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Not enough gourds in your product pics? Try the 'Pumpkin spice' theme Amazon on Wednesday said its Amazon Ads customers can begin beta testing the deployment of AI-generated images for pitching products on its sales platform....

Oh, and happy Twitter acquisition day eve to Elon. Will year 2 be better? Not if the bankers get ahold of him, it seems Don't want to start being bombarded by video calls from Xitter? Then you'd better disable this new "feature" added to the platform yesterday....

Nearly six years on from Spectre and Meltdown, novel method steals passwords, emails, texts University researchers have developed a novel exploit that can steal information from virtually all modern Apple Macs, iPhones, and iPads....

Why, what did you think they were for? US space agency NASA plans to run a technology demonstration for space lasers using the International Space Station next month, to test how this could be used to transmit terabytes of data back from science and exploration missions....

Mozilla's review-check firm acquisition to bear fruit really soon Firefox 119 is out with improved inter-device sync and PDF editing, but the next version looks likely to have a whole new ability....

6.9 injuries per 100 employees? Try 69 percent taking time off for injuries, exhaustion, survey concludes Amazon may have some serious explaining to do. A survey of workers at warehouses and other company facilities finds injury rates astronomically higher than those the online megastore has reported to government officials....

A towel is just about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can carry One spacewalking cosmonaut was hit on their visor by a contaminated tether as a pair of International Space Station crew members ventured outside the outpost a few hours ago to investigate a leaky radiator....

'The company is not agreeing to the deal at this time' Memory chipmaker SK hynix looks set to block the planned merger between Kioxia and Western Digital because the move would undervalue its own stake in Kioxia....

Vivaldi boss calls for browser choice and warns that Redmond might be deflating usage figures Exclusive The European Commission is looking into Microsoft's request to remove Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Ads from the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and at least one rival has claimed the company is not playing fair....

DBAs come in for beer but struggle to find a table, query imaginary world in wardrobe Newcomers to the tech industry may feel like they have entered Narnia, with its abundance of strange language, mythology, and clothing. Now its own King Aslan - Oracle founder Larry Ellison - has stepped into the story by investing in an Oxford pub where Chronicles of Narnia author CS Lewis and his mate JRR Tolkien shared pints....

Competition and Markets Authority needs more time to consider 'complex case', new deadline set for February 2024 Updated Britain's competition regulator is extending into 2024 its prolonged investigation of Adobe's $20 billion purchase of Figma, upending the software giant's plan to complete the transaction by the end of this year....

Don't panic -it's just for testing Microsoft's Raymond Chen took to his "Old New Thing" blog this week to explain why Windows has a hash of a weak password in its cryptographic libraries....

Irish eyes may not be smiling Interview Last week, privacy advocate (and very occasional Reg columnist) Alexander Hanff filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) decrying YouTube's deployment of JavaScript code to detect the use of ad blocking extensions by website visitors....

Everyone's wanting a slice of this spectrum pie Vodafone says tests of frequencies in the upper 6 GHz band for mobile phone calls were successful, and is pushing for it to be available for cellular networks. The problem? Wi-Fi vendors also want this spectrum for wireless broadband....

Researcher who publicized issue brands company's communication 'appalling' ServiceNow is issuing a fix for a flaw that exposes data after a researcher published a method for unauthenticated attackers to steal an organization's sensitive files....

Upstream policy changefor LTS kernels Ubuntu doesn't use Canonical has addressed customer concerns over the reduction in long term support (LTS) of its code - but there is no real change here, and you'll still need Ubuntu Pro to keep the rest of the OS patched....

Make Webex more collaborative and secure, while you enjoy its AI additions and active noise cancellation Cisco has co-branded a pair of high-end electronics vendor Bang & Olufsen's earbuds, and suggested they'll make Webex videoconferences more productive and secure....

Shorter and more specific than certifications, but still tied to Microsoft products. Would you do one? Poll When The Register writes about vendor certification programs, readers often comment that the credentials aren't worth the pixels they're printed on because they don't reflect real-world skills....

Regulator reckons letting scam texts through is a culpable act Singapore's government has proposed making telcos compensate their customers if they're phished via text messages that should have been blocked....

$65 million cable project to connect US to Australia by way of Fiji and French Polynesia Google will build a pair of subsea cables connecting the US to Australia by way of Fiji and French Polynesia....

Two thumbs down as ACLU lawsuit yields uncomfortable results The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used an AI-powered data-scanning tool called Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST) to scour social media looking for post containing "derogatory" comments about the nation....

But beware geeks bearing gifts Apple is backing the Biden Administrations' push for a nationwide right-to-repair law but, as with all things Apple, always check the terms and conditions....

Chocolate Factory agrees $23m guilt-free settlement About 2.5 million people who clicked on a Google Search link between October 25, 2006, and September 30, 2013 can expect to receive $7.16 to compensate them for claims of violated privacy, after an epic legal battle with the ad giant....

Shareholders rejoice! Apple TV+, News+ raises prices over 40% Subscription pricing has been on the rise for nearly every service imaginable, and Apple isn't about to miss the opportunity to squeeze its customers for a little more....

Eh? Canucks cracked by cyber crims Cybercriminals have Canada in the crosshairs, with five Ontario hospitals and a fresh Spamoflague disinformation campaign targeting "dozens" of Canadian government officials, including the PM....

Student's new dorm room comes with bars, not the good kind Food delivery robots became a source of fear for students at Oregon State University on Tuesday after a bomb threat claimed explosives had been placed in an autonomous Starship bot....

In 1983, David Copperfield vanished the Statue of Liberty and Word for DOS turned up Microsoft's Word is 40 years old today. Celebrations aside, it's worth pointing out the productivity juggernaut of 2023 was not always the bloated behemoth that is found on so many workstations....

Meanwhile, ESA looks to SpaceX for help with Galileo constellation United Launch Alliance's (ULA) first certification mission of its Atlas V replacement, the Vulcan Centaur, is set for near the end of the 2023 with a Christmas Eve launch....

With this zero-day, researchers say the 'scrappy' group is stepping up its operations The Winter Vivern cyber spy group is exploiting an XSS zero-day vulnerability in attacks on European governments....

No word on whether getting that energy from space to Earth will be made any easier, though Boffins from two UK universities believe they've figured a viable way to make space-based solar farms feasible, and it doesn't even require any new-fangled or expensive technology to accomplish....

New version of Debian-based live distro boasts added GNUstep, too Back in August, a new version of Window Maker arrived. Now there's a corresponding update to Window Maker Live, so you can try it out without installing....

The purpose is refocusing and 'realigning,' according to chip designer RISC-V chip designer SiFive has laid off 20 percent of its engineers and other staff amid efforts to refocus on creating bespoke processor cores for customers, but insists everything's fine....

Investigations ongoing as full extent of July breach is questioned Seiko Group, the Japanese company known best for its timekeeping business, has published a fresh update on its July ransomware attack, revealing that the group behind it stole 60,000 items of personal data....

'There could have been ways we could have made it work' Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella regrets the abrupt termination of the Windows Phone project....

Unit aims to 'take share in storage, scale private cloud, and expand into infrastructure software' HPE's Hybrid Cloud unit starts operations next month, yet it is unclear if the hardware giant can persuade more customers that its GreenLake service can steer them through the complexity of a multi-cloud world....

Appealing to growing crowd that wants data outside US jurisdiction Amazon is planning to launch a dedicated sovereign cloud for customers in Europe with stringent data residency requirements, and claims this will be physically and logically separate from existing AWS Regions....

The things the kingdom will do to get away from Europe... The UK Space Agency and Axiom Space are signing an agreement to send more Brits into space on a commercially sponsored mission....

5.7 million fiber kilometers of the stuff could be worth 88M to Brit players, claims government The UK is cracking down on Chinese imports to protect its optical fiber cable market, which translated to a length of approximately "5.7 million kilometers" in 2021 alone....

Will there be tinkering under the Christmas tree? The Raspberry Pi 5 has started shipping, but with pre-orders likely to snap up the first batch, will the faithful have a merry or miserable Christmas?...

No honor among thieves as group denies Hive ransomware links A newly emerged ransomware gang claims to have successfully gained access to the systems of a US plastic surgeon's clinic, leaking patients' pre-operation pictures in an attempt to hurry a ransom payment....

Had to kiss Nvidia's ring to make its vision real Lenovo has kicked off its Tech World gabfest by bending a flexible smartphone concept into its AI vision, which goes from the cloud to the wrist....

Crooks swindled about 3 million from victims Spain's National Police say they have busted a 3 million ($3.2 million) cyber crime ring, arresting 34 miscreants allegedly responsible for phishing, stealing personal data belonging to about four million individuals....

Takes rare step of issuing patches for end-of-life versions, as some staff report end-of-career letters VMware has disclosed a critical vulnerability in its vCenter Server - and that it issued an update to fix it weeks ago, along with patches for unsupported versions of the software....

Keeping old servers alive is more lucrative than the G-Cloud Google Cloud remains profitable, but the search and ads giant's rent-a-server side-hustle has struggled as customers seek to reduce costs....

Worked 38 years and was stiffed at the end, tells El Reg age was a probably factor IBM Canada has lost its bid to challenge a judgment that it wrongfully dismissed a former employee....

Chipmaker thought it had 30 days to get last few orders out the door Restrictions on the export high-performance AI accelerators to China have already gone into effect, Nvidia informed investors in a Monday regulatory filing....

Suggest developers spend 'at least one-third of their R&D budget' on safety A group of 24 AI luminaries have published a paper and open letter calling for stronger regulation of, and safeguards for, the technology, before it harms society and individuals....

ETH Zurich boffins say they've devised a better CPU fuzzer to find flaws Video Boffins from ETH Zurich have devised a novel fuzzer for finding bugs in RISC-V chips and have used it to find more than three dozen....

At this point, just assume your kit is compromised Citrix has urged admins to "immediately" apply a fix for CVE-2023-4966, a critical information disclosure bug that affects NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway, admitting it has been exploited....

Oh, and there's a new Snapdragon 8 Gen3 chip bristling with AI potential Qualcomm is claiming its latest PC processors are ready to go toe-to-toe with Intel, AMD, and Apple on performance and efficiency....