The Register

TSMC-equipped Meteor Lake mobile parts not coming until December Intel launched its 14th-gen desktop CPUs, codenamed Raptor Lake-S Refresh, on Monday promising more efficiency cores and higher clock speeds. This includes an i9 that the chip giant says can touch 6GHz, so long as the stars align and thermals are kept in check....

Time to update that resume on, er ... oh. Microsoft is kicking off another round of layoffs, this time cutting 668 jobs across several teams at LinkedIn....

Looks to be related to critical libwebp bug found - and fixed - last month Signal has denied a "vague viral reports" of a zero-day vulnerability in its Generate Links Previews that could allow device takeover....

Some attempted installations of KB5031356 were reportedly stuck on 30% after 24 hours Microsoft has offered a resolution for widespread reports of issues from Windows 10 users attempting to install the latest cumulative update....

Plus: Stanford prof tells off industry for making decisions based on anecdotal data If it ain't broke, there's no need to fix it. Or so is the mantra at one of the fastest-growing mature tech companies. Unlike some of its peers, Nvidia still promises flexible working policies....

Fax, post, and human messengers can still be used for filing vital evidence An unspecified security incident is forcing many state courts across Kansas to rely on paper filings, and it may have continue to do so for weeks, a state judge has warned....

Files official complaint as it battles to keep market share Chinese tech megacorp Huawei is kicking back after EU officials characterized it as a "high-risk supplier," filing an official complaint with the European Commission....

Bravery and a bucket for the screws required to service latest idiot visor Meta's Quest 3 headset has fallen victim to the iFixit team, and the news from a repairability perspective is not good....

Sophisticated malware devs believed to be behind latest addition to toolset of China-aligned attackers Security researchers have uncovered a backdoor used in attacks against governments and organizations in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)....

Redmond runs ad to hire fleshbag team manager to make the magic happen Microsoft is on the hunt for a team manager with robotics experience to work on the automation of datacenter operations, just weeks after blaming an outage at its Australia facility on having insufficient staff available....

Sorry, 'CyberBeers' When you have buggy, unstable alpha males hanging on Elon Musk's every word, it's only natural to want to sell them two beers for $150....

Swedish company claims Moto parent is violating its FRAND commitment Telecoms giant Ericsson has filed a lawsuit against Lenovo and its mobile phone subsidiary Motorola that accuses it of infringing 5G patents and stalling on negotiations over mutual licensing agreements....

Plus: US Space Force halts use of ChatGPT and more AI in brief Computer scientists trained AI models to decipher words from parts of an ancient scroll preserved in thick layers of volcanic mud, where they laid for thousands of years after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD....

As British public spending comes under pressure, tech superstars seemingly avoid two-thirds of tax burden The UK misses out on an estimated 2 billion ($2.4 billion) in revenue because the way seven of the world's largest tech businesses successfully minimize their tax bills....

Accessibility features help everybody... and one day, you might need them too Companies big and small are dropping the ball when it comes to UI design and the support of customers with visual disabilities. Here is why you should care, even if your eyes are fine....

'It's a huge, effing big machine' Interview Tachyum's first chip Prodigy hasn't even taped out - let alone gone into mass production - but one customer has, we're told, committed to buying hundreds of thousands of the processors to power a massive 50 exaFLOPS supercomputer....

Bankrupt council is like 'ship adrift' - lacks financial info in midst of equal pay nightmare Birmingham City Council - Europe's largest local authority - stands accused of being a "ship adrift in the ocean" after it failed to confirm it could make its troubled Oracle implementation "safe and compliant."...

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer once called open source a cancer. Today's diagnosis points to a different cause Opinion Three years ago almost to the day, El Reg reported on how Excel had contributed to pandemic chaos. Some 16,000 cases had vanished between labs and the UK health service due to a combination of file format failures, outdated software, and lack of error messages. Now comes a fresh hell....

The Reg brings you balanced coverage of retro-tech Who, Me? Ah, dear reader, what a joy it is to see you here once again on this blustery Monday morning. And if it's not blustery where you are, don't brag about it - and instead nestle in for another instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers admit to the times their days did not go quite right....

Or about half of China's recent compute upgrade plan The India AI group at the nation's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) last Friday published an AI vision document that calls for a massive build of national computing infrastructure....

Open Compute Partner with a material handling pedigree appears to be doing it for Meta already Folks who show up to this week's Open Compute Summit can see something interesting if they visit Meta's stand: a rig designed to automate moves of datacenter racks over considerable distances while they're full of kit....

Massive price rises are coming for smaller holdouts, and Australian vendor knows its bottom line could hurt In October 2020, Atlassian announced that it would end support for its server products on February 15, 2024. With that deadline now less than five months away, the Australian developer is content it's done the right thing by customers - yet has warned investors the move is a risk to revenue....

Also, CISA cataloging new ransomware data points, 17k WP sites hijacked by malware in Sept., and more critical vulns Infosec in brief The fallout from the exploitation of bugs in Progress Software's MOVEit file transfer software continues, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now investigating the matter, and lots of affected parties seeking compensation....

Elon Musk's social network provided no response - or junk - to official inquiries about its safety practices Australia's e-safety Commission - the education and regulatory agency devoted to keeping Australians safe online - has warned Google and fined X/Twitter for inadequate responses to inquiries on how the platforms detect, remove and prevent child sexual abuse material and grooming....

PLUS: TSMC chips away at export restrictions; Singapore's COVID model challenged; Japan's banking and ID systems wobble India's government has stepped away from its plan to require manufacturers of PCs, tablets, and servers to secure an import license....

Check for 'cr' bubble in pictures if your app supports it, or look in the metadata if it hasn't been stripped, or... Microsoft, Adobe, and other big names this week pledged to add metadata to their AI-generated images so that future compatible apps will flag them up as machine-made using a special symbol....

Bit of a Blizzard of news for Redmond Kettle It has been a busy week for Microsoft, with a $29B bill for back taxes from the IRS, revelations about the costs of its Copilot AI service, and the news that the UK has dropped its objections to the Activision merger deal....

The bull has escaped Minos' labyrinth, and El Reg follows the thread The last interim Ubuntu release before next spring's LTS is out. Some editions are seeing big changes, others very small ones....

And engineer and girlfriend among those held hostage by Hamas Mellanox founder Eyal Waldman's daughter Danielle and her boyfriend Noam Shai were among those killed by Hamas militants while attending the Supernova music festival on the Israel-Gaza border Saturday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a letter to staff....

Probably not a threat to ASML's EUV tech just yet, analyst tells El Reg When it comes to producing the most advanced chips, Dutch semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker ASML has had the market on lock. However, fresh lithography tech from Canon may soon challenge that position....

What could possibly go wrong? American public water systems could be safe from cybercriminals and spies - we may not actually know until these systems are compromised, now that the Environmental Protection Agency has pulled the plug on a rule requiring US states to conduct cybersecurity evaluations after being sued by Republican states and water industry groups....

Won't stop supply of nerfed export-friendly accelerators The Biden administration's next round of sanctions could close a loophole that has enabled Chinese companies to buy export-controlled technologies, including AI processors, through outside suppliers and subsidiaries....

Will players press start to continue with this outfit? Shadow, which hosts Windows PC gaming in the cloud among other services, has confirmed criminals stole a database containing customer data following a social-engineering attack against one of its employees....

Early attempt to exploit latest Progress Software bug spotted in the wild An early ransomware campaign against organizations by exploiting the vulnerability in Progress Software's WS_FTP Server was this week spotted by security researchers....

38 people now accusing Apple of negligence over stalking, assaults and murders enabled by Bluetooth trackers A lawsuit filed in December that accuses Apple of negligence over its failure to prevent AirTags from being abused by stalkers has been amended to add 36 plaintiffs from 20 US states who claim they were victimized by abuse of the Bluetooth trackers....

Strategic DBaaS and distributed back end jettisoned after years of promotion MariaDB is ditching strategic products and cutting 28 percent of the workforce as it struggles to overcome the financial challenges its faced since floating on the stock market. The company also announced access to a new $26.5 million loan facility....

Two years on and Microsoft refuses to address the issue Perceived weaknesses in the security of Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE are being raised once again this week with a fresh single-click exploit....

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and for open source this is a well meaning cluster fudge Opinion When I was in Bilbao recently for the Open Source Summit Europe event, the main topic of conversation was the European Union's (EU) Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Everyone - and I mean everyone - mentioned it. Why? Because pretty much everyone with an open source clue sees it as strangling open source software development....

The suggested change is the first step in desktop environment becoming Wayland-only The two changes are just proposals at present, but GNOME's Wayland-only future is on the horizon. Whether that's a good or bad sign is less clear....

Or it could, just as soon as they figure out how to make the networking work Analysis In the mad dash to capitalize on the potential of generative AI, Nvidia has remained the clear winner, more than doubling its year-over-year revenues in Q2 alone. To secure that lead, the GPU giant apparently intends to speed up the development of new accelerators....

Not quite a pound for every one of the 13.8 million affected UK citizens, and it could have been more The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Equifax a smidge over 11 million ($13.6 million) for severe failings that put millions of consumers at risk of financial crime....

Crumbs compared to the billions thrown about in US and Europe The UK government has announced the ChipStart program as part of its National Semiconductor Strategy, which will see a dozen silicon startups share 1.3 million ($1.58 million) in funding....

'Tactics employed by Microsoft are no way to engage with us' Britain's competition regulator finally waved through Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of games developer Activision Blizzard today, ending a 15-month saga that turned more than a little tetchy at times....

Con: You won't get a Menlo Park salary. Pro: You won't have to meet Zuck UK government is trying to hire a "Deputy Director for AI International," a policy leadership role for someone willing to work for a relative pittance compared to research scientists in the field....

CEO claims bug had millions-to-one chance of disrupting supply - but it did The small island of Jersey's natural gas supply is still switched off five days after a software problem caused its main facility to failover to a safety mode, leaving engineers struggling to reinstate supplies to homes and businesses....

Nobody minded for 20 years or so, until another student took action On Call Many a Friday arrives with a feeling that the previous four days of toil occupied more than 96 hours, which is why The Register always marks the day with a new instalment of On Call, our reader-contributed tales of fun times delivering tech support....

Given they're still trying to fix the capsule's parachute the astronauts better say their prayers NASA announced on Thursday that the first-ever crewed test flight of Boeing's much-delayed Starliner spacecraft will launch no earlier than mid-April, 2024....

They know they're being watched and don't mind - maybe because Beijing says it improves safety Chinese residents are generally comfortable with widespread use of surveillance technology, according to a year-long project conducted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and an unnamed non-government research partner....

There's enough overlap that the deal works already. Next: cloud networks and maybe a storage push Cisco has become Nutanix's closest hardware partner - meaning integration of the hyperconverged upstart's stack and Cisco's UCS servers will be stronger, sooner, as their partnership gathers steam....

Imagine a Jira bug report with an embedded video explaining the situation Atlassian has announced the acquisition of asynchronous video outfit Loom, for $975 million....