The Register

Note to Xi: Marco and Ted Cruz aren't the same person China's Spamouflage disinformation crew has been targeting US Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) with its fake news campaigns over the past couple of months, trolling the Republican lawmaker's official X account and posting negative stories about Rubio on Reddit and Medium....

Private equity giant Thoma Bravo adds another trophy to its growing collection British security biz Sophos has announced a plan to gobble up competitor Secureworks in an $859 million deal that will make Dell happy....

Let bots manage your supply chain? What could possibly go wrong? Since announcing Copilot Studio last year, Microsoft claims it has achieved significant efficiency gains across multiple business units using its tools. Starting next month, customers will be able to put those claims to the test....

Dan O'Dowd tells El Reg about the OS secrets and ongoing clash with Musk Interview This month, presidential hopeful Donald Trump got a tool in his arsenal, some allegedly "unhackable" communications kit, and The Register has talked to the man behind the operating system, who also ran for the US Senate on a campaign to get self-driving Teslas off the road and is on something of a crusade about the matter....

AI innovation and geopolitical tensions push Middle Kingdom filings up 42% China's semiconductor industry is speeding up in response to US export controls, according to research by a specialist in intellectual property....

C'mon, do you really think ol' Elon's handing out all that cash, day after day? Elon Musk's plan to give $1 million each day to a random registered "swing state" voter who has signed his election petition could merit a look for election law violations, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said over the weekend....

Broader December release promises Ubuntu support and enhanced features Prominent RISC-V protagonist SiFive has announced early access to its anticipated development board, built around the firm's P550 core design, with a broader release scheduled for December....

'I am deeply concerned about how creative work is essentially being stolen at scale' Interview Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University and serial entrepreneur, is the author of several books, the latest of which takes the tech industry to task for irresponsibly developing generative AI and putting democracy at risk....

Samsung halts fab orders, deliveries slow, China restrictions continue - but company expects Beijing sales bounce Analysis ASML, the sole provider of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, is navigating market and geopolitical challenges that are hammering its business operations....

Like keeping your camera and microphone private? Patch up In revealing details about a vulnerability that threatens the privacy of Apple fans, Microsoft urges all macOS users to update their systems....

Mozilla and Google complicate life for users of uBlock Origin and uBlock Lite Both uBlock Origin and its smaller sibling, uBlock Origin Lite, are experiencing problems thanks to browser vendors that really ought to know better....

37signals CTO claims cost of new hardware was 'entirely recouped' as contracts expired after AWS exit The web software biz that decided to exit the cloud after racking up a huge bill says it has saved almost $2 million in its first "clean year" after making the switch to on-prem, and has already recouped the costs of the extra hardware it needed....

CEO tells The Reg customers are facing same challenges, not ruling out full-time RTO Exclusive SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, is ordering staff to return to the office for three days a work from the start of next month, and terminating its flexible hours trial....

Gloucestershire continues with legacy system as SaaS replacement delayed by more than a year A South West England authority continues to suffer control weaknesses in its ERP system after the council delayed the project by more than a year and more than doubled the expected costs....

Stylish Artemis spacesuit design revealed last week should never fly, billionaire argues Private sector space outfit Axion and Italian fashion house Prada last week revealed the space suit that will be used on the Artemis III mission....

In science, every day is about testing hypotheses. Such as: 'You did what to the network?' Who, Me? Welcome, gentle reader, to another exciting week at the coalface of tech and therefore the anticipation of five joyous productive days ahead and a fresh edition of Who, Me? - The Register's reader-contributed tales of tech gone awry....

For general-purpose and memory-optimized workloads Microsoft's Cobalt 100 Arm CPUs have reached general availability in its Azure cloud, creating another non-x86 option for running VMs in the Redmondian cloud....

As TSMC defends itself against report it may have helped Huawei Tesla has denied it was involved in illegal-map making activities in China after Beijing asserted an unnamed foreign firm working on a smart car project had done so - and even stolen state secrets - through a collaboration with a local business....

Claims forthcoming chip catches up to Alder Lake and Xen 2 Chinese chip designer Loongson last week teased products that it claimed will deliver the same performance that Intel and AMD achieved around five years ago....

Org turns its woes into a fundraising opportunity Despite the Internet Archive's assurances it's back on its feet after a recent infosec incident, the org still appears to be in trouble after parties unknown claimed to hold access tokens to its Zendesk implementation and to have used them to send a mass email blast....

Plus: Australian bank glitch empties accounts; China online slang crackdown; Toshiba teams with Airbus; and more Asia In Brief Baidu CEO Robin Li has proclaimed that hallucinations produced by large language models are no longer a problem, and predicted a massive wipeout of AI startups when the "bubble" bursts....

Not as clumsy or random as a streamer, an elegant player for a more civilized age Opinion Yup, I called that one wrong. Twenty years ago. I bid farewell to WinAmp, the PC music player of choice. It had been made redundant by Windows Media Player getting better, WinAmp's owners getting bored, and the iPod blowing the doors off everything....

The static analyzer uses Claude AI to identify vulns and suggest exploit code Researchers with Seattle-based Protect AI plan to release a free, open source tool that can find zero-day vulnerabilities in Python codebases with the help of Anthropic's Claude AI model....

Crany' also captured with three 'ghost guns' A California man has been charged with using a DJI drone to distribute drugs, which resulted in a fatal overdose....

But first stop is Mars for a speed boost, then back to Earth for the final push The Europa Clipper has unfurled its solar panels and is on its way to Jupiter, but it's taking a circuitous route by way of Mars....

Also, new EU cyber reporting rules are live, exploiters hit the gas pedal, free PDNS for UK schools, and more In Brief - Updated A critical security update for the near-ubiquitous WordPress plugin Jetpack was released last week. Site administrators should ensure the latest version is installed to keep their sites secure....

Musk's camera-only approach may not be a great idea after all? Tesla is facing yet another government investigation into the safety of its full self driving (FSD) software after a series of accidents in low-visibility conditions....

Another raft of reasons to ponder your social media presence Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter) has updated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to direct disputes to a federal court in Texas and allow third parties to train AIs on user posts....

It's our way or the highway AWS CEO Matt Garman has reportedly told workers that if they don't like the company's five-day-a-week return-to-office policy, they can look for work elsewhere....

The indirect branch predictor barrier is less of a barrier than hoped Six years after the Spectre transient execution processor design flaws were disclosed, efforts to patch the problem continue to fall short....

Google, Amazon, Microsoft dive into costly deals that aren't generating anything yet Nuclear power contracts signed by hyperscalers show they're desperate for reliable "clean and green" energy sources to feed their ever-expanding datacenter footprints, however, investment bank Jefferies warns that these tech giants are likely to end up paying over the odds to get it....

SIM swappers strike again, warping cryptocurrency prices An Alabama man faces five years in prison for allegedly attempting to manipulate the price of Bitcoin by pwning the US Securities and Exchange Commission's X account earlier this year....

No Zero-G shenanigans, but a fully stocked bar and spectacular views Richard Branson is taking to the skies again, this time hitching a ride to the top of the Earth's atmosphere in a Space Perspective balloon....

Says 'limited' incident isolated to 'partner company' ESET denies being compromised after an infosec researcher highlighted a wiper campaign that appeared to victims as if it was launched using the Slovak security shop's infrastructure....

Step forward Workday after mega long procurement to support system that went live 22 years ago More than two and a half years after it began talking to vendors, a city council in northern England has awarded a contract to Workday for 10.7 million ($14 million) to create a finance and HR system that will replace the ageing Oracle ERP installation....

HashiConf shindig oddly reluctant to mention impending IBM acquisition HashiCorp's annual HashiConf shindig wrapped up in Boston with a Big Blue elephant in the room and a hissed instruction: "Don't mention IBM!"...

If you bluff your way out of unpaid bills, there's a chance someone could call you on it On Call By the end of a working week, it can be tempting to just blow up whatever tech you've toiled for days to tame. Which is why each Friday The Register offers a (hopefully) cathartic instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which you share your tetchiest tech support tales....

Finds two more reasons Musk should have known he was on the hook for datacenter kit Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wiwynn has added two more counts to its complaint against Elon Musk's social network X, alleging hasn't paid for hardware it had contracted to buy....

Chipzilla says it obeys the law ... which could mean anything Intel has responded to Chinese claims that its chips include security backdoors at the direction of America's NSA....

'My webcam isn't working today' is the new 'The dog ate my network' It's a pattern cropping up more and more frequently: a company fills an IT contractor post, not realizing it's mistakenly hired a North Korean operative. The phony worker almost immediately begins exfiltrating sensitive data, before being fired for poor performance. Then the six-figure ransom demands - accompanied by proof of the stolen files - start appearing....

Government hardens up infosec to stop this - as you would when Samsung and SK hynix are massive parts of your economy South Korea announced new measures on Thursday to prevent future leaks of technology from its patent office, after noticing increasing incidence of leaks and worrying that it could hurt local companies when stolen IP goes overseas....

Laundry and dining provider still investigating cause and scope Healthcare Services Group (HSG) has disclosed "unauthorized activity within some of its systems" in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing....

Propaganda op focuses on anti-West narratives to meddle with elections The US has placed a $10 million bounty on Russian media network Rybar and a number of its key staffers following alleged attempts to sway the upcoming US presidential election....

Raised $141k+ crowdfunding, but now powered down The SEC has reached a deal with defunct Destiny Robotics after investors lost all their capital when the startup failed to produce the promised product....

Globe Life claims blackmailers shared stolen into with short sellers US insurance provider Globe Life, already grappling with legal troubles, now faces a fresh headache: an extortion attempt involving stolen customer data....

It's the third strike, yet all they get is a slap on the wrist? Sports broadcasting network ESPN faces a proposed fine for using emergency alert service (EAS) attention sounds without authorization - again, apparently....

Five months in, only 200 units reached customers, Qualy tells El Reg Qualcomm has officially pulled the plug on its Snapdragon for Windows Dev Kits less than five months after the X-Elite powered mini-PCs were announced....

Production slated for Q1 2025, barring any hiccups Samsung has finally stolen a march in the memory market with 24 Gb GDDR7 DRAM being released for validation in AI computing systems from GPU customers before production - expected early next year - kicks off....

OpenVMM touts stronger security, but not ready for prime time just yet Microsoft earlier this month published code for a new hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor (VMM), written in Rust....

Snags controlling stake in Motivair Corporation, rest to come by 2028 Schneider Electric is taking a controlling interest in Motivair Corporation, a specialist in liquid cooling and thermal management tech for high-performance computing (HPC) systems....