The Register

Biodiversity increasing, endangered species gradually returning despite radioactive terror pig presence Studies of biodiversity around the former Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan have shown that a decade after the nuclear incident there in March 2011, the local wildlife, at least, is mostly thriving.…

Join us in October for the next MCubed webcast in which you'll learn all about deploying real-life machine learning in a DevOps world Special series After a great first episode, the MCubed webcast will be back on October 7, 2021 to tackle a whole other beast: Continuous Delivery in Machine Learning.…

Because HPE does not do public cloud? No, no, it is 'for the good' Comment Hewlett Packard Enterprise has posted a "UK Public Sector Manifesto" with nine themes, alongside a campaign hyping the value of hybrid cloud.…

Technical difficulties, please stand by Giant Pay – an umbrella company used by contractors across the UK – has confirmed "suspicious activity" on its platform is behind a days-long ongoing outage that has left folk fretting about whether they'll get paid this month.…

Activate Windows and put up a parking lot Bork!Bork!Bork! Sometimes only the freshest of borks will do, and sometimes the best laid plans of administrators can go awry.…

Twisting and turning like a twisty-turny thing Boatnotes II As HMS Severn continues hosting the Royal Navy's Fleet Navigating Officer's course, The Register has taken a closer look at the precision demanded of naval officers conning their ships in and out of one of the most cramped ports where the Navy routinely operates.…

Also a range of homegrown apps. Still in beta, so plenty of rough edges, though Review One of the reasons Linux has never caught on as a desktop operating system, as Linux fans know, is that Linux isn't a desktop operating system, it's a kernel. And assembling it into a coherent package users can install is the job of a distribution.…

It'll all come out in the wash Something for the Weekend, Sir? Something is out of place; it does not quite fit. I reach down and give it a gentle tug. Ah, that's better.…

New guys can't do a worse job than Capita, right? Right? The UK Armed Forces are looking to restart a £1.7bn procurement for recruitment and onboarding of personnel to cover extensive IT investments as well as process outsourcing.…

Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace is a bit miffed its 'Don't attack the internet core' norm is misunderstood The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC) is worried its guidance on preventing the internet and all it connects becoming a casualty of war is being misinterpreted.…

Symbol shenanigans turned out to be the least of the government's problems On Call Fire up the Cossie*! We're going back to the '80s with an On Call tale that combines the drama of a fast Ford motor with the eldritch horror of Unix serial port settings.…

Don’t be a Kubernetes dummy, download this ebook Promo Kubernetes has made developing and managing cloud native applications at scale a far less complex undertaking. The result has been increased agility and flexibility for devs, a productivity boost and lowered risk for ops, and happy C-level execs as time to market for new apps and services is slashed.…

Polymers can transmit at 53Gbps without error correction overheads, and could be just the thing for electric cars Boffins at Japan's Keio University reckon they've built viable optical fibers from plastics.…

Remember iPods? The same bug can bite them, and plenty of older iPhones and iPads too Apple has warned iPhone and Mac users that it's aware of a zero-day bug that's being actively exploited.…

'Broadband' is defined as 512kbps – for now – and just 24 million current connections are wired India's Telecoms Regulatory Authority has revealed that the nation has over 800 million active broadband subscribers.…

NA CEO predicts takeoff in 18 months max Folks in the US will see the transformative effects of 5G first in the areas of online gaming and fixed wireless broadband internet connections, Ericsson North America CEO Niklas Heuveldop said on Thursday.…

AB 701 takes aim at Amazon and other warehouse operators that prioritize productivity over health California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed Assembly Bill 701, establishing new protections for workers at warehouse distribution centers.…

Tech trade groups argue prohibition on moderation is unconstitutional Two IT trade groups on Wednesday challenged the constitutionality of Texas' new social media law, arguing that it compels companies to host speech they disagree with in violation of their First Amendment rights.…

Partnerships are our future, says tycoon Dell CEO Michael Dell once loved big-ticket acquisitions, but not anymore.…

US company equips cybernetic pooch to help in building inspections, post-disaster assessments Boston Dynamics' creepy robot dog Spot has found another new employer for its unique skillset.…

Cupertino thinks EU plan 'stifles innovation rather than encouraging it' Smartphones, tablets, and cameras sold within the European Union could be forced to adopt a single standard charging port by the middle of the decade if the latest plans from the European Commission get the go-ahead.…

A whole lot of ███ in documents which finger Peter Thiel and execs Facebook is remaining silent over two explosive lawsuits unsealed this week which contain allegations that board members "authorized" the overpayment of an FTC fine by up to $4.9bn in order to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg.…

It'll take time for desktop environment to make its way into Linux distros anyway The GNOME Foundation has released GNOME 41 - six months after GNOME 40, which was the first to be based on the GTK4 toolkit.…

The Great Gig in the Sky, or a new plan on GigSky? Mobile tech outfit GigSky is to add a data plan to its mobile app, using the Citizen's Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) small cell infrastructure deployed by the Helium blockchain community.…

Mountain View still ducking questions over whether it'll reimburse that Google has again refused to say whether it will reimburse the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for all the money it has spent warning consumers about dodgy financial ads carried on the tech giant’s platform.…

Prosecutors considering evidence for a number of offences Northern Irish prosecutors are pondering whether to charge two police officers with Computer Misuse Act offences after what local reports described as a Twitter trolling campaign.…

But local providers slip in favour of US tech - even at home GAIA-X, Europe's long awaited federated data infrastructure, got a fresh bulding block this week in the shape of the Eclipse Dataspace Connector, an open-source framework for multi-cloud, policy-based B2B data sharing.…

Brit telco says buyout will mean less competition, higher prices, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria BT has spelled out its opposition to the proposed takeover of Hutchison’s mobile phone masts and towers in the UK by Spanish towerco Cellnex following the publication of legal documents yesterday.…

This time affecting candidates for potential relocation A second leak of personal data was reportedly committed by the Ministry of Defence, raising further questions about the ministry's commitment to the safety of people in Afghanistan, some of whom are its own former employees.…

Or is it that they're just more inclined to complete surveys about themselves? A report from DORA, that's the Devops Research and Assessment sponsored by Google and other DevOps vendors, says 26 per cent of surveyed technology workers consider themselves "elite performers."…

High Court and Employment Tribunal cases to be heard soon A former IBM general manager who was posted to the United Arab Emirates is being sued by the company for £290,000 after filing an employment tribunal case claiming unfair dismissal.…

Hardware capabilities, latest feature updates? You'll get what you pay for Intel's vision of the computing architecture of autonomous vehicles is similar to that of PCs, with pricey models getting better hardware and the latest software, and cheaper self-driving cars getting the bare minimum.…

Espionage motive mooted in attacks which hit industry, government too Researchers at security specialist ESET claim to have found a shiny new advanced persistent threat (APT) group dubbed FamousSparrow - after discovering its custom backdoor, SparrowDoor, on hotels and government systems around the world.…

Up above the streets and houses, XP's flying high Bork!Bork!Bork! Windows XP continues to hang in there – quite literally – as the operating system does what it does best some 90 metres above the London's River Thames.…

The Register speaks to Canonical about running the OS in the cloud Interview Developers targeting Android are spoiled for choice with their platforms.…

Deadline came and went, but over 750 'resources' are still hard at work Infosys has admitted it has missed the Indian government's deadline to fix the tax portal it built, but which has been a glitchy mess since its June 2021 launch.…

What tools are available? What are the benefits? Let's find out Systems Approach In 1984, artificial intelligence was having a moment. There was enough optimism around it to inspire me to explore the role of AI in chip design for my undergraduate thesis, but there were also early signs that the optimism was unjustified.…

Forget wiring cities with IoT devices – this could be how wide-scale sensing gets done Imagine an optic fiber that can sense the presence of a nearby jackhammer and warn its owner that it is in danger of being dug up, just in time to tell diggers not to sink another shaft. Next, imagine that an entire city's installed base of fiber could be turned into sensors that will make planners think twice before installing IoT devices.…

Inside the software built to figure out groups of potentially infected, asymptomatic passengers Faced with limited resources in a pandemic, Greece turned to machine-learning software to decide which sorts of travelers to test for COVID-19 as they arrived in the country.…

Between COVID and corvids, locked-down Aussies can't catch a break - or a coffee lowered from the treetops Some of Google parent company Alphabet's Wing delivery drones have been grounded by angry Australian birds.…

Firm says 40 per cent of a server's bill of material costs are tied to memory Prices for DRAM and NAND flash are set to fall, sharply, in the second half of 2022 according to analyst firm Gartner.…

Hopes three availability zones will be hobbit-forming for local businesses and government agencies Amazon Web Services has announced it will build a Region in New Zealand and light it up by the year 2024.…

Laptops added or refreshed, and another go at making dual-screen phones a thing Microsoft has introduced the Surface Laptop Studio, and if you mistook it for a tablet with a trackpad stand, you'd be forgiven.…

Unexplained service issue blamed after customers unable to leave gratuities electronically Square's payment system malfunctioned over the weekend for several hours, a glitch that cost workers at affected businesses a meaningful portion of their earnings during the most lucrative day of the week.…

Vid-chat giant's ties to China under the microscope by AG-led panel Zoom’s ties to China are at the center of a US government investigation into the video-conferencing giant's $15bn plan to take over Five9, a California call-center-in-the-cloud.…

file:// is blocked? Oh OK, we'll just use File:// or fiLE://... Apple's macOS Finder application is currently vulnerable to a remote code execution bug, despite an apparent attempt to fix the problem.…

Apropos of nothing, here's Lionel Ritchie Comment Salesforce execs get so bowled over by Dreamforce, the SaaS org's annual gabfest, that they seem to lose all perception of time and space.…

Aw, look. It wants to be a 'global science superpower' The UK government has published its much-awaited National AI Strategy in pursuit of "global science superpower" status.…

Baltic state's cyber security centre uncovers remote censorship blocklist function in Mi 10T handset Lithuania's National Cyber Security Centre has told its citizens to get rid of Xiaomi-made mobile devices amid fears that the Chinese company could remotely enable censorship tools.…

Back from the brink with new features More than three years after X.Org Server 1.20, released in May 2018, a release candidate for 21.1.0 has been posted.…