The Register

Foundry giant now searching for new home for high-end fab site Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) will abandon plans to build an advanced chip fab in northern Taiwan after residents opposed the project....

Hey, we're still safer than human drivers, says GM outfit The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched an investigation of General Motors' Cruise driverless robo-taxis after a pair of recent pedestrian injuries....

A little optimistic, given Blue Origin can't even deliver it themselves yet Bezos-backed space firm Blue Origin has unveiled plans to construct a multi-mission, multi-orbit "space mobility platform," and claims it only needs until 2025 to get the structure in space....

Good news: there's a free scanner to check your kit. Bad news: still no fix Remember that critical zero-day bug Cisco disclosed yesterday? Well, it gets worse....

OTA software update to deal with misbehaving sensor Got a Tesla Model X built between 2021 and 2023? The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has said Tesla will recall almost 55,000 vehicles over a brake fluid warning sensor....

An AI may be able to botch a closing argument, but can it sing Killing Me Softly? Former Fugee, Prakazrel "Pras" Michel, who was convicted of criminal conspiracy charges over attempts to influence the administrations of two US presidents, wants a new trial because he believes his lawyer used AI to craft closing arguments, among other things....

Bill in New York aims to stop spread of ghost guns, but fails to address existing kit or private sales A bill introduced in the New York state assembly last week aims to combat the spread of 3D printed "ghost guns" by requiring a criminal background check for anyone buying a 3D printer....

Perfect antidote to range anxiety ... if it works and they can sort compatibility Researchers in Japan are preparing to test out technology that enables electric vehicles to charge wirelessly while still moving, which could lead to drivers not needing to plug in and charge up as frequently, as well as lighter vehicles with fewer batteries....

Jez and friend's Excel-lent Adventure Today is Spreadsheet Day, an auspicious occasion to celebrate the release of VisiCalc and its descendants. So enjoy a bonus On Call story on us regarding Microsoft's finest, Excel....

If all goes well, production to start 'before the end of the year' Amazon's Project Kuiper has continued to make progress as its pair of prototype satellites get ready to route internet data....

Watch out, 'macroeconomic uncertainty' is at it again as network operators slow deployments Sweden's Ericsson has posted a loss for its third quarter of 2023, blaming "macroeconomic uncertainty" in the market and claimed the situation is so volatile that it can't give guidance beyond the end of this year....

Do it now, no ifs or buts, says advisory US authorities have issued an urgent plea to network admins to patch the critical vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server amid ongoing nation-state exploitation....

Account holders reach for telephone as mobile and web services crash Online services with UK-based Barclays Bank have taken a nosedive....

System aims to clean mess of high-performance analytics cluttering the modern data stack Flush from securing a $34 million VC investment for his fledgling database company, TileDB CEO, Stavros Papadopoulos, is not planning on returning to the well any time soon....

US spy-tech vendor's tactic deemed 'contrary to the principles of public procurement' The UK's chief commercial officer is warning a government contract with Palantir was awarded against public procurement principles after the US spy-tech biz got a toe-hold in the Homes for Ukraine scheme via a free six-month trial period....

A Weekend at Burn-ins Apple's flagship iPhone 15 Pro Max is having OLED burn-in issues, according to owners of the new smartphone....

Indie C++ Unix-like OS project now has an indie Javascript-capable browser, too A small project with a hobby of defying expectations found a new one to defy, by making its home-grown browser cross-platform....

Is SpaceX psyching out the competition? There were sighs of relief all round as NASA's Psyche mission finally lifted off late last week. However, the launch highlights more Earthly worries around launch provider competition....

How does the device fare as a daily driver, and is cooling really optional? We've used a pair of Raspberry Pi 5s as daily drivers and have some hot takes. Some really hot takes....

Domestic jets can use 'municipal solid waste' to fly the friendly skies Sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) made from sources other than fossil fuels have the potential to reduce emissions by up to 80 percent, UK researchers have found....

Cites 'increased operational costs' but whatever they are US gamers aren't impacted Nvidia will increase the price of its GeForce Now game streaming services across much of Canada, Europe, and the UK, effective November 1....

Puts Datacenter-ready Secure Control Modules to work in boxen built by Lenovo Cloudflare has joined the ranks of operators that believe baseboard management controllers (BMCs) no longer belong on server motherboards....

In 2027 a quarter of PCs won't use x86, and Redmond wants its ecosystem ready Microsoft has announced an Arm Advisory Service for developers" that it hopes will help coders to develop native software for the version of Windows written for the processor architecture....

Beijing appears to have lifted its ban on Loongson processors reaching Moscow If you have an enormous appetite for risk, we have just the hardware for you, from Russian outfit Norsi-Trans, powered by China's Loongson....

Beijing set big targets for next-gen networks, but adoption stats suggest it's falling short China has issued an edict requiring all new Wi-Fi hardware to be IPv6 enabled, and enable the protocol by default from the moment it's first switched on....

Epic redundancies as new owner Songtradr wields the knife Many staff at audio marketplace Bandcamp aren't singing a happy tune after the platform's new owner, Songtradr, laid off around 50 percent of employees....

We'd say 'Hurry up and patch' but it hasn't written one yet. While you wait, disable HTTP Cisco users' weeks have started badly with a warning that a critical zero-day bug in the networking giant's IOS XE software that allows criminals to hijack devices has been exploited in the wild....

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....