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Researcher finds VoLTE metadata could be used to locate users within 100 meters UK telco Virgin Media O2 has fixed an issue with its 4G Calling feature that allowed users' general location to be discerned by those who called them....

Because nobody wants a random and unverified bot tickling their APIs To unify the proliferating set of would-be standards to govern AI agents, researchers have proposed yet another standard....

Urges world leaders to pay attention because he's already building factories in which GenAI is acing scutwork Computex Foxconn chair Young Liu has predicted the combination of generative AI and robotics will destroy low-end manufacturing jobs and called on world leaders to recognize inevitable geopolitical shifts that will follow....

Fine-print is vague and broad, could easily be abused to blunt protected speech President Donald Trump officially signed Monday the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a bill to criminalize revenge porn - both real and AI-generated. But internet rights groups have repeatedly warned the law is overly broad and vague, and could be used to order the takedown of protected speech....

Brain drain, budget cuts, constant cyberthreats - who wouldn't want this job? The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has a new No. 2: Madhu Gottumukkala, stepping in as the nation's lead civilian cyber agency faces budget cuts, a brain drain, and the never-ending task of defending critical infrastructure....

Police took Big Easy attitude to the rules, says WaPo Since early 2023, facial recognition cameras run by a private nonprofit have scanned New Orleans visitors and residents and quietly alerted police, sidestepping oversight and potentially violating city law, according to a new report....

Never mind the chatbot's recent erratic behavior Microsoft has added xAI's Grok 3 family to its Azure AI Foundry platform, seemingly unfazed by the firm's rivalry with Microsoft investee OpenAI or the chatbot's recent descent into conspiracy territory....

Proving yet again that crims are bad at search hygiene An Alabama man who SIM-swapped his way into the SEC's official X account, enabling a fake ETF announcement that briefly pumped Bitcoin, has been sentenced to 14 months in prison and three years of supervised release....

A fair dinkum disaster Australia's first homegrown rocket launch has been delayed after the vehicle's fairing unexpectedly deployed on the launchpad....

DownDetector reported problems for about 6 hours Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) experienced an outage in Europe earlier today, according to users and online metrics....

800-watt demo breaks distance record for optical energy transmission Wireless power transmission is moving from lab curiosity toward real-world utility, at least if the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's latest test is any indication....

Wants to be the 'HR department for agents' Computex Nvidia has delivered a server design that includes x86 processors and eight GPUs connected by a dedicated switch to run agentic AI alongside mainstream enterprise workloads....

Time to stand on its own two webbed feet? Microsoft has open-sourced the Windows Subsystem for Linux, years after the platform's debut....

Agent mode arrives, for better or worse Build Microsoft's GitHub Copilot can now act as a coding agent, capable of implementing tasks or addressing posted issues within the code hosting site....

Large-scale disinfo campaigns could use this in machines that adapt 'to individual targets.' Are we having fun yet? Fresh research is indicating that in online debates, LLMs are much more effective than humans at using personal information about their opponents, with potentially alarming consequences for mass disinformation campaigns....

Another distro for Windows users - presumably ones who love bling LastOS is a tricked-out version of Linux Mint 22.1 with the Cinnamon desktop and some additional tools to make life easier for Windows folks....

Researchers and TSMC to benefit from expanded infrastructure Computex Against a backdrop of continuing tensions between the US and China, with Taiwan typically stuck in the middle, Nvidia is touting two AI supercomputers for the country....

Veteran OS might be almost out of support, but there's still time for Microsoft to break it As Microsoft's Build developer shindig begins, many users are once again facing a familiar problem: broken Windows....

Cybercriminals lifted info including addresses, ID numbers, and financial records from agency systems A "significant amount of personal data" belonging to legal aid applicants dating back to 2010 in the UK was stolen by cybercriminals, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) confirmed today....

Highest recorded jump in skills gap for more than a decade, recruiter finds The number of UK tech leaders reporting a dearth in AI skills has more than doubled in the last year, according to research....

Enormous org has been hit by ransomware again and again, on multiple fronts, over the past year Top cybersecurity officials within the UK government and the National Health Service (NHS) are asking CEOs of tech suppliers to pledge their allegiance to sound security by signing a public charter....

CEO Cristiano Amon teases plans for high-speed-low-power inferencing products Computex Qualcomm is preparing products for the datacenter....

Yard of Eden just doesn't have the right ring to it Who, Me? Translating one's life from the wonders of the weekend to the madness of a Monday is never easy, but The Register tries to ease the change by delivering a new installment of Who, Me? It's our reader-contributed column in which you admit to making messes and share your escape routes....

One of the two just needs to be made by Nv Computex Nvidia has opened the NVLink interconnect tech used to stitch its rack-scale compute platforms together to the broader ecosystem with the introduction of NVLink Fusion at Computex this week....

PLUS: Euro-cops take down investment scammers; Fancy Bear returns to Ukraine; and more Infosec In Brief The Alabama state government is investigating an unspecified "cybersecurity event" that it said has affected some state systems, but didn't involve the theft of citizen's personal info....

PLUS: South Korea signs for massive supercomputer; HCL gets into chipmaking; US tariffs slow APAC tech buying; and more Asia In Brief Chinese company Guoxing Aerospace last launched a dozen satellites, each packing a 744 TOPS of computing power, in the first step towards creating an orbiting constellation of 2,800 such satellites....

Plus, Co-op tells The Reg: 'we took early and decisive action' to block the crooks INTERVIEW The call came into the help desk at a large US retailer. An employee had been locked out of their corporate accounts....

It'll even help you develop technical skills Systems Approach From 2014 to 2020 I had a title of CTO at VMware, first for the networking business and then for the Asia Pacific region as a Field CTO....

It matters for everyone, because we'll all be disabled one day Global Accessibility Awareness Day Accessibility matters to everyone. If you think it doesn't: it will. Apple builds in some pretty good tools, and they're getting better. Here's why it's important....

ZKLP system allows apps to confirm user presence in a region without exposing exactly where Computer scientists from universities in Germany, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom have proposed a way to provide verifiable claims about location data without surrendering privacy....

As long as you're quiet about it Feature This week, a bipartisan bill was introduced that would allow supersonic flight over the continental US for the first time in 52 years, as long as they're quiet....

Search giant to restore critical Android permission after user outcry In a turn of events to warm our withered hearts, Google has offered to restore the permission that was revoked from Nextcloud's Files app for Android....

Phony LinkedIn recruitment ads? Groundbreaking Chinese government snoops - hiding behind the guise of fake consulting companies - are actively trying to recruit the thousands upon thousands of US federal employees who have been fired since President Trump took office....

Crooks must be licking their lips at the possibilities Uncle Sam's consumer watchdog has scrapped plans to implement Biden-era rules that would've treated certain data brokers as credit bureaus, forcing them to follow stricter laws when flogging Americans' sensitive data....

Agitprop? Protest? An attempt to suck up to the boss? Elon Musk's xAI has apologized after its Grok generative chat-bot started spouting baseless conspiracy theories about White genocide in response to unrelated questions....

Python, TypeScript, Azure SDK devs among those let go Microsoft's recent round of layoffs appears to have fallen largely on software developers, including several prominent Python developers and a veteran TypeScript developer....

An overdependence on hyperscalers and a mountain of debt could pull the rug out Comment CoreWeave this week said it would plow between $20 and $23 billion into GPU bit barns by year's end in order to meet growing demand from model builders and hyperscalers....

Tax bods characterize it more as a brainstorming session, says Elon's unit wasn't involved Congressional Democrats are again demanding answers from a federal agency over whether DOGE's latest tech makeover could put taxpayer data at risk....

Epic's latest submission blocked right after CEO offered truce with Cupertino Apple has blocked Epic Games' submission of Fortnite, just as it was set to return to iOS in the US. Now it cannot be found in the US App Store nor via the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union....

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away Microsoft is pulling the free MS365 Business Premium licenses granted to non-profits and replacing them with Business Basic and discounts for its other services....

'We hope it makes attendees feel safe reporting violations' A Seattle court this week dismissed with prejudice the defamation case brought against DEF CON and its organizer Jeff Moss by former conference stalwart Christopher Hadnagy....

Extending all the dumped devices' lives by 12 months? Like taking 2M cars off the road each year Tech buyers should purchase refurbished devices to push vendors to make hardware more repairable and help the shift to a more circular economy, according to a senior analyst at IDC....

The tech biz was in the process of dropping the payroll company as it learned of the breach EXCLUSIVE A ransomware attack at a Middle Eastern business partner of payroll company ADP has led to customer data theft at Broadcom, The Register has learned....

Beast of Redmond runs scared from EC antitrust cops half decade after rivals complained Microsoft is offering to make a series of concessions for up to ten years to pacify European Commission antitrust regulators. This follows protests from users that tying Teams with its biz productivity applications hinders competition....

CEO warns energy demands will overwhelm grid without extra generation capacity The UK needs more nuclear energy generation just to power all the AI datacenters that are going to be built, according to the head of Amazon Web Services (AWS)....

We suspect Philippe Salle will need it, not to mention staff and customers If at first you don't succeed, transform, transform, and transform again is the corporate motto at Atos these days. The lumbering French-based megacorp has created another blueprint to return to its glory days, and it includes job cuts, offshoring and... AI....

Success of UK's Universal Credit has lessons for government IT projects, former minister claims Former UK government minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith has told a committee of MPs that the digitization of Universal Credit is a success story other government departments can learn from....

DPM signs off 96MW bit barn, citing national policy shift The British government has stepped in to overturn a local council's refusal of a proposed datacenter on green belt land, citing updated national planning policy that urges councils to find space for bit barns, labs, gigafactories, and other strategic infrastructure....

After UK spends hundreds of millions, several say existing systems are better English hospitals are voicing their concern about the functionality provided by Palantir, the US spy-tech firm that won a 330 million ($437 million) deal to run the Federated Data Platform for NHS England, as around a third of trusts go live on the system....

Self-taught coders who work in HR and have a doctorate in English tend to do that On Call Bosses often ask IT pros to clean up messes made by amateurs, and in this week's On Call - The Register's reader-contributed tech support column - we have just such a tale to tell....