The Register

Ex-employee was offered $15M by judge in 2021, but asked for a new trial instead Tesla is being ordered to pay a former employee at least $3 million to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit at its assembly plant in Fremont, California – just a fifth of the amount the judge offered him in 2021.…

Staff WFH so internal cafes are baking too many muffins, says doc, while bus shuttles and yoga classes are empty Google's beancounters are hunting down ways to satisfy corporate expense bill reductions, with many staff asked to sweat PC assets and some noting things like availability of staples and sticky tape becoming more limited.…

Agency asks for industry input into medium Earth orbit system The US Space Systems Command (SSC) wants input from techies and the aerospace industry as it maps out the development of a new satellite-based missile detection and tracking system.…

Some 1.4 million under-13s used the app in 2020 by the ICO's estimates Fresh off the back of an embarrassing "grilling" by US Congress on national security grounds, TikTok has received a more concrete reprimand from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) – a fine of £12.7 million ($15.8 million) for "misusing children's data."…

Just as namesake ISP Virgin Media* falls silent out of respect Space launch outfit Virgin Orbit has filed for bankruptcy in the US just days after suspending operations and laying off most of its staff. The company said it intends to continue trying to sell the business while under Chapter 11 protection.…

That means next version of the most popular Linux distro is getting close Ubuntu "Lunar Lobster" is the middle release between the 2022 and 2024 long-term support releases so this is when Canonical tries out some new stuff.…

Yes, DoD admins, your users can ask for this now, but make sure your bots are in compliance Administrators at the US Department of Defense are just like you: soon they'll have the option to add chatbots and message extensions into Teams for users.…

Even managed to kick its own website into touch in spectacular fail Updated Liberty-owned UK broadband pusher Virgin Media has fallen on its face this morning, with users across the country reporting complete broadband failure for a number of hours, among them some of the reporters on this news desk.…

It's you, hi, you're the problem, it's you A public evidence session about artificial intelligence in weapons systems in the UK's House of Lords last week raised concerns over a piece of the AI puzzle that is rarely addressed: the effect of the technology on humans themselves, and specifically its potential to degrade our own mental competence and decision-making.…

You win this round, Cook – but Europe has already lined up changes Britain fluffed Analysis The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was forced to abandon its inquiry into Apple's role in the mobile browsing and cloud gaming markets because the agency missed its filing deadlines.…

Block complies with Indian policy, but boost may violate avian network's state-sponsored media policy Twitter has followed Indian government policy and geo-blocked an account from neighboring Pakistan, while seemingly violating its own policies by elevating the accounts of Chinese state-controlled media.…

Germany may follow, France and Ireland look for guidance from Rome As Italy suspends use of ChatGPT, other European Union countries are said to be interested in following suit over data privacy concerns.…

Blokes happily bluffed; women played it by the book, leaving the bank struggling to hire Australia's Westpac bank re-wrote its job ads for infosec roles after finding the language it used deterred female candidates.…

Even a politician who visited China last week has binned the app Australia has joined the growing list of nations that have decided TikTok represents an unacceptable risk when running on government-owned devices, so has decided not to allow it onto those machines.…

Crikey! Get those banknotes to an ATM, mate! The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ Bank) has stopped handling cash over the counter at some branches.…

We speak to the boffins behind latest trick to fool Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa Academics in the US have developed an attack dubbed NUIT, for Near-Ultrasound Inaudible Trojan, that exploits vulnerabilities in smart device microphones and voice assistants to silently and remotely access smart phones and home devices.…

Reports suggest Beijing may speed past rivals with supersonic helper for its air superiority weapon China may be aiming to match US efforts to operate pilotless aircraft alongside crewed fighter jets, by creating a so-called "loyal wingman" drone to fly with the nation's J-20 supersonic stealth fighter.…

OpenAI tech outperforms digital serfs toiling away on Amazon's estate Machine learning models can do content processing and data sanitation work better and more affordably than people participating in crowdsourcing platforms, according to a trio of researchers.…

First for women, people of color, Canucks NASA today named the Artemis Moon program's first crew of astronauts. Among them are the first woman, the first person of color, and the first Canadian set to blast off on a lunar mission…

Never mind software supply chain attacks, lawyers are the new soft target? Uber has had more of its internal data stolen from a third party that suffered a security breach. This time, the personal info of the app's drivers was swiped by miscreants from the IT systems of law firm Genova Burns.…

Only 35 of the trucks affected, but that might be most of the ones on the road Tesla's electric Semi truck, which has only been cruising highways since December, is facing its first recall over a faulty parking brake. Unlike other issues, this one won't be fixable with an over-the-air update.…

Hope you're all looking forward to another cold war Comment For years, the United States has leveled waves of sanctions and export bans on Chinese firms in an effort to squelch the Middle Kingdom's fledgling semiconductor industry, all the while rallying allies.…

New layouts for the original 'clickier than the Model M' keyboard What's even harder-core than the IBM Model M? The Model F, the keyboard that launched alongside the IBM PC in 1981. After a 2017 relaunch, new models with the original layout are here.…

Tactical#Octopus: Don't let users click on that zip file The last few days of America's tax season are stressful enough, dealing with deadlines and, increasingly, online scams. Now comes another one, a sophisticated and ongoing phishing campaign by a threat group dubbed "Tactical#Octopus" that is using tax-related lures to spread malware.…

89% of citizens want them gone – at least among the 7.46% who showed up to vote Citizens of Paris voted on Sunday to ban e-scooters from the City of Love, and Mayor Anne Hidalgo responded by promising that the fleets of rechargeable rentables would be gone come September.…

Contracts could be duplicate and poorly conceived, accountability report finds The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) signed 39 percent of its IT contracts – representing billions of dollars in spending – without the approval of the chief information officer (CIO) between 2018 and 2021.…

Staff regain access to Microsoft apps, tech outsourcer still working to restore services for some Capita – everyone's favorite outsourcing badass – is still working to restore services for some customers after admitting the IT outage of certain services on Friday was caused by a cyber attack and efforts to contain the infiltration.…

Researchers hope their code will be used for images taken with the upcoming Vera C Rubin Observatory An AI algorithm can help astronomers deblur images snapped by ground-based telescopes more accurately and more quickly than traditional methods, according to the latest research.…

Seals are totally yesterday's news - the Navy's latest critter is a Gecko video Never mind seals, the US Navy is turning to geckos to improve its ship inspection capabilities. Much like their amphibiously named comrades, these robots are geckos in name – and wall-climbing capabilities – only. …

Platform balks at April 1 deadline, tweaks wording instead Following an announcement last month that Twitter would be "winding down" its "legacy verified program" on April 1, those lucky enough to possess a coveted blue tick waited for the symbol to disappear off their accounts over the weekend.…

Thinks info from internal systems 'obtained' by miscreant, unsure of nature or scope data Western Digital is today dealing with a "network security incident" after detecting a break-in into its internal systems by an unauthorized third party.…

Lesson we've learned from Ukraine Not all defense tech is bleeding-edge cyber — or kinetic — warfare tools. Sometimes the best defense is as boring as ... backups.…

The only winning move is not to play Opinion “Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future.”…

Realization they'd burned money for ages led to smoldering solution rather than angry conflagration Who, Me? Welcome once again, dear reader, to Who, Me? – The Reg's weekly attempt to soften your re-entry into the harsh reality of the working week with tales of workplace mirth.…

'It's not unusual for VoIP apps' says CEO The CEO of VoiP software provider 3CX said his team tested its products in response to recent alerts notifying it of a supply chain attack, but assessed reports of a malware infestation were a false positive.…

Oz upstart promised jira.domain.com, now offers something.jira.domain.com Atlassian customers' eleven-year quest for custom domains continues, with the Australian upstart's proposed solution failing to satisfy.…

ALSO: Synopsys releases AI tools for faster chip design, and Cerebras open sources family of language models In brief A Google engineer reportedly quit after warning CEO Sundar Pichai that the company was wrong to train its AI search chatbot Bard on text generated by OpenAI's ChatGPT.…

To scupper scams, account-holders must hand over personal info or else Almost two million mobile phone subscribers in Vietnam are at risk of having their services severed, thanks to a new government policy that seeks to curb spam.…

Microsoft's cloudy pal 21Vianet upgrades to M365 China somehow, unbelievably, made it through the COVID-19 pandemic without a local version of Microsoft's Teams collaborationware app, but thankfully it won't have to face the next crisis similarly unarmed. On Saturday Microsoft 365 made its debut behind the Great Firewall.…

ALSO: DJI forgets the 'B' in 'BCC,' and this week's critical known exploits In Brief The principal of a Florida science and technology charter school has resigned after allegedly writing a $100,000 check to an Elon Musk impersonator using school funds.…

PLUS Japanese PM grilled by ChatGPT; Singapore slams bank outage; WeChat adds paid tier; and more Asia In Brief The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday successfully flew and landed an autonomous reusable spaceplane.…

Latest rules stop short of naming you-know-who Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry plans to enact export restrictions on 23 technologies used in the production of semiconductors.…

Looking for leaky memory, and possibly revenge The Chinese government has opened an investigation into US memory vendor Micron citing national security risks.…

If the price looks too good to be true, it probably is Ukrainian cops have arrested two suspects and detained 10 others for their alleged roles in a cybercrime gang that used phishing scams and phony online marketplaces to steal more than $4.3 million from over 1,000 victims across Europe.…

Manifest V2 will die another day Back in December, Google postponed its Chrome Extensions shakeup because the project was unfinished and beset by bugs, after a previous schedule setback three months earlier.…

CEO on industry shifts that allow open source and smaller players to gain a footing Interview In December, MariaDB floated on the New York Stock Exchange via the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Angel Pond Holdings. With the move came $104 million in funding and $18 million through private investment in public equity.…

Earning that nickname all over again Capita, a major business and IT services provider that has scored multi-million-dollar contracts with several UK government agencies, confirmed some of its systems fell over today due to "an IT issue."…

Fresh installation image for the rolling-release edition of OpenMandriva The project known as OpenMandriva has released new installation images for its rolling-release edition, with the latest kernel and the latest KDE Plasma – among many other choices.…

Who watches the watchmen? The Office of the Inspector General Back in July 2020, then New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act into law, which required the New York Police Department to reveal how it uses surveillance technology and to formulate surveillance policies.…

Rain of icy and rocky debris from rings was initially dismissed as bad data The infall of icy debris from Saturn's rings is heating the planet's upper atmosphere, according to astronomers, who discovered the phenomenon among old data that was once considered noise.…