The Register

Washington was most displeased and New Delhi knew it made a mistake India was subjected to intense US lobbying after suddenly imposing a requirement that computer importers obtain a license, according to a news report on Thursday....

CompSci and math professor by trade, he envisaged a galactic Usenet, and was utterly brilliant Obituary Science fiction author and academic Vernor Vinge has departed this life, aged 79....

Rights groups protested potential for sneaky censorship of political rivals India's supreme court on Thursday halted a plan to activate a government-run fact-checking unit that would assess info posted about the nation's government posted to social media platforms - the day after it was told to commence operations....

First tests of manycore fibres hailed as success over oceanic distances Japanese tech titans NTT and NEC reckon they've proven the performance of a novel fiber optic technology that could increase capacity of submarine cables by a factor of 12....

The device that makes it possible is required in all American big rigs, and has poor security Vulnerabilities in common Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) required in US commercial trucks could be present in over 14 million medium- and heavy-duty rigs, according to boffins at Colorado State University....

You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, they're telling you why The US government has recommended a series of steps that critical infrastructure operators should take to prevent distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks....

Redmond says it does what it's told, but still thinks users are better off Microsoft is the subject of growing criticism in the US over allegations that its Bing search engine censors results for users in China that relate to sensitive subjects the state wants blocked....

At least we can all agree on something The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would prohibit data brokers from selling Americans' data to foreign adversaries with an unusual degree of bipartisan support: It passed without a single opposing vote....

Upgraded fondleslab and laptops limited to business buyers only, for now At a virtual press conference on Thursday, Microsoft showed off the latest additions to its Surface hardware via an updated tablet and business laptops that Redmond assures us are built for using AI for just about everything....

Rules still unclear for Microsoft users making potentially costly decisions on enterprise applications Microsoft needs to clarify licensing arrangements around its low-code Power Apps and Dynamics 365 software to prevent users from receiving unexpected bills for their projects....

While excited by the implant, Noland Arbaugh says it's not perfect and there's still work to be done Neuralink's first human patient is now a public figure, with the company publishing a video yesterday showing him playing chess on a laptop and talking about how "freakin' lucky" he is to be involved in the tests....

Spawn of Citrix and Tibco 'no longer able to support the community edition of JasperReports Server' Even if you decide to stop offering free editions, you don't get to stop providing the source code to FOSS, users of JasperReports Server are complaining....

MarineMax may be in choppy waters after 'stolen data' given million-dollar price tag The Rhysida ransomware group claims it was responsible for the cyberattack at US luxury yacht dealer MarineMax earlier this month....

Lawsuit alleges iGiant rips off fans, stifles dev innovation, makes it tough to dump iOS for rivals The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, accusing the iMaker of stifling innovation and undermining competitors through its App Store guidelines and developer agreements....

You have my sword ... and my bow ... and my axe! Meta, Microsoft, X, and Match Group are piling on Apple in support of Epic Games' ongoing legal battle over the Cupertino giant's stranglehold on its App Store....

'Our HBM is sold out for calendar 2024,' trills CEO Micron is basking in a market bounceback, crediting the surge of interest in AI for a jump in the company's revenue, even though buyers face the prospect of rising memory prices for the year ahead....

Cloud and upgrade conversions remain steady if sluggish, according to ERP spending bellwether DSAG The German-speaking SAP user group has released data showing the region's appetite for budget increases in spending is diminishing, casting a shadow over the prospects for cloud transformation projects....

1.44 exaFLOPs of FP4, 13.5 TB of HBM3e, 2 miles of NVLink cables, in one liquid cooled unit GTC Nvidia revealed its most powerful DGX server to date on Monday. The 120kW rack scale system uses NVLink to stitch together 72 of its new Blackwell accelerators into what's essentially one big GPU capable of more than 1.4 exaFLOPS performance - at FP4 precision anyway....

The right to repair should be the obligation to repair, if we want to avoid drowning in trashed electronics We're creating electronic waste almost five times faster than we're recycling it using documented methods, according to a United Nations report released on Wednesday....

Security experts insist ransomware is involved but Leicester zips its lips Leicester City Council continues to battle a suspected ransomware attack while keeping schtum about the key details....

Boosted on-device generative AI's not just for the flagship smartphone kids Qualcomm is pushing out its second smartphone platform within a week, in this case an extension of its Snapdragon 7 series for high-end devices that are built to a lower price point than flagship premium smartphones....

Prices also set to rise after being frozen since 2020 Nominet is cutting staff on the back of market pressure, including the loss of a government cyber contract and is considering a domain registration price increase, according to an update from its CEO....

Google pulls a few coins from the sofa and says whatever, just clarify who needs to be paid for what The French Competition Authority (FCA) on Wednesday fined Google 250 million ($272 million, 214 million) for breaking its promise to figure out a payment plan with French news publishers for using their articles....

Claims members will be bankrupted by new VMware licensing regime, and vital services disrupted Lobby group CISPE - a collective representing Cloud Infrastructure Providers in Europe - has called for regulators to investigate VMware by Broadcom's software licensing arrangements, which it claims will bankrupt some of its members and hurt end-users....

Operators pack twenty phones into a chassis - then rack 'em and stack 'em ready to do evil Chinese upstarts are selling smartphone motherboards - and kit to run and manage them at scale - to operators of outfits that use them to commit various scams and crimes, according to an undercover investigation by state television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) revealed late last week....

New infostealer may indicate a shift in tactics - and maybe targets too, beyond Asia North Korea's notorious Kimsuky cyber crime gang has commenced a campaign using fresh tactics, according to infosec tools vendor Rapid7....

Trust us - we're the government On Tuesday, Hong Kong's legislature unanimously passed the city's latest controversial national security legislation, otherwise known as Article 23....

Claims the tech has brought 38 percent improvement to its own dev cycle time ServiceNow has released its "Washington DC" platform update, and done the very 2024 thing of adding generative AI features. It's also done a slightly less 2024 thing by not just hyping the tech, but sharing the benefits it has enjoyed by actually using it....

Claims former staff ripped off IP and even did demos for their new company on Nutanix computers Nutanix has brought a lawsuit against database-as-a-service startup Tessell, an outfit founded by three of its ex-employees, alleging the upstart's products are rip-offs of Nutanix's own Era database management product....

Exact location, power source, and go-live date unknown. But don't worry, there'll be digital jobs Google has announced plans to drop $1 billion on a new datacenter in Kansas City, Missouri - its first in the state - though when it'll come online is anyone's guess....

Phishing season started early with crims intent on the hooking early filers As the digital wolves dress in sheep's tax forms, Microsoft has thrown a spotlight on a crafty 2024 phishing expedition, unraveled in January, that preys on the unsuspecting herd of early tax filers....

From a trickle to a flood, threats now seen as too great to ignore US government is urging state officials to band together to improve the cybersecurity of the country's water sector amid growing threats from foreign adversaries....

Um. Let's successfully land on Moon without immediately faceplanting first, amirite? All aboard the space train - DARPA has commissioned defense contractor Northrop Grumman to figure out what would be necessary for a railroad network on the Moon....

Crouching entity list candidate, hidden semiconductor ... or that's the idea, anyway The US government is considering measures against a number of Chinese semiconductor companies linked with technology giant Huawei, in what appears to be further escalation of Washington's chip wars strategy....

Twitter tipster points to suspicious signs from author producing thousands of recipes Late last year, Sam Altman, the optimistic CEO of chatbot manufacturer OpenAI, predicted artificial general intelligence would be with us in five years, give or take....

First: Not being able buy a meat pie with a credit card. Now this The London Clinic where the Princess of Wales had surgery at the start of this year says it is investigating claims an employee tried to access her medical records....

Special tech allegedly lets Musk's assembly lines produce 5-10 times more kit than rivals Canadian battery exec Klaus Pflugbeil, a 58-year-old who lives in Ningbo, China, was arrested in Long Island yesterday for trying to sell undercover agents "battery assembly trade secrets" so crucial to Tesla's ops that it spent millions on them....

Robert Purbeck even went as far as threatening a dentist with the sale of his child's data A cyberattacker and extortionist of a medical center has pleaded guilty to federal computer fraud and abuse charges in the US....

Department of Commerce says it's the largest such investment in US semiconductor manufacturing Intel is set to grab up to $8.5 billion in direct funding and up to $11 billion in loans from the US government under the CHIPS and Science Act to help build out its semiconductor manufacturing capacity....

At least 31,031 people affected last year Stalkerware has reached "pandemic proportions," according to Kaspersky, which documented a total of 31,031 people affected by the intrusive software in 2023 - up almost six percent on the prior year....

Warm water and a scraper not an option when you're 1.5 million kilometers from home Less than 12 months into its six-year survey mission, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid telescope is experiencing optical issues that require European teams to devise a de-icing procedure....

First they came for McDonald's and I did not speak out because I have even worse taste in food A princess is AWOL, the government refuses to admit defeat, and now pastry purveyor Greggs is unable to process card payments. How many more national crises can the Great British public weather before the streets burn?...

2026 FIFA World Cup in US could be first to see ML models play a part... and you thought video referees were crap A team at Google's DeepMind claim to have demonstrated the efficacy of an AI model in predicting outcomes in soccer football game set pieces, as well as generating on-field tactics....

Unless you want to be the next Change Healthcare, that is The Feds and friends yesterday issued yet another warning about China's Volt Typhoon gang, this time urging critical infrastructure owners and operators to protect their facilities against destructive cyber attacks that may be brewing....

Too busy not using X to notice Brits are satisfied with the speed of their mobile network, research finds, despite the UK having some of the slowest average 5G download speeds among G7 nations. Twitter is also no longer among the top 10 most used mobile apps....

Great! Just ignore the energy needed to train them, process queries, keep the lights on in datacenters ... As the world struggles to keep up with decarbonization pledges, the UK government is dumping 1.73 million ($2.2 million) into a series of AI projects to help it meet 2050 net zero goals....

Awards contracts for spacecraft to bring the IoT to space The European Space Agency has committed 76.6 million ($83 million) toward the development of Genesis - a flying observatory that will provide positioning services accurate to a single millimeter....

Sales are down at home and poor compared to other nations The founder and chairman of Chinese electronics maker TCL has taken the bold step of suggesting China's censors "improve" their work, to help his company sell more televisions ... and help China succeed at home and abroad....

And teases a laptop to show off its current silicon - running the open edition of Huawei's CentOS spinout Alibaba's research arm, the Damo Academy, last week promised to deliver a server-grade RISC-V processor later this year, showed off a RISC-V-powered laptop running the open source cut of Huawei's CentOS spinout, and talked up a growing community working on the permissively licensed processor architecture....

Choice of alternative payment providers labelled 'illusory' - because none existed India's competition regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has ordered an investigation into Google's in-app billing systems after accusations they levy excessive charges and are discriminatory....