The Register

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.…

A new version of very old software for a very old, but very important, computer The LM-3 project has announced version 100, the last ever release of the system software for the MIT CADR Lisp Machine. So, both a new release and a very old one all at once.…

Perché siamo il Garante, e tu sei pazzo Italian privacy enforcers have opened an investigation into OpenAI's ChatGPT for allegedly violating EU and Italian privacy laws by collecting personal data of the country's citizens without "a suitable legal basis".…

Stop sniggering at the back. 'We're going to stick with it', says Nick Clegg. Unlike Disney Meta’s head of global affairs was wheeled out this week to say the Metaverse is still going be a thing in the future, soon after Disney – once an exponent of this brave new virtual world – ditched its own plans.…

But wait! There could be more litigation as VirnetX isn't giving up yet On Thursday an appeals court upheld a ruling in favor of Apple, in a $503 million patent case with Nevada-based security software and technology vendor VirnetX that has been ongoing for thirteen years.…

If you build it, the applications and services will come Sponsored Post Data gravity is commonly defined as the concept that, like a planet, data has mass. And the larger that mass becomes, the greater its gravitational pull so that applications and services become attracted to it.…

Expenses slashed as hopes dashed for UK space pioneer Virgin Orbit — the UK’s big hope for space launches — looks set to suspend operations indefinitely, cutting the majority of its staff and keeping 15 percent as it seeks eleventh hour funding.…

Juicy private sector job vs … money off a season travel ticket Given the importance of the Treasury department's function to Britain, Reg readers might expect the Head of Cyber Security vacancy currently being advertised would come with a salary that reflects its criticality.…

Ravi Mayuram on work to make life easier for devs while sprinkling a bit of SQL on top Interview Couchbase is a JSON document database with global users including PayPal, eBay, and travel distribution system Amadeus, companies with a combined revenue of nearly $40 billion. Its total annual income was $154.8 million, so why is such a small database outfit trusted by big biz?…

'Serious breach of trust' says ICO, 'stakes too high' for mistakes in cases like this In a classic email snafu NHS Highland sent messages to 37 patients infected with HIV and inadvertently used carbon copy (CC) instead of Blind Carbon Copy meaning the recipients could see each other’s email addresses.…

The chap who took the support call for the SEV-1 incident survived – just On Call With another working week almost behind us, The Register has found another tale to tell in our On-Call column – the home of reader-contributed stories of thankless tech support tasks.…

Winter is coming for NATO countries A cyber spy gang supporting Russia is targeting US elected officials and their staffers, in addition to European lawmakers, using unpatched Zimbra Collaboration software in two campaigns spotted by Proofpoint.…

Except maybe in America, where life expectancy keeps dropping Boffins working on a mathematical model to predict future human lifespans say that longevity records may be broken by 2060 – and the sky's the limit from there. They don't think we've even approached the ceiling of how long a well cared-for human can live. …

Snowden-esque 'Vulkan' dossier links Moscow firm to FSB, GRU, SRV An unidentified whistleblower has provided several media organizations with access to leaked documents from NTC Vulkan – a Moscow IT consultancy – that allegedly show how the firm supports Russia's military and intelligence agencies with cyber warfare tools.…

'BingBang' boo-boo affected other internal Microsoft apps, too An Azure Active Directory (AAD) misconfiguration by Microsoft in one of its own cloud-hosted applications could have allowed miscreants to subvert the IT giant's Bing search engine – even changing search results.…

AI policy wonks slam chatty hallucination-prone model in formal complaint The Center for AI and Digital Policy, a non-profit research organization, has urged America's Federal Trade Commission to investigate OpenAI, claiming the upstart violated commerce laws by releasing GPT-4, a product the center believes deceives and puts folks at risk.…

Malicious toolkit targets misconfigured hosts in AWS and Office 365 A fast-evolving toolkit that can be used to compromise email and web hosting services represents a disturbing evolution of attacks in the cloud, which for the most part have previously been confined to mining cryptocurrencies.…

Hint: Hundreds of malicious npm and PyPI packages spotted Exclusive Machine learning models are unreliable but that doesn't prevent them from also being useful at times.…

Hey Bing, help me find a new browser, er, AI chatbot So much for a good thing: Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi said Redmond is considering selling ad space in answers provided by the new Bing chatbot.…

Plus: Complains criteria for foreign companies to access US funding too strict. It's not a great sign, is it? South Korea has passed legislation giving tax breaks to its semiconductor companies in a bill being labelled as the "Korean Chips Act." At the same time, the nation's trade minister repeated its complaints that the criteria for Korean companies to access US funding are unpalatable in a possible sign of growing protectionism in the worldwide chip market.…

Yeast-based study illuminates understanding of how 'nauts physiology may change in space Cellular repair systems seem to respond to microgravity, scientists have found, leading to the hope they can better understand the effects of space flight on the human body.…

Miscreants hit downstream customers with infostealers Two security firms have found what they believe to be a supply chain attack on communications software maker 3CX – and the vendor's boss is advising users to switch to the progressive web app until the 3CX desktop client is updated.…

What's coming up in 2023 and beyond Intel delivered an update to its datacenter and AI roadmap Wednesday in which executives promised the delays that have plagued its Sapphire Rapids CPU launch were behind them.…

If you need extra time to dump RPS, OK, but email from unsupported Exchange servers is blocked till they’re up to date Some Exchange Online users who have the RPS feature turned off by Microsoft can now have it re-enabled – at least until September when the tool is retired.…

Still hundreds of components, verification checks to complete before test flight Boeing's debut Starliner spacecraft launch carrying its first-ever crew of astronauts to the International Space Station is being postponed again, and is not expected to fly until 21 July at the earliest.…

Here's how not to end up in their next report as a cautionary tale Interview Securing cloud databases boils down to three things, according to John Yeoh, global VP for research at Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).…

Transparency? Redmond's heard of it Microsoft is close to resolving antitrust complaints lodged against it with the European Commission by local suppliers OVHcloud, Aruba S.p.A and Danish Cloud Community (DCC) over alleged commercial abuses.…

And it looks like educational flavor Edubuntu is returning, too Ubuntu's Technical Board has voted and passed the motion: as of Ubuntu 23.04, Ubuntu Cinnamon will become the ninth official flavor.…

Our vultures who cover the news weigh in Register Kettle TikTok, the made-in-China video-sharing upstart that's outshone rivals, has copped a lot of criticism of late.…

Under pressure from activist investor, top brass agree to plot new course Airbus has pulled out of negotiations to buy almost a third of Evidian following intense public pressure from an activist investor who described the transaction as an apparent bail out of parent Atos.…

We've got your summarization, your Q&A, your chatbots, your classification tasks ready to go Google opened its Cloud Data & AI Summit on Wednesday with a reminder that it was there at the start of the burst of enthusiasm for machine learning models – something it maybe feels has been lost now that so much attention is being paid to OpenAI's GPT models and related Microsoft spinoffs.…

How someone can nab buffered info, by hook or by kr00k Ambiguity in the Wi-Fi specification has left the wireless networking stacks in various operating systems vulnerable to several attacks that have the potential to expose network traffic.…

$161 million slap-on-the-wrist fine stands, but major restrictions are eased Updated Google's appeal to an Indian tribunal regarding alleged abuse of the Chocolate Factory's dominant position in the Android market resulted in the removal of some antitrust directives, but brought no relief from a $161 million fine.…

Mandiant identifies 'moderately sophisticated' but 'prolific' APT43 as global menace Google Cloud's recently acquired security outfit Mandiant has named a new nasty from North Korea: a cyber crime gang it calls APT43 and accuses of a five-year rampage.…

'Intel inside' a suspiciously baggy t-shirt gave the game away – as did a truckload of parts International Talk Like a Pirate Day is still months away – circle September 19 on your calendar, me hearties! – but The Register has found news of technology smuggling in China that suggests a buccaneering approach to imports.…

Korean chipmaker has created an org to keep it ahead of geopolitical messes The co-CEO of South Korean chipmaker SK hynix has taken a swipe at the US CHIPS Act subsidy program, labelling the process to apply for funding overly onerous.…

Beware of third party downloads Clipboard-injector malware disguised as Tor browser installers has been used to steal about $400,000 in cryptocurrency from nearly 16,000 users worldwide so far in 2023, according to Kaspersky researchers.…

All it needs to do is detect ■■■■■■■■■■ in the ■■■■■ at ■■■■■■ when the ■■■■■■■■ Researchers at America's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are developing machine learning techniques to help the Feds crack down on potentially rogue nuclear weapons.…

Analysts just don't see digi-brains making a difference to dismal demand that's caused deep discounting If you're in the market for a memory-optimized server or top-of-the-range workstation, the industry watchers at TrendForce have some good news.…

Crescent Space will be 'well positioned' to get a piece of NASA's cash pie, no contract yet Aerospace firm Lockheed Martin has announced the launch of a subsidiary to build a satellite communications network to connect future Moon missions with those of us stuck on Earth. …

Unmasking also in store for anyone who's 'posted, uploaded, downloaded or modified' tweet biz code A California court has granted Twitter's request to unmask the GitHub user who uploaded its source code – along with anyone who "posted, uploaded, downloaded or modified" said code.…

German startup reconned on hardware economics favouring a specialist database Interview Exasol has beaten a separate path from rivals in the market, and while open-source systems have climbed in popularity, the German database biz has remained proprietary. And although other vendors have tried to bring together analytics and transaction in one database, Exasol remains, steadfastly, an analytical system.…

First version built on 20.04 hits smartphones and tablets of UBPorts fans The UBPorts project has just released the fruit of a lot of labor, especially for a volunteer group, emitting a fresh version of its smartphone OS – which includes the Lomiri UI, formerly known as Unity 8.…

Those hoping to use nefarious websites like, er, Zoom are overrun by alerts. Redmond 'investigating' Updated Microsoft's at-times-glitchy Defender service is again causing headaches for IT admins by flagging legitimate URLs as malicious.…

Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk find something to agree on The UK has proposed a light touch approach to regulating AI, coinciding with the first reports of a suicide that is alleged to have followed a week's intensive conversation with a chatbot.…

Competition regulators in Britain opt for Phase II discovery over worries about prices and rival tech access UK government will proceed with an in-depth investigation into the proposed buyout of VMware by Broadcom, dashing the companies' hopes the merger might be waved through quickly by regulatory bodies.…

Beijing investing locally in advanced nodes will mean it buys locally, says MediaTek chairman The chairman of Taiwan’s biggest chip designer, Mediatek’s Tsai Ming-kai, expressed distress over US semiconductor sanctions yesterday, saying they may hurt Taiwan's chip houses.…

Digital Market Act interoperability requirement a social challenge as well as a technical one By March 2024, instant messaging and real-time media apps operated by large tech platforms in Europe will be required to communicate with other services, per the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA).…

Quirky Brit idiom, or confusing and gendered term that could deter people from studying the field? The UK’s Institute of Physics (IOP) is calling on the popular press to ditch the term “boffin” when referring to scientists.…

AIs are going to need memory and storage silicon, you know Micron has had another bad quarter – one of its largest quarterly losses ever – with revenues plunging and predictions of further workforce reductions, but claims its performance was in line with expectations, saying it expects to see a return to growth in the near future.…