The Register

But only if enough customers sign new contracts... confirmation deadline is 21 June Managed service provider Redcentric is buying the "business and assets" of three datacenters owned by troubled Sungard Availability Services but it'll only complete if a volume of customers agree to new contracts.…

'Staggering amount of computation' deployed to solve big problems uses a lot of electricity AI is killing the planet. Wait, no – it's going to save it. According to Hewlett Packard Enterprise VP of AI and HPC Evan Sparks and professor of machine learning Ameet Talwalkar from Carnegie Mellon University, it's not entirely clear just what AI might do for – or to – our home planet.…

Fragmentation has put paid to the dream of Linux ever being bigger than Windows Comment Recently, The Register's Liam Proven wrote tongue in cheek about the most annoying desktop Linux distros. He inspired me to do another take.…

NSA, FBI and CISA issue joint advisory that suggests China hardly has to work for this – flaws revealed in 2017 are among their entry points State-sponsored Chinese attackers are actively exploiting old vulnerabilities to "establish a broad network of compromised infrastructure" then using it to attack telcos and network services providers.…

We ask again: Has science gone too far? Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania say they've developed a photonic deep neural network processor capable of analyzing billions of images every second with high accuracy using the power of light.…

Promises new alert notices but warn 'we can sometimes predict thunderstorms but not lightning strikes' RSA Conference A heightened state of defensive cyber security posture is the new normal, according to federal cyber security chiefs speaking at the RSA Conference on Tuesday. This requires greater transparency and threat intel sharing between the government and private sector, they added.…

Overhaul of Chrome add-ons set for January, Google says it's for all our own good Special report Seven months from now, assuming all goes as planned, Google Chrome will drop support for its legacy extension platform, known as Manifest v2 (Mv2). This is significant if you use a browser extension to, for instance, filter out certain kinds of content and safeguard your privacy.…

Bit barns in Saudi Arabia, all-digital bank in Singapore Alibaba's cloud business and financial services affiliate Ant Group has expanded further out of China this week, by opening a pair of datacenters in Saudia Arabia and a digital wholesale bank in Singapore.…

This is why the Viasat attack – rated one of the biggest ever – had little impact RSA Conference The Kremlin-backed cyberattack against satellite communications provider Viasat, which happened an hour before Russia invaded Ukraine, was "one of the biggest cyber events that we have seen, perhaps ever, and certainly in warfare," according to Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of CrowdStrike and chair of security-centric think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator.…

New Delhi now fighting criticism of eroding free speech and privacy with two proposed regulations India's tech-related policies continue to create controversy, with fresh objections raised to a pair of proposed regulation packages.…

When you think about it, it makes cents Waymo and Uber announced on Tuesday a "long-term strategic partnership" promising to work together to deploy autonomous freight trucks on US roads, years after both companies fought bitterly over self-driving technology. …

What do we want? Robot rights! When do we want them? 01001110 01101111 01110111! The US Copyright Office and its director Shira Perlmutter have been sued for rejecting one man's request to register an AI model as the author of an image generated by the software.…

Nearly two years late and in the wrong country, we welcome our robot overlords IBM's self-sailing Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) has finally crossed the Atlantic albeit more than a year and a half later than planned. Still, congratulations to the team.…

A win against AMD as a much bigger war over AI compute plays out Nvidia has chosen Intel's next-generation Xeon Scalable processor, known as Sapphire Rapids, to go inside its upcoming DGX H100 AI system to showcase its flagship H100 GPU.…

Axing workers under 40 must feel like a novel concept for Big Blue After freezing operations in Russia earlier this year, IBM has told employees it is ending all work in the country and has begun laying off staff. …

Google Cloud, OVHcloud say everything's getting back to normal, which is a shame Google Cloud and other internet service providers are recovering from network issues attributed to a network cable cut that began in the Middle East and Asia just before 0700 PDT (1400 UTC).…

The only way to ease transition back to office is reduce the time in the office Poll As return-to-office attempts continue to fail for big tech businesses, another proposed change to the work world is gaining steam: The four-day week.…

Boost to in-database analytics should help replace some human decision-making, vendor claims MongoDB, the company behind the document store database, has unveiled columnstore indexing designed to help developers build analytical queries into their applications.…

Power Apps Express Design doesn't get to have all the AI fun Days after the debut of doodle-recognizing Express Design on the Power Apps platform, Microsoft has updated its Azure sibling: Form Recognizer.…

All companies will need to embrace modern software development, says CEO, and we'll be waiting for them GitLab believes the world is in the midst of a "generational disruption" where all companies will need to embrace modern software development practices, and reckons it can take advantage by positioning itself as the enterprise-grade alternative to homegrown DevOps point solutions.…

And US hyperscalers want to shut it ASAP, we're told OpenInfra Summit The OpenInfra Foundation kicked off its first in-person conference in over two years with acknowledgement that European cloud providers must use the current window of opportunity for digital sovereignty.…

Commissioner to device makers: 'We're not forcing anybody to enter the internal market, but if they want to do so, they must comply' Apple will have to include a USB-C charging port in iPhones it sells into Europe by 2024 after an EU amendment makes it the common standard across a range of devices.…

Update should help users combat software supply chain issues. openSUSE Leap 15.4 to follow a day later The new version of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) is compliant with version 4 of Google's SLSA framework, which should help users combat vulnerabilities such as Log4j and upstream JavaScript library issues.…

So says Chinese economist, but it wouldn't achieve much if Taiwan destroyed its fabs first China should seize Taiwan to gain control of TSMC if the US and its allies impose sanctions against the Middle Kingdom like those now in place against Russia, according to a prominent Chinese economist.…

'However, enterprise demand continues to persist across our entire portfolio,' says CEO Amid a delayed HPC contract and industry-wide supply limitations compounded by the lockdown in Shanghai, Hewlett Packard Enterprise reported year-on-year sales growth of $13 million for its Q2.…

NASA engineers continue to show Ingenuity as uplinking process begins The Mars Ingenuity helicopter is in need of a patch to work around a failed sensor before another flight can be attempted.…

Why? I had motivation problems and wanted to kill a few hours, says dev Though the Wordle fad appears to be fading, engineers continue to find new and exciting places to port the game. Today we present a version using Pascal on Multics.…

Tech jobs – and salaries – look safe despite cooling economy The UK's technology sector is continuing to hire and to bump up salaries despite the deteriorating economic outlook, at least according to accounting and consultancy outfit RSM.…

Fellow travelers in the Whitehall shared services journey await their SaaS move The UK Home Office has awarded Oracle a £31.47 million ($39.5 million) contract to continue to run its HR and finance systems in the cloud.…

Maps HTTP to QUIC to speed the web The Internet Engineering Task Force on Monday published the RFC for HTTP/3, the third version of hypertext transport protocol.…

Iann Barron and Ned Freed were key innovators in computer comms Obituary The IT community has suffered a double loss with the passing of two industry icons.…

Plus: Who is responsible for libel by ML models, and more In brief AI text-to-image generation models are all the rage right now. You give them a simple description of a scene, such as "a vulture typing on a laptop," and they come up with an illustration that resembles that description.…

They're the stuff of life, so the fact they're floating around out there is very exciting Dust that Japan's Hayabusa2 probe returned to Earth from asteroid Ryugu reportedly contain 20 amino acids, according to Japanese media.…

Stockholders can keep shares in Huawei, SMIC, and Inpsur - they're just not allowed to sell The United States last week quietly eased its ban on investors holding stock in, or otherwise profiting from, Chinese companies that are felt to have ties to China's military.…

Plan envisioned using drones to take down school shooters Nine members of non-lethal weapons-maker Axon's AI ethics board resigned Monday after the company's CEO announced plans to build drones equipped with tasers to prevent US school shootings. …

Big Blue joins the hot market for infosec investment RSA Conference IBM has expanded its extensive cybersecurity portfolio by acquiring Randori – a four-year-old startup that specializes in helping enterprises manage their attack surface by identifying and prioritizing their external-facing on-premises and cloud assets.…

Windows giant gets court order to take over dot-coms and more Microsoft has obtained a court order to seize 41 domains used by what the Windows giant said was an Iranian cybercrime group that ran a spear-phishing operation targeting organizations in the US, Middle East, and India. …

It's going to become a human-rights issue, Jeetu Patel tells The Register RSA Conference Exclusive Establishing some level of cybersecurity measures across all organizations will soon reach human-rights issue status, according to Jeetu Patel, Cisco EVP for security and collaboration.…

M2 chip teased plus MacBooks, iOS 16, macOS 13, watchOS 9 and more WWDC Apple opened its 33rd annual Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday with a preview of upcoming hardware and planned changes in its mobile, desktop, and wrist accessory operating systems.…

Right as Texas AG sticks his oar in Elon Musk is prepared to terminate his takeover of Twitter, reiterating his claim that the social media biz is covering up the number of spam and fake bot accounts on the site, lawyers representing the Tesla CEO said on Monday.…

When an exec asked for help tackling supply-chain woes, were they told to 'just Google it' or what? Even in the waning days of the pandemic, extended lead times and delayed packages are an inescapable reality. Logistics giant XPO this week picked Google Cloud to try to change that.…

Doom it is, then, Putin Taiwan's government has enacted a strict ban on the export of computer chips and chip-making equipment to Russia and Belarus, a move that will make it even harder for the two countries to access modern processors following export bans from other countries.…

Remember when ServiceNow said 'no acquisitions? Someone should tell Hitch Works IT helpdesk-turned-workflow software company ServiceNow is to acquire Hitch Works, which produces software to help organizations better use their employees' existing skills.…

The 'OpenLight' union aims for on-chip lasers with help from Intel's recent add, Tower Semiconductor Synopsys and Juniper Networks are targeting the silicon photonics market via a newly established company to let third parties produce devices with integrated on-chip lasers using Tower Semiconductor's production facilities.…

Carbon offsets don't make you green when your datacenters are still rolling coal Comment It's hard to suppress an eyeroll when the world's largest consumers of datacenter resources talk about sustainability. Putting the planet ahead of profits is often not at the top of the to-do list in large-scale, performance-driven environments.…

Desktops, inflation and other factors also shaping American demand US PC shipments fell by double digits in the first quarter of 2022, mostly due to the collapse of Chromebook orders, yet the effect of inflation and a greater mix of higher spec machines lifted the value of those sales.…

From greener datacenters to data transparency and 'conscious code', IBM, Dell, others push for better IT ops IBM and Dell are the founding members of a new initiative to promote sustainable development in IT by providing a framework of responsible corporate policies for organizations to follow.…

What do we want? Open standards, just licensing and a level playing field, say OVHcloud, Scaleway and others If you're a cloud specialist in the EU, things like licensing, Euro digital sovereignty project Gaia-X, and a creating a level playing field are all front of mind.…

Plans to beam data to satellites, and between orbiting birds too Sony on Friday launched a subsidiary dedicated to optical communications – in space.…

Come back Swype, all is forgiven. Don't you want our money, Redmond? There are lots of software keyboards for smartphones and tablets alike, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest… However you can't have it.…