US.gov - including NASA et al - quits the internet. Is the UN running it now?
The US government has disappeared from the internet after a hard core of Republican party lawmakers forced the superpower's state agencies to shut down over a budget dispute.
The House of Representatives refused to agree a budget that would keep cash flowing to public departments, meaning that the entire government was forced to …
TUPPERWARE FOUND ON MOON (Saturn's)
A NASA spacecraft sniffing the smoggy atmosphere of Titan has found traces of the chemical used to make plastic Tupperware boxes.
The robotic Cassini probe has detected propylene on Saturn's moon - the first time this chemical has been found out in space. Titan is a thoroughly unpleasant world with a brownish atmosphere, liquid …
Samsung: Sod off Apple, we've made gold mobes for way longer than you
Samsung has launched a campaign to remind arch-rival Apple that it wasn't the first tech firm to release a golden bling-horror phone.
The South Korean giant has gone to the effort of designing a special web page dedicated to showing off the garish champagne-coloured phones it has inflicted on the human population over the years …
The LSD trick cyclist, the 1980s pop-star and video games to REPROGRAM YOUR BRAIN
The computer games industry has thrown up some pretty surreal situations, from mushroom-gobbling plumbers to inexplicably grumpy avians launching kamikaze attacks against smirking pigs.
So you would be forgiven for thinking video games developed by the once “most dangerous man in America”, psychedelics advocate Timothy Leary, …
APPLE is the new COCA-COLA: Bubble-beverage globocorp beaten by Foxconn rebrander
Apple and Google have overtaken Coca-Cola to be named the number one and two brands in the world, respectively, according to a bunch of consultants.
The fruity firm took the top spot in Interbrand's run down of the world's biggest brands, followed by the web advertising giant in second place. There were five other tech companies …
NSA: Yes, some of our spooks DID snoop on overseas lovers
NSA spooks used top secret surveillance techniques to snoop on their partners and check out prospective lovers, according to an official admission made to a US senator.
A letter from NSA inspector general Dr. George Ellard reveals that spies "intentionally misused" signals intelligence (SIGINT) techniques to gather information …
Uh-oh Google Glassholes: Sugar daddy Intel strokes HUD goggles upstart
Intel has joined an industry-wide drive to make hopeless geeks look totally ridiculous - by ploughing cash into wearable-computing startup Recon Instruments.
Chipzilla has made a "significant investment" into Recon, which makes head-mounted displays for sporty types. Intel could end up squaring off with Google, the maker of …
Apple tackles iPhone lock-up cockup with iOS 7.0.2
Apple has plugged a gaping security hole in iOS 7 which allowed interlopers to snoop through fanbois' private content.
When iOS 7 was released last week, Apple watchers quickly found they could bypass the lock screen bypass method by sliding up the new Control Center and performing a nifty button combination requiring perfect …
WET SPOT found on MARS: NASA rover says 'high percentage'
NASA scientists have reached a milestone in their quest to find life on the Red Planet after discovering significant traces of water in the Martian soil.
The Mars Curiosity Rover discovered water when investigating the very first scoop of soil it took from the surface of Mars.
The extraterrestial explorer analysed the dusty …
SIM card hacker: Bug is either 'a backdoor, gross negligence, or both'
This was the week that Karsten Nohl, the security researcher who found a way to hack into SIM cards with a single text, told El Reg that he was upset that the mobile industry seemed so unconcerned about the vulnerabilities he had reported.
He told El Reg:
We thought our story was one of white-hat hacking preventing criminal …
'200 million' fanbois using iOS 7 just a week after release - study
Half of all American iOS users have now updated to the latest operating system, analysts have claimed, while Apple itself reckons 200 million devices worldwide are now running iOS 7.
Just a week after the release of iOS 7, eggheads from Chitika Insights found that 52 per cent of web traffic generated by Apple mobile devices came …
Boris Johnson's ex-right-hand man's right hand lands johnson in web slip
London Mayor Boris Johnson's former deputy has been left red-faced after a series of selfies revealing his chap found their way onto Facebook.
Richard Barnes, 65, has denied that he intentionally uploaded the frank pictures, which feature full frontal shots of his meat'n'two veg. The images were deleted soon after.
The photos ( …
Bill Gates: Yes, Ctrl-Alt-Del salute was a MISTAKE
Microsoft supremo Bill Gates has claimed that the ctrl-alt-del keystroke - once a way of admitting defeat in the face of crashing software - was a mistake all along.
Anyone with a passing knowledge of PCs will remember hammering those three keys to forcefully reboot the computer as code locked up. Some people even called the …
Apple: Now that you've updated to iOS 7... YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK
Apple has banned any fanbois running iOS 7 from reverting back to a previous version of the iDevice operating system.
Fanbois who downloaded the latest release or developer beta of iOS 7 had the option of retreating back to the warm (and functional) cocoon offered by iOS 6. But with the release of the latest update to its mobile …
Is this the silicon chip KILLER? Boffins boot up carbon-nanotube CPU
Look out, silicon: boffins in the US have created a simple working microprocessor out of carbon nanotubes, possibly paving the way for faster and less power-hungry computer chips.
Nicknamed Cedric by its creators at Stanford University, it is the first of its kind: it can fetch software written in a subset of MIPS machine code …
Regretful selfie-snapping vixens, lads to get shame-hiding digital burqas
California's children will get the legal right to order their embarrassing digital past to be hidden from public view. But the new laws won't end in total deletion of unwanted content – just that it be placed behind a digital veil.
Starting from 2015, any minor will have the right to ask internet companies to destroy …
EasyJet wanted to fling me off flight for diss tweet, warns cyber-law buff
A web-law tutor says EasyJet threatened to stop him boarding a flight because he posted a tweet criticising the bargain-basement airline.
Mark Leiser, who teaches and studies internet law at Strathclyde University, was grumpy about a delayed flight from Glasgow to London, which made him miss a connection to the centre of the …
Fan whips out own pair of iPhone 32Cs, 'unlocks' mobe using breasticle
A pair of fanbois in China have exposed their chests to the world in a bid to prove the iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner can be tricked into accepting nipples.
The internet has been ablaze with rumours that toes, penises, noses and even the paws of a pet cat can be used to trick the iPhone 5S fingerprint detector.
However, …
Oracle sued over $33,000 bill for SaaS: STRIPPERS as a SERVICE
A San Francisco strip club is suing Oracle after the tech goliath refused to pay a $33,540 bill allegedly racked up on the company credit card.
Larkin Street's New Century Theater has filed a lawsuit claiming a man - named in the legal paperwork as Jose Manuel Gomez Sanchez - slid into the sexy flesh-pit last year and partied …
Apple blings up new iMac with latest Intel chips, next-gen Wi-Fi
Apple has unleashed an update of its all-in-one iMac line, which will now come with boosted Wi-Fi and a beefed-up Haswell processor.
The iMac is the technological equivalent of the onesie – all-in-one babygros beloved of Bieber and other nubile young boybadours.
It contains all the Apple goodness in one package, meaning fanbois …
App Store ratings mess: What do we like? Sigh, we dunno – fanbois
Apple's App Store has continued to display the odd glitch four days after it suspended all rankings for eight hours on Friday to allow for the smooth introduction of iOS 7.
The problem lies with the rankings, which detail the most downloaded apps at any given time. These were frozen on Friday during the launch of the latest …
New iPhone sells out, millions in hands of lucky fans, Cook cock a hoop ...
Apple has given itself a pat on the back after shifting nine million of its latest iPhone 5S and 5C models over their first weekend on sale.
However, while we know that the iPhone 5S has sold out across the world, the success of the cheaper plastic-sheathed 5C is less clear. Apple has not broken down the new iPhone 5-series …
Great Fall of China: iPhone 5C sales lag as blinged-up 5S sells out
Apple has failed to conquer the Chinese market with the iPhone 5C, its (slightly) cheaper and more garishly coloured release.
Despite the gold version of the iPhone 5S selling out across the massive nation, Chinese consumers have not warmed to the other versions of the flagship phone and appear to have entirely rejected the 5C, …
Foxconn: 11 hurt in 'personal' fights between workers
Eleven Foxconn workers were hurt after a "large fight" broke out among them near the Nintendo, Dell and Nokia supplier's factory last week, the firm has confirmed.
Between 300 and 400 people joined in with the ruckus on Thursday evening, which took place in the eastern city of Yanta after what Foxconn described as a gathering …
Hardbitten NYC cops: Sir, I'm gonna need you to, er, upgrade to iOS 7
The New York Police Department's motto, Fidelis Ad Mortem – or "faithful unto death" – could easily pass as the utterance of a fanboi pleading lifelong allegiance to the late Steve Jobs.
And it would seem that New Yorkers also keep faith with the Jesus phone – judging by the police force's latest crime-prevention campaign which …
Cook: 'We're not in the junk market segment'. Not on PRICE, anyway
This is the week when fanbois around the world prepared for the launch of a new iPhone - and some other piece of rubbish called the 5C, though the C doesn't stand for cheap. When Tim Cook said that Apple was uninterested in the "junk business", just the day before the mobes went on sale, he was talking about price not quality. …
One of last few iPhone 5Ss STOLEN from within MASSIVE POLICE CORDON at Apple Store
A man's new iPhone 5S was stolen in Apple's flagship London store just seconds after he bought it this morning.
Despite more than a dozen cops turning up at the packed Regent Street shop - where the latest mobe went on sale today at 0800 BST - an enterprising pickpocket managed to swipe the gear.
The Register understands the …
Obama Zucker-punched: 'NSA PR bungle whacked public trust in web giants'
This year's bombshell news about the NSA's global internet snooping has shattered public trust in US web giants, claims Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.
You could say that those companies' wildly oscillating privacy policies had something to do with the erosion of netizens' faith in privacy protections. But Zuck adamantly blames …
Rotten Apple iOS 7 fury: Glitchy audio or is today's music really that bad?
Fanbois and developers have hit out at Apple after the launch of iOS 7 was dogged by problems.
Punters complained downloads of the latest version of the operating system stumbled to a halt as people hammered the update servers. Meanwhile, some software makers warned people to steer clear of the build until bugs caused by …
Official crackdown on Apple fanboi 'shanty town' ahead of London iPhone launch
The British authorities have told two of Blighty's most passionate Apple fanbois to remove a "shanty town shack" they have constructed outside London's Regent Street Apple Store.
Two diehard Apple nuts set up camp outside the fruity firm's UK flagship shop yesterday in hope of being the first to pick up the new iPhone 5S when it …
Phil Collins' daughter 'will give you A VIRUS' – security bods
Phil Collins' actress daughter is the celebrity most likely to give your equipment a nasty virus, security firm McAfee has warned.
Its annual McAfee Most Dangerous CelebritiesTM study warned clicking on search links after Googling Lily Collins could flood your system with malware.
The second most infectious celeb is Sk8r Boi …
Apple beckons fanbois back into its golden era... of, er, 2010
As the world mutters about Apple's uncertain future, the fruity firm has offered out-of-date fanbois a way to relive its glorious past.
Cupertino's online App Store will now let users of old iPhones and other iThings download previous versions of software, so they can continue to use such technological innovations as the Fart …
THE TRUTH about beaver arse milk in your cakes: There's nothing vanilla about vanilla
Sweden's food watchdog has confirmed to horrified netizens that, yes, ooze from beavers' back-passages is used to add a vanilla flavour to cakes, ice creams and drinks - and has been for years.
A yellowish secretion called castoreum is extracted from the animals' scent-laying anal glands, and is sometimes mixed into perfumes and …
Peak Apple: Has ANYONE at all ordered a new iPhone 5c?
Apple has failed to disclose the sales figures for its new iPhone for the first time since 2009, sending fanbois and investors into a spiral of doubt and fear.
The fruity firm normally thrusts upon the world a boastful press release announcing how many gazillions of new iMobes ordered even before the things have hit the shelves …
Anti-drone bods haul MoD to court over SECRET KILLER ROBOTS
The Ministry of Defence is set to face a court hearing next week over its refusal to release information about Britain's lethal unmanned drone missions in Afghanistan.
It will appear in front of the Information Tribunal on 23 and 24 September in a bid to defend its decision to throw a veil of secrecy around the use of drones in …
Pizza drones, mad cyclists and Bitcoin-for-arms traders: A vision of LNDN 2023
Tech quango Nesta and its chums have sketched out a vision of what London might look like in the year 2023.
Nesta, which used to be called the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, roped in blue-sky thinkers from the engineering firm Arup (which designed the Sydney Opera House's structure), as well as various …
Apple's liquid-crystal screen pusher mulls $2bn IPO – report
Tokyo-based Apple supplier Japan Display is reportedly considering an initial public offering which could raise up to $2bn.
The firm makes screens for the iPhone 5C as well as the 5S. It was created by a government-backed fund which integrated screen-making businesses spun off from Japanese firms Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi after …
London Underground cleaners to refuse fingerprint clock-on
Cleaners working on the London Underground will resort to industrial action this week in protest against the introduction of a controversial biometric clocking-in system.
Starting at just after midnight on Thursday morning, "up to 300 cleaners" will join in the action by refusing to scan their fingerprints every time they clock …
Paypal not sure if its bargepole is long enough for crowdfunding
Paypal is considering its policy on crowdfund payments after freezing transactions on a number of mob-monetised projects.
The online money-sending service has announced that is looking into how best to move forward with crowdfunding, after admitting that its "existing policies and processes aren’t working quite right for this …
Microsoft announces iPad amnesty for fanbois
Sick of your iPad and want to swap it for something that's far less desirable? Microsoft wants to help you out.
Redmond has launched a scheme offering a $200 gift card in exchange for a "gently used" iPad 2, 3 or 4. You'll need to give them your charger cable as well and make sure your fondleslab is wiped clean - both on the …
It's official: The iPhone 5S bling-mobe IS chavvy. OR, Burberry isn't
One was once famous for the beige-checked baseball caps worn by footie louts across Britain. The other is a fading luxury brand beloved by the Waitrose class.
Today, Burberry and Apple have forged an alliance of sorts: the new iPhone 5S will be used to snap and upload to the web pics at the British clothing label's fashion show …
Zuck off, Zuck: Brit duo's JustDelete.Me nukes clingy web accounts
Two British students have created a website designed to help people nuke their accounts with crappy online services.
The Portsmouth University pair claim to have received one million visits on their new website, JustDelete.me, which launched only two weeks ago.
Their site provides a one-stop shop for anyone looking to manage …
Flying in the US? Remember to leave your hand grenades at home
It will not come as explosive news to most sensible travellers, but US airline passengers have been warned to leave their grenades at home when getting on a flight.
The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has issued a stern warning to anyone thinking of bringing their favourite handheld bomb on holiday.
In a blog …
ATTACK of the ROBOT BANKERS brings stock market to its knees
Automated "predatory" robot bankers caused a number of serious glitches that sent the global financial system shuddering to a halt, researchers have claimed.
Boffins from the University of Miami found that squadrons of "ultrafast" and out of control trading algorithms caused major spikes and crashes in the market. These dramatic …
Top UK billionaires considerably richer than Chinese ones ... for now
A rundown of the richest people in China has revealed that the very wealthiest British billionaires collectively boast more cash than their counterparts in the People's Republic.
The top ten wealthiest Chinese citizens are worth a total of £69.31billion ($109.3billion), according to an annual analysis by the Hurun Research …
Cavemen innocent in MAMMOTH MURDER case: DNA evidence
Boffins have claimed that the demise of the woolly mammoth was caused by climate change, offering up an alternate theory to the premise that its spot on the human menu was to blame for the species' extinction.
British and Swedish researchers examined 300 mammoth carcasses from around the world and found that populations tumbled …
Boris Johnson floats idea of 'London visa' to attract tech talent
London's tousle-haired ultra-blond mayor, Boris Johnson, has called for the creation of a special "London visa" to tempt the world's tech and fashion superstars to the capital.
The London Mayor's office has submitted an application to be given an allocation of 100 of the "exceptional talent" visas that the Home Office hands out …
We made the iPhones, now we want OUR 'UNPAID' WAGES – student Pegatron toilers
A group of Chinese student workers who have been making iPhones in a Shanghai factory have claimed Apple manufacturer Pegatron owes them unpaid wages – and say they want their cash back.
The students handed a list of their grievances to China Labor Watch, which has released a report today making a series of allegations about the …
Shop-a-suspect web security system: 'We've helped cops nab 100 suspects'
Earlier this year, The Register revealed how a massive security breach accidentally allowed access to thousands of images of people suspected of petty crimes. Now the private company behind that CCTV and image database is claiming its technology has led to the arrest of 100 suspects.
London's Metropolitan Police has spent the …
The bank that likes to say... crash: TSB's online banking goes titsup on launch day
The newly single Trustee Savings Banks (TSB) has been hit with major website problems on the first day of its split from Lloyds.
The two banks are pulling apart ahead of the sale of TSB, which the European Commission set out as a precondition before the government bail-out of Lloyds during the banking crisis.
Some five million …
