The Register

CEO tells The Reg his engineers still have sights on phones to servers SiFive is pulling in nearly $400m in funding this year between a new investment round and the proceeds of a business sale with the ambitious mission of eclipsing rival Arm – and the x86 world of Intel and AMD – with processor designs for everything from smartphones to servers.…

Security vendors now have 5 working days to explain to the Competition and Markets Authority why it's wrong The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) merger inquiry into NortonLifeLock's proposed $8bn acquisition of rival antivirus provider Avast has now closed, with the regulator concluding that a tie-up could indeed reduce competition in the marketplace.…

A $4 microcontroller, you say? Will it run you-know-what? It is with a sense of inevitability that we can confirm somebody has managed to make Doom work on the diminutive RP2040-based Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller board.…

Despite girls outperforming boys when they choose the subject New research by the British Computer Society (BCS) has found girls are outnumbered six to one by boys in computer science classes across the UK.…

A bolt of lightning has caused me days of misery, because the fix requires too much proprietary tech Column I heard an electric discharge, a bit like a Jacob's ladder, immediately before a deafening crack of thunder. I'd never been so close to a lightning strike! All of the lights in the house went bright, then dimmed, then went back to normal. "Uh-oh," I thought, "I'm in trouble now." Everything in the house had been hit by a nasty surge and the oft-spoken aphorism that broadband services are now a utility to rank with water and electricity was suddenly very, very, real to me.…

To the satisfaction of the International Atomic Energy Agency, at least If you've been wondering about the fate of Ukraine's nuclear power stations amid Russia's full-on invasion of the nation, you're not alone. Here's an update from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).…

Vote held after red-tape targeting proof-of-work assets removed Europe's lawmakers this week moved ahead with their proposed cryptocurrency regulations, having ditched a rule that might have banned financial services from dealing in Bitcoin and Ethereum.…

Ingenuity's Earth-side coding team has expanded, and so has its rover-assistance mission NASA has extended the mission of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter and given it the task of assisting the Perseverance rover, thanks to past and future software updates.…

CRM giant pleased to be named yet again on World's Most Ethical Companies list Salesforce has become a defendant in a case brought by the Republican National Committee (RNC) that seeks to prevent the release of information revealing communications within the Republican Party related to the storming of the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.…

Government agencies impersonated, fake antivirus, another wiper, backdoors As Ukraine fights for survival against invading Russian forces, here's a taste of some of the malware the nation's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is battling.…

App already banned, now it's getting very close supervision China's internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has taken unusually strong action against a social network that has long been considered a thorn in the side of the nation's elites.…

Plus: Face ID can recognize you with a mask on, kinda This week Apple released software revisions for its desktop, mobile, watch, and TV operating systems, along with application updates and security patches.…

Cr8escape priv-escalation bug opens the door to cluster takeovers A vulnerability in the container runtime engine CRI-O can be exploited by a rogue user to gain root-level access on a host.…

Bad data can throw vulnerable apps and services for an infinite loop A bug in OpenSSL certificate parsing leaves systems open to denial-of-service attacks from anyone wielding an explicit curve. …

Planned deprecation didn't go as planned, cloud biz aims to try again at the end of March Microsoft's Azure DevOps team has undone the deprecation of outdated Transport Layer Security (TLS) that occurred at the end of January because of unspecified "unexpected issues" that arose following the change.…

Security consolidation du jour SentinelOne reached a $616.5m deal to buy identity security vendor Attivo Networks, the companies announced today.…

Home Secretary ponders putting WikiLeaker on one-way US flight Julian Assange has all but lost his fight against extradition from Britain to America after the UK Supreme Court said his case "did not raise an arguable point of law."…

A state of emergency is declared as officials assess the damage and look for culprits A massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack forced Israeli officials Monday to temporarily take down several government websites and to declare a state of online emergency to assess the damage and begin investigating who was behind the incident.…

Rolls out first Epyc products the same week Google announces cloud infra price rise Cloud hosting provider Vultr has expanded its portfolio of cloud infrastructure with an new range of high-performance virtual machine instances, including its first products based on AMD Epyc processors, all with NVMe SSD storage.…

Sub-$299 Zen 3 desktop chips throw wrench into Intel wheelhouse AMD is doling out a handful of new Ryzen desktop processors, including the first to use the chip designer's 3D die stacking technology.…

Nation's cybersecurity agency has doubts about Russian firm's reliability Germany's BSI federal cybersecurity agency has warned the country's citizens not to install Russian-owned Kaspersky antivirus, saying it has "doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer."…

x86 giant also expands manufacturing in Ireland, plus R&D and packaging across Europe Intel has laid down its grand plans to build chip factories in Europe, which will start with a €17bn ($19bn) mega-site in the city of Magdeburg, Germany.…

Virtual iron curtains are a lot harder to keep free of holes Research by Top10VPN, which regularly publishes data on virtual private newtork (VPN) usage around the world, has highlighted unprecedented demand in Russia and Ukraine.…

Analyst view: 4Q21 drop plus strains from war mean component shortages drag on The telecoms kit market had a good 2021 with revenues close to $100bn, up more than 20 percent since 2017, but growth is now slowing, according to analyst Dell'Oro Group. Huawei is also starting to feel the effect of sanctions, but still leads the global market by a fair margin.…

It was a mistake, vendor tells The Register Updated Microsoft appears to be experimenting with more adverts in Windows 11 after eagle-eyed Insider users spotted helpful hints turning up in File Explorer.…

It turns out all you have to do is wait for someone to code an antidote If there was ever a reason to think data poisoning could fool facial recognition software, a recently published paper showed that reasoning is bunk.…

Brit solicitor fined after admitting it took 5 months to install critical update Criminal defense law firm Tuckers Solicitors is facing a fine from the UK's data watchdog for failing to properly secure data that included information on case proceedings which was scooped up in a ransomware attack in 2020.…

Not every hole is x86, CUDA, or Arm shaped Venture capitalists funneled billions into semiconductor startups in 2021, we're told, targeting designers of machine-learning technologies that fulfill specific or niche needs.…

Does not wish to 'profit' from 'commercial arrangements' in Russia Nominet, the dot-UK domain registrar, has announced that it will suspend services for Russian web domain registrars – and the British government says it "welcomes" the action.…

Apache project mulls options for next big upgrade as Big Blue focuses on 3.x iterations The IBM Cloudant software team has decided to pull the plug on its push to create a new database engine underlying Apache CouchDB, the NoSQL document store used by the BBC, Apple and atomic research facility CERN.…

DIY distro might not be the best place to start, but you'll learn buckets using it Arch Linux, arguably the most widely known rolling-release distribution, just celebrated its 20th anniversary. The project has commemorated its first public release, 0.1, with a snapshot of its original homepage.…

We sent it off 'to tweak a dragon's tail, and it did that and more' Feature We might be nearing the 50th anniversary of the last Apollo Moon landing, but spare a thought for NASA's Pioneer missions. Pioneer 10, the first mission to the outer planets, was launched 50 years ago this month.…

Your processor design fell off the vulnerability tree and hit every branch on the way down Analysis Intel this month published an advisory to address a novel Spectre v2 vulnerability in its processors that can be exploited by malware to steal data from memory that should otherwise be off limits.…

Engineers at TSMC and Samsung look pretty good, so make sure they can get visas The United States should hire more foreign talent and remove some visa barriers as part of a multi-pronged approach to secure its chip industry and supply chain, said a research analyst from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) – an American security and emerging technology policy think tank.…

Competitors and web developers would prefer to see mobile market rules rewritten Apple and Google have defended their business practices in letters to the UK Competition & Markets Authority, while rival companies and third-party developers continue to push for mobile market reforms.…

Auditor finds space agency defends Classified info well, isn't paying attention to valuable Unclassified data An audit of NASA's infosec preparedness against insider threats has warned it faces "serious jeopardy to operations" due to lack of protection for Unclassified information.…

Move along, nothing to see here, totally not slimming down ahead of IPO – or a second IPO in China Chip designer and licensor to the stars, Arm, has reportedly dropped around 1,000 workers onto unemployment queues.…

No service for NoSQL users contrasts with continuous clouds from other players NoSQL database challenger MongoDB has decided it won't sell its wares in Russia – not even its software-as-a-service offering.…

How your computer-vision model learned to stop worrying and love the Python Developers can create large datasets of synthetic videos to train computer-vision models using software written by a team of researchers led by Google.…

Is the West OK when the gun points the other way? Cybercriminals are taking sides over Russia's deadly invasion of Ukraine, putting either the West or Moscow in their sights, according to Accenture.…

CEO tells El Reg why biomedical firms dig big dies AI chip startup Cerebras Systems has deployed one of its CS-2 systems at a well-funded startup that uses natural language processing to analyze massive amounts of biomedical data.…

We want to concentrate on legging it after Arm, says biz Up-and-coming SiFive is selling its OpenFive business, including its portfolio of blueprints for chip connectivity, to fellow silicon designer Alphawave.…

Go away, CPU, you're not needed here ... mostly Nvidia, IBM, and university collaborators have a developed an architecture they say will provide fast fine-grain access to large amounts of data storage for GPU-accelerated applications, such as analytics and machine-learning training.…

Not now with your mischief, Beijing China claims it has obtained malware used by the NSA to steal files, monitor and redirect network traffic, and remotely control computers to spy on foreign targets.…

Why pay more when you can get less? Good news for those kept out of the seat of a new Ford Explorer by the chip shortage: you can get one now, with a slight catch. …

If true, Redmond is capable sustaining a stable working environment somewhere after all Microsoft has claimed an important breakthrough in its journey to build and operate a viable quantum computer.…

One shows signs of a state-sponsored intrusion, the other potentially not Signs of Russian cyberattacks on Western-owned digital systems have begun to emerge – even as the German arm of Russian oil company Rosneft said it was breached over the weekend.…

Huge step towards the project's goal of being a drop-in replacement for older Microsoft operating systems ReactOS, the open-source project for creating a binary-compatible drop-in replacement for Windows, has crossed a crucial milestone with a first look at symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) support.…

Controversial search engine being used to identify dead and Russian operatives The Ukrainian government is using facial recognition technology from startup Clearview AI to help them identify the dead, reveal Russian assailants, and combat misinformation from the Russian government and its allies.…

New, in this case, meaning generally more expensive Pricing changes coming to Google Cloud are likely to catch IT leaders, especially those on the budget side, by surprise. …