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ZBLAN fibers made in space hopefully don't crystallize and are far less brittle, opening the path to faster photonics Fiber optics of the future may be manufactured in space if the results of a recent ISS experiment prove its feasibility....

Expect ongoing supply shortages this year, say storage analysts Seagate has joined Western Digital in increasing the prices of hard drives, with rising demand due to the huge data requirements of AI taking the blame. AI is also behind a rapid growth in orders for Enterprise solid state drives (SSDs)....

Musk outfit's figures almost 10 times worse than industry averages Workplace safety data reported to the US government for 2023 indicates that SpaceX's injury rate continues to surpass the industry average....

What are Mir and Wayland all about anyway? Mir-based tiling window manager Miracle-WM version 0.2.0 is here, building on the basis of the initial release. Will Mir bring peace and harmony and convergence after all?...

Motorists file class action alleging breach of contract and more after their premiums went up Two New Jersey drivers claim they now pay more for their car insurance because General Motors (GM) and its OnStar app snooped on their driving behavior without their consent and sent metrics to "various insurance carriers."...

From first place to third as local brands grow iPhone sales in China - the world's largest smartphone market - slipped by 19.1 percent in Q1 year-over-year while many domestic brands rose, pushing Apple from first to third place....

Language model focused on reasoning fits on a smartphone and runs offline Microsoft claims the latest incarnation of its lightweight Phi-3 Mini AI model rivals competitors such as GPT-3.5 while being small enough to be deployed on a phone....

Electricity goes both ways as bit barns in Dublin aim to cut emissions and boost the bank Datacenter biz Digital Realty is to let facilities in Ireland feed energy back to the electricity grid when needed, helping to smooth out variability in supply, cut CO emissions and provide an additional revenue stream....

Even tighter requirements, so it's time to put old hardware out to pasture... or find an alternative OS Microsoft's war on old PCs appears to have intensified as the latest builds of Windows 11 will not boot if your CPU does not support the SSE4.2 instruction set....

Cloud migration good for margins, CEO says SAP booked revenue of 8.04 billion ($8.58 billion) in the first calendar quarter of 2024, up eight percent on the same period of 2023....

The 'big victory for the good guys' shouldn't be celebrated too much, though The average time taken by global organizations to detect cyberattacks has dropped to its lowest-ever level of ten days, Mandiant revealed today....

That said, good old US healthcare system so elaborately costly some are forced to avoid altogether UnitedHealth Group, the parent of ransomware-struck Change Healthcare, delivered some very unwelcome news for customers today as it continues to recover from the massively expensive side and disruptive digital break-in....

All from billions of miles away NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has begun returning usable engineering data after engineers devised a way to work around a damaged memory chip....

City council says it lost control after shutting down systems It's become somewhat cliche in cybersecurity reporting to speculate whether an organization will have the resources to "keep the lights on" after an attack. But the opposite turns out to be true with Leicester City Council following its March ransomware incident....

Accidents at intersection quadruple The United States are widely free from roundabout tyranny with only one for every 33,330 people. A good thing too because people passing by Hollister, just south of Silicon Valley, can't seem to grok their new one....

Risky bet? Premium price with 'no demonstrable benefits'? It doesn't sound like an order avalanche Italic text...

Unverified users could scoop up data on high-value individuals without any form of verification process Neighbourhood Watch (NW) groups across the UK can now rest easy knowing the developers behind a communications platform fixed a web app bug that leaked their data en masse....

Memo to Andy Stone: Don't go to Russia for your holidays Meta's communications director Andy Stone has been sentenced in absentia to six years imprisonment in Russia for "justifying terrorism."...

For some reason the world's most notorious app decided not to tick all boxes under the world's toughest digital law TikTok has earned itself a second investigation under the European Union's Digital Services Act - and suspension of its rewards program - after failing to comply with the law in two important regards....

Outsourcers outsourced work for the BBC, Amazon, and HBO Max to the hermit kingdom A misconfigured cloud server that used a North Korean IP address has led to the discovery that film production studios including the BBC, Amazon, and HBO Max could be inadvertently hiring workers from the hermit kingdom for animation projects....

Yet X remains a supporter of The Christchurch Call, an international agreement to stop video nasties +Comment Australia's government has secured a court order requiring Elon Musk's social network, X, to remove all videos depicting a terrorist attack....

Digital reform conference sees PM repeat calls to get online government services right at last Usually when a government announces it's drawing up a digitalization roadmap, it's being metaphorical. In Japan's case, it's quite literal: roadways dedicated to autonomous vehicles handling logistics-related traffic will be mapped out....

Putin's pals use 'GooseEgg' malware to launch attacks you can defeat with patches or deletion Russian spies are exploiting a years-old Windows print spooler vulnerability and using a custom tool called GooseEgg to elevate privileges and steal credentials across compromised networks, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence....

Group of now-ex Googlers say 50 folks have been let go, vow ongoing protests After firing 28 people for protesting its cloud deal with Israel by occupying its offices, Google reportedly spent the weekend letting go of more staff to bring the number of employees let go over the incident to an even 50....

Seven years of stonewalling and no consequences for advertising giant Japan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has concluded that Google unfairly blocked its local Yahoo! rival from accessing advertising technology, but will not fine the Chocolate Factory....

Senate kills reform amendments, Biden swiftly signs bill into law US lawmakers on Saturday reauthorized a contentious warrantless surveillance tool for another two years - and added a whole bunch of people and organizations to the list of those who can be compelled to spy for Uncle Sam....

Lachwani faked it but didn't make it Manish Lachwani, former CEO of app testing firm HeadSpin, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and will pay a fine of $1 million....

Chinese tech juggernaut eyes global expansion despite US tech restrictions Huawei plans to expand its native HarmonyOS smartphone platform worldwide, despite coming under US-led sanctions that have deprived it of access to key technologies....

Because nothing reassures investors like discounting some inventory After a week beset by disaster after disaster, Tesla has decided to reassure investors that it's still a safe bet ... by discounting prices around the world....

$20m to keep the industry from having to rely on fossil fuels Solar energy company Exowatt has launched with the financial support of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, alongside two other investors....

The Reg accepts no responsibility for borked installations Worried about Windows 11 bloat and want a bit more control over what goes into its ISOs? Over the weekend, a new version of Tiny11 Builder in PowerShell guise arrived....

Don't bore us, get to the chorus: You need less privacy so we can protect the children Yet another international cop shop has come out swinging against end-to-end encryption - this time it's Europol which is urging an end to implementation of the tech for fear police investigations will be hampered by protected DMs....

KDE edition has the most conspicuous changes, and could become future flagship Fedora 40 is in the final stretch before launch tomorrow, with release candidate 1.14 in testing....

Prosecutors believe one frikkin' laser did make its way to Beijing Germany has arrested three citizens who allegedly tried to transfer military technology to China, a violation of the country's export rules....

LGBTQ+ dating app's maker previously denied selling sensitive user data Hundreds have joined a UK class action lawsuit against LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr, seeking damages over a historical case of the company allegedly forwarding users' HIV status as well as other sensitive data to third-party advertisers....

Riveting conclusion to Tesla recall saga While the vast majority of recent Tesla recalls have been addressed with over-the-air updates, the fix for Cybertruck's recalcitrant acceleration pedal necessitates a rare venture into meatspace. And it's as underwhelming as it is simple....

Meta insists it's just misunderstood and it's safe to talk to citizens over FB The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has warned that government organizations should not use Facebook to communicate with the country's citizens unless they can guarantee the privacy of data....

Which one of you is already running 100-plus kilowatt racks? Survey As CPUs and GPUs grow ever denser and power-hungry, many, including Register readers, expect liquid cooling to play a larger role in enterprise datacenters over the next few years....

Sadly no push to ban stupid TikTok dances, but ByteDance would have year to offload app Stateside Fresh US legislation to force the sale of TikTok locally was passed in Washington over the weekend after an earlier version stalled in the Senate....

High-flying AI scientist claims unfair dismissal following pregnancy leave A lawsuit is alleging Amazon was so desperate to keep up with the competition in generative AI it was willing to breach its own copyright rules....

Clippy 2024 is something else Microsoft has acknowledged an error - Copilot is auto-launching for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel as well as the Canary and Dev builds....

Leaked draft report says stated goals still come up short Google's Privacy Sandbox, which aspires to provide privacy-preserving ad targeting and analytics, still isn't sufficiently private....

Commercial operators must try Varda The US Federal Aviation Administration is updating its launch license requirements: if you're launching something designed for reentry, you'll need a license for that, too. Before you launch....

Syzmon Jastrzebski wrongly borrowed $126k, money written off as he's left the country UK government is kissing goodbye to the 100,000 an IT consultant-cum-software developer wrongly secured under the Bounce Back Loans scheme that was created during the pandemic to financially support firms....

What if it's not AI but the algorithm to blame? Opinion It was a bold claim by the richest and most famous tech founder: bold, precise and wrong. Laughably so. Twenty years ago, Bill Gates promised to rid the world of spam by 2006. How's that worked out for you?...

For once, Redmond's finest saved the day - by being rubbish in unexpectedly useful ways Who, Me? It's Monday once again, dear reader, and you know what that means: another dive into the Who, Me? confessional, to share stories of IT gone wrong that Reg readers managed to pretend had gone right....

For now, Redmond is dogfooding Azure for product simulations Microsoft has bragged that its own Azure HPC service was able to reduce the length of its Surface laptop design process - most notably for a hinge, which was reduced to one iteration, and hopes to use AI to do even better in future....

The processor that gave the world the ZX Spectrum and so much more is out of wafers Production of some models of Z80 processor - the chip that helped spark the PC boom of the 1980s - will cease in June 2024 after an all-too-brief 48 years....

Two rounds of reports and patches may not have completely closed this hole BLACK HAT ASIA Researchers at US/Israeli infosec outfit SafeBreach last Friday discussed flaws in Microsoft and Kaspersky security products that can potentially allow the remote deletion of files. And, they asserted, the hole could remain exploitable - even after both vendors claim to have patched the problem....

A day after FBI boss warns Beijing is poised to strike against US infrastructure China last week reorganized its military to create an Information Support Force aimed at ensuring it can fight and win networked wars....