The Register

If you could just not harvest our info unlawfully and without a warrant, that would be great US Senator Ron Wyden on Thursday asked US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to stop US intelligence agencies from purchasing Americans' unlawfully collected personal data from data brokers....

We chat to AI expert Ilia Shumailov about the pitfalls of using machines to train machines Feature What happens to machine learning models when they feed on themselves, when the data they ingest comes more and more from other generative models rather than human authors?...

Beta Channel Insiders can return to retail Windows 11 23H2 with click of a toggle Liberation beckons for Microsoft's Beta Channel Windows Insiders thanks to an optional installation of Windows 11 23H2 for users who wish to opt out....

Breach filings show Reddit post led to the discovery rather than any sophisticated cyber defenses Biotech and DNA-collection biz 23andMe, the one that blamed its own customers for the October mega-breach, just admitted it failed to detect any malicious activity for the entire five months attackers were breaking into user accounts....

Startups hoping to compete in the industry face an uphill battle Panel The dominance of big tech in cloud computing, coupled with a shortage of chips, is preventing smaller AI software and hardware startups from competing fairly, according to panelists at the FTC Tech Summit this week....

Until we can hook schadenfreude directly into our veins, this will have to do Kettle What was your favorite tech failure this week? You may well agree with our vultures who for this latest Kettle episode selected theirs to talk about....

Pat's gonna need to sell a lotta AI PCs if he wants to make a profit this quarter Intel execs this week painted a grim picture of early 2024, forecasting steep declines ahead for the company's core businesses....

Union claims corporate greed behind alliance, firms claim it is about helping customers The UK's competition watchdog is today kicking off Phase 1 of its probe into proposed merger between Vodafone and Three's UK businesses to determine any repercussions the tie-up could have for rivals or customers....

Cosmetics brand goes from Jackson Pollocking your bathwater to cleaning up serious a digital mess The Akira ransomware gang is claiming responsiblity for the "cybersecurity incident" at British bath bomb merchant....

In Memoriam for plucky robot that brushed off dead sensors and dust like they were nothing After 72 flights and three years, NASA has retired Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter that became the first aircraft operated outside the Earth's atmosphere....

Clean sweep across broadband, landline, and pay TV It may be only a few years since the two were combined, but Virgin Media O2 is topping UK comms regulator Ofcom's customer complaints chart....

When a rack sits on a metal plate, that's so not an invitation to move it On Call The Register loves standards - we have our very own Standards Bureau. Another standard we observe rigorously is that each Friday morning brings a new instalment of On Call, the weekly reader-contributed tale of tech support incidents that ripped up the rule book....

Mission a 'minimum' success because rovers deployed successfully The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has transmitted images of the Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) to Earth....

Work in progress, approach with caution Google has added a fresh round of features to Project IDX, its cloud-based development environment....

Most of the crew still at large A former Trickbot developer has been sent down for five years and four months for his role in infecting American hospitals and businesses with ransomware and other malware, costing victims tens of millions of dollars in losses....

That's the way the Cook, he crumbles Apple has given up its fight against being designated a gatekeeper under Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA), meaning the iMaker will give people in the European Union greater choice over their browser engines and application store on iOS....

Khaaaaaaan! Khaaaaaaaaaaan! Updated The FTC today stuck a probe into five Big Tech players about their generative AI investments and partnerships....

PC unsupported in Windows 11? Start 2024 with a new OS Three of the most highly regarded Linux distros around have put out new releases....

Nothing like an informal talking shop dressed up as formal transatlantic cooperation The next meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) will take place in Washington DC next week to discuss mutual approaches to trade issues and tech challenges, such as climate change and China....

'This was a 101 how not to do a conference call,' says Wall St expert When Elon Musk says Tesla had a "great year," it's best to read between the lines - especially after such a disastrous quarterly earnings call....

Cheerio to cheeky Chardonnay chancers Good news for older boozehounds - the UK government plans to inject age estimation AI into supermarket alcohol sales....

Beats analyst estimates, talks up genAI and yet share price wobbles briefly ServiceNow booked a 20 percent leap in subscriptions for the final three months of 2023, causing it to hike financial forecasts for this year - but Wall Street seemingly wasn't as impressed the company maybe expected....

Last year it was over France. This year it was over Germany. Where will the rocks strike next? A NASA system has accurately predicted where and when an asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere....

That's not to say Redmond hasn't had significant Windows of misfortune Microsoft has crossed the $3 trillion valuation threshold thanks in no small part to investors buying into the company's AI vision....

Ericsson straps in for rough year, while Nokia bets on recovery in second half Telecom giants Nokia and Ericsson both saw sales drop for the final quarter of 2023, blaming tough economic conditions for weak network operator spending. While Ericsson expects another tough year ahead, Nokia is banking on things picking up later this year....

Securities lender processes trillions of dollars worth of Wall Street transactions every day US securities lender EquiLend has pulled a number of its systems offline after a security "incident" in which an attacker gained "unauthorized access"....

Real estate consolidation, 'productivity initiatives' mean Big Blue is upping annual savings target to $3B IBM is recasting its ambitions for annual run rate cost savings by upping the target by another $1 billion, and will pull multiple levers to get there - including completion of the Weather Company's asset and job cuts....

Though that might be the least of their worries, according to this report Despite the specter of IT layoffs, top talent has no difficulty switching employers, according to new research by integrator Advania....

eVTOL to use existing aerodrome infrastructure The UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is looking at design proposals for vertiports at existing aerodromes as the UK begins deliberation over the potential arrival of air taxis....

Turns out it's pretty easy to make the model jump its own guardrails Criminals are getting increasingly adept at crafting malicious AI prompts to get data out of ChatGPT, according to Kaspersky, which spotted 249 of these being offered for sale online during 2023....

Still, up to 180,000 units sold under pre-order and China gray market prepping locals The old joke among less experienced tech product reviewers is that writing the review starts with opening the box. In the case of Apple's Vision Pro, critics are finding that the, er, box lacks the aestethics that a buyer might expect given the hefty price tag....

Plus a big change for Linux folks - native .deb packages The latest Firefox has a raft of modest but desirable improvements for everyone, and a more significant change, external to the app itself, that will be helpful for most Linux users....

Tough luck non-Americans, the cops can still see your footage Surveillance doorbell maker Amazon Ring on Wednesday announced it is discontinuing an option that allowed law enforcement agencies to request video footage without a warrant....

Firefox maker about five years too late Mozilla has decided to be more vocal about the ways in which Apple, Google, and Microsoft set technical requirements that have hindered development of its Firefox web browser, and therefore harmed competition....

Big Blue will move two VMs in each five-hour window offered to those willing to stay IBM Cloud has advised customers who run Power Systems Virtual Servers in its Toronto Canada (TOR01) datacenter of an upgrade to the facility, and outlined a not-so-cloudy process for tenants who make the move....

This may be the best bad news we've had all year Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but South Korean memory-maker SK hynix has posted a surprise profit....

Moscow-backed Cozy Bear may have had access to the green rectangular email cloud for six months HPE has become the latest tech giant to admit it has been compromised by Russian operatives....

They have the hardware, now they just need models that don't, ah... suck? Comment Apple's efforts to add generative AI to its iDevices should surprise no one, but Cupertino's existing uses of of the tech, and the constraints of mobile hardware, suggest it won't be a big feature of iOS in the near future....

Search giant faced potential damages of over $5B but terms haven't been disclosed Singular Computing's multi-billion dollar patent infringement lawsuit against Google was cut short on Wednesday after the search giant agreed to settle the case for an undisclosed sum....

Judge says anti-hacking laws fits Pegasus case "to a T" A US court has rejected spyware vendor NSO Group's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Apple that alleges the developer violated computer fraud and other laws by infecting customers' iDevices with its surveillance software....

Lawsuit claims top execs made fake accounts to study and copy competing products for years AI-powered dashcam maker Samsara sued rival startup Motive Technologies in US federal court on Wednesday, accusing top execs of IP theft, patent infringement, fraud, false advertising,and more....

There's more than one way for these things to crash Deliveries of Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jets to the US military are being delayed again and despite all the metal, software is the culprit....

International Energy Agency has some chilling global figures in latest report Global electricity demand from datacenters could double by 2026, with IT infrastructure adding the equivalent power requirements of another Sweden or Germany. However, low-emission sources are expected to account for almost half of the world's electricity generation by the same time....

Code assistance is like having a weird intern who memorized the docs AI Software Week Simon Willison, a veteran open source developer who co-created the Django framework and built the more recent Datasette tool, has become one of the more influential observers of AI software recently....

That old kit isn't our fault Boeing tells us Another day, another incident with a Boeing passenger jet, this time when a landing gear wheel popped off a Delta Airlines 757 while it was waiting to take off out of Atlanta....

Longer lead times, extra costs and more freight coming via air Logitech reckons the conflict in the Red Sea where Houthi rebels are attacking container ships will add some delays to logistics and potentially some cost too....

1 million members still searching for answers as IT issues floor primary digital services The UK's Caravan and Motorhome Club (CAMC) is battling a suspected cyberattack with members reporting widespread IT outages for the past five days....

9% of workforce getting boot after execs hired too many during pandemic Tat bazaar eBay is laying off 1,000 employees, or 9 percent of the workforce, claiming that general hiring and overhead costs are outpacing the wider commercial growth of the company....

Launch National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource to help non-corporate boffins play catch-up The US National Science Foundation has hooked up with tech companies to help academics secure computing power, data, and more to build their own AI models....

How's low Earth orbit for the edge? An updated version of HPE's Spaceborne Computer-2 is set to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) this week....