Jasper Hamill

Fancy paying someone to start up yet another pebbles-in-your-whisky firm? Well then step this way, because El Reg has discovered a new "disruptive" lifestyle brand which will charge you the earth to put a rock in your grog. A company called Boozestones' eponymous product aims to persuade drinkers to do away with frozen water …

Apple has filed a patent that could save iPhones from certain death when they crash to the ground. The patent is called "protective mechanism for an electronic device" and allows an iThing to rotate whilst in freefall. When it begins its journey to terminal velocity, the iPhone will be saved by a motor connected to an " …

Open source supremo Hortonworks has announced a rather lacklustre IPO, falling miles short of the billion dollar valuation big data tycoons were hoping for. It hopes to raise $78m by flogging six million shares at a cost of between $12 to $14, which roughly works out to a disappointing market valuation of $659m. Hortonworks …

Mathematicians have been computing the value of pi for years*, but cooks have struggled to be anywhere near as exact about a certain pastry-based homophone. Now the cream of the culinary world could face the cops unless they stick to new rules about what constitutes a proper pie. A man called Bill T Wulf has launched a …

Steve Jobs will descend from the Genius Bar in the sky to appear as a witness in an antitrust case brought against Apple. The iPhone giant's late cofounder will star in a video deposition in a class-action case relating to the iTunes store. Proceedings will hinge around the fact early iPods only allowed fanbois and gurlz to …

UpdatedAmazon has suspended next day delivery in Blighty after reporting its busiest day on record. This decision could mean the families of last-minute present hunters will go without gifts on Christmas Day, said a Reg source, who says he was told express delivery would not begin until the New Year. Amazon denies this and claims the …

Apple is in the final stages of designing a 12-inch iPad as big as a dinner plate, it has been claimed. A Japanese magazine called MacOtakara has published blueprints for a device it called the "iPad Air Plus", which will be a bigger version of the world's most famous fondleslab. It will feature a 12.2-inch display and an A9 …

Apple fans are ditching their iPads after buying a new phab-ulous big screened iPhone 6 Plus, a survey has revealed. The mobile reader app Pocket has unveiled research that suggests people who buy mobile phones with large screens no longer spend as much time using their tablets. In a statement which might tickle British …

InterviewThere are a million easy ways to get famous on the internet - or perhaps they're all one way but it's been done a million times. Randall Munroe If you're a budding celeb in search of glory, all you need to do is shoot a sex tape, like Paris Hilton - or maybe do a Miley Cyrus and unleash a vast torrent of semi-clad selfies. …

UK politicos have called upon social media firms to simplify their privacy policies and come clean about how they use customers' personal data. The Science and Technology Committee has concluded an inquiry into the terms and conditions users agree to when they sign up for accounts with sites like Twitter or Facebook. It has …

The number of blacklisted torrent sites has doubled in Blighty after the High Court blocked a record number of piratical webpages. Blighty's top six ISPs have been ordered to prevent access to 53 torrent services, bringing the total number of banned pages up to 93. New sites on the list include BitSoup, IP Torrents, Isohunt, …

Apple has reached an agreement with Disney that will see Mickey Mouse telling the time on its new Watch device. Anyone who buys the new device will be able to select a number of watch faces, with one featuring the rodent star of 20th century kiddie culture. To satisfy fanbois' furious desire for information on the watch, …

The Syrian Electronic Army has compromised a number of news websites – apparently through DNS redirects via Gigya, a customer identity management platform used by all the sites. The Pro-Assad javascript popup appeared across several websites, including The Telegraph, The Independent, Forbes, Time Out, PC World and The Evening …

Harrison Ford will star in the much-anticipated sequel to Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott has confirmed. However, Scott will not direct the follow-up to this iconic film, even though he worked with the original movie's screenwriter, Hampton Fancher, to develop its script. Ford has become something of a cinematic Lazarus …

Oxford boffins have vowed to have the largest quantum computer ever made up and running within five years and help Blighty regain its place at the top of the tech world. The government has announced the creation of four "Quantum Technology Hubs" which will collaborate to build a small device called the Q20:20. Sadly, this won …

Apple has achieved a record-breaking market capitalisation of $700bn - making it more valuable than Switzerland. The cash-laden fruity firm has now become the most expensive company in human history, after its stock rose to a high of $119.75 yesterday. At its peak during trading yesterday, Apple reached a market cap of $703bn …

VidWorkmen are digging up the spot outside Google's London headquarters where a mysterious "beam" once made pedestrians' hair stand on end. Dotted around two freshly dug holes were small signs which said "beware: fibre optic cables" and the remnants of a police cordon. The holes were on the same spot where the odd force was …

An anonymous South Londoner has been named as the winner of a pseudo lottery designed to (hopefully) make one Reddit user a millionaire. A Redditor who goes under the name Emphursis was picked from the posters at a sub-Reddit called Millionaire Makers. Other forum folk have been asked to each pledge one dollar to him, in the …

He's an actor with one of the most famous penises in Hollywood. Now the notoriously well-endowed superstar Michael Fassbender is set to play the tech world's "biggest dick": Steve Jobs. Fassbender is the latest high profile actor to be named as the star of an upcoming biopic about the Apple godhead. He will don the black …

Tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted Apple will face a grim start to 2015 with iPhone sales plummeting by up to a third. Kuo, of analyst outfit KGI Securities, has predicted that iPhone sales will surge ahead of Christmas, reaching a height of a total of 71.5 million units for the fourth quarter. Yet after the Christmas …

British cops have arrested four people suspected of using Trojans to illegally take control of computers. The arrests were made as part of a international operation led by Europol which aimed to clamp down on the criminal use of Remote Access Trojans (RATs). These malware nasties are capable of taking command of a target's …

The man who built a cryptographic sculpture for the CIA has provided a second clue to help crack its infamously difficult code. Standing in a courtyard inside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the last part of the Kryptos sculpture has remained unsolved for almost 25 years. Now Jim Sanborn, its creator, has given a …

Apple has declared war on its Chinese smartphone rival Xiaomi after execs from the two firms locked horns during a public event. Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel and senior vice president of legal and government affairs, appeared alongside Xiaomi founder Lei Jun at the World Internet Conference. The Apple exec might have …

Facebook's shuttle bus drivers have voted to join the Teamsters union – as anger grows over the pay disparity between moneybags engineers and cash-strapped service workers. The unhappy drivers work for Loop Transportation, which has a contract to ferry Mark Zuckerberg's staff to and from San Francisco, the East Bay and the …

Apple has vowed to protect jobs in Mesa, Arizona, and told city leaders it will not walk away from its stricken sapphire glass factory. The future of the entire city of Mesa looked deeply uncertain after Apple ally GT Technologies filed for bankruptcy, shutting down the factory and axing 890 jobs. Now Cupertino has quietly …