The Register

Back to the future with short wave radio, plus Russia drop internet Iron Curtain Russia has reportedly blocked access to Western media outlets including the BBC to netizens within its borders, as suspicions rise that the country has begun implementing a "splinternet" plan to seal itself off from the wider internet.…

But warns sample size is a bit small to leap to big conclusions Backblaze has published the first SSD edition of its regular drive statistics report, which appears to show that flash drives are as reliable as spinning disks, although with surprising failure rates for some models.…

No data or code stored in Moscow and St Petersburg tech operations, bank says International trade sanctions threaten to cut off Deutsche Bank from its near-shore IT support and software development unit in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.…

IT and data arm now part of NHS England, which could be pressured into data sharing without proper oversight Ten months after attempts first began to extract the medical information of 55 million citizens in England, NHS Digital's former chairman is warning the merger of the agency with NHS England threatens the privacy of people's personal data.…

Probe builds on one already in process for Instagram Reports that ByteDance-owned social media platform TikTok is harmful to children are under investigation by a number of US attorneys general.…

Sorry about it. You know how it is with supply chains. Aroogah, arooogah.... Something for the Weekend? My laptop has just spoken to me. It said: "Ba-ding!" It hasn't said that before and I don't know what it means. Whatever does it want?…

The Words are Perfect, the keyboard action less so On Call Welcome to the weekend, wherein you will doubtless be called upon by friends and family to demonstrate your IT prowess when you'd far rather be sipping on a beverage in a hammock.…

For actual headaches, not tech messes, but hasn't said why its staff have a problem that needed tackling Fujitsu has been hailed as the world's leading company by the International Headache Society's World Patient Support Association.…

Google's local pal enters JV with contract kit-maker Sanmina – storage and appliance supplier to the stars Indian conglomerate Reliance, which among its many activities is Google's partner for an India-only cut of Android, is getting into contract manufacturing of datacenter products.…

Our R&D is in an occupied nation, Corsair also warns investors While the top chip and hardware makers may have moved to minimize the impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on their operations, smaller companies are mapping out their worse-case scenarios arising from a prolonged conflict.…

What to know and what not to panic about Updated Fire broke out at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – Europe's largest such facility and one of the biggest of its kind in the world – on Thursday after being shelled by Russian military, according to Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba.…

To keep FOSS developers and non-commercial users (almost) caught up with continuous release cadence Oracle has created an additional version of the Solaris operating system it acquired in 2009, when it bought Sun Microsystems.…

Browser makers set aside differences Browser makers Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, along with software consultancies Bocoup and Igalia, have agreed to work together to make web design technologies perform in a more consistent way across different platforms.…

Hey, who remembers those multi-million-dollar offices, huh? Mountain View remembers Google employees in the United States must be in the office at least three days a week from April 4 as the internet giant winds down its work-from-home policy.…

Even if we wanted to, which we don't, we can't, so we won't, says boss ICANN on Wednesday rebuffed a request from Mykhailo Fedorov, First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, to revoke all Russian web domains, shut down Russian DNS root servers, and invalidate associated TLS/SSL certificates in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.…

This isn't the artificial intelligence we were promised Without a critical update, Amazon Alexa devices could wake themselves up and start executing audio commands issued by a remote attacker, according to infosec researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London.…

Local police want to head off any worries about possible sabotage A Swiss data centre operated by financial messaging service SWIFT is under guard by police following the exclusion of key Russian banks from the system.…

And, because sometimes less is more, extends it to Chromebooks, too Intel has updated its vPro PC management platform, created a less capable edition, and brought the product to Chromebooks.…

Plus $800m Streamlit acquisition – just don't expect a revenue contribution any time soon Cloud-native data warehouse outfit Snowflake – once valued at a heart-thumping $120bn following its 2020 IPO – saw 30 per cent wiped off its value in after-hours trading yesterday as it lowered guidance on revenue forecasts.…

It's not easy to run standard Linux on a lot of single-board computers, but Armbian can help The latest update to Armbian brings a mainline-kernel based Ubuntu- and Debian-compatible environment to dozens of small single-board computers.…

One day after Roscosmos said 'hostile' UK govt should withdraw stake in satellite firm The board of satellite constellation provider OneWeb this morning said it had voted to suspend all launches from Baikonur, a day after Russia's space agency said this weekend's lift-off was in doubt.…

One-in-ten respondents hadn't even heard of it Reader survey results When we published the questions for this survey, our view was that zero trust, or ZT, has finally begun to become a thing – as a real technology in real companies.…

Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions questions if gains may be negated by data creation Modern 5G network infrastructure is more power efficient than prior generations but the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) says it isn't clear if this will deliver a cut in overall energy consumption, or whether consumption may in fact rise.…

Potential mass internet surveillance idea dropped after ISP pushback, uncertainty about final measures linger While the world watches Ukraine, the British government has quietly dropped a requirement for mass surveillance of UK internet users by their service providers.…

Today we walk you through the fascinating world of upcoming text-generating rivals Analysis Text-generating language models are difficult to control. These systems have no sense of morality: they can spew hate speech and misinformation. Despite this, numerous companies believe this kind of software is good enough to sell. Are these organizations, and the wider world, ready for it?…

We found some servers? Quick: buy some software! Here’s something a little ironic: Nutanix, a company that first championed abstraction of hardware with software, then backed away from hardware, has now noticed that some customers’ software buying behavior is tied to hardware availability.…

Whitegoods and cars also allowed to cross the border South Korea's Ministry of Trade has revealed that after discussions with the US Department of Commerce, the nation that is home to Samsung is confident that smartphones are exempt from new bans on exporting technology to Russia.…

Infosys and Wipro bet that makers of metaverses and cloudy cars want ready-to-roll platforms Two of India’s global service giants have announced platforms on which to build emerging technologies, continuing their move towards acting as software vendors.…

Payloads stuck at just 1.5kg, but noise has been reduced Alphabet's drone delivery outfit, Wing, has inked a deal with a major Australian supermarket chain that will see it deliver household staples – in small bundles.…

Party invitation lost – or snubbed? Nvidia's absence from an Intel-led effort among industry players to develop next-gen chips with a more vibrant mix of cores is raising questions about the GPU maker's chiplet strategy, particularly regarding the integration of graphics when it comes to future PC processors.…

The further you move from the office, the more wild the product descriptions CrowdStrike is bringing its identity threat prevention technology to its managed detection and response (MDR) service, giving enterprises a chance to blunt the growing threat of identity-based attacks that has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

As Moscow tries to retain IT talent with military exemption, a three-year tax suspension for biz Russia, scrambling to deal with economic sanctions imposed in response to its invasion of Ukraine last week and to staunch the hemorrhaging of businesses and talent, will exempt IT companies from taxes for three years and will excuse specialized tech workers from military service.…

Says enterprise open-source house Red Hat The use of proprietary software in enterprise organizations is expected to decline eight percentage points over the next two years, while the use of enterprise open-source software is expected to increase five percentage points.…

'Please stop using your device' Fitbit recalled all models of its Ionic smartwatch on Tuesday after a small number of wearers were left with burns when the gadgets' lithium-ion batteries overheated.…

Verification hit and miss so far Ukrainian news website Ukrainska Pravda says the nation's Centre for Defence Strategies think tank has obtained the personal details of 120,000 Russian servicemen fighting in Ukraine. The publication has now shared this data freely on its website.…

Latest info dump days after anonymous outing of 60,000 messages Infamous ransomware group Conti is now the target of cyberattacks in the wake of its announcement late last week that it fully supports Russia's ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine, with the latest hit being the leaking of its source code for the public to see.…

Fresh data transfer pact in the works for spring The State of the Net conference in Washington, DC, has heard officials representing the EU and the US say they believe they are close to reaching a data-sharing agreement to replace Privacy Shield.…

SpyCloud highlights poor password hygiene of consumers and the threat to enterprises Passwords, long a weakness in the tapestry of defenses designed to keep enterprises and individuals more secure, continue to be a problem due in large part to the same issue that has haunted them for years: the users themselves.…

Hopefully a better experience than the 'disastrous' Files On-Demand update Microsoft's cloudy storage service, OneDrive, has gone native on Apple Silicon as Folder Backup arrives in Public Preview.…

State-owned Sberbank's software contracts under scrutiny As of this morning, the EU confirmed it had "agreed to exclude key Russian banks from the SWIFT system, the world's dominant financial messaging system.…

StreetComplete told people how they could fund development, now it's not allowed to StreetComplete, a free Android program designed to help people to contribute to OpenStreetMap, was blocked from Google's Play Store merely for urging users to donate money to the app's development.…

A fascinating firsthand retelling of the technical history of MPLS Systems Approach One of the more satisfying conference experiences in my career was giving a presentation in the SIGCOMM 2003 Outrageous Opinions session, entitled: MPLS Considered Helpful.…

We can still hear the echoes of the launch fanfare from 2020 Microsoft's attempt to put its homegrown Pluton security processor architecture into third-party Windows 11 PCs is right now more work-in-progress than the slam dunk its publicity would have you believe.…

US giant wants 20% of the world's chips from EU Intel's doing a European version of Amazon HQ2: enticing governments to pledge more and more funds to subsidize the construction of chip mega-plants along with ever-growing packages of benefits.…

Underwater sediment surges sliced several segments, required extreme splicing to fix Two boffins from New Zealand's University of Auckland have detailed the extraordinary repair job performed to reconnect the submarine cable connecting the Kingdom of Tonga to the world.…

Beijing and Moscow are suddenly BFFs, and that's already seen one Chinese firm reverse a Russia ban As big tech companies from the West swiftly and happily comply with new rules that prohibit interactions with Russia, Chinese companies will soon feel pressure to do likewise – and counter-pressure to resist such calls.…

State of the Union features call for Congress to pass law that could see Intel spend $100B on chip factories United States president Joe Biden has used his first State of the Union speech to call for a ban on social networks serving ads targeted at children.…

AI cloud business booms, but not at levels – or in locations – that will worry rivals Chinese web giant Baidu has revealed plans to introduce its autonomous taxi service to 65 cities by the year 2025, then add another 35 cities by 2030.…

Where in the world is Carm, sorry, Satish Kumbhani? Satish Kumbhani, who is accused of scamming people out of $2.4bn in a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, has disappeared while evading an American watchdog, a court was told this week.…

Who says organic chemistry doesn't have its drama? The US Patent Office's appeal board on Monday sided with Harvard University and MIT by upholding a set of the group's patents covering CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in plants and animals.…