The Register

Deposit in 19-million-year old caldera could dwarf sources in Bolivia, Chile and Australia A lithium find in the McDermitt Caldera region on the border between US states of Oregon and Nevada has excited media attentions with the promise of lithium deposits exceeding those in Bolivia, which make up nearly a quarter of the world's resources....

Go native or go home: End of servicing plan rolled out for legacy printer drivers in fresh update Microsoft has made it clear: it will ax third-party printer drivers in Windows....

Plus: Google CEO says AI will be biggest tech shift in our lives, new official AI words on Dictionary.com AI in brief The US Internal Revenue Service has said it will use AI software to go after wealthy individuals and corporations violating tax laws....

Plus: Spending on AI model training infra now the top priority among datacenter operators Feature Cloud-based infrastructure services date back at least as far as 2006, when AWS introduced its S3 storage platform, followed by Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances. Since then, cloud has become a global industry topping $100 billion in size, but some customers have begun to question the move to these services and started to bring workloads back in house....

Oracle's repeated public sector failures prove a different approach is needed Opinion Fill in the blank: "_______ project fails, costing millions." Five points if you chose "Government IT," five points for "Oracle," and a gold star if you had both....

A subtle change to a vital piece of equipment almost derailed a major project Who, me? Welcome once again gentle reader to another Monday morning, and with it an instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers cushion your entry to the working week with tales of things going not quite right....

Leaders settle for modest action on issues including AI, stablecoins, cross-border payments The annual G20 leaders' summit has delivered a tame set of resolutions regarding technology, with a 2027 target year for the implementation of a planned CryptoAsset Reporting Framework (CARF) the most impactful proposal as it is designed specifically to take into account the crypto sector's aim of providing an alternative to established and regulated financial institutions....

Managers warn company goals can't be achieved unless coders get more face time and less FaceTime IBM Software has mandated a swift return to the office for staff globally, telling those living within a 50 mile (80km) radius of a Big Blue office to be at their desks at least three days a week - to "spend more meaningful time together."...

It's not 'Alexa: build me a K8s cluster' but could become Ansible or Chef using models trained on log files to recommend what your app needs Generative AI boosters are beginning to explore how the technology could be used to augment infrastructure as code tools, according to Arun Chandrasekaran, a distinguished VP analyst at Gartner....

ALSO: Alibaba Cloud succession plan overturned; Fujtisu's Thai takeaway; Australia takes on PayPal Asia In Brief The ban on using iPhones in some central Chinese government agencies is reportedly more extensive than first chronicled by Tthe Wall Street Journal. Japan's Nikkei last Friday reported that local governments and state-owned companies also frown upon their staff using iThings in the office....

ALSO: Verizon turns self in for reduced fine, malvertising comes to macOS, and this week's critical vulnerabilities In brief Watch out, cyber security researchers: Suspected North Korean-backed hackers are targeting members of the infosec community again, according to Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG)....

Soldiers, first responders may eventually be able to phone home from their clothes The US government is investing in network-connected garments through a program called - we kid you not - SMART ePANTS....

Any other monthly plans want to cancel themselves? BMW has decided to stop charging car owners a subscription fee to use their heated car seats, though the German automaker remains committed to paid on-demand services....

NixOS event organizers say community unhappy about funding from Pentagon contractor On Monday, the organizers of NixCon, which celebrates the NixOS Linux distribution, welcomed Anduril Industries as a sponsor of the event....

No patch yet - but you've got strong creds and MFA enabled anyway, yeah? Heads up: ransomware slingers are exploiting a Cisco zero-day weakness in some of its VPN products. The networking giant has issued an interim workaround to address the oversight as it works on a full patch....

AtariAge is older than the current Atari incarnation - retro enough for you? Planning a bit of retro fun over the weekend? The news that Atari is to acquire retro gaming forum AtariAge might dampen your enthusiasm or raise your spirits, depending on your point of view....

Gas-guzzling US favors hybrids while Europe prefers battery power Shipments of electric cars - both battery and plug-in hybrid vehicles - are set to grow by 19 percent in 2024 to hit 17.9 million units worldwide, according to Gartner....

As it reaches Release Candidate status, one change among many will have more visible impact GNOME 45 has reached the RC stage, but it has a change that will impact more users: it's altering the way extensions work, which will impose strict versioning requirements....

Watchdog finds space agency has no plans to measure SLS production costs NASA has received another kick from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) as space agency officials said the quiet part out aloud: "The SLS program is unaffordable."...

Boss Mark Liu says silicon ready but advanced packaging isn't Bad news for anyone looking to get their hands on Nvidia's top specced GPUs, such as the A100 or H100: it's not going to get any easier to source the parts until at least the end of 2024, TSMC has warned....

No user interaction needed for this one as Pegasus turns up via iMessage Apple devices are again under attack, with a zero-click, zero-day vulnerability used to deliver Pegasus spyware to iPhones discovered in the wild....

Tax collector's DALAS waits in wings to tackle humongous legacy estate IBM spin-off Kyndryl has won a 15-month contract from the UK tax collector to manage its mainframe estate and prepare the services for cloud migration....

Southampton top for connectivity flops, says Uswitch research Suffered from broadband blackouts over the past 12 months? You aren't alone because an estimated 22 million Brits endured outages of three hours or more, and are paying a higher monthly subscription for the pleasure....

Armbian 23.08 is out, and adds preliminary support for this ultralight Snapdragon laptop Review The latest release of Armbian helps with the non-trivial problem of installing and running an arbitrary Linux distro on Arm computers....

Banks aren't very creative, which became an issue for one customer On Call With Friday once more upon us, another week has descended from the energetic optimism of a Monday to the deflated downtime of Friday. To ease that slump The Register as always presents a new instalment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column that shares tells of tech support triumphs and terror....

Sometimes using AI to make hilariously wrong images that still drive social media engagement Microsoft, which earlier this week admitted not being able to detect a Chinese attack on its own infrastructure, has published a report [PDF] titled "Digital threats from East Asia increase in breadth and effectiveness." In the report, Redmond's Threat Intelligence group expounds on its fresh insight into evolving online aggressions from both China and North Korea....

The Mate 60 Pro keeps making waves - this time worrying Korean chipmaker If The Register ever ran an awards program*, the choice for 2023's Most Disruptive Smartphone would be easy: Huawei's Mate 60 Pro has created a geopolitical ruckus like no other device, now giving South Korean memory-maker SK hynix a supply chain and compliance mystery to ponder....

Floats draft guidelines prohibiting 'dark patterns' developed with help from Amazon, Google, and Meta The Indian government has commenced a consultation on how to regulate - and possibly prohibit - tricky tactics called "dark patterns" designed to fool consumers as they transact online....

Confidential figures for Tesla, Snap, Roku, Avnet, others swiped and used to rack up millions in ill-gotten gains Vladislav Klyushin, the Russian owner of security penetration testing firm M-13, was jailed for nine years in the US on Thursday, for his involvement in a cyber-crime operation that stole top corporations' confidential financial information to make $93 million through insider trading....

Exploding drone subs 'lost connectivity, washed ashore harmlessly' Elon Musk personally ordered SpaceX's Starlink to stop its satellite broadband service in Ukraine, scuttling a major offensive operation by the nation against Russia, according to a biography about the billionaire tycoon....

Top admin, HR managers, devs go on transatlantic deny-list The US and UK governments named and sanctioned 11 Russians said to be connected to the notorious Trickbot cybercrime crew this week....

In the march to rid world of third-party cookie tracking, we've picked up targeting APIs Google's Privacy Sandbox is now open for business, the search advertising behemoth said today....

Tough luck, freeloaders: You're on your own Microsoft vowed on Thursday it would step in and defend paying customers if they face any copyright lawsuits for using Copilot....

BIOS update incoming to rescue stricken users with exotic Intel chips There's good news for those suffering from the dreaded UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR Blue Screen Of Death error following the installation of August's Windows update....

It's not a broken business model if the subsidies make up for cratering market and flagging demand Bitcoin mining outfit Riot Platforms earned $31.7 million from Texas power authorities last month for curtailing operations - far more than the value of the Bitcoin it mined in the same period....

Sueball alleges company at fault after employee info leaked, including Musk's An ex-Tesla staffer has filed a proposed class action lawsuit that blames poor access control at the carmaker for a data leak, weeks after Tesla itself sued the alleged leakers, two former employees....

A quiet period for the IT industry is a good time to rebuild and refresh, apparently Taking advantage of the summer lull, there are new versions of a slew of distros: Nitrux, Ubuntu DDE, Linux Lite, Manjaro, and siblings Mageia, OpenMandriva and PCLinuxOS....

Starship Super Heavy to remain on terra firma until US watchdog ticks off the corrective actions SpaceX supremo Elon Musk has declared that the next fully stacked Starship is primed for blast off. Sadly, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) doesn't see things in quite the same way....

Learn to love Microsoft Graph or say hello to Mr 404 Microsoft will finally kill off the Outlook REST API v2.0 in 2024, years later than planned after the company bowed to protests from its customers and partners....

You're just giving manufacturers carte blanche to profit off personal data Updated Depressingly predictable research from Which? serves as another reminder, if one was needed, that furnishing your home with internet-connected "smart" devices could be a dumb idea if you'd rather try to preserve your privacy....

Two and a half years after Brexit, some cheer for scientists based in Britain. We're... baaaaxit (sorry!) UK scientists can once again pitch for chunks of the EU's 86 billion ($107 billion) Horizon program after the British government negotiated re-entry to the flagship fund following a Brexit-related hiatus....

But don't celebrate yet ... it has simply kicked the online safety can down the road, Westminster style Comment Sanity appears to have prevailed in the debate over the UK Online Safety bill after the government agreed to ditch proposals - at least for the time being - to legislate the scanning of encrypted messages....

Microsoft among in-memory AI chip startup's backers Generative AI infrastructure builds have given chip startups a hardware niche yet to be targeted by larger players, and in-memory biz d-Matrix has just scored $110 million in Series-B funding to take its shot....

Hat tip to the late Lester Clare Van Atta, whose array is behind the system A group of MIT boffins have successfully tested what they said is the first practically useful ultra-low power underwater networking and communication technology, and all it took was some nearly 70-year old technology to get it going....

Targeted ads require data usage consent under EU regulations A court in Oslo, Norway, has upheld the Norwegian Data Protection Authority's daily fines against Meta for delivering behavioral advertising in violation of data privacy rules....

Agreed bid prices in advance with local rival for work in Australian mining camps DXC has been named as a participant in a cartel that rigged bids for work in Australia....

So what? Smartphones are routinely restricted in, or excluded from, sensitive locations Analysis Chinese authorities have reportedly banned Apple's iPhones from some government offices....

Now for the hard part: testing its ability to pick a safe landing spot Japan's space exploration agency (JAXA) has successfully launched a rocket carrying the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) - an effort to test new technologies that allow spacecraft to pick their own landing locations....

Oh, what a foul-up as database maintenance created a mess Toyota has revealed a server running out of disk space after botched maintenance was the cause of an outage that forced it to shut down 14 manufacturing plants across Japan last week....

It's not all bad news. Poets are safe. And machines will take some jobs no human wants Generative AI will replace 2.4 million US jobs by 2030, and influence another eleven million, but other forms of automation will cost more jobs, according to a report from analyst firm Forrester....