worries over printer supplies declines
A respected Wall Street analyst has downgraded HP Inc's share rating on the back of worries that its PC division won't be able to sustain the growth numbers it has been banking, which paper over the cracks in the print supplies business.…
Just what we all needed, lactose-free 'beer' from northern hipsters – it's the Vegan Sorbet Sour
Beer o'clock starts at 4pm today at Leeds-based North Brewing Co's tap room where it will be launching a sour beer that "pushes the boundaries of taste, flavour and colour".…