The Register

Failure can be factored in when you're doing your sums, says vendor Cloud storage and backup provider Backblaze has released a comprehensive report detailing reliability statistics for the hard drives it operated during the whole of 2021, with an interesting finding on its older kit.…

Shell station logistics supplier Oiltanking 'operating with limited capacity' Two companies owned by Hamburg-based company fuel group Marquard & Bahls are battling cyberattackers, with loading and unloading systems at the German arm of petrol tank terminal provider Oiltanking affected.…

To lose an entire Moderation Team might be considered bad luck. But three of the Core Team? There is only drama in the open source community when the day has a "y" in it, and sure enough a trio of members have decided to step back from the Rust Core Team, including a nine-year veteran of the language.…

Vendors shipped more but demand outstripped supply, says Gartner Semiconductor supply shortages last year led to the world's top original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) spending 25.2 per cent more on chips than the previous year, with Apple and Samsung heading up the list.…

You must be this small to ride Some out-of-this world generosity emerged out of Florida this week as it was revealed that one of the passengers on SpaceX's first space tourist flight in September was actually given his ticket by a friend.…

It wasn't what Microsoft promised... but it wasn't all bad either On January 30 2007, 15 years ago this week, the delayed and delayed again Windows Vista was released.…

Muscle-flexing rather than publicised 'sabotage right here' plan A Russian naval exercise in the Atlantic, near several submarine cables between Britain, France and the US, is more likely to be sabre-rattling than an attempt to sabotage critical communication links.…

One streaked across 750km of sky, the other set a duration record The World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations' weather watching agency, has certified two new world records for lightning.…

$600M sale to new owner created and funded just to handle mobile, networking, and messaging IP BlackBerry, once a byword for the world's most ubiquitous mobile messaging devices, has decided the tech that propelled it to the top of the charts is now a non-core legacy asset and disposed of it for $600 million.…

Allege content delivery network enables piracy Four major Manga publishers are set to sue internet-grooming firm Cloudflare, on grounds its content delivery network facilitates piracy of their wares.…

Developer overwhelmed by game's runaway success, doesn't oppose future paywall Viral online puzzle game Wordle has been acquired by The New York Times Company (NYTCo), publisher of The New York Times.…

Supply chain management is back at the forefront Unnerved by a pre-pandemic electronics materials shortage, STMicroelectronics took the decision to start bringing its supply chain for silicon carbide in house, from substrates to end products.…

Bullet-proof hosting? Can't help you there. Will you settle for rapid repairs? Comcast Xfinity technicians have restored service to customers in Oakland, California, after the cableco's cables were pierced by gunfire early Sunday morning.…

A timeline of the x86 giant's stumbles – and commitments for the future Analysis Intel is cranking up its research spending to fix past mistakes, catch up with and overtake the competition, and build a foundation to grow in future.…

Now that's egg on your typeface Earlier this month, a German court fined an unidentified website €100 ($110, £84) for violating EU privacy law by importing a Google-hosted web font.…

Semiconductor shortage helps cause reshuffle at the top The semiconductor shortage helped smartphone and memory chips in 2021, and Samsung toppled Intel to become the world's largest chip company, according to Counterpoint Research.…

PC makers ditch Google OS portables for higher-margin Windows machines as component shortages linger Chromebook shipments collapsed in calendar Q4 as the channel – with an eye on market saturation – ordered in lower volumes and PC makers moved available components to higher-margin builds running on Windows.…

Oracle replacement project continues as SLC opts for SaaS model Workday has pocketed a £9.8m contract for the second phase in an ERP project intended to improve efficiency in finance and HR management at the UK's Student Loans Company (SLC).…

Go-private deal with gang it previously bought Wrike from Citrix is to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital in a deal worth $16.5bn. The move will see Citrix taken into private ownership and combined with Tibco, another firm already in Vista's portfolio.…

Claims it will make it easier to amend ‘retained EU law’ The UK government is having a second pass at flogging the benefits of Brexit, as much as they exist, in a new bill that promises to accelerate work on AI and gene editing.…

Plus: Non-profit suicide hotline criticised for sharing mental health crisis texts with AI startup, and more In brief Waymo is suing California's Department of Motor Vehicles in an attempt to keep information about its autonomous car crashes and other operational details private, arguing that the data is a trade secret.…

Next: How to throw it a million miles without anything falling off A double helping of plastic playtime this Monday as we honour the achievements of the James Webb Space Telescope by building one out of Lego and an ESA astronaut takes some Playmobil on a tour of the ISS.…

Data at rest should remain at rest Dell believes that technologies such as computational storage will soon play a part in high-performance computing (HPC) in response to ever-growing volumes of data. It doesn't see the general-purpose CPU disappearing any time soon, but says it will be complemented with specialised processors for specific tasks, with composability seen as both an opportunity and a problem.…

The doctor won't see you now Opinion It started in Jeopardy and ended in loss. IBM's flagship AI Watson Health has been sold to venture capitalists for an undisclosed sum thought to be around a billion dollars, or a quarter of what the division cost IBM in acquisitions alone since it was spun off in 2015.…

'Save and replay memories'? Not quite, say boffins... Publicity-shy self-proclaimed technoking Elon Musk reluctantly hit the headlines last week as his brain wiring startup Neuralink launched recruitment for clinical trials.…

A tale of command line booby traps and bored engineers Who, Me? Take a trip back to when mainframes and terminals were all the rage and The Cloud was the smoke produced by the mainframe when a washing-machine-sized disk was about to let go. Welcome to another Who, Me? confession.…

Deep Space Network scope tilts to find its targets, or to dispose of the effects of recent rain Video The venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft is currently more than 19 billion kilometres from Earth, travels at 15 kilometres per second and talks to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) at a torturously slow 160 bits per second.…

Offers $2 million bug bounty and hopes perps see that record payout, and a clean conscience, as reasons to sacrifice $78m Another week, another crypto upstart admitting its lax security has been exploited and parties unknown have made off with millions. But this time there's a twist: the crypto upstart has appealed for the return of its assets by appealing to the thieves' consciences.…

Big Tech gets hauled in and reminded of its responsibility to keep China's internet nice The Chinese government has unveiled a draft law clamping down on deepfakes – the practice of using AI to adapt existing digital content into realistic simulations of humans.…

Pledges work on 'mutually agreed commercial initiatives' – such as figuring out how to use 5G Google has dipped into its $10 billion India Digitization Fund to have local wireless carrier Bharti Airtel work with it on "mutually agreed commercial initiatives."…

35 US States, more than 50 academics, Microsoft, others take aim at iGiant and its grip on the iOS ecosystem Analysis Epic Games' legal campaign to break Apple's near absolute control over its iOS ecosystem received reinforcement this week from 35 US states, Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen, and more than 50 academics, among others.…

The migration of PlayStation exclusives continues to be a great idea The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. Long may this trajectory of PlayStation titles eventually coming to PC continue – because we now have God of War.…

Brit tycoon's bad Friday just got worse UK Home Secretary Priti Patel tonight approved Autonomy founder Mike Lynch's extradition to America to face criminal charges over the multi-billion-dollar sale of his tech biz to Hewlett-Packard.…

Where Britain leads, America follows The US Navy has managed to drop an F-35C fighter jet off one of its aircraft carriers into the South China Sea, just months after the Royal Navy did the same thing with an F-35B in the Mediterranean.…

Not enough money going into 40nm+ process nodes Semiconductor shortage issues will continue through the first half of 2022 as the industry attempts to build up inventory to normal levels, according to research firm IDC.…

Exorcising the ghost of Windows past Microsoft has dropped another Windows 11 Insider build into the hands of unpaid testers, demonstrating it is serious about tidying up the mismatch of user interface cues in its flagship operating system.…

Federal appeals court upholds decision not to block connection protection rules The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a lower court's refusal to block California's net neutrality law (SB 822), affirming that state laws can regulate internet connectivity where federal law has gone silent.…

Hobby project sees Hello Games' first baby return at the request of a dedicated dad In these times of political uncertainty, economic upheaval, and an ongoing pandemic, it’s heartening to reveal a human story in software development.…

Oh boy While Microsoft's Azure Quantum continues to hover between vapourware and hardware – a state of quantum if you will – NASA boffins have been putting tech inspired by the research to work in spacecraft communications.…

All that and improved energy efficiency The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has published the official standards for HBM3 memory, the latest update to the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) Standard.…

€500m cloud investments drag on profit SAP's operating profit has fallen 45 per cent year-on-year in the fourth calendar quarter pf 2021 to €1.47bn as cloud investments drag on profitability.…

Where to begin when you're ready to get your K8s on Engineer Nelson Elhage offers several reasons Kubernetes is so complex but this does at least mean that multiple companies offer tools to try to help you master it.…

Time to get out ISO 22300:2021, Security and resilience – Vocabulary The great International Organization for Standardization outage is entering its third day as consultants find themselves bereft of technical documents with which to beat engineers.…

Remainder of Capita's Portfolio of unwanted businesses to be expunged by year end, says CEO Capita is again clearing out another of the previous CEO’s past conquests with confirmation this morning that it is offloading software licensing and hardware reseller Trustmarque to One Equity Partners for £111m.…

Plus: Cops' surveillance is used against drug gangs and not child abusers, says Tutanota Britain's controversial Online Safety Bill will leave Britons more exposed to internet harms than ever before, the Internet Society has said, while data from other countries suggests surveillance mostly isn't used to target child abusers online, despite this being a key cited rationale of linked measures.…

All eyes turn to Priti Patel as midnight extradition deadline looms Updated Hewlett Packard Enterprise "substantially succeeded" in its multi-billion pound lawsuit against Autonomy founder Mike Lynch for fraud over that startup's accounts.…

'Incalculable cost' of non-participation in Horizon programme 'continues to rise' The UK's European Scrutiny Committee has published the government's response to concerns over the Brexit divorce bill and the impact on the UK's participation in EU programmes.…

*They're probably fine Poll Boffins from UCL's Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory (PEARL) have linked arms with London e-scooter providers to decide on a "universal sound" for the silent but deadly transport mode.…

Mme D finally takes to the Web 2.0 stage and becomes a bad actor Something for the Weekend, Sir? "Is it in yet?"…