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Mark it in your diaries: 14 October 2025 is the end of Windows 10
Wasn't it to be the 'last version of Windows'? Maybe not...Continue readingMicrosoft has updated its product lifecycle documentation to state that Windows 10 Home and Pro will be retired on 14 October 2025.
The statement is likely linked to the forthcoming event on 24 June where Microsoft promises to unveil what's next for Windows. Note that it is the future of Windows, not of Windows 10, that is the subject.
What happened, then, to the idea that Windows 10 would be the last version, but constantly kept up to date with incremental updates?
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$28m scores mystery bidder right to breathe same air as Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos in Blue Origin flight
Burning dollars faster than liquid oxygen and hydrogenContinue reading$28m has secured someone a seat on the first crewed flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard, with the mystery bidder scoring the right to breathe the same air as fellow passenger Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Bezos had previously confirmed that he and his brother, Mark, would be strapped into the capsule atop the reusable rocket on 20 July.
Bidding for a seat to accompany the billionaire began in the low millions and stood at a shade under $5m by the end of the last week. An auction on Saturday resulted in a final ticket price more than five times higher at $28m.
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If HAL did digital signage. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that...
My God! It's full of Bork!Continue readingBork!Bork!Bork! A black oblong of purest bork glares balefully over shoppers in Plymouth, southwest England. An echo from an alternative future or just big-screen borkage?
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Orbex is creeping towards orbit from a UK launchpad, but first there are courts, birds, and billionaires to overcome
Sutherland Spaceport: A Prime location?Continue readingInterview British rocketeeer Orbex has spent the best part of the last half decade or so moving towards the goal of a first commercial orbital launch from home soil. While others have shown off engine firings and sub-orbital lobs, Orbex is aiming for orbit with its Prime rocket.
In an industry where dates tend to be forever moving deeper into the future, Chris Larmour, CEO at Forres-based Orbex is refreshingly blunt and suggests rolling a dice for picking that first launch date.
"We're working towards the end of 2022," he tells us. However, he also remarks: "There's always something either internally or externally, that impacts the ability to meet those dates, whether it's, you know, the spaceport is delayed, or the regulations aren't ready yet, or we've got a technical issue to be solved…"
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We've been shown time and again that strong encryption puts crims behind bars, so why do politicos hate it?
If we trust it, crooks will too – meaning Plod can get their kiloscrote nabContinue readingColumn Back in October, a call by spy agencies to weaken end-to-end encryption "because of the children" provoked a bit of analysis on how many times UK Home Secretaries had banged the same drum. All of them, it turned out. All of the time.
The argument is a bit beyond Priti Patel, alas, as she ran the threadbare rag up the flagpole yet again in April, presumably on the grounds that the 50th time's the charm.
The real world has not done her argument any favours in the weeks since. Last Wednesday, law-abiding citizens around the world enjoyed hearing about a massive collar-feeling spree courtesy of Operation Trojan Shield. This was a sting that did better than many a startup: it flogged a respectable 12,000 custom messaging devices to the, if you will, crimmunity before using the intercepted data to reel in getting on for a thousand of its least attractive members.
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Want to keep working in shorts and flipflops way after this is all over? It could be time to rethink your career moves
Pandemic has opened a can of worms for our work goals with what comes nextContinue readingFeature It may not be your fault that your broadband is crap, but it is your problem when you're interviewing over Zoom or even Teams.
One of the good things to come out of lockdown is that IT pros seem to be a lot more appreciated, which means now is a good time to start pushing for a raise since we are at the sweet spot of high visible productivity and understanding that there is possibly more to come as we remember that corporate gratitude is as alien to them as porn is to fish.
I've spent time talking with IT pros and their management about what we can usefully learn about tech jobs as we move to some sort of normality. Obviously there has been an uptick in demand for skills to enable people to work at home and that will last for a while yet, though the skill of saying "No I don't know why Microsoft Teams is down again" in a way that doesn't alienate users is perhaps the best to have. Flinging over that link to Downdetector.co.uk might be an even better way to deflect their howls of anguish away from you.
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Do you come from a land Down Under? Where diesel's low and techies blunder
UPS = Uninterruptable Pager SpyingContinue readingWho, Me? We go Down Under for today's Who, Me? with a slightly NSFW tale of an incomplete checklist, a surprise outage, and an even more surprised gerbil.
"Bruce", as the somewhat unimaginative Regomiser has dubbed our reader, is today's contributor and tells us of an event that occurred in the 1990s.
He was working for a telecoms firm notable for its paging network. "Used to be able to look at the paging messages in real time in plain text from emergency services," he cheerfully told us before unnecessarily adding: "You'd be amazed by what people can 'accidentally' put up their bumhole."
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The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good
Crims now know what not to trust, and how to stymie future infiltrationsContinue readingComment In April 1943, Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was killed when the US Air Force shot down the plane carrying him to Balalae Airfield in the Solomon Islands.
The attack was made possible by the USA cracking Japanese codes and decrypting a message that revealed Yamamoto’s flight plan would just take him within range of America's scarce long-range aircraft.
The chances of those aircraft happening upon Yamamoto were very small so US strategists worried Japanese analysts might conclude an attack was only possible because their codes been broken.
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Inventor of the graphite anode – key Li-ion battery tech – says he can now charge an electric car in 10 minutes
Dr Rachid Yazami shares his predictions for EV batteries with The RegisterContinue readingFeature Morocco-born Dr Rachid Yazami has lived all over the world, thanks to an invention he made in his first year as a PhD student – the graphite anode – which is one of the key components that make lithium-ion batteries perform so well.
With electric vehicles on the rise, he believes the invention will soon take you everywhere, too.
Yazami’s story starts in the mid-1970s when scientists knew that graphite could help to form molten or powdered lithium into a usable energy storage material but struggled to turn it into a product. In 1983 Yazami and co-author Ph. Touzain cracked the problem by using a solid polymer electrolyte.
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IBM pulls up the ladder behind some supercomputer customers
As in it's stopped selling the ladders needed to clamber up and do maintenance. Thankfully the internet can helpContinue readingIBM has pulled up the ladder behind customers of its Blue Gene/Q supercomputers.
A hardware withdrawal announcement dated June 8th, 2021 lists 53 products that Big Blue will stop selling as of September 30th, 2021.
Most are cables, old-school add-on cards, or racks.
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As so many people work away from the office, Wi-Fi 6E is perfectly timed for connected homes, other wireless apps
Wi-Fi 6/6E use-cases drive adoption as network refresh gains distinct advantagesContinue readingSponsored Wi-Fi 6E – the Wi-Fi Alliance’s extension of the 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) standard to use the 6 GHz band – is a timely and significant step toward enabling congestion-free and reliable connectivity. It will also serve as an immense impetus for wireless innovation in the connected home through the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Growing momentum in the release of the 6 GHz spectrum globally for unlicensed use, including Wi-Fi, has opened up 1.2 GHz of bandwidth capacity. Today, 600 MHz of unrestricted spectrum in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands is allotted to Wi-Fi. But demand for Wi-Fi is rising exponentially and it is expected to carry 51 percent of all IP traffic by 2022.
Wi-Fi 6E-enabled consumer devices will come onto the market in 2021. To support 6 GHz, home gateways and routers will have to be replaced with tri-band devices supporting 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz. Over the next three years, the operating features of Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) will also be finalised.
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