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Look Ma: no tether! It is 40 years since the iconic image of Bruce McCandless II, floating free and untethered above the Earth while testing out the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), was snapped from the Space Shuttle Challenger....

It isn't just the price that makes your eyes look so weird Tech repair champ iFixit has disassembled Apple's newly released Vision Pro headset and came up with an explanation for why the EyeSight display looks so weird....

It's the second Chicago hospital to disclose a major incident in the same week For the second time in one week, cybercriminals have targeted a Chicago children's hospital, this time causing significant operational disruption....

Five months after cloud love-in, critics worry about costs of deploying Oracle hardware and DBs in Microsoft's cloud As the dust settles on Microsoft's decision to house Oracle hardware in its datacenters, experts keeping a close eye on Big Red's commercials are warning customers to tread carefully when choosing the transition....

Shares in French IT giant plummet 25% Ailing tech integrator Atos is in talks with creditors on refinancing options for debt following the cancellation of its 720 million ($774 million) rights issue and ongoing uncertainty over efforts to split the company to secure its future....

Plus: Another lawyer is in trouble for citing fake cases hallucinated by ChatGPT, and more AI In Brief More than half of undergraduates in the UK are using AI to complete their assignments, according to a study conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute....

You were warned AWS could rake in between $400 million and $1 billion a year from charging customers for public IPv4 addresses while migration to IPv6 remains slow....

CEO Peter Beck on the future of commercial launches and not raining debris over national reserves Interview Rocket Lab is a relatively small player in a launcher marketplace dominated by governments and billionaires. However, despite some notable anomalies, the company is starting 2024 with a packed schedule and grand plans for the future....

After car-crash implementation, Birmingham City Council must weigh up options after current problems are fixed Auditors of Europe's largest local government body say it's time to decide whether to grind on with a rollout of Oracle - an ERP project set to be five times over-budget and which has shattered the council's financial reporting - or choose another system....

The one thing you don't want your data security to be is, er, edgy Opinion Are you a Windows user? How many spoons do you own? Have you counted them lately? The reason we ask is due to the old adage, "the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." When it comes to the tech giants, they like to talk about their commitment to data security a whole lot, but by Jiminy they like rifling through your cutlery drawer while they're doing it....

What is it? It's an instrument used to train pilots, but that's not important right now who, me? Welcome once again, gentle reader, to another instalment of Who, Me? - the Monday missive in which Reg readers share stories of occasions on which their prowess didn't quite meet tech repair challenges....

Chap in charge hopes the Internet Archive is willing to pipe in historical search results as a substitute Google has stopped offering links to cached versions of web pages alongside search results....

Recordings of past vidchats suspected as source of fakery - so there's another class of data you need to lock down A Hong Kong-based finance professional at a multinational was reportedly swindled out of $25 million (HK$200 million) of company money when scammers created a deepfake of his London-based chief financial officer in a video conference call....

Paytm's bank has been locked out, edtech darling Byju's faces bankruptcy Two of India's tech leaders, both of which have been widely hailed as exemplars of local entrepreneurialism, are in deep trouble....

PLUS: more glibc vulns discovered; DraftKings hacker sentenced; and a hefty dose of critical vulnerabilities Infosec In Brief The recent indictment of a massive SIM-swapping ring may mean convicted crypto conman Sam Bankman-Fried is innocent of at least one allegation still hanging over his head: The theft of more than $400 million in crypto hacked from wallets belonging to his crypto firm, FTX, just before it declared bankruptcy....

PLUS: TikTok returns to Indonesian e-commerce; Chinese giants' EV battery swap scheme; India drops mobile tariffs APAC in Brief The eleven-nation ASEAN bloc has decided to create a regional network of submarine cables, and to push for interoperability of member governments' digital infrastructure....

Is there anything more terrifying than a 'smart' HR chatbot? Well, OK, yes, but ... Kettle This ongoing generative AI assistant hype-cycle already feels like it's been going on for a decade, with Big Tech pouring billions into systems that simultaneously are supposed to take away our jobs and enhance our working day....

Fans of the spec bemoan lack of transparency in Interop 2024 process Browser makers Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, alongside two software consultancies, celebrated a moment of unity and common purpose on Thursday with the announcement of Interop 2024, a project to promote web browser interoperability....

The closest thing we may ever get to a real-life Die Hard 2 scenario Criminals could remotely tamper with the data that apps used by airplane pilots rely on to inform safe takeoff and landing procedures, according to fresh research....

Remote work option will still be offered - but at the cost of career advancement Exclusive On Monday Dell is expected to send a "Return To Office" notification to all employees, a source familiar with the matter has told The Register....

So that's where all the laid-off semiconductor engineers went! After years of development, Meta may finally roll out its homegrown AI accelerators in a meaningful way this year....

Cloud software slinger admits no guilt, promises better basic security hygiene Blackbaud, which had data on millions of people stolen from it by one or more crooks, has promised to shore up its IT defenses in a proposed deal with the FTC....

Up until now watchdogs say they've just been guesstimating consumption The US government has just signed off an emergency probe into how much power cryptocurrency miners are drawing from America's electricity grid....

Danger of remote account takeovers leaves lead devs scared of releasing many details Mastodon has called admins to action following the disclosure of a critical vulnerability affecting the decentralized social network favored by erstwhile Twitter lovers....

Probe that started with 12 records six months ago has ballooned to 2,191 claims of failed 2023 Model 3 and Y steering An investigation of Tesla power steering problems was this week upgraded to an engineering analysis after initial probing turned up thousands more failures....

Letter: Budget cuts will 'essentially cancel' daring multi vehicle project unless reversed Members of the US Congress have signed a letter calling for a reversal of cuts made to the budget of NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR.)...

As extortion tactics evolve, operational shutdowns are the next step Feature The Colonial Pipeline ransomware infection has become a cautionary tale about how borking critical infrastructure can cause real-world pain, with fuel shortages leading to long lines and fistfights breaking out at gas stations....

References to future update found in Microsoft documentation Industry chatter over the fate of the Windows 11 brand in 2024 is again rising in volume following the discovery that a Windows 11 24H2 installation is most definitely on the way....

US govt isn't exactly in a hurry with the Chips Act money either Intel has seemingly postponed the completion date of its planned Ohio manufacturing site to late 2026, blaming the current weakness of the semiconductor market and delays in receiving CHIPS Act subsidy cash....

Efforts part of internationally coordinated operations carried out in recent months Interpol has arrested 31 people following a three-month operation to stamp out various types of cybercrime....

Microsoft named - again - by EU trade groups seeking to level the playing field New research is highlighting the restrictive licensing practices deployed to prevent businesses from switching cloud providers....

Biz boffins say bottom line and market cap didn't change post directive - but staff mood did Research has shed light on the profitability gains that the biggest US corporations experienced after issuing return to office mandates: There weren't any, and the policy made their staff unhappier....

But can it run Doom? Microsoft Excel was used for many purposes over the years from accounting to 3D rendering, yet implementing a 16-bit CPU in the spreadsheet is something else....

Twelve very cold hours and many miles after being told to ignore the power button, guess what happened? On Call Every Friday, The Register presses the OFF button the week with a fresh instalment of On Call, our column that recounts readers' experiences of taking on tricky tech support jobs in exotic places....

Asks why only one Bing ad - the one you see when searching for other browsers - looks like a Windows popup Mozilla on Thursday accused Microsoft of forcing its Edge browser down the throats of Windows users through "dark patterns" - design elements geared to push people towards certain decisions....

Cloud optimization efforts ebb, and migrations resume Amazon.com has completed a "useful life study" for its servers and decided they can be used for an extra year - taking the working life from five to six years. It predicts the change will contribute $900 million to net income in Q1 of 2024 alone....

'Vault 7' leak detailed cyber-ops including forged digital certs Joshua Schulte, a former CIA employee and software engineer accused of sharing material with WikiLeaks, was sentenced to 40 years in prison by the US Southern District of New York on Thursday....

The only thing worse than a telemarketer is a robo-telemarketer The FCC wants to make AI-powered robocalls illegal and has warned of a rising wave of scams from voice-cloning technology....

Atlassian systen compromised via October Okta intrusion Cloudflare has just detailed how suspected government spies gained access to its internal Atlassian installation using credentials stolen via a security breach at Okta in October....

Good to know that boffins can't easily prompt their way to new careers as supervillains GPT-4 contributes "at most a mild uplift" to users who would employ the model to create bioweapons, according to a study conducted by OpenAI....

Breaking the AI performance bottleneck is key for Middle Kingdom's ambitions ChangXin Memory Technologies, aka CXMT, could become China's first domestic producer of high-bandwidth memory modules, which are crucial to building the accelerators used in AI and high-performance computing....

Some devs just don't want anything to do with neural-network code serfs JetBrains introduced an AI assistant in December to help programmers write code. Now the biz is trying to figure out how to allow its customers to get rid of it....

Defenses need a rethink in face of increasing sophistication Cyber attacks using AI-generated deepfakes to bypass facial biometrics security will lead a third of organizations to doubt the adequacy of identity verification and authentication tools as standalone protections....

Router maker claims Chinese giant refuses to license on reasonable terms Netgear is suing Huawei in California, accusing its networking kit rival of racketeering and anti-competitive behavior for refusing to license Wi-Fi patents it holds on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms....

Senate, House can try but won't make it past the Prez, says White House The Biden administration has expressed to congressional representatives its strong opposition to undoing the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) strict data breach reporting rule....

Endeavour raised into position for California Science Center's 'Go For Stack' For the first time in more than ten years, a Space Shuttle has been raised into launch position. Although the completed stack won't be seeing a launchpad any time soon....

When Redmond says unsupported, it really means it. Windows 11 fans beware Old Windows 10 hardware is struggling to open some recently updated Microsoft applications, giving anyone running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware a glimpse of their potential future....

No restrictions, but it could be harder to deal with American businesses The chip wars between Washington and Beijing keep grinding on with more than a dozen Chinese tech companies now being added to a list of entities claimed by the Department of Defense (DoD) to be working for the military....

It even had the gall to set the ransom demand at $800K ... for a nonprofit Ransomware gang LockBit is claiming responsibility for an attack on a Chicago children's hospital in an apparent deviation from its previous policy of not targeting nonprofits....

They're just an algorithm away, national lab engineer tells El Reg Feature When the first commercial coal-fired electric power plants came online, starting with the Holborn Viaduct power station that supplied electricity to the City of London in January 1882, the world was changed forever. Fast forward 142 years, and the world has changed a lot....