The Register

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.…

You opted out, but you didn't uncheck the box on page 24, so your data's ours... Opinion "We value your privacy," say the pop-ups. Better believe it. That privacy, or rather taking it away, is worth half a trillion dollars a year to big tech and the rest of the digital advertising industry. That's around a third of a percent of global GDP, give or take wars and plagues. …

Supply and demand are in for a switcheroo, analyst tells El Reg Cloud service providers drove the datacenter switching market to its fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth, but it won’t last forever, Dell’Oro Group analyst Sameh Boujelbene told The Register.…

Just make sure to drink it AFTER the rocket has successfully launched Who, Me? Welcome back to Who, Me?, where this week a reader tells us how they used brute force and whiskey to solve a pyrotechnic problem.…

Wants private coins to have face value in Yen by 2023 Japan's parliament has passed legislation allowing Yen-linked stablecoin cryptocurrencies, thus becoming one of the first countries – and by far the largest economy – to regulate a form of non-fiat digital money.…

Four years later than planned – maybe that's how long it will take to make it secure? Microsoft has updated its roadmap for Exchange Server and revealed that the next version will arrive in 2025 – four years later than planned.…

Debuts version 5.19rc1, which includes HPE's next-gen server ASIC and much more Linus Torvalds has announced the first release candidate for version 5.19 of the Linux kernel, and declared it represents a milestone in multiplatform development for the project.…

Also US warns of voting machine flaws and Google pays out $100 million to Illinois In brief Last month the notorious Russian ransomware gang Conti threatened to overthrow Costa Rica's government if a ransom wasn't paid. This month, another band of extortionists has attacked the nation.…

Russia's top tech CEO accused of material support to Moscow Arkady Volozh, CEO of Russia's biggest internet company Yandex, has resigned after being added to the European Union's list of individuals sanctioned as part of its response to the illegal invasion of Ukraine.…

Startup teases 128+ core chip, disses Xeon and Epyc, unsurprisingly Interview After two years of claiming that its Arm-powered server processors provide better performance and efficiency for cloud applications than Intel or AMD's, Ampere Computing said real deployments by cloud providers and businesses are proving its chips are the real deal.…

'The attack surface has expanded exponentially' during the work-from-home pandemic, says one Almost all cybersecurity professionals are stressed, and nearly half (46 percent) have considered leaving the industry altogether, according to a DeepInstinct survey.…

Hey, big Apple, how'd you like them Big Apples? Right-to-repair advocates are applauding the passage of New York's Digital Fair Repair Act, which state assembly members approved Friday in a 145–1 vote.…

Albeit to avoid US sanctions hitting it in the wallet The Russian-based Evil Corp is jumping from one malware strain to another in hopes of evading sanctions placed on it by the US government in 2019.…

Like the Hotdog, Not Hotdog app but more Kidnapped, Not Kidnapped Australia's federal police and Monash University are asking netizens to send in snaps of their younger selves to train a machine-learning algorithm to spot child abuse in photographs.…

For $50,000 annually plus building work, budget-strapped teachers can (maybe) zap gunmen, for the kids Rick Smith, founder and CEO of body camera and Taser maker Axon, believes he has a way to reduce the risk of school children being shot by people with guns.…

Android patches incoming for NAS-ty memory overwrite flaw A critical flaw in the LTE firmware of the fourth-largest smartphone chip biz in the world could be exploited over the air to block people's communications and deny services.…

Crooks divert transactions to own wallets while running mining on the side A crew using malware that performs cryptomining and clipboard-hacking operations have made off with at least $1.7 million in stolen cryptocurrency.…

Via their insurance companies, natch Healthcare organizations, already an attractive target for ransomware given the highly sensitive data they hold, saw such attacks almost double between 2020 and 2021, according to a survey released this week by Sophos.…

Can't open that tin of beans? Put it back in the cupboard and take it out again! Something for the Weekend We're standing still. The suspense is unbearable. One of us is going to crack.…

Mainframe muddle means extra crossword time for today's hero On Call Welcome back to On Call wherein a Register reader accidentally improved an airline's productivity by the simple virtue of knowing their stuff.…

Management reveals 10 suitors, plus a digital transformation plan to become a software-defined business Disgraced tech giant Toshiba has revealed it has received ten buyout proposals, and devised a plan to grow its digital businesses.…

Local authorities insist the next chapter is not a collapse in foreign investment Amazon.com has decided to end its Kindle digital book business in China.…

Redmond is open to its staff organizing, but feels they don't need to On March 23, 1976, a vote of the United Nations General Assembly brought into force the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – an international agreement that at Article 22 states "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests."…

Strongly suggests extensive re-writes and consultation - backed up by Microsoft, Intel, AWS, and friends Lobby group The Software Alliance (BSA) has written to India's government, pointing out impractical requirements, inconsistencies, and flaws in the nation's recently announced infosec reporting rules. The organization says the problems can only be addressed with extensive consultations and a delay to implementation.…

And no, I'm not throwing out this lawsuit, says judge Amazon's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit, led by one of its senior software engineers, asking it to reimburse workers for internet and electricity costs racked up while working from home in the pandemic, has been rejected by a California judge.…

Hortons hears a sue From May 2019 through August 2020, the mobile app published by multinational restaurant chain Tim Hortons surveilled customers constantly by gathering their location data without valid consent, according to a Canadian government investigation.…

CISA's suggested action is to take the thing offline until it can be fixed, Atlassian has added a possible defence Updated Atlassian has warned users of its Confluence collaboration tool that they should either restrict internet access to the software, or disable it, in light of a critical-rated unauthenticated remote-code-execution flaw in the product that is actively under attack.…

Is this gang some sort of Conti side hustle? The answer may be yes The Feds have warned organizations about a lesser-known extortion gang Karakurt, which demands ransoms as high as $13 million and, some cybersecurity folks say, may be linked to the notorious Conti crew.…

From Non-Fungible Tokens to No Freedom, Twit, if convicted A now-former product boss at a top NFT marketplace was arrested and charged with wire fraud and money laundering in the first-ever insider-trading case involving the digital tokens.…

Don't leave those firmware patches to last The notorious Conti ransomware gang has working proof-of-concept code to exploit low-level Intel firmware vulnerabilities, according to Eclypsium researchers.…

US think tank sees growing interest in counterspace capabilities In a report published earlier this week, the Secure World Foundation, a space-oriented NGO, warned that in the past few years there's been a surge of interest in offensive counterspace weapons that can disrupt space-based services.…

Still managing app servers by hand? What is this, 2012? If you want to run analytics in a serverless cloud environment, Amazon Web Services reckons it can help you out all while reducing your operating costs and simplifying deployments.…

House Dems demand documents from CEO on facility hit by tornado – or else The US House Oversight Committee has told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to turn over documents pertaining to the collapse of an Amazon warehouse – and if he doesn't, the lawmakers say they will be forced to "consider alternative measures."…

The hope is for Taiwan’s chipmakers to build new plants in Europe as tensions brew with China Taiwan's government has announced a "major breakthrough" in talks with the European Union about cooperation in the semiconductor industry, which could pave the way for the island nation's chipmakers to build new plants in Europe.…

Two years on and there's still not enough stuff to go around--or people The US datacenter construction boom may be faltering and the reasons are not difficult to predict. The same supply shortages, price hikes and a lack of labor that have characterized not-quite-post-pandemic life is a risk for DC builders, too.…

Work culture is irrevocably changed. Businesses that don't see that are in for a rough ride Comment What goes up must come down - even in the tech industry. …

Do you feel the need? The need for speed? Arista Networks aims to eliminate every last ounce of excess latency from your network. And in pursuit of this goal, the company tapped an all-star cast of Broadcom, Intel, and AMD Xilinx silicon to power its latest switches.…

Antivirus-but-for-pictures would trample rights, not even work as expected, say academics While Apple has, temporarily at least, backed away from last year's plan to run client-side scanning (CSS) software on customers' iPhones to detect and report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to authorities, European officials in May proposed rules to protect children that involve the same highly criticized approach.…

At least one manufacturer would like to disagree with study's conclusions Updated Mini nuclear reactors that are supposed to usher in an era of cheaper and safer nuclear power may generate up to 35 times more waste to produce the same amount of power as a regular plant, according to a study.…

In Gaussian boson sampling at least, quantum supremecy is here Researchers in Canada have conducted a quantum computing experiment that they claim completes a calculation in just a fraction of a second that would take a conventional computer 9,000 years.…

Your package is delayed. Click this innocent-looking link to reschedule FluBot, the super-spreader Android malware that infected tens of thousands of phones globally, has been reportedly squashed by an international law enforcement operation.…

The chips must flow. But don't mention the Great Wall Taiwan has engaged with the United States, and the European Union, in separate talks aimed at securing tech supply chains.…

De-Googled Android phone does the job, has a few rough edges First Look The /e/ Foundation's de-Googled version of Android 10 has reached the market in a range of smartphones aimed at the privacy-conscious.…