The Register

LGBTQ+ dating app's maker previously denied selling sensitive user data Hundreds have joined a UK class action lawsuit against LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr, seeking damages over a historical case of the company allegedly forwarding users' HIV status as well as other sensitive data to third-party advertisers....

Riveting conclusion to Tesla recall saga While the vast majority of recent Tesla recalls have been addressed with over-the-air updates, the fix for Cybertruck's recalcitrant acceleration pedal necessitates a rare venture into meatspace. And it's as underwhelming as it is simple....

Meta insists it's just misunderstood and it's safe to talk to citizens over FB The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has warned that government organizations should not use Facebook to communicate with the country's citizens unless they can guarantee the privacy of data....

Which one of you is already running 100-plus kilowatt racks? Survey As CPUs and GPUs grow ever denser and power-hungry, many, including Register readers, expect liquid cooling to play a larger role in enterprise datacenters over the next few years....

Sadly no push to ban stupid TikTok dances, but ByteDance would have year to offload app Stateside Fresh US legislation to force the sale of TikTok locally was passed in Washington over the weekend after an earlier version stalled in the Senate....

High-flying AI scientist claims unfair dismissal following pregnancy leave A lawsuit is alleging Amazon was so desperate to keep up with the competition in generative AI it was willing to breach its own copyright rules....

Clippy 2024 is something else Microsoft has acknowledged an error - Copilot is auto-launching for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel as well as the Canary and Dev builds....

Leaked draft report says stated goals still come up short Google's Privacy Sandbox, which aspires to provide privacy-preserving ad targeting and analytics, still isn't sufficiently private....

Commercial operators must try Varda The US Federal Aviation Administration is updating its launch license requirements: if you're launching something designed for reentry, you'll need a license for that, too. Before you launch....

Syzmon Jastrzebski wrongly borrowed $126k, money written off as he's left the country UK government is kissing goodbye to the 100,000 an IT consultant-cum-software developer wrongly secured under the Bounce Back Loans scheme that was created during the pandemic to financially support firms....

What if it's not AI but the algorithm to blame? Opinion It was a bold claim by the richest and most famous tech founder: bold, precise and wrong. Laughably so. Twenty years ago, Bill Gates promised to rid the world of spam by 2006. How's that worked out for you?...

For once, Redmond's finest saved the day - by being rubbish in unexpectedly useful ways Who, Me? It's Monday once again, dear reader, and you know what that means: another dive into the Who, Me? confessional, to share stories of IT gone wrong that Reg readers managed to pretend had gone right....

For now, Redmond is dogfooding Azure for product simulations Microsoft has bragged that its own Azure HPC service was able to reduce the length of its Surface laptop design process - most notably for a hinge, which was reduced to one iteration, and hopes to use AI to do even better in future....

The processor that gave the world the ZX Spectrum and so much more is out of wafers Production of some models of Z80 processor - the chip that helped spark the PC boom of the 1980s - will cease in June 2024 after an all-too-brief 48 years....

Two rounds of reports and patches may not have completely closed this hole BLACK HAT ASIA Researchers at US/Israeli infosec outfit SafeBreach last Friday discussed flaws in Microsoft and Kaspersky security products that can potentially allow the remote deletion of files. And, they asserted, the hole could remain exploitable - even after both vendors claim to have patched the problem....

A day after FBI boss warns Beijing is poised to strike against US infrastructure China last week reorganized its military to create an Information Support Force aimed at ensuring it can fight and win networked wars....

PLUS: Akira ransomware resurgent; Telehealth outfit fined for data-sharing; This week's nastiest vulns Infosec In Brief In a cautionary tale that no one is immune from attack, the security org MITRE has admitted that it got pwned....

PLUS: Samsung in 'emergency mode'; Tim Cook's Asian charm tour; APAC AI spend to surge Asia In Brief Elon Musk's X, the artist formerly known as Twitter, has vowed to commence court action against Australia's government over orders to take down content depicting violence and violent extremism....

With little competition at the goverment level, Windows giant has no incentive to make its systems safer Interview Microsoft has a shocking level of control over IT within the US federal government - so much so that former senior White House cyber policy director AJ Grotto thinks it's fair to call Redmond's recent security failures a national security issue....

VASA-1 framework can turn a still image and a cloned voice file into a plausible video of a person talking Microsoft this week demoed VASA-1, a framework for creating videos of people talking from a still image, audio sample, and text script, and claims - rightly - it's too dangerous to be released to the public....

4-letter survivor's move to Qt 6 means that, love it or hate it, Wayland is looming Version 2.0 of the LXQt desktop updates its foundations to Qt 6, as also used in KDE Plasma 6 - but still has one foot in the Qt 5 past, to ease the transition....

Bulletproof? Is it waterproof? Ts&Cs say: 'Failure to put Cybertruck in Car Wash Mode may result in damage' The perils of turning cars into computers were laid bare by a hapless Cybertruck owner who claimed his ride was rendered an $80,000 "paperweight" by something as benign as a wash....

Not yet the London Underground style efficient schematic we want, but it's a start Boffins at the UK's Surrey Space Centre have devised a way of determining the optimal route for spacecraft that doesn't require the engines to burn precious fuel....

You can leave your personal vendettas at home - we have work to do, Pichai warns Google is consolidating the various teams working on generative AI under the DeepMind team in a bid to accelerate development of more capable systems....

LEO rising in US military: Close encounters of the recon kind SpaceX is understood to be working with aerospace and defense biz Northrop Grumman on a spy satellite program that provides the US military with improved intelligence imagery....

Police say this appears to be a 'deliberate act.' Sacramento International Airport (SMF) suffered hours of flight delays yesterday after what appears to be an intentional cutting of an AT&T internet cable serving the facility....

Look out for a new star next week NASA is to send a solar sail demonstrator into orbit next week, and there is a good chance that the sail, measuring 860 square feet (80 square meters), will be visible from Earth....

Hot on the heels of Ubuntu Noble beta come the betas of the Qt-based remixes, with some interesting differences The beta versions of Lubuntuand Kubuntu 24.04 are out, showing that there's room to improve on the standard Ubuntu formula....

No wonder industry is exploring nuclear as an alternative to electricity US energy provider Exelon has calculated that power demand from datacenters in the Chicago area is set to increase ninefold, in more evidence that AI adoption is will put further strain electricity supplies....

Still available in Hong Kong and Macau, for now Apple has removed four apps from its China-regional app store, including Meta's WhatsApp and Threads, after it was ordered to do so by Beijing for security reasons....

That isn't what Tesla meant by Full Self-Driving Tesla has issued a recall notice for every single Cybertruck it has produced thus far, a sum of 3,878 vehicles....

Social media use and gaming show steep increases within the age group, after UK comms watchdog given new powers The UK's telecoms regulator has found that nearly a quarter of children between the ages of five and seven own a smartphone while a similar percentage use social media unsupervised....

It's the second time the World-Check list has fallen into the wrong hands The World-Check database used by businesses to verify the trustworthiness of users has fallen into the hands of cybercriminals....

Apparently an attempt to damage Ukraine's war effort Bavarian state police have arrested two German-Russian citizens on suspicion of being Russian spies and planning to bomb industrial and military facilities that participate in efforts to assist Ukraine defend itself against Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion....

No, boss, I'm not just playing a game. I'm testing compatibility. Honest It is almost 30 years since Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger was released. In addition to allowing users to kick some Kilrathi ass, the game also played an important role in testing Windows 95....

UK reckoning with prospect of millions of homes with obsolete hardware Months after being quizzed by a committee of cross-party MPs, the UK government is still failing to clarify ways to support the substitution of millions of smart meters that will become obsolete when 2G and 3G networks are switched off....

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in the debrief meeting On Call Welcome once more to On Call, The Register's Friday foray into tech support memories contributed by you, our much-appreciated readers....

TUC questions government's approach so far A UK federation of trades unions has published a bill designed to protect workers from the risks and harms" of AI-powered decision-making in the workplace....

Kirin 9010 SoC powering the Pura 70 is impressive, but doesn't indicate unforeseen prowess When Huawei debuted its Mate 60 smartphone in mid-2023, it turned heads around the world after teardown artists found it contained a system-on-chip manufactured by Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) using a 7nm process....

But Big Red's $8 billion investment plan may not be all it seems Oracle has had a big win in Japan that could turn into something enormous, and also revealed plans to score more success in the land of the rising sun....

Plans multilingual 400 billion parameter version, but starts with more modest fare Meta has unleashed its latest large language model (LLM) - named Llama 3 - and claims it will challenge much larger models from the likes of Google, Mistral, and Anthropic....

Robo-plane was made to restrain itself so as not to harm pilot or airframe Video The US Air Force Test Pilot School and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) claim to have achieved a breakthrough in machine learning by demonstrating that AI software can fly a modified F-16 fighter jet in a dogfight against human pilots....

Source blames BlackSuit infection - as separately ISP Frontier confirms cyberattack Octapharma Plasma has blamed IT "network issues" for the ongoing closure of its 150-plus centers across the US. It's feared a ransomware infection may be the root cause of the medical firm's ailment....

'I want to buy a car. That's all' Crooks are exploiting month-old OpenMetadata vulnerabilities in Kubernetes environments to mine cryptocurrency using victims' resources, according to Microsoft....

More like Instability AI, right kids? Stability AI is laying off staff in its search of steadier footing following the sudden departure of its CEO late last month....

Big Blue bosses retaliate against those seeking overtime, lawsuit claims IBM has been accused of cheating its executive assistants by denying them overtime pay and meal breaks and retaliating against them for accurately reporting their working hours....

Alphabet Workers Union says bosses refuse to listen to concerns Google has fired more than two dozen employees after they staged sit-ins at the web giant's offices in protest of its cloud contract with the Israeli government....

Do not pass go, do not collect $200, says government agency The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has slapped coding boot camp BloomTech with several punishments for alleged deceptive business practices....

And it's far from the only hyperscaler getting in on the act Microsoft is looking to significantly expand datacenter space to service expected AI demand, tripling the rate at which it adds capacity early in its next financial year. Other hyperscalers appear to be following suit....

Vote met strong opposition from Biden's office A draft law to restrict the US government's ability to procure data on citizens through data brokers will progress to the Senate after being passed in the House of Representatives....