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Dev claims to have fixed 'issue that caused messages not to be sent or received' The developer behind Beeper Mini just released an updated version of the standalone Android app that users say can sidestep the block Apple put in place over the weekend....

A mis-merged patch causing corruption on ext4 volumes is to blame The Debian maintainers have identified a problem in kernel 6.1 that can cause corruption on ext4 volumes. As a result, the planned 12.3 release won't happen....

Board and incoming CEO decide reorganizing is better than splitting BlackBerry has decided its plan to split into two separate companies is not a good idea and will instead reorganize itself into two independent divisions....

Let's choo-choo-choose safety, folks Space weather can wreak havoc on electronic systems, but while most folks focus on protecting datacenters or the power grid, a group of UK researchers are warning that relatively mild solar storms could bork train signaling systems....

Scum lure folks with promises of good jobs in crypto and then won't let them leave Hundreds of suspected people smugglers have been arrested, and 163 potential victims rescued from servitude, as part of an Interpol-coordinated operation dubbed "Turquesa V" that targeted cyber criminals who lure workers into servitude to carry out their scams....

Takes huge stake in local superapp Tokopedia, for the good of the small business community A mere two-and-a-half months after Indonesia imposed a ban on social commerce, made-in-China social media giant TikTok and local super-app company GoTo have announced a "strategic e-commerce partnership" in a form that appears to evade the ban....

Interstellar Glory Space Technology gets a boost - even though it's yet to reach orbit Chinese private space biz i-Space (not to be confused with Japanese aerospace concern iSpace) has recycled a rocket just 38 days after its previous flight....

Fortnite dev hails 'a win for all app developers and consumers around the world' Epic Games has won its antitrust battle against Google....

Expanded service provider definition could force cafes and hotels to spy for the feds Many US businesses may be required to assist in government-directed surveillance - depending upon which of two reform bills before Congress is approved....

Also kills perpetual licenses, adds a vSphere bundle for smaller users +COMMENT Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division has announced what it's described as "a dramatic simplification of our product portfolio," plus the end of perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions - some at half their previous price....

This one weird trick works every time, most of the time Investigators at Indiana's Purdue University have devised a way to interrogate large language models (LLMs) in a way that that breaks their etiquette training - almost all the time....

Redmond reassures AFL-CIO workers they won't be pushed out by technology Microsoft is partnering with the largest US union group - representing 60 unions and more than 12 million workers - to explore how AI will impact labor, and help shape policies to support workers as the technology threatens to disrupt jobs....

More awards imminent agency says British arms dealer BAE Systems will be among the first beneficiaries of the $53 billion US Chips and Science Act....

Elon's biz claims 1st Amendment rights It may have taken more than a year, but Tesla has finally responded to the California Department of Motor Vehicles allegations that it misrepresented Autopilot's capabilities, arguing that it's free to do so under the US Constitution....

AlphV lays claims to the intrusion Norton Healthcare, which runs eight hospitals and more than 30 clinics in Kentucky and Indiana, has admitted crooks may have stolen 2.5 million people's most sensitive data during a ransomware attack in May....

Elsewhere, BAE Systems bags first CHIPS Act funding Upstate New York is set for a $10 billion semiconductor research facility to work on next-generation chip manufacturing, with IBM and Micron part of the scheme....

Latest offensive cyber group to switch to atypical programming for payloads Research into Lazarus Group's attacks using Log4Shell has revealed novel malware strains written in an atypical programming language....

Why would FTC call that antitrust, it asks in dismissal request Amazon is asking a judge to dismiss the antitrust case filed against it by the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states, arguing the case fails to allege any anticompetitive conduct or harm to consumers from its behavior....

Hey Bing, how can I invest billions in a company but not break antitrust laws? Microsoft's OpenAI headaches might not be going away following reports that now the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering an investigation into the Windows giant's investment in the company....

Lack of awareness still blamed for patching apathy despite it being among most infamous bugs of all time Two years after the Log4Shell vulnerability in the open source Java-based Log4j logging utility was disclosed, circa one in four applications are dependent on outdated libraries, leaving them open to exploitation....

Mission to the Moon likely to slip to 2024 following dress rehearsal issues United Launch Alliance's heavy-lift launch vehicle Vulcan Centaur is facing yet another delay after the company was unable to complete a Wet Dress Rehearsal on December 8....

Chip giant claims demo tech could 'significantly' improve device density Intel is looking to new options for its future chips including 3D stacking of transistors to enable greater density, extending backside power, and use of gallium nitride for greater power delivery....

Ofcom opens consultation on resilience requirements... power backup for mobile networks, anyone? Britain's comms regulator is asking telecoms providers for updated guidance on how resilient their networks are, given modern society's increasing reliance on digital services....

Also: 'well-known Bay Area tech' firm's laptops stolen and check out some critical vulns Security in brief The saga of 23andMe's mega data breach has reached something of a conclusion, with the company saying its probe has determined millions of leaked records originated from illicit break-ins into just 14,000 accounts....

Almost 100M in handouts available for LEO connectivity projects UK government may subsidize Brit companies working on low Earth orbit satellite connectivity projects - the aim being to support comms for remote parts of the country and boost the domestic satellite industry....

Keeping the lights on with an enterprise product while staying true to your roots Interview Monitoring biz VictoriaMetrics is relatively unusual in its field. It is yet to accept external investment, preferring instead to try to grow organically rather than being forced to through a private equity meat grinder by committing to grow by X every year until the investor exits....

Better than a Pi? It's an open and shut case Opinion Space junk grabs headlines. There's a lot of space hardware alive and dead - 9,064 objects at the time of writing according to the Orbiting Now tracker - and cleaning it up at end of life is the focus of a number of bizarrely nautical technology proposals like sails, harpoons and nets, more at home on an 18th century whaling ship than Low Earth Orbit....

Vast battery life, zippy performance, and rich speakers make an impressive package Desktop Tourism When I speak to laptop-makers about their wares, they often admit that the benchmark in their field is the MacBook Air. Ever since its 2008 debut, Apple's minimalist portable has been the standard others aspire to match, despite changing little from the formula of a gently tapering aluminum clamshell with screens of between 11 and 13 inches....

Nice ridiculously redundant drive you've got there - what a pity if something ...happened to it Who, Me? Heavens to Betsy, dear reader, are you back again? It feels like only a week since we last met in the corner of The Register we call Who, Me? to share the schadenfreude of a fellow Regizen's misfortune....

Big Tech plays the 'this might hurt innovation' card for rules that bar predictive policing, workplace emotion assessments The European Union (EU) on Saturday reached provisional agreement on the AI Act - a broad legal framework limiting how artificial intelligence can be used....

And the joy of slaughtering demons as John Romero himself delivers a frag-tastic new level Seminal first-person shooter Doom marked the thirtieth anniversary of its release on December 10, and co-creator John Romero marked the occasion by releasing new levels for the game and celebrating its role as the genesis of many IT careers....

First to wear it will be an M.2 connector that draws power from PCIe The Raspberry Pi project has released the first revision to its Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) spec, along with an update to the RPi 5's PCIE handling tools....

PLUS: The AI companies that will use AMD's latest GPUs, and more AI In brief Google wowed the internet with a demo video showing the multimodal capabilities of its latest large language model Gemini - but some of the the demo was faked....

PLUS: Japan Moon landing scheduled; Mastercard's APAC pay-by-face trial; Scammers feast on restaurant QR code Microsoft last week announced price hikes for its software and services, with the biggest rises to be felt across Asia....

Silicon carbide production for EVs among key targets Silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors are getting a lot of attention of late and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry doesn't want to be left out....

Proposals now due in 2024 for a launch 5 years later NASA has tweaked the contract and shuffled the dates for its procurement notice covering a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station (ISS.)...

Microsoft spots surge in pro-Russia exploits of video platform to spread propaganda An unknown pro-Russia influence group spent time recruiting unwitting Hollywood actors to assist in smear campaigns against Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky....

Register journos brew up on the future of hybrid in our latest Kettle Kettle Readers have been up in arms this week about a study by Stanford boffins suggesting that the return to the office trend is stalling, as workers rebel against demands that they take up the commute again....

'This is a brainstorming concept a team is at the early stages of exploring' Google is reportedly toying with the idea of using its latest Gemini AI models to analyze images from Google Photos and text from Search to put together a life story for users....

End-of-year deadline looms on US surveillance Two competing bills to reauthorize America's FISA Section 702 spying powers advanced in the House of Representatives committees this week, setting up Congress for a battle over warrantless surveillance before the law lapses in the New Year....

Same old argument about free speech - let's see if it sticks this time Elon Musk's lawyers are again trying to get the world's richest man out of his "Twitter sitter" consent decree with the US Securities and Exchange Commission via an appeal to the US Supreme Court....

Latest Insider Build brings new features for Windows 365 Boot Microsoft has begun rolling out fresh Windows 365 Boot features, starting with its Windows Insider program....

CTO Mark Papermaster lays out the plan for the next two years Interview Semiconductors have been getting progressively hotter over the past few years as Moore's Law has slowed and more power is required to push higher performance gen over gen....

HashiCorp software faces challenge after licensing change The rebellion against HashiCorp for adopting a competition-limiting license for its Terraform software expanded this week, with word that The Linux Foundation aims to help hatch an open source alternative to Vault, the company's secrets management project....

Experimerntal milestone needs work before it can be considered a candidate for power generation The US Department of Energy has released $42 million in seed funding to help research the nuclear fusion techniques successfully demonstrated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory last year....

It's tricky to pull off, but new rules may make reuse more common Datacenters generate lots of heat and myraid providers are trying to put this resource to use, but there are geographic and various practical limitations on re-purposing it....

Interpol increasingly concerned as abject abuse of victims scales far beyond Asia origins Human trafficking for the purposes of populating cyber scam call centers is expanding beyond southeast Asia, where the crime was previously isolated....

It looks like everything is coming up HP. Do you want some help with that? The curious case of the HP Smart app and unexpected renaming of printers has taken another turn, after a Reg reader pointed to broken metadata pushed out in a November Windows Servicing Stack Update (SSU)....

Days left to decide chameleon's fate ... vote now LOGOWATCH Linux distro openSUSE this week parked its electric scooter outside the marketing boutique as it pursues a brand that somehow reflects the paradigm shift in its own not-so-corporate journey....

Has recent CEO, board shenanigans given rise to a merger situation? CMA is asking for a friend The UK's competition regulator wants to know if recent changes at OpenAI and its evolving relationship with Microsoft are cause for concern....