The Register

Vice-presidents, engineers among those scheduled to have a rotten Christmas Chip designer Qualcomm has revealed it intends to shed over 1,000 California-based employees, delivering on previously foreshadowed plans to address its economic woes....

Parts reportedly geared toward high-performance compute and leverage advanced packaging A mystery US company has tapped Samsung to fabricate datacenter chips using its 3nm manufacturing process....

We'd like to say don't panic ... but maybe? 35 vulnerabilities in the Squid caching proxy remain unfixed more than two years after being found and disclosed to the open source project's maintainers, according to the person who reported them....

Looking for a bright spot? Well, it's easier to beg the Feds for cash now, say researchers Hopes that the venture capital market would recover in the latter half of 2023 can be considered well and truly dashed, with a report finding VC spending in Q3 reached its lowest level in six years....

'If you are challenged, we will assume responsibility' Google has joined the ranks of AI services providers willing to offer its customers limited indemnity against copyright infringement claims....

Turns out secrecy doesn't breed security The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) may open source the proprietary encryption algorithms used to secure emergency radio communications after a public backlash over security flaws found this summer....

Quest for control as AEI alleges Meta's monopolistic missteps A VR development collective has filed a $353.2 million antitrust lawsuit against Meta, accusing the platform of conspiring to kill a fitness app developed for Quest devices once it learned it would also be available for Apple and Pico headsets....

Almost a quarter of SoftBank-owned chip designer's total revenue comes via Middle Kingdom, um, arm China could prove problematic for Arm once more, amid claims key staff from its local subsidiary have left to form a server chip design biz with government backing, and are eyeing up ex-colleagues to help....

Just melt it with lasers, say researchers in Germany Researchers in Germany's proof-of-concept study shows solar energy could be harnessed to turn lunar dust into paving for landing pads and roads....

Hacks, physical tricks could turn headsets into vomit extractors, but tests already show no ops needed for that DARPA is launching a program to head off "cognitive attacks" for mixed reality headsets that could, in theory, cripple future warfighters when deployed....

Dodgy weather results in a launch postponement NASA has pushed its billion-dollar Psyche mission back to October 13 thanks to bad weather at the launch site....

The ransomware gang changes identities more than Jason Bourne The Everest ransomware group is stepping up its efforts to purchase access to corporate networks directly from employees amid what researchers believe to be a major transition for the cybercriminals....

Slated to work with existing 4G phones, though space rivals still trying to shoot it down SpaceX's Starlink is advertising a Direct to Cell satellite phone service due to start next year and which it claims will work with existing phones and eventually provide access to text, voice, and data....

Simpson Manufacturing yanks systems offline, warns of ongoing disruption Simpson Manufacturing Company yanked some tech systems offline this week to contain a cyberattack it expects will "continue to cause disruption."...

eBPF project jumps from 'just a network plugin' moves to begin wide adoption The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has awarded a graduated sash to Cilium, a validation of the maturity and future of the eBPF project....

Mangled mismatch of formats, macros, and VLOOKUP practice hits wannabe anesthetists Exclusive Computer errors, bad technology choices, and flawed processes have disrupted the recruitment of trainee anesthetists in England and Wales....

Interested parties invited to speak now or forever hold your peace Britain's Competition and Markets Authority is asking the mobile industry for feedback on Vodafone's local merger with Three to determine if the agreement could negatively impact rivals, customers, or both....

OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo chatbot defenses dissolve with '20 cents' of API tickling The "guardrails" created to prevent large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo from spewing toxic content have been shown to be very fragile....

And in full swing by next October Google has decided to kick third-party cookies out of its Chrome browser for one percent of users in early 2024, and to banish the web trackers entirely by Q3 of the same year....

1.5 trillion needed in the next five years - some to turf Huawei - and nobody's quite sure where to find it The European Commission's consultation on the future of the bloc's telecoms sector has concluded, and revealed majority disinterest in the idea of making big tech pay to access networks....

57 flights past expected lifetime and still improving NASA has scheduled the 62nd flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter and given it the job of achieving a new speed record for rotorcraft on Mars....

One has the talent, one has the money - both want more tech The gulf states and former Soviet nations of central Asia are set to become a new hub of tech activity, according to Anatoly Motkin, president of Strategeast - a non-profit that operates in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, and works to develop their digital economies....

House always wins, er, wait ... As more details emerge from September's Las Vegas casino cyberattacks, Caesars Entertainment - the owner of Caesars Palace - has disclosed more than 41,000 Maine residents alone had their info stolen by a ransomware gang....

Just some building blocks for life - in a few billion years, who knows what could develop? Initial analyses of samples collected from the surface of Bennu reveal the ancient asteroid contains water and carbon-based molecules, vital materials needed to create and support life....

Says it has enough cash to foot the demand Microsoft today revealed the IRS last month sent the Windows maker a bill for $28.9 billion in back taxes - and has vowed to contest the charge....

Those are some fat vector registers SiFive today launched a pair of RISC-V CPU cores aimed at high-performance and AI/ML applications....

'Digital emancipation proclamation' praised by tech tinkerers, but info brokers aren't happy On Tuesday, California's Governor Gavin Newsom signed two law bills that give people more control over their devices and their data, the Right to Repair Act and the Delete Act....

Contractor blamed by watchdog for late SPIDER arm work A NASA plan to robotically repair and refuel satellites in orbit is way behind schedule and well over budget, says NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), with most of the blame falling on space tech contractor Maxar....

Worth it for 20 years behind bars? A US Navy service member pleaded guilty yesterday to receiving thousands of dollars in bribes from a Chinese spymaster in exchange for passing on American military secrets....

Added functionality follows BluBracket acquisition earlier this year HashiConf HashiCorp today revealed its latest front in the battle against secrets sprawl with new Vault functionality - plus a first look at the fruits of the company's BluBracket purchase....

Meanwhile, Exchange Online is on the fritz Microsoft has issued a fresh update to address an old vulnerability affecting Exchange Server 2019 and 2016 while its online service has problems of its own....

Meta also told to clean out election-bothering deepfakes from its empire - or face the music Updated The European Commission has publicly rebuked Elon Musk's X for what it says is its role in disseminating disinformation and illegal content surrounding the Hamas/Israel conflict. And the EC is threatening penalties under the Digital Services Act if the platform doesn't take measures to stop it....

Boffins estimate power needed if every Google search became an LLM interaction. Gulp The recent spike of interest in AI thanks to large language models (LLMs) and generative AI is pushing adoption of the tech by a wide variety of applications, leading to worries the processing needed for this will cause a surge in datacenter electricity consumption....

Can I use AI to write me a license that won't annoy the open-source community? HashiConf A host of Terraform features join HashiCorp's flagship product today, including testing and user interface tweaks aimed at cutting errors in infrastructure code....

Dust blocks light from Sun-like star as far-off worlds meet Evidence of a collision between planets outside our solar system was published for the first time today....

We still doubt any infosec leaders will be going without heating this winter The gap between the top and bottom-earning CISOs is growing wider, with the highest-paid execs having their salaries increased at three times the rate of those at the lower echelons....

Email is just so 20th century Comment Red Hat has closed its security advisories mailing list. It will still share the information, just via an RSS feed, with access free for all... at least for now....

IT folks look back on 20 years of what is now infosec tradition Feature Twenty years ago this month, Microsoft did something pretty revolutionary at the time when it formalized the Windows software release schedule....

Analysts 'put stake in the ground' to say tech will hit market in matter of years Smartphones with self-healing displays could be on sale within the next five years, according to the latest predictions from research outfit CCS Insight....

Bhargs Srivathsan also urges enterprises to ditch the tech Lamborghinis for efficient ride The use of generative AI is cutting down cloud migration efforts by 30 percent to 50 percent when done correctly, according to McKinsey's Bhargs Srivathsan, speaking at a conference in Singapore on Wednesday....

You may need it - Windows 10 is no longer a free upgrade Microsoft has published guidance on how to download and install Linux. In other news, Hell freezes over and pigs fly south to their winter feeding grounds....

The coordinated disclosure didn't quite go to plan, though Updated After a week of rampant speculation about the nature of the security issues in curl, the latest version of the command line transfer tool was finally released today....

Britain's privacy watchdog still not happy that agreement 'appropriately' protects sensitive data Opinion The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (aka Data Bridge) will enter into force on October 12, allowing certifying entities to easily transfer personal data from the UK to the US....

Gartner finds only a third are somewhat prepared for S/4HANA transition Global tech researcher Gartner has found that only 33 percent of SAP users relying on its legacy ECC ERP system have bought or subscribed to licenses to start their transition to S/4HANA....

Or maybe don't let Microsoft's desire to defeat Google dictate your defensive strategy Column I am still amazed how few people - even in IT - have heard of Windows Copilot. Microsoft's deep integration of Bing Chat into Windows 11 was announced with much fanfare back in May....

PhilHealth blames government procurement rules for license expiry and issues phishing warnings A recent ransomware attack on the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) occurred while the organization's antivirus software subscription had expired....

Probe goes loopy after mistaking solar rays for stars The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope is back to normal and will resume its mission, thanks to a software update that was required after its navigation sensors mistakenly identified solar ray signals as stars....

Commercial customers are in the frame, and gamers aren't forgotten, as it takes on Intel's mini PCs Fresh from winning the rights to build machines based on Intel's quirky little Next Unit of Compute (NUC) mini-PC spec, ASUS has cooked up plans to offer custom NUCs to industrial clients, or even for edge deployments by cloud service providers....

Asian internet registry still has 5M 32-bit addresses from different sources - or practically infinite IPv6s The Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) on Monday announced it is close to delegating the last IPv4 addresses in its final /8 block, bringing the regional internet registry a step closer to IPv4 exhaustion....

Doctored video featured vile false slur, but it wasn't a deepfake ... so that's OK, then? Meta's Oversight Board is probing the social media giant's policies on deepfake content after Facebook decided against taking down a faked video that falsely labelled US President Joe Biden a pedophile....