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Plus: Waymo's self-driving cars are mapping the mean streets of NYC In brief Alphabet has launched a new AI company, Isomorphic Labs, focused on developing new drugs.…

Scaling up or down – how do you cope? Reg Reader Survey Technology in the 2020s is very forgiving, particularly if our processing happens in the cloud. By this, we mean that if things start to perform sub-optimally, the issue is usually quite easy to resolve.…

Replacement in preparation for 10 years, but not quite ready to replicate legacy functionality The UK's Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) system is set to retire in 2023, according to a National Audit Office, 10 years after plans to phase it out began and 29 years after it came into service.…

Are you syncing what I'm syncing? Opinion "I don't want AI," the message read. "I don't want the metaverse. I just want my Teams calendar to sync with my Google calendar."…

I don't care about your problems, it works fine here Who, Me? Although a little late for Halloween, today's entry into the Who, Me? archives concerns mysterious outages and some electrics that were perhaps a touch too cunning.…

Nvidia partner EVGA voids warranties - that'll show whoever nabbed 'em, or maybe flush them out US-based Nvidia partner EVGA has reported that a shipment of GPUs it was sending to a distribution centre has been stolen from a truck.…

COVID didn't stop crooks, but law enforcement doesn't seem to have realised Public reports of computer-linked crimes are soaring thanks to a huge rise in data breaches, even as prosecutions against Computer Misuse Act offenders slump.…

It's not a place to spend all day, but a useful alternative when friends are distant, or the real world is dangerous I've spent rather a lot of time lately in an online environment that nails the Oxford Dictionary's definition of a metaverse – "a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users" – and I find it so useful I expect to visit it frequently in future.…

Centaur's brains will be transplanted to make hybrid AI tech for Chipzilla Taiwanese manufacturer VIA has traded employees from its CPU design subsidiary Centaur Technology to Intel.…

Offers scant details to back assertions, won't say where chips have been deployed Tencent Cloud, China's third-largest cloud by revenue behind Alibaba and Huawei, has revealed that three home-grown chips are powering its services – and claimed they offer world-beating performance.…

Season Two looks like it'll be a courtroom drama Netflix has rejected the premise of the lawsuit brought against it by South Korean telco SK Broadband, which demanded the streaming video giant pay up for the colossal amount of bandwidth consumed by hit shows such as Squid Game.…

'We are absolutely losing some science' Feature Hundreds of scientists around the world have been quietly volunteering their time to prevent low Earth orbit satellites from destroying astronomy.…

Turns out making code public with the right fine-print is harder than rocket science Houston, we've had a problem: our rocket scientists don't entirely understand the nuances of software licensing.…

Low Earth orbit is going to be chockablock with broadband-beaming birds Amazon wants to launch another 4,538 satellites to provide wireless broadband internet under Project Kuiper, according to a fresh filing to America's communications watchdog.…

Chocolate Factory thirst hidden behind non-disclosure agreement claims Google says responsible water usage is one of its top sustainability goals but the mega-corp tries to keep its data center water usage secret.…

Even your telly is now a moneymaking gadget for someone else A Register reader triggered a kerfuffle for Samsung after asking the electronics biz if he could disable large and intrusive adverts splattered across his new smart TV's programme guide.…

Finally – a purpose for the least-used key on your keyboard Do you remember the days before desktop processors needed heatsinks? Are you wearied by the constant churn of new computer tech that never seems to make things easier?…

No more loyalty deals or spanking customers for going elsewhere The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has approved a final order intended to curb Broadcom's "anticompetitive conduct."…

That thing about discontinuing technical content was all a 'misunderstanding' IBMers were last week treated to a re-enactment of the Hokey Cokey*, sources claim, as staff working on Redbooks technical papers were told of planned reassignment, only to be told days later by the architect of the change that it was all a "misunderstanding."…

Eight years after Snowden, you'll never know how much they spy on you… The US Supreme Court this week refused [PDF] to hear a case that would have forced the country's hush-hush Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to explain its justifications for giving the Feds the right to help themselves to bulk amounts of the public's data.…

Beta and Release Preview Channels receive a fix while Dev gets Windows Subsystem for Android Microsoft has rushed out updates to its Windows 11 beta and release preview channels to deal with an expired digital certificate - while at the same time confirming bleeding-edge testers will as last get the fabled Windows Subsystem for Android.…

Plus: Interpol boasts of infosec companies' help nabbing Cl0p suspects US authorities are dangling a $10m reward for information on the DarkSide gang, while Interpol says half a dozen people were arrested in Ukraine on suspicion of being part of the Cl0p extortionist crew.…

Just like NASA did in spacecraft... and Fujitsu did for mobiles in 2015 Mobe and matress maker Xiaomi has unveiled its latest tech for keeping phones cool – a small heat pipe mechanism called Loop LiquidCool.…

'Anon firm lost your data, don't worry' just makes people more fearful Mystery surrounds the Labour Party ransomware attack, with former party members who left years ago saying their data was caught up in the hack – while official sources refuse to say what really happened.…

A software workaround for an iffy component looms. Sound familiar? Ever had a component spew garbage and had to bodge around it? Engineers appear to be faced with a similar issue as they continue work to rouse the science instruments of the Hubble Space Telescope from their Safe Mode slumbers.…

Some get a halo from the boss. Others barely get a hello Register Debate This week, Register readers debated the motion The Pandemic improved the status of IT workers… forever.…

Brit telco to test out broadband tech in UK labs before customer trials next year Government-owned satellite broadband slinger OneWeb says it is planning to loft 648 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites in the next eight months, after signing terms with BT for a new Distribution Partner Agreement.…

Gimme gimme gimme fried chicken Something for the Weekend, Sir? I have a self-flushing toilet.…

It's on a computer screen. It must be some sort of technical jargon, right? On Call We do like our acronyms and initialisms in the IT world. Some might suggest we conceal the simplest of concepts behind a bewildering array of letters. And sometimes users try to join in. Welcome to On Call.…

Nvidia, though, expects this virtual-reality world to be as vast as the internet Is the Facebook-driven metaverse opportunity for real? Chip makers seemingly have more important things to worry about than a concept that could either take off or emerge as the Myspace of virtual reality.…

When IBM sold it back in 2014, it was a breakeven proposition. Seven years later not much has changed Lenovo has come within $17 million of recording a profit for its Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), the enterprise hardware division within the PC giant.…

Chinese media wonders why it hasn't been reported in the West - hang on, you're reading this ... China's Ministry of State Security released details this week of three alleged security breaches that saw sensitive data illegally transferred abroad.…

But central bank worries about security, usability – and business continuity 140 million digital wallets capable of storing China's central bank digital currency – the Digital Yuan or E-CNY – have already been issued to individuals, and another ten million businesses have signed up too.…

NASA and SpaceX to resume working on the next lunar lander The US Court of Federal Claims has dismissed Blue Origin’s complaints that NASA unfairly awarded its $2.89bn next-generation lunar lander system contract to SpaceX.…

Email tells bosses to down-level open positions to control costs Exclusive Next year, IBM's Red Hat plans to cut back on hiring senior engineers in an effort aimed largely at controlling costs.…

Pair of 10/10 critical bugs demand your attention, as does a 9.8-rated SSH SNAFU Cisco this week revealed a pair of critical flaws, rated ten out of ten in severity, in its family of Catalyst PON Series Switches Optical Network Terminals.…

All right, which country's next? Google says it will comply with South Korean law by allowing Android apps hosted on Google Play to include third-party in-app billing systems, a decision that shows the dominant app store duopoly – represented by Apple and Google – losing control of their mobile app platforms.…

We're sure everything will be OK, its revenues have only fallen 37 per cent in the past decade IBM has finally cut loose its multi-billion-dollar managed infrastructure business, renamed to Kyndryl, sending 90,000 staffers into a life that is less big and less blue.…

And we're talking about shipped code, not some Insider beta, here It has proved an unfortunate Halloween for Microsoft, with the ghost of an expired certificate haunting Windows 11 users. The upshot is: various built-in programs may stop working properly or cannot be opened at all.…

Another way to make sure the yawns don't get through Microsoft has added a mute button for Teams into the taskbar of the latest Windows 11 preview build.…

Don't Be Evil... unless... Google has changed its mind about dealing with the US Department of Defense and is chasing a juicy chunk of the Pentagon's new Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract.…

What was that, Brad Smith? You're at climate summit COP26 talking about sustainability plans? You're breaking up... Going in a tunnel Microsoft published a report today that highlights the "problem" of users sticking with ageing devices.…

Cruft removed to improve performance Version 13 of the Google-sponsored Angular JavaScript framework is here and the old View Engine renderer is gone, as is IE11 support, making Angular faster and smaller.…

For now, here's an IMG CXT processor with real-time ray-tracing abilities Imagination Technologies says supporting DirectX is becoming a bigger consideration for the company when it comes to designing GPUs.…

Oh and that company-wide cost-cutting programme is 18 months ahead of schedule BT has decided against bringing in an external investor to help with the rollout of fibre networks across Britain, this morning citing lower build costs per premise as the rationale for going it alone via its Openreach division.…

He's in Spain, faces extradition to the US to stand trial A Briton accused of carrying out SIM-swapping attacks to compromise high-profile Twitter users' accounts has been charged with stealing $784,000 in cryptocurrency.…

While 11% plan to take up the package, lack of use cases keep numbers low Three times the number of SAP users in the UK have never heard of RISE with SAP – the service bundle hoped to accelerate cloud adoption – than plan to use it.…

Mechanisms taken for granted on x86 vanish in WASM land, says trio WebAssembly has been promoted for its security benefits, though researchers in Belgium and New Zealand contend applications built in this binary format lack important protections.…

Energy price rises trigger bigger bills at cloud and network provider M247 Think everything is getting more expensive these days? Spare a thought for customers of M247 on the receiving end of a 161 per cent uplift in charges, with rising energy prices blamed.…

But let me tell ya, technology work is better than diggin' a ditch Register Debate Welcome to the latest Register Debate in which writers discuss technology topics, and you the reader choose the winning argument. The format is simple: we propose a motion, the arguments for the motion will run this Monday and Wednesday, and the arguments against on Tuesday and Thursday. During the week you can cast your vote on which side you support using the poll embedded below, choosing whether you're in favour or against the motion. The final score will be announced on Friday, revealing whether the for or against argument was most popular.…