The Register

We wanted to post a dad joke about sodium, but we thought: Na, people will groan... TerraPower – the Bill Gates-founded nuclear company – and Warren Buffett-owned PacifiCorp are hooking up to build a Natrium reactor at a decommissioned coal plant in Wyoming.…

When it works well enough in the real world, that is Computer scientists have built an algorithm to predict deadly explosions within blazes before they occur in the hope it can one day serve as a warning system for firefighters tackling burning buildings.…

No, literally, let's make illegal Four in five Brits wants to make it illegal to force employees to work from the office, according to an extensive survey, providing further evidence that a shift in working patterns may be permanent.…

As Sapphire Now kicks off, users, SIs and analysts see unanswered questions Five months after SAP launched its RISE plan, a half-loaf cloud lift-'n-shift + business transformation service, the German software company is still struggling with unanswered questions.…

It is Thursday and it's framework-tastic Pheonix Software, Deloitte and Computeam are among the 17 winners sticking their snouts into a £100m pork barrel framework for outsourcing in the UK’s education sector.…

Plus: Judgement in immigration exemption case makes things worse Comment Almost two weeks ago, the European Parliament took the step of objecting to the Commission decisions to grant the UK data adequacy.…

Hello, my name is Mr Snrub, and I come from, uh ... someplace far away Analysis Huawei on Wednesday introduced its first tablets and smartphones running its HarmonyOS 2 software – and said 100 or so other devices will be able to upgrade to the totally-not-but-really-is-Android OS.…

Down continues to be the new up NortonLifeLock, the company that offers the consumer products Broadcom didn’t want when it bought Symantec, has started to offer Ethereum mining as a feature of its Norton 360 security suite.…

Applies pressure as negotiations on harmonized global web levies near conclusion Countries whose digital services taxes disproportionately affect the US tech industry have been slapped with 25 per cent tariffs on up to US$2bn of their goods by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).…

Xi Jinping says it’s time the world learned Marxism works, socialism is good, and China is really nice Analysis Chinese state-controlled media has revealed the nation's rulers have decided it’s time for a charm offensive.…

Plans to grow capacity in all 27 regions by 30 percent in 2021 Chinese web giant Tencent has announced its cloud service has expanded its presence in Germany, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Japan.…

National growth strategy also prioritises low power distributed data centres Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga has outlined a national growth strategy that will include doing whatever it takes to lure semiconductor manufacturers to the nation’s shores.…

CentralSquare says Big Red raided it for key staff CentralSquare Technologies, a Florida-based maker of software for public safety officials, sued Oracle on Tuesday claiming that the database giant has been poaching key employees in an effort to build its business selling software to law enforcement and justice organizations.…

Ironically, they’re all advance notice of maintenance that's promised to improve resilience IBM Cloud is having another challenging day, this time sending customers word of upcoming maintenance work 20 or more times – and even to those who don’t use the services that will soon be patched.…

'A stalker can abuse it to stalk people better. There are no mitigations mentioned' Owners of Amazon Echo assistants and Ring doorbells have until June 8 to avoid automatically opting into Sidewalk, the internet giant's mesh network that taps into people's broadband and may prove to be a privacy nightmare.…

Top tips from an insider in the tech recruitment game Comment It has been a decade since we first demonstrated that IT pros' resumes were a bit crap, and so here's an update to help you get real about how you present yourself in 2021.…

Q&A community ponders life as an enterprise education resource Prosus NV, a Netherlands-based consumer internet conglomerate, on Wednesday said it plans to acquire online Q&A community Stack Overflow for $1.8bn.…

Embarrassing flaw in E3372 device finally patched Huawei has belatedly fixed a mild vulnerability in a USB connectivity dongle spotted by Trustwave after The Register intervened.…

It's not me, it's GNU The GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) Steering Committee has lifted a long-standing requirement that all code contributions must be assigned to the FSF (Free Software Foundation).…

AWS Innovation Day promises to accelerate your business into the cloud and beyond Promo Who wouldn’t want to learn about reusable spacecraft, 3D printing and manufacturing in orbit, and malaria fighting drones – and what they all mean for your business?…

Aussie cops start probe and FBI and USDA lend a hand Australian police are investigating a ransomware attack at the facilities of JBS Foods — one of the largest producers of meat in the world – as the White House fingers Russia-based cybercriminals.…

2020 missives from American securities regulator to car firm revealed The SEC has repeatedly found itself frustrated by the bombastic tweets of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. And letters from the regulator have revealed that two of Musk’s postings were in breach of a previous settlement.…

Bizarre promotion practice leads to near-inevitable breach Exclusive An astonishing data security blunder saw the personal data of Special Forces soldiers circulating around WhatsApp in a leaked British Army spreadsheet.…

Belated recognition that maybe, just maybe, someone should check submissions to official Windows package receptacle Microsoft has introduced human moderation for packages submitted to the repository for its newly released Winget package manager, following a spike in duplicate and/or bad submissions.…

Time running out for secrets of cosmos to remain hidden Boffins at the University of Edinburgh will soon be able to get their hands on a new high-powered supercomputer to help them "unlock the secrets of the universe" following a deal with European tech outfit Atos.…

Now patched: 'A function that can be called with attacker-controlled data (which it shouldn't) and dereference twice a pointer (boom)' Security researchers have posted proof of concept code that exploits a recently patched vulnerability in Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor. The bug enables code in the guest to crash the host, and in some circumstances compromise the host's security.…

Plans test launch this year, satellite-lifting in 2022 and moonshot not long after South Korea has revealed a test version of a locally developed rocket with satellite launch capabilities.…

Not the obvious function, the other obvious function OpenPGP project RNP has patched its flagship product after Mozilla Thunderbird, a major user, was found to be saving users’ private keys in plain text.…

New tax rules see a hike in use of umbrella companies - another can of worms Contractors able to continue working outside the IR35 regulations are gaining leverage in the market and succeeding in punting their scarce skills, according to a survey.…

'You’re crazy if you don’t start in the cloud; you’re crazy if you stay on it' - but others disagree Analysis Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist Andressen Horowitz has posted a paper suggesting that "If you're operating at scale, the cost of cloud can at least double your infrastructure bill."…

ESA's veteran probe left for its mission 18 years ago today Space extenders Today marks the 18th anniversary since the European Space Agency' (ESA) launched the extraordinarily long-lived (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft from the Baikonur cosmodrome in 2003.…

Also tries to bust blades out of the box with new UCS-X series Cisco has advanced an alternative vision for running hybrid clouds – but you’ll need Cisco hardware to make it happen.…

We might have a solution Webcast The convergence of traditional CPU-powered HPC and GPU-fueled AI is one of the wonders of the age, whether it’s modelling vaccines or the climate, enabling automated trading, or speeding up fraud protection.…

Millions can’t use it, but it may be about to become a de facto travel permit India has updated its Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app to record users’ COVID-19 vaccination status.…

Data center companies and chipmakers have signed an agreement as the government seeks to deglobalize their supply chain As semiconductor demand and supply chain insecurity both continue to grow, South Korea has decided it wants its own CPU production capability and has pushed its chip companies and hyperscale operators together to make it happen.…

Judge decides fondleslab giveaway was offered after permission to carry concealed weapons had been secured The strange case against Apple global security boss Thomas Moyer, who was accused of trying to bribe his way to permits to carry concealed guns, has ended with the judge dismissing the charges.…

Pair had access to financial results before release and slipped those details to traders, says watchdog India’s Securities and Exchange Board says staff at services giant Infosys committed insider trading.…

Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks Amazon warehouse workers sustain serious injuries more frequently than employees working in similar jobs across thousands of other companies, a report by unions concluded on Tuesday.…

Info-stealing scheme, attributed to Russia-affiliated crew, relied on spoof USAID marketing messages Uncle Sam on Tuesday said it had seized two web domains used to foist malware on victims using spoofed emails from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).…

New visuals, simplified menus, though Mozilla has yet to fully state its position on 'privacy preserving ads' Mozilla has released Firefox 89, proclaiming it a "fresh new Firefox," though it comes amid a relentless decline in market share.…

3070 Ti, 3080 Ti available this month ... well, in theory Nvidia announced two more GPUs this week: the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. These represent its latest “gaming flagship” hardware.…

Newsgroup restored after spam sinks entire board The Usenet group comp.lang.tcl vanished from Google Groups for several hours before being restored on Tuesday.…

Amazon's container service running on-premises: a turnaround for a company that once scorned hybrid cloud ECS Anywhere, which enables on-premises or Edge container applications to be managed by AWS, is now generally available.…

What’s the remedy? Read on… Promo The thought of ransomware gripping the corporate systems we manage is enough to give any of us sleepless nights. The thought of a ransomware attack crippling the healthcare infrastructure all of us rely on is terrifying.…

No more appeals as lawyer gravy train pulls into station Nokia and Daimler have resolved a long-running patent dispute, with both sides halting any pending litigation across the world and the German carmaker agreeing to pay licence fees.…

CDR and KKR the new owners of shape-shifting data platform biz Cloudera has been snapped up by private equity firms CDR and KKR in a cash deal worth around $5.3 billion, the California-based data biz confirmed today.…

Promises lower latencies, higher power thresholds BT has started trials of hollow-core fibre optical networks to test if they can raise fixed-line speeds and produce mobile networks with lower latencies.…

'Medieval mixed with athletic wear' chic from 1995 Fans of 'cyber' flick Hackers can amuse themselves by visiting an exhibition of the characters’ costumes in London – but time is running short if you want to catch a glimpse of Angelina Jolie’s bizarre getups.…

One of the few differentiators left in the smartphone arena Chinese mobile maker Xiaomi has demoed its latest charging tech, dubbed HyperCharge. Xiaomi claims its tech allows a 200W charger to fully replenish a 4,000mAh battery in eight minutes.…

Yep, UK.gov to build literal flagship - for about £200m Boatnotes Britain is to get a new ocean-going gin palace to schmooze VIPs, negotiate trade deals and fly the flag for UK Plc, the government confirmed at the weekend.…