Microsoft caves on Xbox One DRM and used-game controls
Consumer power might still mean something
Faced with a growing tide of angry gamers, Microsoft has pulled a U-turn on its forthcoming Xbox One console's terms and conditions to allow game sharing and internet-free gaming.
Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft's interactive entertainment business, announced the about face in a blog post, saying he'd appreciated the " …
Microsoft breaks bug-bounty virginity in $100,000 contest
Black Hat sets phasers to stun on Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11
Microsoft is breaking its long-standing tradition of not paying for security vulnerabilities by offering a $100,000 cash prize for the first penetration tester to crack Windows 8.1 and a $50,000 bonus to explain how they did it.
At this year's Black Hat USA conference – held at the end of July in the sweaty hell that is Las …
John McAfee releases NSFW video on how to uninstall security code
Naturally this requires sex, drugs, and firearms
International fugitive, criminal suspect and self-described eccentric millionaire John McAfee has released a tongue-in-cheek video explaining how to uninstall the security software that still bears his name.
McAfee claims that one of the most frequent questions he's asked is how to get rid of the pernicious software, despite his …
Icahn doubles down on Dell offer with $14 per share buyback scheme
Confirms he's now Dell's largest private investor – short of Big Mike, that is
With exactly a month to go before the special meeting of Dell shareholders that could decide the company's fate, investor Carl Icahn has increased the pressure for a better deal for shareholders – chiefly himself.
In an open letter to Dell shareholders, Icahn said that he has now purchased 72 million shares of Dell stock from …
Google mounts legal challenge to surveillance gag orders
Argues free speech trumps security secrecy
Google has filed a legal petition "respectfully requesting" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) release it from a gag order, and allow the company to tell users how often the NSA comes calling for data.
"We have long pushed for transparency so users can better understand the extent to which governments request …
Tor users locked out of Facebook after wave of dodgy traffic
Don't panic, a solution is at hand
Users of the Tor traffic anonymizing service are currently locked out of Facebook after a flood of dodgy traffic triggered an automatic lockdown by the social network's security systems.
Given the paranoid post-PRISM times we live, in the outage on Tuesday caused a certain amount of online panic. A report highlighting the issue …
Apple's screw-up leaves tethered iPhones easily crackable
24 seconds from pickup to pwned
iPhones being used as Wi-Fi hotspots are open to attack because of lax security protocols in the automatic password generation system Apple has in place, according to new research from the University of Erlangen in Germany.
The paper, "Usability vs. Security: The Everlasting Trade-Off in the Context of Apple iOS Mobile Hotspots …
Boffins build headless robo-kitties
Video Soft kitty, warm kitty, cuddly little ball of wire kitty
Swiss scientists have built a trotting robotic house cat, and say that the form factor could prove very useful for small and agile search-and-rescue robots.
Robot cat Keep it away from your mouse – though it can't bite
Cats – big and small – hold a particular fascination for robotics engineers (and for much of the internet, …
NSA whistleblower to tech firms, Obama: 'Grow a pair!'
Ed Snowden: Email tracking grabs 'IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything'
Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old fugitive who revealed the NSA's PRISM system, has told the technology companies involved in surveillance to stand up for users' rights and demand a change in the current law.
"If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community …
Facebook RSS reader said to uncloak June 20
Secret event scooped by Scottish developer?
Facebook has sent out invitations for a press event on June 20, and it's widely rumored to be the announcement of a new RSS reader aimed at scooping up disaffected Google Reader users.
In March, Google announced it was going to shut down the Reader system on July 1, saying that the number of users had declined over the years and …
Facebook killing off Sponsored Results in search pages
Plans radical slim-down of ad options
Facebook has confirmed that it will drop the sale of Sponsored Results in its search pages, a "feature" that plenty of El Reg readers have been less than happy about.
"In keeping with the goal of streamlining our ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results," the company told El Reg …
Report: Foreign owners blocked T-Mobile, Verizon from NSA snoops
Sprint/Softbank merger hire suggests Japanese will play ball
T-Mobile and Verizon were not issued court orders to hand over mobile data for their users because their part-ownership by non-US companies could have caused complications, according to an unnamed US official.
The government source told The Wall Street Journal that T-Mobile, which is 74 per cent owned by German communications …
Kaspersky slips server security into PC software as attackers get crafty
Want to bag a CEO? Aim for his family
Kaspersky Lab is shifting anti-malware code from its enterprise business down to its consumer security software in an effort to cut down on the effectiveness of zero-day attacks.
"It's the first time we've done it this way," Denis Nazarov, head of anti-malware research at Kaspersky Lab USA told The Register. "Usually we develop …
Big browser builders scramble to fix cross-platform zero-day flaw
Mac users, you're just as vulnerable to phishing scheme
Browser manufacturers will release an update in the next few weeks to block a new type of malware that exploits a cross-platform flaw that allows attackers access to Mac, PC, mobile, and even games console internet users.
"PC, Android, Mac – the vulnerability hits them all the same," said Sveta Miladinov, founder of the British- …
Scientists investigate 'dark lightning' threat to aircraft passengers
One stormy flight could give lifetime radiation dose
US Navy scientists are going to rig aircraft with radiation detectors to check if a phenomenon known as dark lightning could be killing aircraft passengers.
Dark lightning is the product of the electrical activity caused by thunderstorms and produces intense bursts of omnidirectional terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) up to …
Silicon Valley digiterati to brainstorm at 30,000 ft
Nothing spurs creative thinking like 11 hours in a flying tube
British Airways is flying 130 Silicon Valley business leaders, venture capitalists, and start-up specialists from San Francisco to London in an "Innovation Lab in the Sky" – an 11-hour flight that's going to try and sort out ways to expand STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills around the world.
The group …
Thanks, NSA: Amazon sales of Orwell's 1984 rise 9,500%
Citizens of Oceania bone up on the new reality
A glance at the "Movers and Shakers" page of Amazon shows there's been an unusual reaction to the current NSA spying scandal: sales of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are up 9,538 per cent.
It was somewhat ironic that the news of the NSA's systematic slurping of phone records and the subsequent …
Planetary Resources may upgrade crowdfunded satellite into alien-finder
'Just give us another million dollars'
The Kickstarter campaign to build a satellite for public use is going better than expected, according to asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, and so it has extended its revenue target to help fund hardware upgrades to enable the orbital platform to search for exoplanets.
The campaign, which seeks to partially fund an …
Sony sucker-punches Xbox on price, specs, DRM-free gaming
Updated As ever, there's a catch
Microsoft may not have been listening to the rumbling of discontent over some of the new "features" coming with Xbox One, but Sony certainly has.
Sony's new PlayStation 4 'It's the games, stupid'
Sony unveiled the new PS4 console at this week's E3 gamers conference in Los Angeles, and it undercuts Redmond Xbox One by $100, …
Microsoft announces $499 price tag, new games for Xbox One
Europeans pay more, Brits face biggest pricing rip-off
Microsoft has used the annual E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles to announce the launch pricing for its new Xbox console and – surprise, surprise – it's UK gamers who will be paying more than anyone else for the kit.
US consumers will pay $499 for a bundle including the Xbox, Kinect gesture control system, and a single Xbox …
Cisco and iRobot build videoconferencing robot for remote workers
AVA 500 takes telepresence to slightly creepy levels
For the last two decades videoconferencing manufacturers have been touting their systems as the ultimate tool for remote workers. Now Cisco has added one of its "telepresence" systems to a remote-control robot that can wander around the office meeting people and performing inspections.
AVA 500 videoconferencing unit Now your …
Hacker who helped find Steubenville rapists threatened with decade in prison
While the rapists get minimum sentence and rehab
A security consultant who helped uncover evidence of the repeated rape of an Ohio teenager has been raided by the FBI and charged with offenses that could see him spend 10 years in prison.
Last year, a 16 year-old girl from Steubenville, Ohio was repeatedly assaulted by members of the local football team, dubbed Big Red, after …
Author Iain (M) Banks falls to cancer at 59
Obit Misses the release of his final work
The internationally renowned Scottish author of both literary and science fiction Iain Banks has passed away unexpectedly early at 59 after suffering from an aggressive form of cancer.
Iain Banks/Iain M Banks Science fiction loses a giant (credit: Murdo MacLeod)
"Too soon. Iain died in the early hours this morning. His death …
Google accused of hypocrisy over Glass ban at shareholder shindig
Updated Strange things afoot in Google's bathrooms
Google's directors were accused of hypocrisy over a regulation banning attendees at its annual shareholder's meeting in California from wearing Google Glass hardware at the event.
"Cameras, recording devices, and other electronic devices, such as smart phones, will not be permitted at the meeting. Photography is prohibited at …
HP's Ray Lane faces $100m tax bill over 'sham' tax shelter
Picks accountants like he does software firms
It seems ex-HP chairman Ray Lane is as good at picking tax shelters as software companies, since the IRS now says he owes them $100m in unpaid taxes from an investment scheme that has been ruled illegal.
Papers filed in the Washington tax court show claim Lane, who stepped down from HP in April in the wake of the botched …
We're losing the battle with a government seduced by surveillance
Comment And a hearty 'Screw you!' to the cynical cowards
As Scott McNealy - always a man who deliberately gives good quote - famously said in 1999, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." On Thursday night he tweeted "Wow! I was righter than I ever thought I would be as an American. You have no privacy but this is hard to get over."
It really is, but it shouldn’t be. Anyone who …
Forget phones, PRISM plan shows internet firms give NSA everything
Microsoft, Google, Apple and Yahoo! and others open their legs servers
It has been a rough 24 hours for the US National Security Agency. First a leaked court order (and the political reaction) showed that the agency routinely harvests US mobile-use data, and now a new document has been uncovered that claims to show the larger internet companies do the same thing.
A 41-page presentation, given in …
Police 'stumped' by car thefts using electronic skeleton key
Appeal for the public's help
Police in California have admitted they are baffled by a series of car thefts where robbers use a small hand-held electronic device to unlock supposedly secure car-locking systems.
"This is bad in the sense we're stumped," Long Beach deputy police chief David Hendricks told NBC. "We are stumped and we don't know what this …
Obama administration defends mass call-data slurping
It's either that or the terrorists win, apparently
A senior White House official has said that the US National Security Agency is perfectly correct to be downloading the mobile metadata every US caller, and politicians on both sides of the political divide have rallied to defend the practice.
The NSA's policy – revealed on Wednesday in a leaked court order that the anonymous (no …
Leaked docs show NSA collects data on all Verizon customers
The Patriot Act strikes again
The USA's National Security Agency (NSA) has harvested all the call data from US mobile provider Verizon since April, according to a secret court order leaked to The Guardian.
The order was granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and instructs Verizon to hand over the "session identifying information ( …
Curiosity prepares for year-long road trip to Mount Sharp
Some interesting stops planned along the way
Ever since landing on Mars, the Curiosity rover hasn't moved around that much – just 733 meters to date. But that's about to change as NASA prepares to send the rover on an eight-kilometer trek to the base of Mount Sharp.
Curiosity's route to Mount Sharp The long and winding road ahead
"We know we're going to start in a few …
FreedomPop aims to gut US wireless oligopoly with free smartphone
Freemium VoIP model piggybacks on Sprint
By the end of the summer, FreedomPop aims to offer US users a smartphone for around $100 that gives unlimited texts, 200 voice minutes, and 500MB of data a month for free, with no contract.
"This is a long-term ploy," Steven Sesar, FreedomPop's COO told The Register. "This is a real threat to the major carriers. The price point …
iPHONES and 'Pads BANNED in US for violating Samsung patent
Updated 60-day countdown for presidential veto
Apple is facing an ITC embargo on imports of older iPhone 4 and iPads after Samsung successfully convinced the trade body that Cupertino had infringed on a single one of its patents.
The patent, No. 7,706,348, covers coding and decoding of wireless signals within the CDMA architecture, and the ban will stop Apple from importing …
Tech aristocracy joins conflab with Secret Rulers of the World
Annual Bilderberg meeting sets conspiracists' tongues wagging
Some of the biggest names in the technology industry are among the guests at the 61st annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group – a secretive talking shop for the top echelons of business and politics or a shadowy cabal seeking to rule the world, depending on whom you believe.
Eric Schmidt, making his fourth trip, will represent …
Obama's patent troll proposals: Long on talk, short on walk
Comment And Congress won’t play ball
The White House has issued five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations to act against patent trolling. but while the president has done what he can within the limited scope of the executive's powers, it's nowhere near enough and relies on Congress to try and stop the problem.
Executive orders (EO) are limited in …
Prosecutor on Private Manning's Wiki-leaks: 'Arrogance meets access'
Soldier charged with 'aiding the enemy' as court martial begins
The court-martial of Private First Class Bradley Manning has begun in Fort Meade, Maryland, where prosecutors have claimed that the rogue soldier's leaks to WikiLeaks amount to "aiding the enemy," a charge that can carry the death penalty.
"This, your honor, this is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of …
Google seeks to calm facial recognition furor with app block for Glass
Nothing to see here, yet
Google has sought to allay privacy fears by saying it won't be allowing any facial recognition applications to run on its Glass computer spectacles for the moment.
"We've been listening closely to you, and many have expressed both interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass," said the team in a …
Mars Express' 10th birthday celebrated with Martian atlas
Jury-rigged and underfunded, ESA veteran still has it where it counts
Ten years after the Mars Express first launched into the skies from Asian steppes, the European Space Agency has released a full-planet atlas of the distribution of Martian volcanos, mineral fields, and dust dunes.
"The history of Mars is encoded in its minerals," said Alvaro Giménez, ESA's director of science and robotic …
Elon Musk pledges transcontinental car juicers by end of year
Mars, warp drives a little further off
Elon Musk says Tesla is tripling the number of electric recharging stations available this year, with enough installed to enable coast-to-coast road trips by the end of the year.
Speaking at the D11 conference, Musk said his company has perfected a new "supercharging" technology that will enable faster fill-up times for its …
Motorola shows off tattoo and swallowable password hardware
Mobe manufacturer playing long game for end times
Motorola has shown off an electronic authentication tattoo and an FDA-approved pill that uses the body to transmit passwords, and says it wants to see a new generation of smartphones geared towards such wearable – or edible – technology.
The Number of the Beast The Number of the Beast
Speaking at the D11 conference, Regina …
EFF files objections with W3C decrying addition of DRM to HTML5
Will Microsoft, Google, and Netflix have their way?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has upgraded to full member status of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and as its first act has registered a formal objection to the proposed addition of DRM to the HTML5 specifications.
Its objection stems from the Encrypted Media Extension (EME) which was advanced to first draft …
China denies hacking claims, says it doesn’t need US tech
'You underestimate our wisdom' warns Middle Kingdom
The Chinese Defense Ministry has rebutted claims in a US government report that it is systematically stealing American military secrets, and points out that China is producing enough of its own.
"We believe that the US remarks are a misjudgment. First it underestimates the Pentagon's security capabilities, and second it …
Russians draw liquid blood from frozen woolly mammoth
10,000 year-old specimen could inspire Korean cloning
A team of researchers from Russia and South Korea claim to have taken the first sample of liquid blood from an adult woolly mammoth that was frozen in the permafrost of the New Siberian Islands.
Blood from a 10,000 year-old mammoth Blood from a 10,000 year-old mammoth
"We were really surprised to find mammoth blood and muscle …
Microsoft bigs up Surface Pro to 256GB for Asian markets
It's big in Japan
Redmond is starting shipments of a 256GB version of its Surface Pro fondleslab to Japanese customers from June 7, according to the local Microsoft website.
Microsoft is not even bothering to push the 64GB model to Japanese consumers and is just selling its current 128GB system and the new supersized version, for ¥99,800 ($986.62 …
US National Intelligence Council boss gets personal email hacked
Guccifer claims another political scalp with anti-Obama rant
In a rather embarrassing slip, the personal email account of Christopher Kojm, chairman of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), has become the latest victim of been the cracker known as Guccifer.
According to screenshots seen by The Smoking Gun, Guccifer grabbed email exchanges with 9/11 Commission members, banking …
Planetary Resources turns to crowdfunding to help with satellite costs
Updated Astro-miners come up with novel concept for space selfies
Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company backed by some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, is launching a crowdfunded satellite that could be in orbit by 2015.
The Arkyd 100 satellite, named in homage to the Star Wars droid manufacturers Arakyd Industries, is a small orbital platform that will form part of the …
First 'adult' app for Google Glass planned 'within days'
Mom warned it'll make you go blind
It had to happen. An app developer at the more risqué end of the market tells El Reg it has already started developing for Google Glass after getting its hairy palms on some of the new hardware and will have an application ready before the end of this week.
"We should have something out in a couple of days," MiKandi cofounder …
PC market facing worst-ever slump in 2013
IDC: Tablets to outsell everything by 2015
Analyst house IDC has revealed its latest predictions of the PC industry, and the results aren't pretty: shipments of desktop systems are expected to fall by 7.8 per cent this year, the biggest decline in the platform's history.
Laptops aren't immune, either. IDC predicts that tablets will outsell laptops this year, and that by …
Lego X-wing fighter touches down in New York's Times Square
Biggest-ever brick model to plug Disney show
Danish toymeister Lego has unveiled the largest model yet using its eponymous plastic chunks: a 43ft (13.1 meters) X-wing fighter that's a claimed 1:1 scale replica of George Lucas' Death Star destroyer, and is 42 times the size of the same kit that Lego offers to children (old and young).
A Lego X-Wing fighter in Times Square …
AT&T adds 61¢ 'Mobility Administrative Fee' for users
Nickel and diming customers because it can
US subscribers to AT&T's mobile network are getting an extra 61¢ "Mobility Administrative Fee" on their bills beginning in May.
That's not a lot of money for individual users, but it adds up to over $40m a month in additional revenue for AT&T – around half a billion each year. The company has reportedly said its administrative …
