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Updated 2024-10-08 11:31
Linux 6.3 debuts after 'nice, controlled release cycle'
Preps for Intel's Meteor Lake, improves support for Chinese RISC-V silicon, and gets to the starting line with a racing wheel Linux 6.3 has arrived after a push that project boss Linus Torvalds characterized as "a nice, controlled release cycle" that required the seven release candidates he prefers and was supported by helpful developer behavior.…
Microsoft suggests businesses buy fewer PCs. No, really
Redmond wants you using Cloud PCs instead because they offer a better sustainability story At first flush it's an utterly bizarre argument for Microsoft to endorse, but the PC operating system giant has floated the idea that businesses buy fewer PCs.…
Chinese scientists calculate the Milky Way's mass as 805 billion times that of our Sun
ALSO: Australia says offensive hacking is working; DJI hit with $279m patent suit; Philippines Police leak data; and more Asia In Brief Chinese scientists have estimated the mass of the Milky Way.…
NASA solar satellite burns up over the Sahara desert
Goodbye RHESSI, thanks for all the data NASA's defunct RHESSI solar flare satellite plummeted into Earth's atmosphere and disintegrated over the Sahara desert this week, the Department of Defense confirmed. …
European air traffic control confirms website 'under attack' by pro-Russia hackers
Another cyber nuisance in support of Putin's war, nothing too serious Europe's air-traffic agency appears to be the latest target in pro-Russian miscreants' attempts to disrupt air travel.…
TSMC brags of 20TWh solar scheme. Feels a bit like greenwashing to us
A welcome development, but let's not overdo it Chip maker TSMC in collaboration with ARK Power on Friday said it intended to source 20,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity from solar power.…
Florida folks dragged out of bed by false emergency texts
Laugh while you can, UK residents – you've got a nationwide emergency alert system test this weekend Florida residents – and a lot of them, in all likelihood – were awoken at 0445 local time on Thursday morning by an emergency alert. To make matters worse, it wasn't even a real emergency, just an incorrectly sent test.…
Microsoft pushes for more women in cybersecurity
Redmond tops industry average, still got a way to go Microsoft has partnered with organizations around the globe to bring more women into infosec roles, though the devil is in the details.…
Taiwan asks US if it could chill out on the anti-China rhetoric
We're trying to run a chip business here Taiwan is keen for the US to scale back on its anti-China stance amid concerns that scare stories about the dangers of relying on chips made on the island nation are harming the country's business interests.…
Boffins think they've decoded mysterious 819-day Mayan calendar
Letting the calendar cycle for 45 years gives each planet a chance to complete a synodic cycle A pair of researchers claim to have deciphered one of the most mysterious of the Mayan calendars, which they believe represents a 45-year cycle of our neighboring planets. …
Autonomy's Mike Lynch loses battle against extradition to the US on fraud charges
Next stop, Euro human rights court? UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch is running out of options in his efforts to avoid extradition to the US to face wire and securities fraud, conspiracy, and similar charges in connection with the $11 billion sale in 2011 of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.…
It's a matter of when, not if, customers move to the cloud, SAP tells investors
That's news to some as analysts claim on-prem will be here for the foreseeable SAP is telling investors that customers' migration to the cloud is only a matter of when – not if – despite evidence to the contrary from users, analysts, and other third parties.…
With a mighty hand, and an outstretched arm, Musk scraps Pope's blue tick
Agrees to pay $8 monthly sub for LeBron James, Shatner and Stephen King but others? Nope In the same day that Elon Musk’s Twitter snubbed the Pope by removing his legacy blue tick despite personally paying for some celebrities to keep theirs, the billionaire’s personal fortune shrank by the biggest amount this year.…
Aurora exascale system gets 'mini-me' testbed for researchers
We node you want to test it out. (We're here all week.) Researchers waiting to get their hands on the much delayed Aurora supercomputer at the US Argonne National Laboratory now have a new toy at their disposal, a mini-Aurora codenamed Sunspot.…
Central UK govt awards £12M+ contract to leave Google Workspace for Microsoft 365
Capgemini gets the job of saying goodbye to the Chocolate Factory The UK's Cabinet Office is to migrate away from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 — in line with the rest of central government — in a move set to cost up to £15 million in third-party project support alone.…
Musicians threaten to make Oasis 'Live Forever' with AI
Some things should remain dead Comment This week witnessed the destructive potential of AI in action as someone thought it'd be a good idea to bring brainless Britpop bores Oasis back from the dead.…
Proliferation of AI weapons among non-state actors 'could be impossible to stop'
Governments also have no theory on how nefarious groups might behave using the tech The proliferation of AI in weapon systems among non-state actors such as terrorist groups or mercenaries would be virtually impossible to stop, according to a hearing before UK Parliament.…
International cops urge Meta not to implement secure encryption for all
Why? Well, think of the children, of course An international group of law enforcement agencies are urging Meta not to standardize end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger and Instagram, which they say will harm their ability to fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online.…
ChatGPT fans need 'defensive mindset' to avoid scammers and malware
Palo Alto Networks spots suspicious activity spikes such as naughty domains, phishing, and worse ChatGPT fans need to adopt a "defensive mindset" because scammers have started using multiple methods to trick the bot's users into downloading malware or sharing sensitive information.…
CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses
Put the $26 million in the bag Video Hands up who wants to watch a CEO's mask of sanity crack. OK, roll the tape.…
Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?
Guessing the admin password is cool. Using it, even for good, is dangerous On Call It’s always twelve o’clock somewhere, the saying goes, but Friday comes around but once a week and only this day does The Register offer a fresh instalment of On Call, our reader-contributed tales of tech support torture and turmoil.…
Hyundai to develop a Moon rover (to launch, not because the roads are so bad down here)
Japan's Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, are already pondering what it takes to make a MoonMobile Hyundai Motor Group announced on Thursday that it has begun building a lunar exploration rover in partnership with major Korean research institutes, and hopes to launch it to the moon in 2027.…
Google backs Bard to generate ads, which apparently improves creativity
Assures advertisers 'guardrails' will stop anything bad from happening With the rise of ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google's Bard, generative AI is seemingly inescapable, and it will soon power many of the ads you see on the internet.…
IBM starts renting cloudy bare metal Linux almost-mainframes
LinuxONE servers come to the Big Blue cloud IBM has taken a longer-than-usual stride towards making its proprietary hardware platforms cloudier, by offering bare metal LinuxONE boxes in the big blue cloud.…
Huawei replaces ERP with homebrew effort, claims it’s perfect and shows company will thrive despite sanctions
Compares three-year development push to a famous battle that saw Communist forces triumph Huawei has announced it created a homegrown ERP in just three years, and that the app now runs its entire business flawlessly.…
ChatGPT creates mostly insecure code, but won't tell you unless you ask
Boffins warn of risks from chatbot model that, Dunning–Kruger style, fails to catch its own bad advice ChatGPT, OpenAI's large language model for chatbots, not only produces mostly insecure code but also fails to alert users to its inadequacies despite being capable of pointing out its shortcomings.…
Pentagon shoots down UFO rumors but says 650 cases are still pending
Has found no evidence of alien tech or objects that defy the known laws of physics The Pentagon's recently-established All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) - set up to investigate unidentified flying objects - has not found any evidence of aliens in its analysis, its director has said.…
Google Brain, protein-folding DeepMind fold into one
Great minds in tech come together to solve hard problems – such as, why did anyone think Bard was a good name? Google Brain and DeepMind are merging to form a new unit named, predictably enough, Google DeepMind to accelerate the development of general AI, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai argued on Thursday. …
Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster scuttles into public view
You may be all a Flutter over the installer Ubuntu 23.04, codenamed Lunar Lobster, has crawled out of beta and onto public release today.…
What does an ex-Pharma Bro do next? If it's Shkreli, it's an AI Dr bot
Martin, for it is him, tells El Reg: 'We've looked around for a real LLM-powered chatbot' Just because you're banned from the pharmaceutical industry for life, that doesn't mean you can't launch a medical chatbot to dispense advice.…
Google Fi still kicking, gets third rebrand in less than a decade
It's better than a one-way trip to the Graveyard Google might have a history of killing useful products, but its Fi mobile service has survived seven years and, as of today, a third rebranding.…
Microsoft not a Teams player as admin center, 365 service suffer partial outage
It’s not the caching. There’s no way it’s the caching. It was the caching Final update Microsoft is investigating an issue that is keeping some users from being able to fully use the Microsoft 365 cloud service and Teams admin centers on Thursday.…
Microsoft nopes out after Twitter starts charging $$$ for API access
Plus: Musk threatens lawsuit, claims Redmond trained models 'illegally using Twitter data' Opinion "Is Elon on crack? I'm not paying $42K PER MONTH for Twitter API access." These were the words of a Reddit user last night when it emerged that this was indeed the starting price for any more than zero pull requests on the "cheap" tier. Microsoft also swiftly erased Twitter access from its Ads platform with CEO Elon Musk then threatening to sue it for training "illegally using Twitter data."…
Oracle offers AI to tell you if those lead times are hogwash
It'll also give staff career advice Keeping up with the must-have trend of 2023, Oracle has sprinkled a smattering of "AI" across its human capital and supply chain management applications.…
SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball
'Rapid unscheduled disassembly' could apply to much of Musk's world SpaceX's second attempt at getting the combined Starship and Super Heavy booster to orbit got further than its try earlier this week. That said, the two stages failed to separate, leading to yet another explosive end for a Starship flight.…
Capita has 'evidence' customer data was stolen in digital burglary
Admits criminals accessed 4% of servers from March 22 until it spotted them at month-end Business process outsourcing and tech services player Capita says there is proof that some customer data was scooped up by cyber baddies that broke into its systems late last month.…
TSMC revenues slide for the first time in four years
The world's largest semiconductor contract manufacturer isn't immune to ongoing chip slump TSMC has posted mixed results for calendar Q1, representing a fall in revenue when reported in US dollars, although some analysts say the company exceeded lowered expectations in the current economic climate.…
An earlier supply chain attack led to the 3CX supply chain attack, Mandiant says
Threat hunters traced it back to malware-laced Trading Technologies' software The supply-chain attack against 3CX last month was caused by an earlier supply-chain compromise of a different software firm — Trading Technologies — according to Mandiant, whose consulting crew was hired by 3CX to help the VoIP biz investigate the intrusion.…
How DARPA wants to rethink the fundamentals of AI to include trust
Would you trust your life to the current generation of AIs? Yeah, we wouldn't either Comment Would you trust your life to an artificial intelligence?…
Broadcom chases AI craze with ML-tuned switch ASICs
Faster GPUs don't mean much if you've got a network bottleneck Broadcom is aiming to capitalize on the AI-arms race with a switch chip tuned for large GPU clusters.…
Europe wants more cities to use datacenter waste heating. How's that going?
There's a cost, and operators are worried it will fall on them As part of its 2035 energy targets, the EU wants the heating and cooling sector to be carbon-neutral, using renewable sources including waste heat from datacenters. Germany has gone even further and tried to mandate this with targets. How's it going?…
4chan and other web sewers scraped up into Google's mega-library for training ML
Are you still so keen to have generative AI write your emails, sales proposals, blog posts ... ? Problematic, racist, and pornographic web content is seemingly being used to train Google's large language models, despite efforts to filter out that strata of toxic and harmful text.…
Europe doesn't just pass laws on Big Tech algorithms, it sets up cop shops to police them
The union doesn't fsck around Euro leaders officially opened the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency (ECAT) on Tuesday, an institution that will support the regulation of social media and search algorithms. …
Chinese company claims it's built batteries so dense they can power electric airplanes
But Dr Rachid Yazami, one of the key minds behind lithium-ion batteries, thinks this could be hot air The world’s top EV battery maker, China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), announced on Wednesday a battery it believes boasts sufficient energy density to power electric airplanes.…
Seagate hit with $300m penalty for selling sanctioned storage to Huawei
Felt it was on the right side of the law when shipping seven million drives worth $1.1 billion. Oops The United States Department of Commerce has fined Seagate $300 million for selling disk drives to Huawei, despite the Chinese company’s presence on its list of entities to which certain products can’t be sold without first securing a license.…
India gives itself a mission to develop a 1000-qubit quantum computer in just eight years
$730 million plan includes secure quantum comms, the sort of thing you need when you live next door to China India’s government has signed off on a ₹6003.65 crore ($730 million) plan to make the nation a quantum computing and communications power by the year 2031.…
Facebook puts a price on privacy for US users and it's not enough to buy a cup of coffee
Coughs up $725 million to settle class action that covers 244 million users In 2018, Facebook was sued multiple times for allegedly selling access to account holder data, contrary to privacy commitments.…
Medusa ransomware crew brags about spreading Bing, Cortana source code
'Does have a somewhat Lapsus$ish feel' we're told The Medusa ransomware gang has put online what it claims is a massive leak of internal Microsoft materials, including Bing and Cortana source code.…
Appeals court spares Google from $20m patent payout over Chrome
Chocolate Factory can afford some staples now, or? Six years after a jury decided otherwise, Google has convinced an appeals court to reverse a $20 million judgment against the web giant after Chrome infringed some patents.…
Metal-rich stars inhibit chances of life on their planets
They give off less UV, but more is absorbed by their planets’ atmospheres, boffins tell life hunters Scientists hoping to narrow down the hunt for life outside of our solar system have hit on an indicator that may guide the search: metal.…
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