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Waiting on that thumbs up from the FAA The US Air Force is dipping its toe into electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft by trialing a short-hop air taxi that has yet to get FAA certification to fly....

As expert panel suggests some tweaks to boost public's confidence in FISA The White House has weighed in on the Section 702 debate, urging lawmakers to reauthorize, "without new and operationally damaging restrictions," the controversial snooping powers before they expire at the end of the year....

Plus: Google DeepMind's latest visual-language model robot, and more AI in brief Four research papers this week concluded that users' political beliefs and behavior don't seem to be all that impacted by information amplified by Facebook's algorithms....

Neighbors say it's an eyesore, Musk's underlings won't let inspectors near it Updated A huge super-bright flashing X logo appeared atop the HQ of the company formerly known as Twitter on Friday, spurring complaints from neighbors and visits from San Francisco building inspectors that Elon Musk's underlings rebuffed twice over the weekend....

How they do it remains a mystery, say boffins in research paper Large language models such as OpenAI's GPT-3 can display the ability to solve complex reasoning tasks which humans crack using analogies....

Perhaps that'll focus your minds on speeding up your adoption of IPv6, eh? Cloud giant AWS will start charging customers for public IPv4 addresses from next year, claiming it is forced to do this because of the increasing scarcity of these and to encourage the use of IPv6 instead....

GPU giant says you can't stop secondary sales, surveillance gear maker maintains innocence Updated Video surveillance equipment maker Hikvision was paid $6 million by the Chinese government last year to provide technology that could identify members of the nation's Uyghur people, a Muslim ethnic majority, according to physical security monitoring org IPVM....

In an industry that runs on hype, this might just live up to it Arc is a new Chromium-based web browser which shakes up the standard workflow that browsers have had ever since tabs were invented. It's good, but it will take some getting used to....

Got to keep up with those FTTP builds and the tens of thousands of staff that will leave BT, the former state owned telecommunications monopoly that is building Britain's fiber backbone, has confirmed current Telia Company president and CEO Allison Kirkby as its new boss from the end of January 2024....

Middle Ages maths to the rescue Future satellite navigation systems intended for Earth's Moon may be aided by a model of it developed with methods that go back to mathematician Fibonacci, who lived 800 years ago....

Clue: Nothing like what's on offer today Opinion "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today," fumed Admiral David Beatty during 1916's Battle of Jutland. Fair enough: three of the Royal Navy's finest vessels had just blown up and sank....

Techie installing an upgrade did everything right. But the user was already wrong Who, Me? Greetings and felicitations, dear reader-folk, and welcome to the soft landing to the working week that we at The Reg call Who, Me? in which we share tales of readers like you who found themselves in unfortunate circumstances - often of their own making....

Comms vendor's employee allegedly generated bogus licences and hijacked sysadmin accounts to make more A New Jersey man has plead guilty to selling pirated Avaya software licenses, allegedly generated and shopped by one of the vendor's system administrators....

Thankfully the probe regularly phones home to fix this sort of mess NASA revealed on Friday that its venerable Voyager 2 probe is currently incommunicado, because the space agency pointed its antenna in the wrong direction....

It might be the only non-boring thing about the release, which has Linus Torvalds celebrating Linus Torvalds has noticed a "weird numerological coincidence" during work on version 6.5 of the Linux kernel....

ALSO: Japan's government to write docs with AI; 5G boom coming; India denies infosec issues Asia In Brief Elon Musk's rebadged Twitter, X.com, has been blocked in Indonesia as the domain was formerly used to for websites containing content deemed unsuitable, such as - ahem - adult entertainment and gambling....

ALSO: China says US hacked it right back, BreachForums users have been pwned, and this week's critical vulns Infosec in brief US senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) thinks it's Microsoft's fault that Chinese hackers broke into Exchange Online, and he wants three separate government agencies to launch investigations and "hold Microsoft responsible for its negligent cyber security practices."...

Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix's guitars, Vader's helmet, Captain Kirk's chair, and more Paul Allen left more than just a tech legacy and billions of dollars behind when he died. The Microsoft co-founder amassed a sizable collection of unique artifacts from popular movies and music, which is now headed to a permanent home at Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture....

Privacy ritual aims to deter fingerprinting of the iFaithful Apple has told developers writing apps for its shiny stuff that they will soon have to explain why their programs use certain sensitive APIs....

Mar-a-Lago IT director told 'the boss wanted the server deleted' Federal prosecutors have expanded their criminal case against a famous Floridian and his loyal minions for allegedly mishandling national security secrets and not being forthright about the storage and handling of hundreds of classified documents....

IDORs of the storm Personal, financial, and health information belonging to millions of folks has been stolen via a particular class of website vulnerability, say cybersecurity agencies in the US and Australia. They're urging developers to review their code and squish these bugs for good....

Give them Z80s, Joe, and tell 'em to like it Some American lawmakers aren't happy with US efforts to limit exports of AI chips to China, and have called on the Biden administration to enact tighter controls....

US, Europe and China all rushing to create next gen of experts and upskill existing workforce Chip designer Arm is looking to address the shortage of vital skills in the semiconductor industry with an initiative that aims to help find the next generation of talent and upskill the existing workforce....

Also: China's 'got a bigger hacking program than that of every major nation combined' Nearly all of the FBI's technical intelligence on malicious "cyber actors" in the first half of this year was obtained via Section 702 searches, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray....

PRC semiconductor exports curiously rose 19% y-o-y for first 9 months of 2022 Chinese companies, including state-owned defense companies, are evading tech sanctions and fueling Moscow's war in Ukraine, according to a US report released on Thursday....

Mir 2.14 and its easily installable sibling Miriway Canonical is still working away on its own Mir display server, used in several of its IoT product lines. Version 2.14 gains more functionality useful for full desktop environments....

When you get to Chapter 14 of a Unix book you're ready for a laugh In more than a few IT departments, or more likely in the pub on Friday night, there will be the ritual singing of the Unix Sysadmin Song, which is still remembered 28 years after its genesis in Harley Hahn's book, The Unix Companion....

Watch out, mad scientists - your careers are over AI systems are rapidly improving and will accelerate scientific discoveries - but the technology could also give criminals the power to create bioweapons and dangerous viruses in as little as two to three years, according to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei....

Sounds to us like the beginning of an entertaining, but tragic, Who Me tale AI may be coming to help sysadmins, with the promise of alleviating repetitive tasks like log analysis, resource monitoring, vulnerability prioritization, and patch management, but few of them are put in charge of its implementation....

Both support biz and vendor claim victories in latest chapter in 13-year legal saga In litigation dating back to the year the first iPad was released, Oracle and SAP support specialist Rimini Street is vowing to appeal against the latest court ruling that it infringed Big Red's copyright, removed copyright notices, and made false statements about support practices....

There's still life in the wider Version 6 Unix family - and 9front too Not only are various editions of Version 6 UNIX, often known as V6 for short, still being maintained - but new ones continue to appear....

CFO says paying customers expected to flood in from 2024 Microsoft is betting big on generative AI by spending many billions of dollars more on building datacenter capacity in anticipation of a rapid uptick in demand from paying customers, expected to start in anger from calendar 2024....

Phasing out epoxy resin laminate with biodegradable substrate might be costly, though Infineon Technologies will using recyclable printed circuit boards (PCBs) based on a material developed by a UK startup in upcoming demo boards....

We've dipped into the mailbag for more tales of rogue cabling and keyboard confusion On Call Some say that working for The Register is one never-ending holiday, but On Call - our weekly reader-contributed tale of techies being asked to endure atrocious emergencies, has taken a break. This week we therefore present some shorter tales from the On Call mailbag that were sent in response to an On Call from June 2nd, regarding ethernet cable strung through trees to avoid blowing the budget on a WAN, and an On Call from June 30th concerning the perils of international keyboard layouts ....

From Norman Cook to Tim Cook A patent granted to Apple this week suggests the iGiant is, if not actively working on, at least entertaining the thought of introducing some modular hardware into its lineup - including, bizarrely, an old-fashioned record player....

Pat on the back for Pat who's back in the black after getting costs whacked and demand stacked After racking up $3.5 billion in losses over the past two quarters, Intel managed to stanch the bleeding and return to profitability in the second quarter....

This tech is certainly full of something California's Attorney General is reportedly investigating complaints about the safety of Tesla's so-called self-driving features, as well as boasts made by the automaker about the technology in its marketing....

Sorry, FTC, didn't mean to step on you like that Two US Senators have proposed legislation to create a government commission to tame Big Tech, an often uttered goal on both sides of the political aisle that has yet to be realized....

'Gay furry hackers' say it's in response to 'attacks on human rights' and noooothing to do with Russia-Ukraine NATO is investigating claims by miscreants that they broke into the military alliance's unclassified information-sharing and collaboration IT environment, stole information belonging to 31 nations, and leaked 845 MB of compressed data....

Boffins build automated system to smash safety guardrails The "guardrails" built atop large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude to prevent undesirable text output can be easily bypassed - and it's unclear whether there's a viable fix, according to computer security researchers....

Maximus plus Deloitte and Chuck E. Cheese join 500+ victim orgs Accounting giant Deloitte, pizza and birthday party chain Chuck E. Cheese, government contractor Maximus, and the Hallmark Channel are among the latest victims that the Russian ransomware crew Clop claims to have compromised via the MOVEit vulnerability....

Will make regulating China's 5G telecom equipment look like a cinch Chinese made AI-enabled products should spark similar concerns to Middle Kingdom sourced 5G equipment and therefore be regulated, said think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on Thursday....

Plus: US warns domestic chip suppliers will feel the pain Prices of two vital chipmaking materials are rising ahead of export restrictions imposed by the Chinese government coming into effect next week....

Hey, at least this one isn't an actual bomb NASA's ambitions to speed up space travel are about to go nuclear, as its joint project with military boffinry unit DARPA has found a builder for an experimental nuclear thermal rocket vehicle, or X-NTRV: Lockheed Martin....

AI runs on chips, remember Despite yet another dip in wafer shipments, major chip shops are predicting a resurgence in the latter half of 2023....

Machine learning helps take fuzz out of thermal imaging A machine learning-assisted approach to thermal imaging could transform the night vision of autonomous vehicles and other nascent robots....

'The solution to the surveillance economy seems to be more surveillance' Vivaldi boss tells El Reg Google's Web Environment Integrity (WEI) proposal, according to one of the developers working on the controversial fraud fighting project, aims to make the web "more private and safe."...

Antitrust inspectors trying to figure out if Redmond has breached local competition laws Updated The European Commission has officially launched a formal investigation" into whether Microsoft flouted EU competition rules by bundling Teams with dominant productivity software suite Office 365 and Microsoft 365....

Come back Teams, all is forgiven No, your colleagues aren't just taking ages to respond, Slack is currently staggering to its feet after experiencing a global outage across all regions....

Utility to consider introducing restrictions Thames Water is considering measures to cut down the water used by some datacenters, including fitting flow restrictors or charging operators more at peak times....