The Register

Anna? Oh, she was just a demo persona, says organizer Presenters at the DevTernity software developer conference have been told the gig, scheduled to begin December 7, has been canceled after allegations emerged that one or more fake profiles had been added to the speaker list....

Crook did everything from SIM swaps to fake verified badge scams A Los Angeles man has been jailed after pulling off SIM-swap attacks on victims, hijacking social media accounts, committing fraud with Zelle payments, and impersonating Apple support....

TikTok parent reportedly gives hundreds the tintack TikTok parent ByteDance is expected to sashay away from its attempts at being a major video game maker, with studio division Nuverse reportedly set to shutter operations in the coming months....

Integration woes delay Nvidia's hopes of maintaining grip on Middle Kingdom Nvidia has reportedly delayed the launch of its latest Chinese-market AI accelerators until early next year over issues integrating the chip into server platforms....

Sparks fly as Elon's Musketeers sue for license plate liberation Tesla is suing the Swedish government to force it to take action against widespread strikes that have crippled the electric car maker's operations....

Mitigations require mix of updating libraries and manual customer action ownCloud has disclosed three critical vulnerabilities, the most serious of which leads to sensitive data exposure and carries a maximum severity score....

Less is more, as hyper heterogeneous computing heats up Server unit shipments for 2023 could crash by up to 20 percent on last year, despite revenue growing. The cause is hyper heterogeneous computing which is driving up the silicon content of systems, according to Omdia....

Bonuses for bums on seats is a new one for us at Vulture Towers A pair of Japanese tech startups are taking a new approach to the challenge of bringing reluctant employees back into the office by sweetening the pot with small bonuses for in-person working....

17 countries agree to adopt vision for artificial intelligence security as fears mount over pace of development The UK's National Cyber Security Agency (NCSC) and US's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have published official guidance for securing AI applications - a document the agencies hope will ensure that safety is inherent in AI's development....

Funding follows FDA approval for human trial Elon Musk's Neuralink has secured an additional $43 million in venture capital to help develop its digital interface to the human brain....

An option for after sun sets on Windows 10, but Microsoft might have a problem A new version of Tiny11 - a stripped-down version of Microsoft's flagship operating system - is here, now in full 23H2 guise....

Three guesses where DAMO plans to focus research from now on. Yep, you guessed it...AI China's cloud and e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing laboratory and laid off a number of researchers in what appears to be a bid to cut costs....

The horror of logging in only to find everything since May has vanished Google Drive users are reporting files mysteriously disappearing from the service, with some posters on the company's support forums claiming six or more months of work have unceremoniously vanished....

But the one-stop shop vision fails to take it far beyond the competition Analysis At Microsoft's Ignite conference, CEO Satya Nadella called Fabric perhaps the company's biggest data product launch since SQL Server, the third-highest-ranked database in the world....

Also: Qakbot on verge of permadeath, Australia can't deliver on ransom payment ban (yet), and Justin Sun's very bad month Infosec in Brief Cybercriminals working out of Russia go to great lengths to conceal their real identities, and you won't ever find the state trying to unmask them either - as long as they keep supplying the attacks on Axis nations. It's the reason why we found it so amusing that of all the ways the identity of an organized cybercrime gang leader could be revealed, it was Russian state media that may have recently outed someone of note....

Plus: Russia will soon be Putin up with lagging West, fake influencers and more AI in Brief Amazon launched AI Ready, a program that aims to train two million people in AI skills by 2025, and started the initiative by offering free courses and scholarships this week....

Unique institutions need unique security. Instead, they're fobbed off with the same old, same old Opinion The British Library's showpiece site, in a listed red brick building in St Pancras, is presided over by a large bronze sculpture depicting Isaac Newton poring over a document he's working with, measuring it with dividers....

Your brain and heart do not enjoy Zooming, Teamsing, or Webexing Feeling especially drained after a day on Zoom is not a figment of your imagination - videoconferencing fatigue (VCF) is real, according to a study penned by a quartet of Austrian investigators....

They're basically skyscrapers, says Charles Fortin. But they could be ships, cars, or rocks Charles Fortin can't get excited by 30-storey skyscrapers....

Hey Google, are the jails nicer in South Korea or the US? Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon - a wanted man in both South Korea and the United States - will soon face extradition from Montenegro after a court gave approval for his removal....

$195 a pop, delivered, pre-provisioned ready to stream desktops or apps re:Invent Amazon Web Services has announced the WorkSpaces Thin Client - a device dedicated to connecting to its WorkSpaces desktop-as-a service offering and based on Amazon's own "Fire Cube" smart TV box....

They get access to both China's internet and global platforms, and cash in on both China is offering foreign influencers access to its vast market in return for content that sings its praises and helps to spreads Beijing's desired narratives more widely around the world, according to think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)....

PLUS: Japan, UK, Italy, collab on new fighter jet; Korea's CBDC trial; Toshiba to delist Asia In Brief Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of contract manufacturer Foxconn, has ended his campaign to be elected as president of Taiwan....

Stout heart a requisite for software engineers in days of yore Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has recalled a time when Windows developers encountered the trundling terror of the USB Cart of Death following an unfortunate mistake live on stage during a Windows 98 keynote....

Hey Cortana: Why is David Tennant back as the BBC's longest lived space alien? The BBC is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its long-running science fiction series, Doctor Who, by popping a Surface Duo into the hands of actor David Tennant's latest take on the humanoid alien....

You may never have heard of it, but you almost certainly use it, possibly many times a day New versions of this amazingly versatile tool, used in most streaming video services and devices, don't come along very often....

Naughty engineers + inability to work email = $$$ A jury has sided with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) over the theft of source code and documentation. A total of $210 million was this week awarded....

Web storefront maker fixed the flaw, but not before blasting infoseccer The owner of the e-commerce store management system OpenCart has responded with hostility to a security researcher disclosing a vulnerability in the product....

Another mega-constellation incoming China has launched an Internet Technology test satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China's Sichuan Province....

Public Accounts Committee slams progress and questions plans Delays to a central plank of the UK tax collector's efforts to provide an end-to-end digital service "mean the Exchequer will likely miss out on additional tax revenue of 1.75 billion," according to a spending watchdog....

Think of all the crap discounted things you won't need to buy now HSBC's online and mobile banking systems crashed spectacularly this morning on the busiest shopping day of the year, potentially disappointing early risers looking for a spot of Black Friday retail therapy....

No, but here comes the Functional Source License to further muddy the open-source licensing waters Opinion Way back when we loaded software with punch cards and magnetic tape, all programs were "free software" and "open source." Then along came proprietary software, and everything changed. But programmers rebelled and developed the first formal definitions of free and open source software....

Ex-hosting biz boss to be sentenced for historic offences after being found guilty of earlier sexual assault Lawrence Jones, the founder and former chief exec at hosting biz UKFast, is awaiting a prison sentence after being found guilty of raping two women in the Greater Manchester area....

Constitutional court tells govt: Er, about that 60B you handed out... it's not legal A recent ruling by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has cast doubt over funds earmarked to subsidize the building of local chip factories by companies such as TSMC and Intel, it has emerged....

When is a spreadsheet not a spreadsheet? On Call Fridays can often feel like purgatory to prepare for the heavenly weekend, which is why The Register marks the day with a new installment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed tale of tech support torture....

Still not reusable, but at least it's getting closer to long-delayed launch The Ariane 6 launcher has successfully conducted a hot fire test -, an important achievement for the Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA)....

Buying on credit forbidden, affordability tests imposed, and accreditation required for big bets The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) revealed on Thursday its latest cryptocurrency regulations - measures designed to manage the digital payment tokens (DPTs) with measures akin to those some governments treat cigarettes or gambling....

Bharti Enterprises-backed outfit beats Kuiper and Starlink The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) has approved Eutelsat OneWeb to provide commercial satellite broadband services....

Tech companies should behave like the aviation industry and detail failures to improve safety for all The chief scientist of the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the region's internet registry, as called for operators of digital infrastructure to share more info about their outages....

Russia's Unified Digital Platform could be yours, along with many other less controversial projects India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has created the Global Digital Public Infrastructure Repository - a collection of code created by governments, made freely available to other nations....

One of US's largest underwriters forced to shut down a number of key systems Fortune 500 insurance biz Fidelity National Financial (FNF) has confirmed that it has fallen victim to a "cybersecurity incident."...

With Ingenuity still on the Red Planet, engineers have the best of both worlds NASA is planning more ambitious flights for the Mars Ingenuity helicopter as engineers work on its follow-up back on Earth....

Recall issued for fiery surprise Got a Lenovo USB-C Laptop Power bank? Is the model number PBLG2W? There's a chance the device could catch fire, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (USCPSC), and Lenovo has issued a recall notice....

Company hopes more folks needing AI compute globally will offset pain AI chip developer Graphcore is laying off staff in China after ceasing sales in the country, following the introduction of updated US export restrictions....

Kim's cyber cronies becoming more active, sophisticated in attempts to pwn global orgs The national cybersecurity organizations of the UK and the Republic of Korea (ROK) have issued a joint advisory warning of an increased volume and sophistication of North Korean software supply chain attacks....

Eyeing an August 2024 launch, if spacecraft is ready for its first mission Blue Origin is expected to launch two small Martian satellites as the first-ever interplanetary payload aboard its upcoming New Glenn rocket, NASA confirmed this week....

Customers complain of poor comms during huge outage that's sparked payroll fears A ransomware attack and resulting outages at direct debit collection company London & Zurich has forced at least one customer to take out a short-term loan as six-figure backlogs continue to cause cash flow mayhem....

Net-zero promises or zero-net progress? Greenpeace has savaged global electronics companies, claiming they are simply not doing enough with efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions....

Restoration project headed up by Steve Kaisler is gathering steam ANTIQUE CODE SHOW Xerox's pioneering graphical Lisp workstation operating system is not only alive, well, and MIT-licensed, but running in the cloud as well as on modern OSes....

Akamai sounds the alarm - won't name the vendors yet, but there is a fix coming Akamai has uncovered two zero-day bugs capable of remote code execution, both being exploited to distribute the Mirai malware and built a botnet army for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks....