It's a long, long buildup to CEO's soliloquy, it's a long way to go

Knowledge 2020 With the long flights, late nights and early starts, IT conferences might seem endless. But with the shift to the online format becoming standard, for now at least, participants might be spared the trial of endurance.…

Politicos watered down earlier efforts, so data defenders will fight to the end

The small group of policy wonks that forced California’s legislature to rush through privacy legislation two years ago are back – and this time they want a ballot.…

ML eggheads, devs get more bang for their buck, say OpenAI duo

Machine-learning algorithms are improving in performance at a rate faster than that of the underlying computer chips, we're told.…

OK, a third agreed with Thales when it asked the question

About a third of firms and organisations in Europe and the Middle East still believe the humble password is a good enough security measure, according to a survey carried out by French firm Thales.…

Microsoft, Cisco, Google etc gang up to form Open RAN Policy Coalition

Some of America’s super-corps have remembered how the US became the dominant global technology force it is, and have vowed to use innovation over threats to counter Chinese dominance in 5G markets.…

Australia bit barn outfit NEXTDC adds classic film reference to usual mix of resilience, connectivity and security

Australian serial entrepreneur Bevan Slattery has revealed that he told the architects of a data centre he funded to make it resemble the sets used in classic submarine flick The Hunt for Red October.…

Doesn't play well on iPhones, but bureaucrats rushed it out rather than wait months for perfection. Meanwhile serious bug reports have emerged

Australia’s “COVIDSafe” contact-tracing app was rushed to market in the knowledge it would perform poorly on some devices and without agreements in place to let actual contact-tracers use the data it collects. As a result, no collected data has been used in at least 10 days since its launch.…

Remember when all we had to complain about were crappy rail services?

Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to another in The Register's inexplicably long-lived series of digital signage suffering the odd public whoopsie.…

At last, we can write headlines with all the letters intact

For a company defined by design and attention to detail, the Butterfly keyboard was a tremendous humiliation for Apple. Conceived in 2015, it replaced the previous scissor-switch mechanism for one with a smaller profile, allowing Cupertino to continue shrinking already-svelte laptops.…

One has the vulns, the other has the brass neck to pull off heists. Right?

Russia might begin carrying out cyber attacks against Britain's 5G networks "at the behest of China", the chairman of a Parliamentary Select Committee has ventured.…

Multinationals' UK arms pair up to take on Voda and former state-owned telco

Telcos Telefónica and Liberty Global today confirmed plans to join their O2 UK and Virgin Media subsidiaries into one combined entity in a deal analysts branded a "blockbuster merger".…

We all need to tighten our belts

For the first time in over three decades, BT has suspended its dividend scheme as the former state-owned teleco grapples with the fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the financial uncertainty that'll inevitably ensue.…

High-frequency audio could be used to stealthily track netizens

Technical folks looking to improve web privacy haven't been able to decide whether sound beyond the range of human hearing poses enough of a privacy risk to merit restriction.…

Switchzilla issues a whopping 30+ patches in time for the long UK weekend

Cisco has emitted a fresh round of software updates to address nearly three dozen security holes in its products.…

Update used wrong data type, causing Tinder to Spotify to fall over

A change in the Facebook SDK backend managed to crash many popular iOS apps that integrated the code library, used for implementing various Facebook services.…

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.…

Opposition spokesman on tourism, Dr Wykeham McNeill, is calling for an investigation into allegations that some employers of tourism workers have not been turning over income tax deductions to government.  The situation has resulted in...

-Album Details- Title: Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY JIRITSU Publisher: Square Enix Music Catalog Number: SQEX-10659~60 Release Date: September 20th, 2018 Ripped by: dancey -Info- Nothing new or revelatory here other than it was only available at TGS2018, enjoy nonetheless.

Sorry all, rides over. See you in another life~

-Album Details- Title: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening Original Soundtrack Publisher: Nippon Columbia Catalog Number: COCX-41117~20 Release Date: March 18th, 2020 Ripped by: Razakin -Info- Soundtracks to the new Switch and the way better Game Boy versions of Link’s Awakening. Enjoy. Purchase Link(s) CDJapan

-Album Details-   Title: Death Stranding Original Score Publisher: Sony Classical Catalog Number: 19439727722 Release Date: March 13th, 2020 Ripped by: Razakin -Info- Soundtrack to Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, score by Ludvig Forssell. Purchase Link(s) Amazon

-Album Details- Title: Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon EVERY BUDDY! Original Soundtrack Publisher: Square Enix Music Catalog Number: SQEX-10710 Release Date: April 24th, 2019 Ripped by: Razakin -Info- Khew!  Some classic FF tracks arranged again for a Chocobo-game, the 2019 remaster of Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon. Enjoy. Purchase Link(s) CDJapan

A review by ALLEN HALL (6). Excellently showcased what a computer could offer a gamer over a board game

В состав «армии Microsoft» попали как инди-студии, так и крупные разработчики.

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OED Word of the Day: time-ridden, adj. Afflicted by the effects of time; time-worn

“The most difficult part was persuading our children that they had the freedom to make anything they wanted,” writes mom Anam Ahmed at Let Grow. (Click here!) …Like most kids, my children live prescheduled lives (at least they did in “the time before”). At school, someone tells them when to play outside and when to […]

These “cards” are really an excuse for kids to interview their moms and shower them with the ultimate gifts: attention to mom’s quirky uniqueness, gratitude, and offers of help! Here you go — click here! (Mother’s Day is SUNDAY!)

2021 for taxi-style usage in selected areas. This is level 4 automation: no human driver will be needed to take over. But the car won't be able to go everywhere. Likely that means the cars will be restricted to very well mapped areas without challenging conditions. Ford says the higher cost of the computer and sensing equipment restricts its use to fleets which rack up very high mileage per vehicle per year. The car will be a more expensive piece of capital equipment that requires very high usage rates to pay the cost of capital. I find the 2021 launch date to be a little surprising since Ford seems late to the party. On the other companies seem think they...

By 2060 Phoenix Arizona will have 132 days a year over 100F. Dallas will 55 and Pecos Texas 101 days. My view about problems: We should solve them. If the Earth really does heat up substantially then we should pull the CO2 back out of the atmosphere while also releasing cooling gases. If its practical we should also raise the albedo (surface reflectivity) of the planet. Right now cities should change their zoning laws and roads policies to make buildings, roads, and other surfaces more reflective. No more dark buildings. Use light colors of concrete, white shingles, and other surfaces that reflect more light. That would be beneficial even if the Earth was not heating up. Hot cities are unpleasant...

I've previously argued that going to Mars and trying to live there is a dumb idea for the foreseeable future. Notwithstanding assorted recent comments by Elon Musk this is still true. The best treatment of Musk's proposal for a big trip to Mars comes from The Martian science fiction author Andy Weir in his comments to Ars Technica. I think Weir went too easy the obviously ridiculous low cost estimates made by Musk and didn't address many of the problems with a Mars colony. But he makes excellent points. Read the article if you are interested. I like Weir's point that solar panels weigh too much to cart all the way to Mars. Better to take a nuclear reactor. I've...

In a nutshell: editing offspring DNA at the embryo stage will eventually offer so many advantages that lots of people will cave in on some advantage. Don't want to make your kid smarter? Make him or her better looking? Don't want that? How about a throwing arm competitive in major league baseball? Opposed to that? How about avoiding passing along your terrible allergies, need for braces, terrible eyesight, tendency to get depressed or perhaps anxiety attacks or eating disorders? Lots of ways to be persuaded to step over the line once the tech becomes safe. If asked whether one would genetically engineer one's offspring today many people would answer "No" to the hypothetical question. But today choosing genes for your...

For large electric power storage projects the cost of batteries has plummeted. 2008, when battery prices were 10 times higher than they are today. This advance is timely as photovoltaic electric power prices have dropped so far that in SoCal PV is causing a growing drop in mid-day demand and therefore a much bigger spike in evening demand. Therefore there's a growing need for a cheaper way to store power generated in mid day and deliver it in the evening. You can see how much solar power output surges each day in California by clicking on some of the Daily Renewables Watch links at the Cal ISO site (the organization that manages California's electric grid). The growing supply of wind...

Suppose you randomly go 1 million miles somewhere away from our Sun. What will you find when you get there? With extremely high probability: Nothing! Suppose you go 100 light years in a randomly chosen direction. It is exceedingly likely that once you get there you will find nothing. Space. Vacuum. Rarely any atoms. Nothing, really boring nothing. Space is a dull and boring destination. If we don't take something with us to make our visit to a space destination interesting then it will be boring. Suppose we arrive at some place that is not just space. If some location has lots of mass it begins to have a chance of not being boring. But most pieces of mass out...

Keep calm, and stay geeky people!