The Register

Report says $42b will need to be poured into industry over next decade Growing demand for lithium for batteries means the sector will need $42 billion of investment to meet the anticipated level of orders by the end of the decade, according to a report.…

Still think we're ready for that autonomous future? Autonomous cars may be further away than believed. Testing of three leading systems found they hit a third of cyclists, and failed to avoid any oncoming cars.…

Catching compromise attempts before kicking off that recovery plan Kubecon Veeam acquisition Kasten kicked off this year's Kubecon with an updated version of its K10 product, aimed at securing the Kubernetes container orchestration platform.…

'Most challenging element of migration likely remains' warns analyst Spanish financial giant Santander has migrated 80 percent of its core banking IT infrastructure to the cloud as part of its $20.8 billion (€20 billion ) modernization programme, with the help of in-house software created by resident developers.…

<5% figure was based on 100 accounts, if you're wondering Updated Last week Elon Musk hit pause on his Twitter acquisition over the platform's "less than 5 percent" bot figure.…

Instagram, Microsoft responsible for lifts coming in version 3.11 and beyond The next version of the standard Python interpreter, CPython, is expected in October. It will include significant performance improvements and support for running inside the browser.…

Agenda includes warning system for disruptions, and avoiding 'subsidy race' for chip investments The EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) is meeting in Paris today to discuss coordinated approaches to global supply chain issues.…

Plus: DeepMind launches new generalist AI system, and Apple boffin quits over return-to-work policy In brief Facial recognition bans passed by US cities are being overturned as law enforcement and lobbyist groups pressure local governments to tackle rising crime rates.…

Arm shows us that even total domination doesn't always make stupid levels of money Opinion Interviews with chip company CEOs are invariably enlightening. On top of the usual market-related subjects of success and failure, revenues and competition, plans and pitfalls, the highly paid victim knows that there's a large audience of unusually competent critics eager for technical details. That's you.…

Bill McDermott thinks companies need workflow on top of enterprise apps, whether they replace them or not Interview In a month that has seen nearly a fifth wiped from his company's share price, Bill McDermott is remarkably cheerful.…

Bye-bye bottlenecks. Hello composable infrastructure? Interview Compute Express Link (CXL) has the potential to radically change the way systems and datacenters are built and operated. And after years of joint development spanning more than 190 companies, the open standard is nearly ready for prime time.…

Plus: Tech giants commit $30m to open-source security, miscreants breach DEA portal, and US signs cybercrime treaty In brief San Francisco police have been using driverless cars for surveillance to assist in law enforcement investigations.…

Concerns raised over government drive to implement distinct post-Brexit policy Legal experts say UK government plans to create new data protection laws will make more work and add costs for business, while also creating the possibility of challenges to data sharing between the EU and UK.…

If I get in early and work hard, everyone will notice, right? Who, Me? "The early bird trashes the business" is a saying that we've just made up, but could easily apply to the Register reader behind a currency calamity in today's episode of Who, Me?…

IT giant may be shifting its focus to software and services, but systems remain the foundation Analysis At this month's Dell Technologies World show in Las Vegas, all the usual executives were prowling the keynote stages, from CEO Michael Dell to co-COOs Chuck Witten and Jeff Clark, all talking about the future of the company.…

Researchers find widespread harvesting of info without consent Tracking, marketing, and analytics firms have been exfiltrating the email addresses of internet users from web forms prior to submission and without user consent, according to security researchers.…

AA-battery-sized biological photovoltaic cell touted as ideal for IoT applications Researchers at the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry have run an Arm CPU for six months using algae as a power source.…

Is state-approved Ubuntu distro how the Middle Kingdom will replace PCs with home-grown kit? China's military-derived and government-approved Linux distribution, Ubuntu Kylin, has revealed plans to target a second RISC-V platform.…

Hires external advisors to bolster decision making capacity and hints it could consider multiple buyout plans Ailing Japanese giant Toshiba has revealed it has 10 potential suitors for its possible sale.…

Markets outside China are doing better, but at home vendors have huge component stockpiles Demand for chips needed to make smartphones and PCs has dropped "like a rock" – but mostly in China, according to Zhao Haijun, the CEO of China's largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).…

Sometimes a half-sized shipping container at the base of a cell tower is all you need Analysis Colocation facilities aren't just a place to drop a couple of servers anymore. Many are quickly becoming full-fledged infrastructure-as-a-service providers as they embrace new consumption-based models and place a stronger emphasis on networking and edge connectivity.…

For those that want to keep their data in the homeland Quantum computing outfit D-Wave Systems has announced availability of an Advantage quantum computer accessible via the cloud but physically located in the US, a key move for selling quantum services to American customers.…

US publishes technical guide to help organizations avoid violating Americans with Disabilities Act The Biden administration and Department of Justice have warned employers using AI software for recruitment purposes to take extra steps to support disabled job applicants or they risk violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).…

Your US tax dollars at work The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has spent about $2.8 billion over the past 14 years on a massive surveillance "dragnet" that uses big data and facial-recognition technology to secretly spy on most Americans, according to a report from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology.…

You robot kids, get off my LAN AI will completely automate the network within five years, Juniper CEO Rami Rahim boasted during the company’s Global Summit this week.…

We speak to scientists involved in historic first snap – and no, this isn't the M87* Astronomers have captured a clear image of the gigantic supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy for the first time.…

We take a look at low, low subscription prices – not that we want to give anyone any ideas A Tor-hidden website dubbed the Eternity Project is offering a toolkit of malware, including ransomware, worms, and – coming soon – distributed denial-of-service programs, at low prices.…

Touting info on 6,700 compromised systems will get you four years behind bars A Ukrainian man has been sentenced to four years in a US federal prison for selling on a dark-web marketplace stolen login credentials for more than 6,700 compromised servers.…

David Harville is seventh to cop to harassment campaign David Harville, eBay's former director of global resiliency, pleaded guilty this week to five felony counts of participating in a plan to harass and intimidate journalists who were critical of the online auction business.…

Nvidia, AMD, Apple et al may be forced to pass cost on to customers Just as costs for some components have started to come down, TSMC and Samsung, the two largest contract chip manufacturers in the world, are reportedly planning to increase prices of production, which may affect Nvidia, AMD, Apple, and others that rely on the foundries.…

Demand for PostgreSQL and Kafka driving interest in cloud service, CEO tells The Register Finnish open-source-as-a-service provider Aiven received $210 million in funding this week, adding $1 billion to its nominal valuation in just nine months.…

Adds infosec regulation coming to more industries but with a light touch, more collaboration Black Hat Asia Software made unsafe by dependencies should be fixed without users needing to interact with the source of the problem, according to US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, who serves in the Executive Office of the President.…

The idea? To get investors muttering: DRAM, those gross margins are stable... Memory and storage maker Micron Technology has revealed a new business model intended to address the volatility in the memory market that has resulted in sharp swings in pricing over the past several years.…

Nine out of ten organizations would do it all over again, keeping attackers in business Almost nine in 10 organizations that have suffered a ransomware attack would choose to pay the ransom if hit again, according to a new report, compared with two-thirds of those that have not experienced an attack.…

The internet is now the first battleground of any new war – before the shooting starts Black Hat Asia Cyber war has become an emerged aspect of broader armed conflicts, commencing before the first shot is fired, cybersecurity expert Kenneth Geers told the audience at the Black Hat Asia conference on Friday.…

'This is not recommended for production development. It may be unstable and it will have bugs' Canonical has begun slinging daily builds of Ubuntu at Windows Subsystem for Linux. We took a look at the not-for-production code.…

Khamenei, can you just not? Not right now, fam The Iran-linked Cobalt Mirage crew is running attacks against America for both financial gain and for cyber-espionage purposes, according to Secureworks' threat intelligence team.…

Yes/No/Cancel culture at its worst Something for the Weekend "We all know what we're doing today? Good. Do your best!"…

Less than 5% of users are spam accounts? Show us your working Elon Musk has hit the brakes on his proposed takeover of Twitter in light of the platform's insistence that spam accounts accounted for less than 5 percent of its daily active users.…

Farewell to scheduling your emergencies in advance Microsoft is to permit unscheduled breaks into its exams, bringing relief to students working through the often lengthy process.…

Make it work like it does at home On Call In this week's episode of our On Call column, an exasperated Register reader nearly walks the plank after failing to break the laws of physics.…

‘Cooperative mutation’ spots problems that checking scripts alone will miss Black Hat Asia Security researchers have devised a tool that detects flaws in the way apps like Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat process JavaScript, and it's proven so effective they've found 134 bugs – 59 of them considered worthy of a fix by vendors, 33 assigned a CVE number, and 17 producing bug bounty payments totaling $22,000.…

As well as chip design licensing, 5G smartphones, cars ... who needs Nvi-whatchamacallit? With Arm looking to re-enter the public market at some point, the British chip designer is hoping to get would-be investors excited with figures that indicate it achieved record revenues and profits in 2021.…

Guess you could call this Mercury Ryzen Here's a new data point that will rile Intel up: AMD now accounts for nearly 30 percent of x86 CPU market share, and the chip designer got there during an industry downturn.…

Less demand will see prices fall, and gaming laptop sales rise – which is nice as the rest of the PC market has cooled Taiwanese hardware giant ASUSTeK says demand for GPU used to mine cryptocurrency is "disappearing" – and so is about ten percent of demand for personal computers.…

Around the time Beijing banned online gambling, RATs started targeting operators, say Taiwanese researchers Black Hat Asia Keep an eye on new Chinese government policies, if you want to anticipate malware attacks, a threat intelligence analyst suggested at the Black Hat Asia conference on Thursday.…

Reverse-engineered code redirects visitors to dodgy corners of the internet A years-long campaign by miscreants to insert malicious JavaScript into vulnerable WordPress sites, so that visitors are redirected to scam websites, has been documented by reverse-engineers.…

Yes, give those smartNICs something to do Trusted platform modules (TPMs) got a bad rap for headaches they caused some PC enthusiasts. One place they are arguably more palatable is the datacenter, or so AWS, at least, hopes with the actual, real launch of its NitroTPM for Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).…

OK includes an outage, plummeting cryptocurrencies, falling stock price Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has scrambled to alleviate fears that customers storing cryptocurrencies at the digital cash exchange will lose everything if the biz goes under.…

Microsoft probes complaints of domain controller headaches Microsoft is warning a security update may cause authentication failures for Windows domain controllers.…