The Register

Perhaps gigantic puffy exoplanets aren't as hostile to life as previously thought Astronomers believe five binary-star systems identified by NASA’s now-defunct Kepler Space Telescope could have the right properties to support extraterrestrial life, according to new calculations.…

Automotive supply is a 'top priority', analysts told TSMC this week warned the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor supplies will probably continue throughout this year and next.…

E-commerce wing to also get a huge fulfillment center for Q3 2022 Indian e-commerce company FlipKart, majority owned by US behemoth Walmart, has chosen AdaniConneX to build its third data center in Chennai. It is expected to be one of the largest private cloud deployments in the country,…

ioXt Alliance aims to bring 'transparency and visibility' On Thursday the ioXt Alliance, an Internet of Things (IoT) security trade group backed by some of the biggest names in the business, introduced a set of baseline standards for mobile apps, in the hope that IoT security may someday be a bit less of a dumpster fire.…

Linux for Windows switchers: smooth user experience, if users steer clear of Windows apps on Wine Zorin OS 16 Linux has moved into beta, promising improved performance and a more extensive application Store covering Flathub and Snap as well as old-style repositories.…

Lowest scoring sections were 'performance' and 'deal', but it looks like it could be a lot worse You aren't the only one feeling like you're giving more than you're getting from your employer – a chunk of Microsofties are of the same opnion.…

Plus HTTP/2 web server written in Rust Deno 1.9 hit the streets this week touting new features including an HTTP/2 server written in Rust.…

Mayor thrilled with $175m up front for Guitar Town infrastructure projects Oracle is continuing its journey into the heart of the southern United States with a $1.2bn investment in a new campus in Nashville, set to create 8,500 new jobs.…

It won't fly. 'We are collateral damage' Things have taken a tern for the worse for the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, which is seeking an exemption from the EU for a law that takes flight tomorrow, so their birds can participate in a long distance European race.…

And Positive Technologies has been slapped with American sanctions Russia’s infamous APT 29, aka Cozy Bear, was behind the SolarWinds Orion attack, the US and UK governments said today as America slapped sanctions on Russian infosec companies as well as expelling diplomats from that country’s US embassy.…

Another UK institution topples at the hands of miscreants The University of Hertfordshire has fallen victim to a cyber attack that has resulted in the establishment pulling all its systems offline to deal with the situation.…

Emulation could make more sense than migration. Here’s why… Webcast There’s nothing like the joy finding a piece of vintage vinyl on eBay, having it appear on your doorstep, then watching your friends’ faces light up as you drop the needle into the groove.…

Incoming iPhone 13 could be final slimline version All good things come to an end. And pointless things, too, with Apple reportedly planning to discontinue the iPhone Mini after the next iteration expected later this year.…

Accidental borkage ... or a not-so-subtle hint that it really is time to move on? Multiple customers have told The Register that OneDrive for Business on Windows 7 is falling over for them, with one reporting that Microsoft has quietly pulled the plug on support.…

Matchbox goes green with sustainably produced toys based on electric cars Soon tots will be able to throw their toy cars at the 4K TV and claim it was Autopilot what did it, Daddy.…

Chap brought in $27m deal – so bosses withheld two-thirds of his pay A salesman who claimed bosses at software biz SAS diddled him out of half a million pounds in commission had "no reasonable prospects" of successfully proving his case, an Employment Tribunal judge has ruled.…

COBOL-inspired caps lock English just don't add up when dealing with large SQL codebases Structured Query Language (SQL) at scale can lead to unstructured, unmaintainable database code - at least as far as Google is concerned - so boffins affiliated with the biz have devised an open source logical programming language to make SQL more amenable to maintenance.…

Activity history tracker over mobile devices set to become history Microsoft is set to pull down at least one shutter on the once-trumpeted Timeline feature of Windows 10, judging by the most recent emission on the Windows Insider Dev Channel.…

Makes a change from the waves of redundancies IBM has joined the Eclipse Adoptium working group as an enterprise member and committed to building and publishing Java SE TCK-certified JDK binaries with OpenJ9 free of charge.…

Full year impact of the compensation hike of Q4 will be felt into FY 22, says Infosys Infosys has landed massive new deals that it says will require a return to pre-COVID hiring practices, even as workers start to leave for other employers.…

Because local democracy is hilarious – oh, and transparency's good too Jackie Weaver and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, have called on the UK government to keep online council meetings legal even as coronavirus restrictions across Britain are eased.…

Oh, you mean the 'features that make it easier for people to find and connect with friends on our services'? Ireland’s Data Protection Commission this week launched an investigation into whether Facebook failed to adequately protect users' personal info – and whether it fell foul of GDPR – when a package of 533 million profiles was given away for free online.…

Seventeen currencies - not just the Greenback - are now just an API call away Microsoft has tweaked its Retail Rates API to offer retail pricing information for all Azure services in currencies other than the US dollar.…

PublicBenefit.uk campaign reports 97 per cent of its supporters behind effort A second extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to fire the remainder of the board of directors of Nominet and replace them with people willing to make long-sought-after reforms now looks like a certainty.…

‘Frank’ reckons it won’t follow Parler’s path to plug-pulling because it has its own servers and ‘the best security’ . But it also uses Cloudflare … A new social media network that promises its users untrammeled free speech won’t allow “The N-word, the C-word, the F-word or God’s name in vain.”…

Meanwhile, ESXi on Arm spotted booting Windows Two new Windows-on-Arm options have come into view.…

One day you too can experience a few minutes of free fall with great visuals... if you can afford it Video Blue Origin has successfully completed a test launch and landing of its reuseable New Shepard rocket with an advanced capsule design, bringing the outfit one step closer to eventually sending up paying passengers.…

‘Market does not appreciate hardware/software combo’ says Big Mike. So virty giant gets freedom, customers are promised no change +Analysis Dell will spin out its stake in VMware, and the two companies will continue to operate without major changes for at least five years. Indeed, they said they plan to deepen their collaboration.…

Firefox 'fully compromised' in 15 minutes via SMASH attack Boffins from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and ETH in Zurich have bypassed memory chip defenses to execute a successful browser-based Rowhammer side-channel attack dubbed SMASH.…

Among the victims: the United Nations A Nigerian email scammer based in New York was on Tuesday sentenced to 40 months in prison, and ordered to pay back $2.7m in stolen money.…

Mozilla-authored code in iOS exploited, since patched, it is claimed Australian security firm Azimuth has been identified as the experts who managed to crack a mass shooter's iPhone that was at the center of an encryption standoff between the FBI and Apple.…

Firm's Griffin lander to do the honours Astrobotic has provided an explanation for another of SpaceX boss Elon Musk's tweets with news that its Griffin lander lander will be riding a Falcon Heavy to the Moon in 2023.…

'Federated Learning of Cohorts' groups users together and is already being tested in Chrome Updated Google's FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) mechanism for ad personalisation, currently being trialled in the Chrome browser, has been rejected as privacy-invasive tracking by other browser makers including Vivaldi and Brave.…

We're sure the comms watchdog will take that on board Huawei has argued that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cannot force US carriers to remove its equipment from their networks, and can only reimburse those that voluntarily choose to do so.…

JS component seems to be focus of researchers and miscreants alike Google has announced new updates to Chrome 89 following the discovery of yet another live exploit for a vulnerability in the V8 JavaScript engine.…

Shrugs off 21% slump – that's just infra shift, share awards SAP says cloud sales jumped 7 per cent in its Q1 and has upped full-year forecasts on renewed hopes for higher growth, indicating senior execs reckon customers will begin spending in greater numbers this year after projects slowed in pandemic-struck 2020.…

Dictates 3 languages, translates into 6, available only in China Swiss computer peripherals manufacturer Logitech has teamed with Chinese AI and internet company Baidu to make a voice-dictation mouse.…

Hard luck, BT The UK's competition watchdog has provisionally cleared the proposed merger of Virgin Media and O2 after concluding it would not materially impact competition (and thus the price and availability of services) in the telecoms wholesale market.…

Private preview for now, Windows and macOS users sought for testing System76, a US company which markets laptops, PCs and servers running Linux, is developing a new GNOME-based desktop GUI called COSMIC for its Pop!_OS distribution.…

Potential surveillance nightmare could be unfolding in secret, civil-rights warriors fear The US Department of Homeland Security and its law enforcement agencies – Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection – have been sued for failing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about their use of Clearview AI’s facial-recognition technology.…

For a small fee, of course – and no video or voice yet Exclusive Element Matrix Services (EMS) is asking users tied into Microsoft's Teams platform but who "actually want [end-to-end] encrypted secure comms" to take a stroll over a newly built bridge to its own message network.…

It takes two to tango, says SaaS vendor Maine has accused Workday of showing "no accountability" for its part in a flawed process to replace the US state's HR system.…

Colourful PowerBook 170 was a one-off for Japanese women's golf tournament Another piece of Apple history has been put on the block, this time it's the turn of a weird - and in some eyes, possibly wonderful - limited edition of the PowerBook 170.…

Keep using the provided tools, NCSC says Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat has publicly claimed GCHQ sources told him Gmail was more secure than Parliament’s own Microsoft Office 365 deployment – but both Parliament and a GCHQ offshoot have told him to stop being silly.…

Filling the void left by Huawei Smaller telco kit makers should provide 25 per cent of the equipment used in Britain's 5G networks following the removal of Huawei, according to the recently formed UK.gov-backed Telecoms Diversification Task Force.…

'A huge Tetris' as biz struggles prepping kit for relocation under renewed COVID lockdown OVH is yet to bring all customers affected by its Strasbourg data center fire back online – and the French cloud operator's CFO has described ongoing restoration efforts as a "real nightmare."…

AI algorithms in large-scale astronomy are mandatory, study says A neural network has helped astronomers catalog a whopping 27 million galaxies collected from one of the largest astronomical surveys probing the mysterious nature of dark energy.…

Ride-sharing, food-delivering, payment-processing, home-insuring and money-lending org thanks COVID for pumping up its financials Singaporean superapp Grab announced yesterday that it plans to go public in the United States – through a $39.6bn merger with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).…

Alibaba was just the beginning, says regulator, as it forbids western web titans' favourite bullying behaviours China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has warned 34 local web “platforms” to make sure they comply with local laws, and take care not to adopt western startups' aggressive tactics, or they may suffer the same kind of smackdowns recently inflicted on Alibaba.…

IT giant is learning to live with repeated sprints rather than mega-deals Tata Consultancy Services won just seven new customers in its fiscal 2021, and went backwards on revenue and profit.…