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Adding extra shine to Ubuntu Jammy... with the lightweight edition to follow One of the more widely used Ubuntu spinoffs, non-techie friendly Zorin has put out three editions of its latest version - Zorin OS 17.1 - and there are still more to come....

The NIMBYs are fed up, and it's an election year The UK's Data and Digital Infrastructure Minister wants telcos to stop installing new telegraph poles....

Resulting cycle of rushed repairs and recriminations did wonders for the IT/user relationship On Call Thirsty folk will tell you it's always twelve o'clock somewhere, but Friday comes but once a week and The Register marks it by offering another instalment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of the weird and woeful world of work....

Reaction from channel was 'stunned silence followed by anger and disbelief' Citrix has allegedly made major changes to its partner program, and one of the consultancies briefed on the new arrangements told The Register that the when the news was delivered to a gathering of the Citrix faithful the result was "stunned silence followed by anger and disbelief."...

Thankfully the prizes for human winners are far higher than those for machines Alibaba has added a twist to its annual Global Math Competition by opening a separate challenge to AI....

But rates his first 100 days in charge a 'strong start' Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has rated his enterprise's first hundred days as the owner of VMware "a strong start," but also acknowledged the rapid changes at the virtualization giant have been hard for some to digest....

Flagship facility has just 48 GPUs NASA's supercomputing capabilities are not keeping pace with the latest technology developments, and are "oversubscribed and overburdened," causing delays to missions that are sometimes addressed by teams acquiring their own infrastructure....

Uncle Sam can use this snooping tool, too, but that's beside the point There's another Chinese-manufactured product - joining the likes of TikTok, cars and semiconductors - that poses a national security risk to Americans: electronic locks, such as those used in safes....

IDC forecasts spend to grow 15.4% in 2024 to $232B - then add another $100B in three years Spending on edge computing is growing fast and because it's 2024, analyst firm IDC believes AI is a big reason for the boost....

If you can live with a measely 6GHz the standard i9 is a $110 cheaper If Intel's 6GHz Core i9-14900K was too pedestrian for your tastes, the x86 giant now has a special-edition processor up for grabs that it says will do 6.2GHz right out of the box....

Imagine trying to trick folks into buying $500 of unnecessary repairs - and they turn out to be federal agents A pair of tech support businesses accused of swindling marks out of their hard-earned cash have agreed to cough up a $26 million settlement following an undercover probe by the FTC....

Boffins show less platinum may be needed for long-lived power source Adding caffeine can enhance the efficiency of fuel cells, reducing the need for platinum in electrodes and significantly reducing the cost of making them, according to researchers in Japan....

Canadian-Russian said to have turned to a life of cybercrime during pandemic, now must pay the price - literally A LockBit ransomware kingpin has been sentenced to almost four years behind bars and ordered to pay more than CA$860,000 ($635,000, 500,000) in restitution to some of his victims by a Canadian court as he awaits extradition to the US....

Rare occasion when you do want Big Tech to make a hash of it Google has enhanced its Safe Browsing service to enable real-time protection in Chrome for desktop, iOS, and soon Android against risky websites, without sending browsing history data to the ad biz....

But is there one that can sort out failing ERP projects? Well Larry, is there? Oracle has unleashed 50 use cases for gen AI on its Fusion Applications suite, letting vector-based statistical models provide financial report "narratives," help filter job candidates, and provide product descriptions....

VLOGGER needs just a still photo and an audio recording to generate footage, but it's far from perfect Google has a new AI trick up its sleeve that can animate a still photo using nothing but a recording of a person's speech, and boy is it widening the uncanny valley....

Zut alors! Department for registering and helping unemployed people broken into A French government department - responsible for registering and assisting unemployed people - is the latest victim of a mega data breach that compromised the information of up to 43 million citizens....

Booster hit the water hard and monster rocket lost during re-entry, but otherwise a success! SpaceX has launched its third Starship Super-Heavy rocket on a test flight that went almost entirely to plan....

Will the WEF experiment work? The Cybercrime Atlas, a massive undertaking that aims to disrupt cybercriminals across the globe, enters its operational phase in 2024, two years after organizers laid the groundwork at the RSA Conference....

If you don't pay attention, your lovely little Teams app will stop working Time is running out for developers and administrators to prepare themselves for Microsoft's one domain to rule them all - cloud.microsoft....

Services slowly coming back online but providers still struggling Change Healthcare is being investigated over the alleged 6 TB data theft by the ALPHV ransomware group as it continues recovery efforts....

Veteran spacecraft shows signs of sanity with poke from engineers Engineers are hopeful that the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 might have turned a corner after spending the last three months spouting gibberish at controllers....

SteveTok? TikMnuch? breaking news On the heels of the US House of Representatives passing a TikTok ban bill, former US Treasury secretary and private equity mogul Steve Mnuchin is apparently thinking about buying the platform....

We thought everyone was thrilled about being spied on and having their jobs taken by bots A survey of UK workers suggests that quality of life declines as exposure to newer technology including wearables, robotics, and AI rises in the workplace....

Microsoft IP addresses on the spam naughty step If you're an Exchange Online user wondering why emails to Yahoo and AOL users haven't been getting through, don't worry - it isn't just you. Stricter security rules have tripped up Microsoft's email service....

Ewe-nique endeavor aimed to create Jurassic Baaa-rk experience for hunters In a case that could have been lifted from a bad movie about a "mad scientist," a Montana rancher has pleaded guilty to wildlife trafficking charges in his quest to genetically engineer an ubersheep for hunting....

Complainant moved to 'retire in place' role after Sarbanes Oxley Act report, filing alleges SAP is being sued for age discrimination and retaliation by an employee that alleges he was moved to a meaningless role after he asked for an investigation of potentially anti-competitive practices....

Thanks to Europe forcing Apple to offer a browser choice screen. Now, about ditching WebKit ... Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers....

Windows preview delivers one app to handle multiple accounts, boosts Copilot's capabilities Microsoft is on the cusp of addressing a major frustration caused by its Teams app by introducing a version capable of simultaneously logging in to multiple personae....

Australian minister singles out Meta - where Zuck has 600,000 Nvidia GPUs ready to roll The governments of ten nations have called on social media operators to improve their ability to detect and prevent fraud from flourishing on their platforms....

The Chaebol that also runs chipmaker SK hynix lacks energy to run multiple middle kingdom entities SK Innovation, part of the same Chaebol as chipmaker SK hynix, has liquidated its Chinese battery subsidiary, Blue Dragon Energy....

Plans to digitally transform trees South Korea's Forest Service announced on Wednesday it plans to establish a real-time forest resource management system and an AI-based forest fire monitoring platform....

Bill proposes to do to China what China already does to the US - make life hard for foreign social networks The United States House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act - a law aimed at forcing TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the app's US operations or face the prospect of a ban....

Akira ransomware crooks brag of swiping thousands of ID documents during break-in Over the next few weeks, Nissan Oceania will make contact with around 100,000 people in Australia and New Zealand whose data was pilfered in a December 2023 attack on its systems - perhaps by the Akira ransomware gang....

Cloud exit toll booth bypass built by EU regulators Microsoft on Wednesday said it will no longer charge customers an egress fee to remove their data from its Azure cloud, following similar declarations earlier this year from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google....

Would put those AI accelerators out of Arm's reach, at least Opinion After a difficult 2023, things may be looking up for RISC-V chip designer SiFive, which expects AI to drive strong revenue growth in 2024....

What's good for quantum optimization could help make models leaner Analysis Quantum computing has remained a decade away for over a decade now, but according to industry experts it may hold the secret to curbing AI's insatiable appetite....

A $2M drop from previous year. So ... things are more secure? Google awarded $10 million to 632 bug hunters last year through its vulnerability reward programs....

Vehicle electronics and software becoming ever more complex Chip designer Arm is bringing its Neoverse architecture to the automotive sector along with the first Armv9 processors for in-vehicle applications, claiming these will provide better performance for AI....

Bitcoin Fog washed hundreds of millions for criminals The operator of the world's longest-running Bitcoin money laundering service faces a 50-year prison sentence after being found guilty in a US court....

Automated AI helper intended to make security more manageable Microsoft Copilot for Security, a subscription AI security service, will be generally available on April 1, 2024, the company announced on Wednesday....

Rules were not bent for Big Tech, politicians say The European Parliament has enacted the world's first legislation designed specifically to address the risk of artificial intelligence, including biometric categorization and manipulation of human behavior, as well as stricter rules for the introduction of generative AI....

Unlikely to survive hexavalent chromium dip, officials ask residents to keep an eye out A cat covered in toxic chemicals is wandering the streets of Fukuyama in Japan, and locals are being warned not to go near....

Media giant's counterfiling accuses AI darling of 'spin' in copyright infringement case The New York Times has fired back another legal salvo at OpenAI after the ChatGPT maker accused it of manipulating the chatbot to regurgitate the media group's content....

Plus: Trump reportedly gave chipmaker license to sell to Huawei back in the day... The Pentagon has reportedly declined to grant $2.5 billion to Intel for the production of defense-related semiconductors, which could leave the Department of Commerce to foot the entire bill....

Microsoft prepares to replace an old faithful with something shiny, new, and lacking key features. Sound familiar? Analysts have warned that some enterprises have a mountain to climb ahead of Microsoft's planned phase-out of the classic Outlook for Windows. 2029 is the earliest cut-off date for support, but some key functionality is still missing from the veteran app's replacement....

Startup is also working with Qualcomm on optimized models for its Cloud AI 100 Ultra inference chips Cerebras revealed its latest dinner-plate sized AI chip on Wednesday, which it claims offers twice the performance per watt of its predecessor, alongside a collaboration with Qualcomm aimed at accelerating machine learning inferencing....

And here you were saying tech hadn't yet made a difference to someone special Larry Ellison's personal wealth is inextricably linked to Oracle and yesterday it ballooned by more than $15 billion following a 12 percent rally of Big Red's stock on the news that it is building an AI datacenter and has a deal with AI darling Nvidia....

27,000 individuals had data stolen, which for some included names and social security numbers Stanford University says the cybersecurity incident it dealt with last year was indeed ransomware, which it failed to spot for more than four months....

Might be wishful thinking from finance exec following two-year computer sector recession AI could be the mechanism to shorten notebook replacement cycles, according to the chief financial officer at Dell....