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Apple prepares to unleash iPhone 5S, 5C for the GREAT BRAWL OF CHINA

Apple will launch an assault on the booming Chinese smartphone market tomorrow with the announcement of two new iPhones. As well as the expected iPhone 5S, Apple is more or less certain to introduce a cheaper mobe thought to be called the 5C, which is aimed at China and developing markets. China is now the world's biggest …
Jasper Hamill, 09 Sep 2013
Another Brick in the Wall film still, Pink Floyd

Headmaster calls cops, tries to dash pupil's uni dreams - over a BLOG

An irate headteacher reported one of his pupils to the police and tried to scupper the youngster's chances of getting into university after reading a blog post that slammed his school. Jacques Szemalikowski, headmaster of Hampstead School in North London, refused to allow 19-year-old Kinnan Zaloom to come and collect his A-level …
Jasper Hamill, 06 Sep 2013

Fancy some BEER ON TOAST? Italy invents spreadable booze

Italian foodies have invented a way for beer lovers to enjoy their favourite drink for breakfast - without the risk of being forced to attend those troublesome Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Chocolatier Napoleone and brewery Alta Quota, both based in the central Italian province of Rieti, have joined forces to create the world's …
Jasper Hamill, 06 Sep 2013

Boffinry breakthrough OF THE DECADE: Teens 'influenced' by friends

Social networking turns teens into cigarette-smoking, booze-swilling party monsters, researchers have claimed. Groundbreaking eggheads at the University of Southern California surveyed more than 1,500 high-school students and found that they were more likely to drink or smoke if they saw pictures of their friends doing so. …
Jasper Hamill, 05 Sep 2013
The Register breaking news

Forget Mars: Let's get someone on the Moon – NASA veteran

The retired NASA chief who sent the first American astronaut into space has said the agency should give up on Mars and focus on putting another astronaut on the Moon. Chris Kraft, who was NASA's first ever flight director before becoming a senior manager on the Apollo programme – the US project dedicated to "landing a man on the …
Jasper Hamill, 04 Sep 2013
The Register breaking news

MPs blocked from ogling 'web smut' 300,000 times – WHILE IN PARLIAMENT

British politicians triggered grumble-flick website filters within the Houses of Parliament more than 300,000 times in the past year. Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that ministers and their staff upset the anti-porn blocking systems on the Westminster network 309,316 times in 12 months - a rate of 850 …
Jasper Hamill, 04 Sep 2013
medical_doctor_health_channel

Doctors face tribunal over claims of plagiarism in iPhone app

Three doctors face the withdrawal or suspension of their licences to practise medicine after being accused of releasing an iPhone app which allegedly plagiarised material from an award-winning medical textbook. One of the three stands further accused of writing a "misleading" review praising the app on the App Store. The trio …
Jasper Hamill, 04 Sep 2013
The Register breaking news

Furious Frenchies tell Apple to bubble off: Bling iPhone isn't 'champagne'

French booze watchdogs have warned Apple that its decision to flog a blinged-up "champagne gold" version of the iPhone could end in a nasty court battle. Most Apple watchers now agree that the fruity firm is about to offer fanbois the chance to buy a garish gold phone, but the trade body that represents champagne makers has …
Jasper Hamill, 04 Sep 2013
Assange

WikiLeaks' Cablegate server touted on eBay for $3k-plus by Swedes

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has attacked a former ally after one of the servers used to host the infamous Cablegate material was put up for auction on eBay. The document-leaking operation – headed by Julian Assange™ – slammed Bahnhof, a Swedish internet service provider, for flogging the once-rented Dell Poweredge R410 …
Jasper Hamill, 03 Sep 2013

Beat the UK's incoming smut filter: Pre-censor your grumble flicks

Smut-lovers across the UK will be able to beat Cameron's censorship ban and watch grumble movies - as long as they don't mind all the rude bits being cut out. A new website is now offering fully Tory-proof filth by taking pornographic films and then slicing away all the naughty moments, leaving only the appallingly scripted …
Jasper Hamill, 03 Sep 2013

Lenovo chief Yang wangs hefty bonus wodge to workers

Yang Yuanqing, CEO of the world's largest PC maker, Lenovo, plans to share a portion of his whacking great bonus with staffers for the second year in a row following bumper sales figures. A pool of 10,000 workers out of the firm's more than 30,000 employees will each be given a piece of the $3.25m portion of Yuanqing's bonus, …
Jasper Hamill, 02 Sep 2013

US gov preps sale of TOP SECRET disease research island

Rich Americans in search of a new home could soon be able to snap up a lovely private island within striking distance of New York City. The catch? It's the home of a federal disease research centre rumoured to have created gruesome human-animal hybrids. The American federal government has started the process to sell off Plum …
Jasper Hamill, 02 Sep 2013
The Register breaking news

Star Wars revival secret: This isn't the celluloid you're looking for

The next Star Wars film is to be made using analogue film in a bid to evoke the glory days of the space saga. The excitement is Palpatine palpable among Star Wars fans, who will be hoping the return to the traditional methods of filmmaking heralds a move away from the digital, hyper-real – and hyper-rubbish – style of the last …
Jasper Hamill, 27 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

UK gov call-centre serfs told: Fondle your button for HAPPINESS

Has anyone in the world ever phoned up a call centre to pass on how overjoyed they are about an organisation and its services? The British government certainly seems to think so, because it's introduced a new on-screen button for its headset-sporting apparatchiks to hit whenever someone rings up to heap praise. Designed by El …
Jasper Hamill, 27 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Germany warns: You just CAN'T TRUST some Windows 8 PCs

Microsoft's new touchy Windows 8 operating system is so vulnerable to prying hackers that Germany's businesses and government should not use it, the country's authorities have warned in a series of leaked documents. According to files published in German weekly Die Zeit, the Euro nation's officials fear Germans' data is not …
Jasper Hamill, 23 Aug 2013
By Luke Ford  http://www.lukeford.net/Images/photos4/071209/214.htm  Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en

Kim Kardashian's bosom pal in bling snatch Instagram unpleasantness

Kim Kardashian's best buddy was roughed up by a wannabe mugger soon after Instagramming his $500,000 gold watch in a flash cafe, according to a New York gossip column. Jonathan Cheban, who frequently appears on the execrable reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, was busy chowing down on an alfresco lobster lunch at the …
Jasper Hamill, 22 Aug 2013

iCloud outage outrage: Look, iPhoto friends, kitty just learned to... NOOO

Apple's iCloud is suffering an outage that has resulted in millions of fanbois being unable to access the service. According to Apple's own status page, there are currently issues with photo stream, documents in the cloud, backup and iPhoto journals, which some fanbois use to share snaps on Facebook. Around 1 per cent of all …
Jasper Hamill, 22 Aug 2013

EXPLICIT VID: Man filmed trying to bang brand new 'budget iPhone'

Footage has emerged which appears to show that Apple's mysterious cheap new iPhone has a scratch-resistant surface which can take a serious battering and still stay pretty. A video posted on the Taiwanese site Apple Daily shows what it claims is a brand new model of iPhone being tested against several real-world scratch risks. …
Jasper Hamill, 22 Aug 2013
Prison window

Gambling addict IT boss gets 7 years' porridge for £19m swindle

An IT boss who defrauded his employer of close to £19m to help fund a crippling gambling addiction has been sent down for a seven-year prison stretch. Jonathan Revill pleaded guilty to four charges of fraud and one of transferring criminal property at Leeds Crown Court. The court heard that he had used his position at …
Jasper Hamill, 22 Aug 2013
balaclava_thief_burglar

New use for old iPhones: Watch your house get robbed in REAL-TIME

Fanbois have been offered a new way of keeping their home safe – well, sort of – as long as they've managed to avoid chucking away all their old fondleslabs. A firm called People Power has released an app which turns old iPhones and iPads into home security devices which will allow Apple fans to keep an eye on their home. The …
Jasper Hamill, 22 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Fame-hating planets don't need to hang around STARS – boffins

Scientists have claimed that free-floating planets could form from dust clouds deep out in interstellar space – a finding that challenges the belief that planets are only created near stars. Boffins from Japan's Osaka University had previously revealed the existence of hundreds of millions of orphan planets, but the latest …
Jasper Hamill, 21 Aug 2013
Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer and CFO Ken Goldman

Marissa Mayer causes controversy after KEEPING HER KIT ON

Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer has sent the digital chattering classes into a frenzy after posing for a series of buttoned-up photographs for fashion bible Vogue. In an entirely predictable reaction to the Vogue spread, feminist bloggers unleashed tens of thousands of words of purple prose discussing Mayer's decision to appear in the …
Jasper Hamill, 21 Aug 2013
Clapping children

Wait, don't ditch that IT career just yet: UK vacancies hit 5-year high

Britain's tech jobs market is showing signs of recovery with the number of available positions growing across the nation. The number of tech jobs available in inner London has doubled since 2009, from 5,736 to 9,886 in 2013, according to new independent figures. IT recruiters CWJobs handed El Reg data that suggests the number …
Jasper Hamill, 21 Aug 2013
Heinrich Popow, paralympic athlete, truns on his speciallly designed prosthetic leg. Picture courtesy Ottobock healthcare

iWatch rumours grow as Apple hires Nike fitness guru Jay Blahnik

Apple has hired a healthy living guru who helped Nike develop the FuelBand fitness bracelet to work on a mystery project for the fruity firm. Jay Blahnik started work at Cupertino earlier this month, according to reports from unofficial Apple blog 9to5Mac. He is likely to have been hired to work on the near-mythical iWatch, …
Jasper Hamill, 20 Aug 2013

'BLING BLING, BLING BLING' 'Hello, yes, my iPhone is made of GOLD'

The Apple rumour mill is approaching lightspeed, fuelled by a growing number of insiders talking up a C-3PO-like gold iPhone 5S. Today's iOS mobes are only available in black and white, but more and more anonymous sources are piling in online to claim the next-generation model - due out on 10 September - will sport an optional …
Jasper Hamill, 20 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Bitcoin blitzkreig as Germans prepare to tax virtual currency

Germany has become the first country to recognise Bitcoin as a real form of currency, which will be subject to tax like any other dosh. The country's ministry has declared that Bitcoins are “units of account” and should be regarded as “private money”. What this means is that anyone trading in the virtual currency will be liable …
Jasper Hamill, 20 Aug 2013
Julian Assange as Goldfinger

Getting worried, Assange? WikiLeaks spaffs out 'insurance' info

WikiLeaks has released a massive encrypted cache of documents as an “insurance policy” to be opened if its leaders come to harm. Julian Assange's rebel army published torrent links to about 400GB of data on its Facebook page, but have not yet explained how to access the files containing the sensitive material. It is likely that …
Jasper Hamill, 19 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Fanbois taught to use Apple's new killer app: Microsoft Windows

Apple is preparing to train its shop staff to use Microsoft Windows in a bid to flog more Macs to business users reared on PCs. The fruity firm is planning to teach its shop staff to use a piece of virtualisation software called Parallels, which allows fanbois to run both OSX and any number of Windows and Unix operational …
Jasper Hamill, 19 Aug 2013
Sign outside the National Security Agency HQ

Snowden's email provider may face court rap after closing service

The owner of an encrypted email service used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden could be facing contempt of court charges after refusing to hand over his users' information to spooks, according to a recent report. Ladar Levison dramatically shut down his email firm, Lavabit, after being whacked with a secret federal court order. …
Jasper Hamill, 19 Aug 2013

Fear the JOBZILLA! 150ft STATUE of Steve planned 'lest fanbois forget'

The world's most fervent fanbois have launched a campaign to build a massive icon of Apple Godhead Steve Jobs that could end up bigger than the Statue of Liberty. Passionate iZealots have launched a fundraising drive on crowdfunding site Indiegogo, aiming to raise $50,000 to build a life-sized statue. If they manage to raise …
Jasper Hamill, 19 Aug 2013

Apple erects measures to stop app-happy kids splurging parents' dosh

Apple has handed new guidelines to App Store software programmers to prevent kids from racking up huge bills from in-app purchases. The fruity firm has come under pressure to protect kids from spending all their parents' cash on virtual rubbish in games, such as smurfberries or vegetables. The new guidelines, available from the …
Jasper Hamill, 16 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

'But we like 1 Direction!' Rock gods The Who fend off teen Twitter hate mob

Legendary rockers The Who have announced they have no plans to ask One Direction to withdraw their new track Best Song Ever after a digital mob of rabid teenage girls bombarded them with death threats. The English rock band issued the statement yesterday, weeks after the boy band released their hit song. From the day of its …
Jasper Hamill, 16 Aug 2013

'Abel, put that camera down right now! Abel, you're fired. Out!'

This was the week where we all heard AOL boss Tim Armstrong publicly fire a hapless camera-toting creative in the middle of a tense conference call about the fate of local news platform Patch. The meeting took place last week, but the audio was leaked just a few days ago, when we were all treated to a recording of the moment the …
Jasper Hamill, 16 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

KABOOOM! Space-faring dwarf's galactic pile-up snapped by X-ray boffins

Astronomers have spotted a huge collision between a plucky little dwarf galaxy and a massive spiral rival that goes by the snappy name of NGC 1232. NASA stargazers using the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory were alerted to the intergalactic pile-up after spotting a cloud of super-heated gas in the huge spiral galaxy, which is …
Jasper Hamill, 15 Aug 2013

Brits: We can STOP TROLLS if we know where they LIVE - poll

The Great British Public want an end to anonymous registration for social media accounts in the aftermath of high-profile online abuse cases, pollsters have claimed – and the older and more conservative they are, the more likely they are to want it. A YouGov survey found that 72 per cent of the British public want social media …
Jasper Hamill, 15 Aug 2013

Twee...THUD: Boffins build 'The Classifier' to seek out, kill millions of Twitter fakes

Comp sci boffins spent a year buying up more than 100,000 fake Twitter accounts in a bid to help the teeny-tiny text transmitter beef up its spam defences. They also used their research to build a retroactive classifier that sniffed out the fakers so the Big Blue Bird itself could snuff them out. A group of researchers, …
Jasper Hamill, 15 Aug 2013

Superstar cluster-Zuck as Facebook tries out celeb-only edition

Facebook is building an anti-social network which will ban ordinary people and only allow celebrities beyond its virtual velvet rope. Zuck's advertising empire is reportedly working on a "VIP app" that non-famous people - whom Elizabeth Hurley once famously described as "civilians" - will not be allowed to use. Sources told All …
Jasper Hamill, 15 Aug 2013
Osama bin Laden

Osama Bin Pwned: Al Qaeda mocked in Twitter counter-jihad

Al Qaeda has come under attack from a massive troll army after asking Twitter users for ideas on how jihadis could run a PR campaign. Using the hashtag #اقتراحك_لتطوير_اﻹعلام_الجهادي, which means “suggestions for development of jihadist media”, supporters of the Islamists' war on everyone offered various po-faced suggestions, …
Jasper Hamill, 15 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Foxconn mulls solar panels, sticking Apple where sun doesn't shine

Apple iStuff maker Foxconn could start churning out solar panels at its Chinese factories, a spokesman for the manufacturing goliath revealed. Perhaps worried that the sun could set on its long-running relationship with the iPad giant, the Taiwanese multinational will decide by the end of the year whether to move into the solar …
Jasper Hamill, 14 Aug 2013

Rate-my-boink app scores frisky fanbois, fangurlz' SCREAMS, VIBRATIONS

Spreadsheets are pretty much the unsexiest invention since the chastity belt, but one app developer is hoping the idea of analysing their own performance in the bedroom will appeal to a generation of selfie-taking fanbois. A new bit of software called Spreadsheets is now on sale in Apple's app store, an online space that's …
Jasper Hamill, 14 Aug 2013
Kindle Big Brother

DARPA calls Big Data boffins: Help us lock up everyone's privates

The American military is looking for number-crunching wizards able to tackle the national security threat posed by, erm... publicly available data. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is searching for boffins to "measure the national security impact of public data and to defend against the malicious use of …
Jasper Hamill, 13 Aug 2013

PEAK Apple: Cupertino's hopes died with Steve Jobs, says Larry Ellison

Oracle supremo Larry Ellison has told Apple that it doesn't stand a chance of success without Steve Jobs at the helm. In an interview with CBS, the multibillionaire performed a bizarre dance routine meant to illustrate what chance Apple has in the post-Jobs era. Just like the oracles of old, Ellison's predictions take a bit of …
Jasper Hamill, 13 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

PayPal's fizzog-based payments app rubbished over reliability worries

Shop assistants may be too thick to guarantee the security of Paypal's new real-world payment system, a leading security bod has cautioned. PayPal is currently trialling a new system that allows shoppers in the London suburb of Richmond to pay for stuff using their ugly mugs. Customers can pay for goods using their pocket …
Jasper Hamill, 13 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Nude swimmers warned of GONAD-GOBBLING FISH ON THE LOOSE

Swedish men have been told to stay out of the water after a gonad-gobbling fish known as the "ball cutter" was spotted in the wild. The warning was issued after fisherman caught what appears to be a 21cm-long pacu fish in the Oresund Sound between Denmark and Sweden. Related to the famous Amazonian piranha, the pacu is famous …
Jasper Hamill, 13 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Mobe-slurping Wi-Fi SPY BINS banned from London's streets

Electronic BINS in the heart of London must stop tracking hundreds of thousands of passing smartphones, officials have demanded. A dozen or so high-tech rubbish cans - which display adverts and information on built-in flat-screens and are dotted around the capital's financial district's pavements - were set up to collect data …
Jasper Hamill, 12 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

The Pirate Bay's new censorship-dodging browser 'not secure'

The Pirate Bay has released a bundle of add-ons to help people search for and access bits of the internet that governments and ISPs have locked away. The only hitch is: despite the fact that it contains a Tor client, security experts have said that it doesn't completely anonymise internet traffic. This has raised concerns about …
Jasper Hamill, 12 Aug 2013
The Register breaking news

Titsup Apple app dev nerve-centre hauled back online after hack scare

Apple has revived its online base for app developers a month after the plug was pulled over a "security intrusion". The developer.apple.com site was taken down on 18 July, just hours after a London-based bloke claimed he had exploited vulnerabilities in the website to prove it was riddled with flaws. Apple started resurrecting …
Jasper Hamill, 12 Aug 2013

New blinged-up 'iPhone 5S' touted by Jobs FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

The next-generation iPhone, one of the last devices conceived by Apple godhead Steve Jobs before his death, will hit the shelves on 10 September, according to fresh rumours. The new spin of the iOS smartphone, expected to be called the 5S, could sport a gaudy "champagne gold" coloured case, as well as the usual white or black, …
Jasper Hamill, 12 Aug 2013
Student with textbooks

Students, rejoice ... and squint! Google rents out textbooks to mobes

Google is offering fanbois and fandroids the chance to borrow academic textbooks on their smartphones. The update to the Chocolate Factory's Google Play app to allow the lending of textbooks, which often prove prohibitively expensive for students. Its iOS update adds the ability to borrow rental books, something that fandroids …
Jasper Hamill, 12 Aug 2013

Think your smutty Snapchats can't be saved by dorks? THINK AGAIN

Sexting has become even more inadvisable following the launch of an app which can surreptitiously store images sent using the self-destructing photo service Snapchat. Anyone looking to broadcast pictures of their naughty bits was given a boost when Snapchat first launched, because it purported to destroy images a few moments …
Jasper Hamill, 12 Aug 2013