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COBOL-coding volunteers sought as creaking mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response
The governor of New Jersey has asked COBOL-capable coders to volunteer their skills as the State’s mainframe computers have struggled to cope with a surge of requests for benefits to help citizens through the coronavirus crisis.…
Watch: Rare Second World War footage of Bletchley Park-linked MI6 intelligence heroes emerges, shared online
Vid An astonishingly rare film documenting British intelligence personnel, linked to the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, has been released by the park's trust, offering a glimpse of unsung heroes who helped win the Second World War.…
Not only is Zoom's strong end-to-end encryption not actually end-to-end, its encryption isn't even that strong
Zoom has faced increased scrutiny and criticism as its usage soared from 10 million users a day to 200 million in a matter of months, all thanks to coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.…
NSO Group: Facebook tried to license our spyware to snoop on its own addicts – the same spyware it's suing us over
NSO Group – sued by Facebook for developing Pegasus spyware that targeted WhatsApp users – this week claimed Facebook tried to license the very same surveillance software to snoop on its own social-media addicts.…
Oracle teases prospect of playing nicely with open-source Java in update to WebLogic application server
Oracle has chosen this week of all weeks to foist on the world an update of its application server WebLogic, festooned with new features addressing Java EE 8, Kubernetes and JSON.…
Things that go crump in the night: Watch Musk's mighty missile go foom
Video Yet another of SpaceX's Starship prototypes, SN3, was left in pieces last night following tank testing.…
Microsoft brings Mixed Reality toys and other improvements to 'citizen developers' using low-code Power Apps platform
Microsoft has updated its "citizen developer" platform, Power Apps, adding Mixed Reality support, fixing a compatibility issue with the mobile app, and improving options for working with data in grids.…
Where's the best place to add Mentos to Diet Coke for the most foam? How big are the individual bubbles? Has science gone too far?
Did you know that the popular Diet Coke and Mentos soda geyser experiment works better at higher altitudes? Or that the average size of the bubbles formed on the scotch mints is about 6μm? Now you do, thanks to the wonders of science and those with a bubbling passion for it.…
ESA missions back doing science after precautionary pandemic plug pull: We talk to space boffins about Mars Express emergency command line
ESA's mission operations centre in Germany has got back to doing interplanetary science after a short stand-down due to COVID-19.…
Motorola casually trots out third UK release in as many months: This time it's a 'Lite' take on the Moto G8 Power
Hello again, Moto. In the past month, the Lenovo-owned mobile maker has announced three new smartphones for the UK market. The latest is the Moto G8 Power Lite, which retails at £149.99, and offers a surprising amount of battery life for your buck.…
Biz software pusher IFS goes a bit Minority Report with augmented-reality repair suite
ERP flinger IFS is inflicting more augmented reality on the unsuspecting world of repair and maintenance as it strives to catch up with Oracle and SAP.…
Cabinet Office dangles £15m for help ditching its Single Operating Platform for cloud-based ERP system
The Cabinet Office is offering a £15m contract for a consultancy to help it shift central government enterprise applications to an as software-as-a-service delivery model, part of an ambitious refresh programme.…
UK judge gives Google a choice: Either let SEO expert read your ranking algos or withdraw High Court evidence
Google must either show its "crown jewels" to a man it described to the High Court as a search engine optimisation expert or give up parts of its defence in a long-running competition lawsuit, the UK High Court has ruled.…
On the lookout for IT jobs? Hunting for new staffers? <i>Reg</i> readers list vacancies across the globe here
Job Alert Welcome to this week's jobs list, a run down of the vacancies that El Reg is advertising for free to help keep tech people in work.…
Tech services biz Allvotec furloughing staff, asking remainder – including top brass – to take pay cut
Allvotec – the rebranded Daisy Partner Services business – is responding to the coronavirus crisis by furloughing a number of staff and asking all that remain to take a pay cut to avoid potential redundancies.…
Windows spotted flashing its unmentionables in a Chicago clothier
Bork!Bork!Bork! Chicago! A town famed for what some might regard as a jumped-up quiche masquerading as pizza and home of the first skyscraper. Could there be a better venue for today's bork?…
Zoom vows to spend next 90 days thinking hard about its security and privacy after rough week, meeting ID war-dialing tool emerges
Video-conferencing app maker Zoom has promised to do better at security after a bruising week in which it was found to be unpleasantly leaky in several ways.…
Absolutely everyone loves video conferencing these days. Some perhaps a bit too much
On Call Phew, March is over. Everything will be OK now, right? Right? Oh well... join us in nervously welcoming April with another tale from that special breed tasked with answering the phone, even when the subject matter is perhaps less than savoury.…
Cricket’s average-busting mathematician Tony Lewis pulls up stumps
Eminent British mathematician Tony Lewis has died, aged 78.…
Automatic for the People: Pandemic-fueled rush to robo-moderation will be disastrous – there must be oversight
Analysis The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Thursday warned that the consequences of the novel coronavirus pandemic – staff cuts, budget cuts, and lack of access to on-site content review systems, among others – have led tech companies to focus even more resources on barely functional moderation systems.…