The Register

Plus: Spending watchdog slams 'counter-productive staffing cuts' in technology Tech skills shortages and reliance on legacy systems are holding back the UK government's efforts to improve efficiency at a time when public finances are under severe pressure....

Fun technique - but how practical is it? Some smart cookies at institutions in China and Singapore have devised a technique for reading keystrokes and pilfering passwords or passcodes from Wi-Fi-connected mobile devices on public networks, without any hardware hacking....

Pensioners, employees and medical pros among those aiming to be compensated for data exposure The number of claimants signing up to a collective action against Capita over the infamous March cyber security break-in and subsequent data exposure keeps going up, according to the lawyer overseeing the case....

Deal for tax collector's legacy application services goes to troupe of suppliers including Accenture, Capgemini and IBM Exclusive UK government has named the winning suppliers on the first tranche of a tech deal which could be worth a total of 4.2 billion ($5.24 billion) for application software services supporting the nation's tax collector....

If the Chocolate Factory can't track you to sell ads, what does it have left? A group of Dutch consumer orgs sued Google today for what it alleges are "large-scale privacy violations."...

Personal AI can redefine the handheld experience and perhaps preserve privacy too Column Smartphone innovation has plateaued. The iPhone 15, launched overnight, has some nice additions. But my iPhone 13 will meet my needs for a while and I won't rush to replace it. My previous iPhone lasted four years....

Humans just can't leave anything alone, huh The leftover lunar descent module, which carried the Apollo 17 crew to the surface of the Moon in 1972, triggers tiny artificial moonquakes that rumble through Earth's natural satellite every lunar morning, according to research....

Same salespeople and same lock-in, which may actually help this time Analyst firm Gartner has observed its clients asking hyperscale cloud vendors to behave more like legacy tech vendors - and feels that might not be the worst thing to happen to organizations seeking to tap into the value of multi-cloud....

Running unsupported and unpatched versions of Exchange Server will do that to a country Sri Lanka's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) is currently investigating a ransomware attack on the government's cloud infrastructure that affected around 5,000 email accounts, it revealed on Tuesday....

As Japan's space agency preps a rover to land on Martian moon Phobos South Korea's science ministry has released a photo taken by the nation's Danuri Moon orbiter depicting the landing site of India's Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission....

'Obtaining a disruptive capability could be one possible motivation behind this surge in attacks' Espionage-ware thought to have been developed by China has once again been spotted within the power grid of a neighboring nation....

White House bags more voluntary commitments Eight big names in tech, including Nvidia, Palantir, and Adobe, have agreed to red team their AI applications before they're released and prioritize research that will make their systems more more trustworthy, the White House tells us....

Plus: Adobe and Android also tackle abused-in-the-wild flaws Patch Tuesday It's every Windows admin's favorite day of the month: Patch Tuesday. Microsoft emitted 59 patches for its September update batch, including two for bugs that have already been exploited....

Taiwanese also plot $100M investment in Arm IPO, x86 giant gets real about Thunderbolt 5 TSMC is on a spending spree. The Taiwanese factory goliath just acquired a 10 percent stake in Intel-owned IMS Nanofabrication for $430 million and also announced plans to drop another $100 million on Arm's initial public offering (IPO) this week....

Thanks, Europe. Couldn't have done it without EU Video Apple surprised almost no one on Thursday with the announcement of several iPhone 15 models and a renovated smartwatch, the details of which were more or less known or guessed by the cadre of analysts, journalists, and pundits who follow such things....

DARPA awards Boeing $70.5M to develop intercept technology No longer content to trail its rivals in the development of hypersonic weapons, the US military is turning to development of hypersonic weapon interceptors....

$50k to breathe new life into its corpse. The rest of us must move on to OpenSSL 3.0 OpenSSL 1.1.1 has reached the end of its life, making a move to a later version essential for all, bar those with extremely deep pockets....

Back to the drawing board with those China sanctions then, eh? The US looks to be tightening up its technology export restrictions on China following Huawei's release of a new 5G smartphone using homemade chips, a feat many had thought it would not be capable of delivering....

That or it's just really gassy The James Webb Space Telescope continues to deliver the goods with scientists publishing insights into the atmospheric properties of a habitable-zone exoplanet....

Another would be copyright class action Pulitzer Prize winning US novelist Michael Chabon and several other writers have filed a proposed class action accusing OpenAI of copyright infringement for allegedly pulling their work into the datasets used to train the models behind ChatGPT....

Exploit observed in the wild as Mountain View pushes out updates Google has rushed out a fix for a vulnerability in its Chrome browser, noting that an exploit already exists in the wild....

Jean Baudrillard would've LOVED this Comment The Postmodernist French philosopher Jean Baudrillard was known for his concept of hyperreality, where the real and imaginary are confused....

Don't expect 'armies of programmers' to rewrite Cerner, says Larry, talking up low-code app dev platform APEX Software and hardware giant Oracle disappointed the stock markets with slightly less than expected revenue for Q1 of 2024, while CTO Larry Ellison teased a closer alliance with Microsoft and its Azure cloud platform....

Chipmaker reigns supreme, at least until iGiant gets its house in order Apple looks to have further delayed the introduction of its own 5G modem chips after it extended an agreement with Qualcomm to use its components until at least 2026....

Not to be a buzzkill, but let's take a deep dive into the disparity Generative AI currently only makes up a small fraction of cloud computing costs for enterprises and cloud providers, despite all the hype....

Science shocker: Real BFFs understand authenticity and sincerity can't be machine-generated People feel less confident in their friendships if they discover that their buddies have been sending them messages written with the help of AI....

You're probably using cloud providers bespoke chips already and not even know it As cloud datacenters grow ever larger and complex, providers are increasingly developing their own chips to eke out performance, efficiency, and cost savings over their competitors....

Remember Microsoft's first attempt at an Android foldable? Of course you don't Microsoft has drawn a discreet veil over another of its attempts to become relevant in the mobile hardware space. The original Surface Duo has dropped out of support, meaning it is bereft of support as well as users....

Accused software giant of MFA error that rendered work address useless The New Jersey attorney who sued Microsoft for $1.75 million claiming verification gremlins had cut him off from his paid work email filed for voluntary dismissal on Friday....

Flipping the script to a control plane Interview Cloud software automation generally begins with scripts, but at some point, according to Oren Teich, chief product officer of Upbound, that approach becomes unmanageable....

Promised change to allow Windows system links open in the actual default browser not yet evident Last month, Microsoft said that for customers in Europe, its Insider build of Windows 11 now opens web links associated with Windows system components in the user's actual default browser instead of in Microsoft Edge....

Claims it's already comparable to finance industry pros and capable of recommending insurance plans Alibaba's fintech arm, Ant Group, has unveiled a large language model and related applications for the financial services industry that it thinks can offer advice to both professionals and consumers....

IPO-hungry chip biz promises to donate copies to universities - may also demand a reprint Reverse-engineering expert Maria Markstedter, whose domain names were wrestled from her by Arm the other week for trademark reasons, has said the British processor design biz's lawyers are now reviewing her Arm assembly language book for any trademark violations - and may make her issue a reprint....

You can't take a machine to lunch or put it to sleep with PowerPoint, but you can try to shape its worldview Billions of new buyers of goods and services will emerge in coming years, but salespeople won't be able to woo them all with slideware, gifts, football tickets, or lunch - because many of these new customers are machines....

Open AI boss to get 'red carpet' at immigration OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been granted Indonesia's first ever golden visa - entitling him to reside in the archipelagic nation for up to ten years - in recognition of his potential to generate inbound investment....

Hundreds more iconic props set to go on sale from collection of late Hollywood model maker Greg Jein A long-lost model of an X-Wing Fighter used in the climactic Death Star battle sequence of 1977's Star Wars has been discovered - and it's for sale if you have a spare $400,000 (320K) to meet the opening bid....

Musk snaps up Nvidia GPUs even as he builds Dojo. Finance bods foresee SaaSy AI, rivers of cash Tesla's forthcoming Dojo supercomputer could add as much as $500 billion to the automaker's valuation - which currently sits at $875 billion - according to a Morgan Stanley Research note....

On one hand, it's private-public cooperation. On the other, it's heavy-handed state intervention. We take a look at this important unfolding case Analysis The USA's Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has narrowed a lower court ruling that ordered the US government not to pressure social media companies to moderate user-posted content....

Would be a new low, even for these lowlifes Cybercrime crew BianLian claims to have broken into the IT systems of a top non-profit and stolen a ton of files, including what the miscreants claim is financial, health, and medical data....

Mull it over, think tanks, while we roll out this tech into every corner of life Google has put together a $20 million to fund studies into how artificial intelligence can be developed and used responsibly and have a positive impact on the world....

Ransomware? Some would be willing to bet on that MGM Resorts has shut down some of its IT systems following a "cybersecurity incident" that the casino-and-hotel giant says is currently under investigation....

In its rush to lead the generative ML world, Redmond may have developed a datacenter drinking problem Microsoft's water consumption surged 34 percent to 6.4 million cubic metres in 2022 and a generative AI guzzle may be to blame....

It's not hip to be this Square Square says the widespread outage that hit its payment terminals last week was caused by a DNS failure and not a cyberattack nor an intrusion....

Akamai reckons traffic flood peaked at55.1 million packets per second Akamai says it thwarted a major distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack aimed at a US bank that peaked at55.1 million packets per second earlier this month....

AB 587's true purpose is to eliminate speech the government finds objectionable, lawyers argue A California social media transparency law is being challenged in court by Elon Musk's X Corp on the grounds that it violates the US Constitution's First Amendment right to freedom of speech....

The clock is ticking for Windows troubleshooters, plus Microsoft's preparing a new OS release As the arrival of the next version of Windows 11 looms, it is also time to prepare a not-so-fond farewell to the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) and its troubleshooters....

Kubernetes configuration laid bare by chatbot, customer context next on roadmap Kubernetes management platform vendor D2iQ has become the latest vendor to stir generative AI into its product....

Samsung's KSMBD server hitting primetime has several significant implications The next release of the Linux kernel, 6.6, has hit release candidate status. As usual, it contains a number of new features, but we think one has more potential ramifications than all the others put together....

Concept will need to be scaled up to keep more than a small dog alive NASA has called time on the oxygen-generating experiment bolted to its Mars Perseverance rover....

The origin story of the 'in case u need to lose a boner fast' tweet Comment Elon Musk's Weltanschauung isn't so much "forgive and forget" as it is "resent and remember" - then post a nasty meme on the internet about the person who "wronged" you....