The Register

This is release 0b11111111 (0xFF) - what could possibly go wrong? The 255th version of systemd is here, banishing support for split and unmerged /usr directories but enriching its UKI boot support....

Yearning for the pre-web internet can be misplaced... it certainly wasn't user-friendly Long before the internet became our world, there was a mishmash of online services such as AOL, CompuServe, GEnie, and Prodigy. Except for being faster, there's less difference between then and now than you might think....

12.5 million teased with speedy internet, only 4 million take the bait Openreach claims it has reached the halfway point in its goal of rolling out fiber broadband to 25 million UK premises by the end of 2026....

Cover-up saved the culprit after a battery of tests diagnosed the problem On Call The steady process of time means that The Register has once again arrived at Friday and the timeslot we reserve for On Call - our weekly reader-contributed tale of tech support trials and tribulations....

No repair mission required - for now The Hubble Space Telescope is expected to resume science operations on Friday, after a gyroscope glitch forced NASA to suspend astronomical observations for weeks....

Says it was probably hacked, which isn't good news either A trio of Polish security researchers claim to have found that trains built by Newag SA contain software that sabotages them if the hardware is serviced by competitors....

Committee worries licenses are being issued to boost and suit business, not national security On Thursday, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report urging tighter restrictions on export of critical technologies to China - including a policy of denial for all items controlled for national security reasons....

Bundled support has already come to Catalyst - but don't bother asking how it works Cisco has quietly introduced changes to the licensing model for its Catalyst range, and will bring it to more products over time....

The idea that Big Content should pay network operators is in trouble Amazon's game-streaming business Twitch has announced it will quit South Korea, citing network access costs ten times higher than those it pays in any other nation....

The Russians are coming! Err, they've already infiltrated UK, US inboxes Russia-backed attackers have named new targets for their ongoing phishing campaigns, with defense-industrial firms and energy facilities now in their sights, according to agencies of the Five Eyes alliance....

Security boosted and inappropriate content blocked in large language models Meta has launched Purple Llama - a project aimed at building open source tools to help developers assess and improve trust and safety in their generative AI models before deployment....

Warns of $1.3 billion charge for cutting Virtzilla's costs, rapid shift to subs and sales of the whole vStack rather than individual pieces Updated Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has announced his intention to divest VMware's end-user computing and Carbon Black units, and signalled a rapid shift to subscription licenses of bigger software bundles....

Akamai says it reported the flaws to Microsoft. Redmond shrugged A series of attacks against Microsoft Active Directory domains could allow miscreants to spoof DNS records, compromise Active Directory and steal all the secrets it stores, according to Akamai security researchers....

In the race for the Red Planet, NASA is falling behind Inspired by the success of NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter, Chinese boffins are proposing a more capable extraterrestrial flier for a planned Mars sample return mission....

Middling performance, but check out the longevity Fairphone has retained top marks for repairability, with the Dutch manufacturer's fifth iteration scoring high for software longevity, even if some components are starting to get a little more "conventional."...

As Cyber Solidarity Act edges closer to full adoption in Europe The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has signed a working arrangement with its EU counterparts to increase cross-border information sharing and more to tackle criminals....

First post-Pi 5 update brings dark mode among numerous bug fixes As many users wait for their Raspberry Pi 5 units to arrive, a fresh version of the Raspberry Pi OS has just landed, complete with fixes and that most essential of operating system add-ons - dark mode....

Just install the latest client and follow the instructions, but don't ask questions Google has released an updated version of the Google Drive app for Windows and macOS that, along with some simple manual work, should resolve missing file issues....

Surfing the cryptographic wave Meta is pressing ahead with default end-to-end encryption on chats and calls in Messenger, with the rollout beginning today....

Apparently they're being serious What's this? A tacit admission from Hewlett Packard that customers hate printer products?...

World's biggest off-prem service slinger submits comments to UK cloud inquiry, mostly has Redmond HQ's rival in its sights AWS has publicly called out Microsoft's software licensing terms, claiming they "restrict choice" and make it "financially unviable" for customers to choose anyone other than Microsoft - something Google and other rivals have complained of....

NHS Trust admits highly sensitive data left online for nearly three years More than 22,000 patients of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust were hit by data leaks that took place between 2020 and 2021....

Code shack has had two years since auditor's 'adverse opinion' to get house in order GitLab has again warned of material weaknesses in its financial controls because of failures to design and maintain the correct internal IT systems....

Between a bloc and a hard place The European Commission yesterday proposed a three-year delay on cross-border electric vehicle tariffs it described as a "one-off."...

Should have called Vista 'Shitterton' and had done with it Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has revealed that Redmond's efforts to port Windows from 32-bit to 64-bit had a code name that served a second purpose: a thinly veiled dig at a rival....

Precursor to crewed flight can reportedly carry animals Iran on Wednesday launched a "biological capsule" into low Earth orbit - an effort the nation's minister of communications claims is a precursor to crewed flights....

Indictments allege plot to shift FPGAs, accelerometers, and spycams A Belgian man has been arrested and charged for his role in a years-long smuggling scheme to export military-grade electronics from the US to Russia and China....

Catalyst 1200 and 1300 keep perpetual licenses, PoE and stackability Cisco has refreshed its small business switch range, giving the world the Catalyst 1200 and 1300 series devices....

'He can't just make his own rules,' Danish labor leader says of Musk Swedish Tesla employees have gone on strike, and unions in neighboring Denmark and Norway have joined boycotts of Elon Musk's electric automaker....

Don't worry, your developer jobs are safe ... for now Google's latest code-generating model - AlphaCode 2, powered by its Gemini Pro system and making its public debut on Wednesday - reportedly scored above the 99.5 percentile of participants competing in programming contests online....

Plans to share 'vast amounts of data' - very carefully Australia is building a top-secret cloud to host intelligence data and share it with the US and UK, which have their own clouds built for the same purpose....

Also: India's PC ban didn't take into account needs of ecosystem CANALYS APAC FORUMS Lenovo won't stop making Chromebooks despite the machines scoring poorly when it comes to both sustainability and revenue, according to an exec speaking at Canalys APAC Forum in Bangkok on Wednesday....

Canalys mostly agrees, but thinks GPU giant still has a way to go CANALYS APAC FORUM Buyers won't tolerate Nvidia's long lead times to deliver GPUs, enabling new entrants to enter the market, according to Dell Asia Pacific and Japan president, Peter Marrs....

Memory safety vulnerabilities need to be crushed with better code Business and technical leaders should prepare to focus on memory safety in software development, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) urged on Wednesday....

Scheduled summer Mach 5 flight deadline came and went Stratolaunch has taken its Talon-A reusable hypersonic aircraft into the sky fully fueled and ready to launch, but the long-delayed test flight isn't happening yet....

Cupertino promises to reveal its data deliveries, ending silence on the matter Government agencies in unspecified countries have compelled Apple and Google to hand over push notification data without telling anyone, thanks to US government regulations, according to US senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)....

Issue has been around since at least 2012 A years-old Bluetooth authentication bypass vulnerability allows miscreants to connect to Apple, Android and Linux devices and inject keystrokes to run arbitrary commands, according to a software engineer at drone technology firm SkySafe....

Chips boast 1.3x lead in AI, 1.8x in HPC over Nv's H100 AMD is pushing advanced packaging and chiplets to the limit with the launch of its Instinct MI300-series accelerators, part of a quest to close the gap with rival Nvidia in the AI arena and bolster its standing in the high performance computing (HPC) community....

Gemini accepts text, images, audio, and video and comes in three flavors Google has unveiled Gemini, its most powerful class of transformer-based models yet, which are capable of processing text, images, audio, and video....

Folks are dipping their toes in without a full commitment Despite a huge surge in awareness over the last year, just 10 percent of organizations have adopted generative AI technology in production environments, according to a survey by Intel....

What, spent all your liquid assets on Twitter, Elon? The world's richest man is begging for cash again, this time he'd like $1 billion for his recently formed AI outfit, with individual investors told to offer at least $2 million for a slice of the equity pie....

Commerce Sec threatens redesigned AI-capable chips will be curtailed 'the very next day' Nvidia chief Jensen Huang reckons Huawei and Intel are potential challengers for the GPU-maker's crown in the AI accelerator space, and says it is working out a deal with the US to keep selling products to China....

Need a lot of compute? How does 8,960 TPUs sound? Google revealed a performance-optimized version of its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) called the v5p designed to reduce the time commitment associated with training large language models....

Does the Saturnian moon contain the chemical building blocks for alien life? Future spacecraft flying close to Enceladus may be able to detect amino acids, an essential class of organic compounds for life on Earth, in the explosive plumes erupting from the moon's surface, a new study suggests....

Insights tool aims to simplify conversion process, but it'll probably cost you Red Hat has suggested that if customers are worried about the impending end of life for CentOS 7, they might wish to migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) via its Insights service....

Apparently no one thought to check if this D-Link router 'issue' was actually exploitable A security vulnerability previously added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerability catalog (KEV), which was recognized by CVE Numbering Authorities (CNA), and included in reputable threat reports is now being formally rejected by infosec organizations....

'Inconsistent wiring label definitions' resulted in drogue being cut before it was deployed NASA has revealed how a wiring mix-up resulted in a parachute problem on its otherwise successful OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission....

Bloc risks missing out on first-to-legislate status if timetable slips The European Commission is entering 11th-hour negotiations to hammer out legislation governing the development and use of AI in time to retain its position as first mover on AI rules....

Semiconductor bods get cash injection after threatening to quit UK over lack of government support UK-based chipmaker Pragmatic Semiconductor has netted 182 million ($229 million) in finance to expand production, after threatening to quit the country entirely earlier this year over lack of government support....

Grudge match between quantum mechanics and general relativity attracts new effort to find harmony Since the early 20th century, physicists have struggled to marry theories governing the very big with those for the very small....