computer science

The Register

The Register is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Register rather than just read about it. In short: The Register (often also called El Reg) is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee and John Lettice. The masthead sublogo is a vulture "Biting the hand that feeds IT." The publication's primary focus is information technology news and opinions.

Key takeaways

The Register belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Register to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Register from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Register (often also called El Reg) is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee and John Lettice. The masthead sublogo is a vulture "Biting the hand that feeds IT." The publication's primary focus is information technology news and opinions. In 2025, The Register was named the "BBC of cloud computing news" by the premiere cloud computing industry conference, CloudFest. Situation Publishing Ltd is the site's publisher. Drew Cullen is an owner, and Linus Birtles is the managing director. Andrew Orlowski was the executive editor before leaving the website in May 2019.

History The Register was founded in London as an email newsletter called Chip Connection. In 1998, The Register became a daily online news source. Magee left in 2001 to start competing publications The Inquirer and later the IT Examiner and TechEye. In 2002, The Register expanded to have a presence in London and San Francisco, creating The Register USA at theregus.com through a joint venture with Tom's Hardware. In 2003, that site moved to theregister.com. That content was later merged onto theregister.co.uk, but the entire site moved to theregister.com in 2023. The Register carries news and columns including Simon Travaglia's BOFH stories. In 2010, The Register supported the successful launch of the Paper Aircraft Released into Space, a project they announced in 2009 that released a paper plane in the extreme upper atmosphere.

Readership and content

In 2011, it was read daily by over 350,000 users according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, rising to 468,000 daily and nearly 9.5 million monthly in 2013. In November 2011, the UK and US each accounted for approximately 42% and 34% of page impressions respectively, with Canada being the next most significant origin of page hits at 3%. In 2012, the UK and US accounted for approximately 41% and 28% of page impressions respectively, with Canada at 3.61%. Channel Register covers computer business and trade news, which includes business press releases. News and articles for computer hardware and consumer electronics are covered by Reg Hardware. Reg Research is an in-depth resource on technologies and how they relate to business. Their stories are cited by major news sources and also used for backup information. Stories in other periodicals were based on their exposés. For instance, InformationWeek ran a story about The Register's story, as used as the source for a New York Times article. In September 2018, its Alexa ranking was #7,194. The National Archives and Records Administration has archived part of the Web site.

Writers The Register has an editorial staff of about 20 writers and production experts around the world. Matt Rosoff is editor-in-chief. Paul Kunert is EMEA editor, Jude Karabus is EMEA deputy editor, Avram Piltch is US editor, and Simon Sharwood is Asia-Pacific editor. Columnists include Mark Pesce and Rupert Goodwins.

Intel chips flaw investigation

On 6 February 2017, The Register linked a clock signal issue in Cisco hardware to a serious defect on Intel's Atom C2000 series processors. Around 3 January 2018, The Register broke news about Google's long-ongoing investigation into Intel's processor design, which revealed that a serious flaw in the design of its chips would require Microsoft, Apple, and Linux developers to release patches for their operating systems.

Criticism On 12 October 2010, Martin Robbins of The Guardian accused The Register of misunderstanding climate science and misrepresenting a paper from the journal Nature in a manner that deliberately minimized the climate impact of human emissions. The Register published its "amusingly put-out 'response'" the same day.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Register

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Register claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Register before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Register ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Register

In research: The Register appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Register in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Register is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1994 establishments in the United Kingdom, British technology news websites, Computer magazines published in the United Kingdom, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Register outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Register in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Register means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Register out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Register in simple terms?

Why does The Register matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Register?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Register.