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B2-inspired molecule powers up flow batteries Harvard University researchers reckon they can make flow batteries cheaper using an electrolyte based on vitamin B2.…

Clouds want dumb things, Intel wants smart things and you'll need both Internet of Things (IoT) hype focuses on the riches that will rain from the sky once humanity connects the planet, but mostly ignores what it will take to build and operate fleets of things.…

Broadcom brief the FCC on the last sticking point slowing spectrum-sharing agreement FCC filings by Broadcom reveal the chip-maker is still feeling bullish about the controversial LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed) push.…

Telco, embedded systems may inherit remote vulns A vulnerability in a widely used ASN.1 compiler isn't a good thing: it means a bunch of downstream systems – including mobile phones and cell towers – will inherit the bug.…

Last month's borked Couchdb breach delivers more pain to Thomson Reuters The World-Check database that lists "heightened risk individuals and organizations" is reportedly up for sale on the dark web.…

Burned naphthalene hosts room-temperature qubits A Sydney University researcher has burned naphthalene to create a material that can hold quantum qubit information at room temperatures.…

'Still some value there' Gartner analyst tells El Reg as web biz writhes in pain Yahoo! fell short of already-low expectations as the shriveling internet icon continues to limp towards its impending sale.…

Virtzilla CEO Gelsinger rates Q2 'good' as it hits $7bn run rate and new products take off Vmware CEO Pat Gelsinger has dropped a very strong hint that the company plans to get into multi-cloud connectivity and management.…

Blaze-gawping flying cam shoos away vital helicopters A man was arrested by officers from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection after his drone allegedly got in the way of them tackling a major blaze.…

Years in the clink and it wasn't even a good club A former scout for the St Louis Cardinals baseball team has been sentenced to 46 months behind bars for hacking the player database of a rival Major League team.…

Blockchain, AI, analytics ... if it's a buzzword, it's the future IBM today reported its second quarter financial results and the figures don't look good, with profits falling nearly 30 per cent.…

Greg Hunt moves from environment to Minister For Agreeing With StartupLand If you were hoping tech would get some kind of boost in the Turnbull government's third ministry, prepare for disappointment.…

Open-source CrypTech board launches in Berlin The long-awaited response from internet engineers to Edward Snowden's revelations of mass surveillance by the US government has been launched in Berlin.…

German government and United Nations plan for the future The recent high-profile crash of a Tesla driving in Autopilot mode has sparked a rush to develop new laws for self-driving cars.…

Tech giants scramble to fix pricey loophole Gaming two-factor authentication systems with premium rate phone numbers can be very profitable – or it was until the flaws got reported.…

Did, er, did they check what was inside the box? Opera will sell its web browser technology to Chinese investors for $600m after a larger sale worth $1.2bn fell apart.…

So you know it's really scary A dangerous easy-to-exploit vulnerability discovered 15 years ago has reared its head again, leaving server-side website software potentially open to hijackers.…

Full-state containers covered by the end of the year Data-protection slinger Commvault has plans to deliver stateful container protection by the end of the year.…

'True importance of this work is not necessarily the data storage' – head researcher Nano-tech scientists have managed to create the world’s smallest hard disk. The 500TB/inch disk can store a kilobyte of memory in a few tiny chlorine atoms, according to new research published in Nature Nanotechnology.…

What? Hang on, isn't it an EU mandated project? The closure of the UK government's Department of Energy & Climate Change should result in a major rethink of the organisation's shambolic and costly £11bn Smart Meter programme, campaigners have urged.…

Enterprise engine? Check. Cloud database? TBC Microsoft has had a database since 1989, initially working with Ashton-Tate and Sybase to create a variant of Sybase SQL Server for IBM’s OS/2.…

Quadding 3D NAND cells to up capacity Backgrounder Toshiba is pushing flash chip capacity higher on two fronts: through, er, Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) and by increasing a cell's bit count to four.…

BBC captures Jeremy Corbyn capturing Krabby If terror attacks, coups and the prospect of a Trump presidency aren’t enough to convince the end of days might just be at hand, a brief review of the weekend’s Pokemon Go related news should tip the balance.…

Son of beefburger loving Gummer gets Cabinet Office job New UK Prime Minister Theresa May's reshuffle last week resulted in higher pile of bodies than a Game of Thrones wedding. Among a number of big hitters to be axed, including George Osborne, was digital and cultural minister Ed Vaizey.…

Swells the ranks of ethical hackers at Secarma Secarma, the cyber security business owned by UKFast chief exec Lawrence Jones, has bought application security specialists Pentest Limited reportedly for £10m.…

And plenty of investment, natch Brit-tech success poster child ARM holdings is to be acquired by Japanese telecom multinational Softbank.…

You mean there actually was a plan in the first place? Brexit has left the UK peering into a digital regulatory void, according to MPs.…

Zuckerbook adds OpenCellular to its disruptive, non-MNO network vision Facebook has outdone even Google recently, in its efforts to shake up the mobile industry and accelerate the delivery of broadband services (and its revenue generators) to the entire planet. This is no longer just about using balloons and new spectrum to push affordable wireless access to underserved communities. It is about blowing apart the traditional mobile network supply chain, and the way those networks are deployed.…

Pull on your vendor hoodie - it's a casual affair In June I was in in Seattle, the home of Starbucks, Boeing and Microsoft, for DockerCon 2016. Compared to the normal events I attend, this one promises to be a more “casual” affair, so I sported polo shirts and vendor hoodies as my standard attire.…

In colossal surprise, criminals revealed as rather fond of anonymity technologies Knock us over with a feather: a study by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has found that those who infringe intellectual property for a living are quite fond of anonymity technologies that cover their tracks.…

Plaid Parliament of Pwning's IE attack turned into pay-to-p0wn cannon The new wearer of the crown for World's Worst Exploit Kit is compromising users with exploit code for a dangerous new attack published by a white hat researcher.…

Chap responsible for very early nodes says 'recent events' make it impossible to continue Tor's annus horribilus continues, with one of its earliest contributors, Lucky Green, quitting and closing down the node and bridge authority he operates.…

It's not the next Stuxnet, says SentinelOne, it's just very naughty code Malware hyped as aimed at the heart of power plants is nothing of the sort according to security outfit Damballa, which has put its name to analysis claiming the "SFG" malware is run-of-the-mill code without sufficient smarts to target SCADA systems.…

We need home-grown Googles and MOOCs might get us there, says minister India's decided its massive successes of the last 20 years aren't enough and will tweak its Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IITs) to create home-grown technology colossi.…

This time we'll hear the sounds of Mars, if the enhanced Sky Crane works All being well, NASA will launch the successor to Curiosity Rover in 2020. And this time the agency hopes to prepare samples for an as-yet-blue-sky manned mission that could one day return them to Earth for analysis.…

SDK, driver live on GitHub Intel has fulfilled a promise made in April to open-source a Linux driver for its SGX technology.…

And then the extortion starts and you're asked to steal critical data A newly-detected piece of malware dubbed "Delilah" has been fingered as probably the first such code created with the intention of extorting victims into stealing insider data.…

US$32 BEEELLION to change hands as Japanese giant gets into the chip biz British semiconductor designer ARM is about to be acquired by Japan's SoftBank, according to reports in financial press.…

In July 1966, Charles Kao looked into glass and saw the future of telecoms One of the seminal developments in modern telecommunications turns 50 years old this month: the paper that bootstrapped the world of optical fibre communications.…

Virtzilla's mistakes show how Microsoft must not package its hyperconverged cloud By most accounts VMware's first stab at hyperconvergence, the EVO:RAIL software-defined Nutanix clone, was a decent set of software.…

Blowfish is faster than SHA256, and that's a problem when servers talk back A bug in OpenSSH allows an attacker to check whether user names are valid on a 'net-facing server - because the Blowfish algorithm runs faster than SHA256/SHA512.…

SKA precursor publishes 'first light' images The operators of the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have switched on its first 16 dishes and, pretty much immediately, spotted more than 1,200 new galaxies.…

Aerial inspectors, air traffic control and flying COWs ahead Vid AT&T is planning to rapidly expand its use of drones – it can already put one of the gizmos in the air virtually anywhere over continental United States.…

Someone pressed the wrong button in portal redesign Weird emails from Samsung to third-party developers containing usernames and passwords had some worried that the chaebol had been hacked. But the electronics giant says it's nothing to worry about.…

Quick, man the VPNs! Access to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter is blocked in Turkey tonight amid an ongoing attempted military coup in the NATO nation. The cyber-blockade has failed to prevent pictures from the unfolding uprising spilling onto the internet, though.…

Mall patrol droid maker hits back at claims its machine ran over a kid The maker of the security guard robot that allegedly ran down a toddler in a Silicon Valley shopping mall last week has claimed its droid is innocent.…

US watchdog puts out advisory for other smart home makers The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided not to move forward with an investigation into smart-home company Nest and its decision to end support for the Revolv hub.…

All that nagware hasn't worked When Windows 10 launched, Microsoft claimed it would have the new operating system on a billion devices by mid-2018. That isn't going to happen, however, Redmond has now admitted.…

Senatorial janitorial US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has thrown a hissy fit over the refusal of Apple CEO Tim Cook to attend a Senate hearing on encryption.…