The Register

'An entire database can be in one rack' DataStax, the lead vendor behind open-source DBMS Apache Cassandra, is rolling out a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) version of its wares, while the Cassandra-emulating ScyllaDB has pushed out its own upgrade to compete with DynamoDB, the AWS-native version of the same database.…

'The pandemic hasn't changed these trends: it has accelerated them' Webcams – like toilet paper and disinfectant wipes – have become an increasingly scarce commodity since the start of the pandemic, with analysts at the NPD Group reporting an almost-threefold increase in sales for the first three weeks of March.…

Coronavirus focused minds on desktop kit, networking, security, cloud, Register reader survey finds Seven in ten IT pros and executives surveyed by The Register told us they, on average, maintained or increased their technology spending amid the coronavirus pandemic. Those polled also, overall, named Microsoft as their most valued vendor, followed by Zoom, Google, and Amazon Web Services.…

Bye-bye US, bonjour Brussels The Eclipse Foundation today unveiled plans to make itself a little more European with a jump into Brussels.…

And smiles as its tech services industries do swimmingly in Q1 Taiwan has let it be known it’s attracted a big new investment from Apple.…

We like finding non-Remond alternatives, but the free options make it tough for commercial operations SoftMaker's Office 2021 – a cross-platform office suite that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux – has hit public beta.…

Virtzilla prepares to re-open some offices next week for staff who are willing to leave home VMware has emerged as a player in coronavirus contact-tracing.…

Good luck fishing all that out of the sky Russian rocket tanks used to launch a radio telescope have broken up into 65 chunks, littering Earth’s orbit with debris.…

Infraspace Cloud encrypts, stores and protects to mitigate high-end risk for high-end apps Promo It feels like every article starts with something along the lines of "now we’re all working remotely" but, honestly, when the shoe fits...…

Eight weeks to turn ‘helping you enable remote work with Office 365 at this difficult time’ into cash Organisations that took up Microsoft’s offer of a free six-month Office 365 trial to help them enable remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic are about to see the other side of that offer.…

Cart, meet horse, and you can both worry about 180-day data retention India's government has released the protocol for using data gathered by its Aarogya Setu COVID-19 tracing app, weeks after its April 2nd release and after it was downloaded almost 100 million times.…

Xeon, shmeon: Netflix loves ‘em and AWS has more instance types using it coming soon Amazon Web Services has flicked the switch for a new instance type powered by the second generation of its custom Arm CPUs – the Graviton2.…

Miscreants threaten to leak 756GB of allegedly stolen paperwork Hackers are threatening to release 756GB of A-list celebs' contracts, recording deals, and other personal info allegedly stolen from a New York law firm.…

Damien Patton 'deeply ashamed' of drive-by synagogue shooting The CEO of surveillance AI upstart Banjo, Damien Patton, has quit the company he founded following revelations he was involved with the Ku Klux Klan in the 1990s and participated in the shooting of a synagogue.…

Full mitigation is buy a newer computer – or don't use suspend-to-RAM It's possible to extract data from a computer via its Thunderbolt port – once you've got the case off, plugged in a flash programmer, and reprogrammed the controller's firmware to grant access.…

Elementary, my dear Holmes Federal prosecutors have filed a superseding indictment against the CEO and COO of now-defunct blood-testing company Theranos, piling on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and forfeiture.…

If push comes to shove, PC giant could get 0.2% on the dollar in recompense Quanta Storage has blamed the coronavirus pandemic for failing to hand over the $439m it owes HP.…

Revenue shortfall fears have led a third of polled businesses to shed workers More than a third of businesses in France, Germany, the UK, and the US have laid off or furloughed IT staff based on coronavirus cost concerns, says private equity biz, and Scottish satellite slingers, Leonne International.…

Jeez, no need to be so salty Liquid Martian brines may be more common than once thought, but they are unlikely to play host to anything that looks like life as we know it, a paper in Nature Astronomy has found.…

Aims to head off supply chain issues from dependence on Asian plants Analysis The US is reportedly in talks with Intel and TSMC to develop new chip factories on home soil due to supply chain concerns as well as the geopolitical threat posed by China.…

768G SoC supports upgradeable drivers, claims 15% performance boost Gaming phones are an increasingly lucrative niche within the smartphone market, particularly in Asia, where vendors like Xiaomi's Black Shark, ZTE's Nubia, and Asus all vie for dominance. Catering to this segment is Qualcomm, which today rolled out the Snapdragon 768G platform.…

But you wanted floating windows? Sorry, too hard The Visual Studio Code team has released version 1.45 and is beginning to implement new features including binary custom editors for content such as images or audio files, as well as Notebook functionality, along the lines of Jupyter notebooks.…

Plus: Waymo to resume self-driving car tests amid pandemic, and more Roundup Let's get stuck into another roundup of AI news beyond what we've already reported.…

Plus: From the creator of axed Wunderlist, presenting... Superlist Roundup It's farewell to an old friend and hello to a fresh build of Windows 10 in this week's rundown of news from Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington.…

Yet again, science reality is better than science fiction The giant hexagon-shaped storm raging atop Saturn’s North Pole is made out of frozen hydrocarbon ice suspended in seven hazy layers stacked on top of one another, according to a study published in Nature Communications on Friday.…

And the banker never wears a mac / In the pouring rain / Very strange Perhaps with an eye on its own well-documented Reply-All woes, Microsoft has slipped a little mail storm protection into Office 365.…

Don't phunk with my smart home Rapper Will.i.am's IoT startup Wink will be pivoting to a subscription model this week after the shocking realisation that servers cost money to run.…

Plus: Cognizant cognisant of whopping $70m in damage, malware creeps hit hospital firm, phishing campaigns, and much more Roundup It has been a full week in infosec news. Here are a few things you should know about, beyond what we've already covered.…

So no one told you life was gonna be this way Google's Go programming language, all but disallowed by the web giant's own Fuchsia team for its excessive memory consumption, tops developers' to-do lists. That's according to a survey by tech talent platform HackerEarth.…

Hundreds to be forced out of the door into COVID-19-ravaged jobs market IBM has slammed shut the window of opportunity for Global Technology Services (GTS) staff to put themselves forward for voluntary redundancy, meaning a requisite number will now be forcibly ejected.…

Knowing me Big Red, knowing you, Norwich authorities: Aha? Aha. Norfolk County Council, the UK local government authority based in Norwich, has awarded contracts for an organisation-wide ERP upgrade to Oracle and "service partner" Insight Direct.…

I'll take two gallons of petrol, some wilted apology-flowers and a double dose of bork, please Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to a bumper edition of The Register's ongoing series of screens surprising users. The petroleum retail industry is today's culprit in a double borkage.…

Where's the DHCP box? It's behind y... oh heck Who, Me? It's a new week and that means a fresh tale of close calls and proper falls from those who should know better in another of The Register's regular Who, Me? columns.…

Holiday did not go as planned, but he’s working remotely, participating in agile rituals and happy at the half-way mark of a two-week stretch Alex Mackenzie was due to arrive home from a holiday in Japan on April 15th. But the DBA is currently under guard in a Sydney hotel while he serves out a mandatory 14-day quarantine period after finally making it home from what’s turned into quite an odyssey.…

Robots! 5G! AI! Stimulus cash to float all the tech buzzwords The South Korean government will fund 5G networks and AI to create jobs and boost the economy once the coronavirus pandemic is brought under control.…

James Damore decides he doesn’t need a day in court James Damore, the one-time Google developer who infamously suggested his bosses' diversity rules made it impossible to voice some opinions, has dropped his lawsuit against the internet titan.…

Smithers: If I really must go outside, can you arrange it so I encounter the smallest possible number of virus-laden humans? Singapore is trialing robot dogs to enforce social distancing in its parks, to assist the national coronavirus-control effort.…

Nice way to get to Alpha Centauri though boffin tells us: 'Such a laser system could be used as a weapon' Coin-sized pieces of graphene can be accelerated by firing low-powered lasers at them in micro-gravity conditions, say scientists. The technology could be a stepping stone to graphene solar sails, which could propel future spacecraft using starlight or a laser array.…

Problems aside, no one is sure how useful phone-based tracking will be The NHSX, a technology group within the UK government's National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.…

Zero-click remote-code exec hole found by Googler, updates emitted Samsung has patched a serious security hole in its smartphones that can be exploited by maliciously crafted text messages to hijack devices.…

Hayabusa 2 expected to return with out-of-this-world material in December Video Close-up footage of asteroid Ryugu, taken by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft as it touched down to retrieve a sample, reveals the near-Earth object’s surface may have been torched by the Sun as its orbit changed over time.…

Virus knocks hackers online: Show will try going virtual amid pandemic Annual Las Vegas hacker gathering DEF CON has officially called off its physical conference for this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.…

Apparently. But we’re so incredulous, we’re gonna test those claims on live internet TV… Webcast “The journey to cloud” echoes through all organisations. It’s a Bildungsroman – a story of empowerment and betterment. A shiny, towering cityscape of gleaming edifices and elegant spires. It’s like an ascension into the actual clouds. Like dying and waking up in heaven.…

iGiant not only screwed up the wiring, it knew it was shipping dodgy gear, it is claimed Apple is potentially facing a class-action lawsuit over the failure of displays on its MacBook Pro line.…

Schneider Electric patches vulns after Trustwave raises alarm Two Schneider Electric SCADA products had vulnerabilities similar to the ones exploited in the Iran-bothering Stuxnet worm, an infosec outfit has claimed.…

It's over, Amazon, we have the high ground (and all you had was a high price) says Redmond Updated Amazon.com has filed a second, secret, appeal against the decision to award Microsoft the Pentagon's $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.…

If you listen closely, you can hear how the creatures' full-throated call increases in volume when you are on holiday On Call Friday is here! How is your weekend looking? Same as the last one, and the one before that? Never mind – before breaking into the lockdown lagers, join us for another entry in The Register's tales of those brave souls who are On Call.…

Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.…

And now to avoid container sprawl costing you plenty Microsoft has slipped out licensing details for SQL Server running in containers and it will likely encourage developers to be pretty diligent in their use of Redmond’s database.…

It's like three buses showing up at once carrying $8bn India’s largest mobile carrier, Jio, has just scored a third new investor in three weeks!…