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Kim Jong Un's all in for home-built silicon says warning North Korean government spies have broken into the servers of at least two chipmakers and stolen product designs as part of attempts to spur Kim Jong Un's plans for a domestic semiconductor industry, according to Seoul's security agency....

Plus a new anodization seal should make Midnight edition more resilient to gamer grease Four months after Apple launched its M3 processors alongside refreshed MacBook Pros, the chips have finally arrived on the iGiant's fanless ultra lite laptops....

Meanwhile, only 22% of orgs are looking at GenAI strategy for databases Google has introduced vector search to its MySQL database service, surpassing Oracle - custodian of the open source database - which has so far failed to add the feature deemed an advantage in executing large language models (LLMs)....

Officials can't tell whether the tape was edited, but fear Kremlin has more juicy bits to release in the future The German Ministry of Defense (Bundeswehr) has confirmed that a recording of a call between high-ranking officials discussing war efforts in Ukraine, leaked by Russian media, is legitimate....

Copilot failed to shift the dial. Could Moment 5 and upcoming invitations do the trick? Microsoft is adding fresh features to Windows 11 and preparing to fling yet more update nagware at Windows 10 users in the hope that a bigger wave will migrate to the latest - but not necessarily the greatest - OS....

OSAM-1 - expensive, late, difficult, and no longer what the market needs? NASA has finally pulled the plug on its ambitious mission to refuel and service working satellites via its OSAM-1 demonstrator....

Cupertino blames Spotify, says Commission is just giving preference to another European company Apple's anti-steering provisions that prevent music streaming apps from directing users outside the App Store for paid services were smacked down in the European Union today and earned the iGiant a fine of more than 1.8 billion ($1.95 billion)....

Built on OCI, the cancer-focused analytics company struggled to find sufficient paying customers, one report claimed A Larry Ellison-backed startup focused on bringing data analytics to the study and treatment of cancer has reportedly closed....

Increasingly clear number of permanent solutions is narrowing Global law enforcement authorities' attempts to shutter the LockBit ransomware crew have sparked a fresh call for a ban on ransomware payments to perpetrators....

At least the US Army is thinking about the frogs in those 226 acres of wetland Micron's proposed "mega fab" semiconductor plant in New York State is to be scrutinized by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which is tasked with preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the project....

Plus: Google CEO admits company got it wrong when it built 'too-woke' AI, and more AI in brief Cruise, the self-driving biz backed by General Motors, had its valuation slashed by more than half since one of its cars crashed and dragged a woman down a street....

'Criminal,' says CEO Lawyers representing shareholders who quashed Elon Musk's $56 billion Tesla compensation package have submitted a request for nearly $6 billion in the electric car maker's stock as their fee....

Website 404ing, calls to switchboard go dead, 'sad reflection' of how tough it is to make money in smartphones UK-based ruggedized phone maker Bullitt Group has called in PWC as administrative receivers after its management team seemingly failed to pull off a proposed restructure....

Design aims to sate the bandwidth hunger of next-gen networks Semiconductor design outfit Synopsys is targeting datacenter customers with a 1.6 terabit (1.6T) Ethernet blueprint intended to enable chips for demanding AI networking applications....

Updated with kernel 6.6, latest GCC and glibc, still under 25 MB Tiny Core Linux shows that a fully functional, GUI-driven Linux distro can be smaller than Windows 95 and still be modern and useful....

When you can't lock 'em up, lock 'em out Opinion The best cop shows excel at mind games: who's tricking whom, who really wins, and what price they pay. A twist of humor adds to the drama and keeps us hooked. It's rare enough in real life, far less so in the grim meat grinder of cybersecurity, yet sometimes it happens. It's happening right now....

Pride came before a fall for techie who thought he knew it all who, me? Welcome once again, gentle reader, for that cushion into the working week that we like to call Who, Me? in which readers like your good selves entertain us with tales of times technology did not go quite right....

The tech just isn't ready and clunky collab with ESA isn't helping, auditor finds NASA's Office of Inspector General, the agency's auditor, has found that the Mars Sample Return Program is struggling to get off the drawing board, never mind the launchpad....

Not compulsory for now, but IT minister says that's coming after Google's Gemini said the quiet part out loud India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued an advisory last Friday stipulating AI technology still in development acquire government permission prior to release to the Indian public....

15.99/month server offered with Ubuntu or Debian, and a zero percent Service Level Agreement French cloud provider Scaleway has fired up an instance type powered by a RISC-V system-on-chip (SoC), developed by Chinese tech giant Alibaba's T-Head offshoot....

ALSO: CISA warns Ivanti vuln mitigations might not work, SAML hijack doesn't need ADFS, and crit vulns Infosec in brief The infamous LockBit ransomware gang has been busy in the ten days since an international law enforcement operation took down many of its systems. But despite its posturing, the gang might have suffered more than it's letting on....

Misinformation is rife, AI makes it easier to create, and 42 percent of the planet's inhabitants get to vote this year Feature Two US intelligence bigwigs last week issued stark warnings about foreign threats to American election integrity and security - and the nation's ability to counter these adversaries....

Previously pondered the need for an extra release candidate Linus Torvalds has decided Linux 6.8 will in all likelihood debut next week....

PLUS: APNIC director general to step down; Hong Kong's odd cloud survey; Rent-a-friend online in China; and more Asia In Brief India's minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has vowed to prevent Google removing Indian apps from its Play Store....

Want all-FOSS 120Hz 4K video on Linux, or 5K at 240Hz? Bad news... AMD says it has improved its FOSS display drivers for Linux, though the organization that controls the HDMI standard won't let it release them....

So, er, how will WebKit-only applications work under latest Euro antitrust laws? Anyone? Tim? Apple has reversed its decision to limit the functionality of Home Screen web apps in Europe following an outcry from the developer community and the prospect of further investigation....

'Farewell' snap revealed by Intuitive Machines amid hope solar-powered craft may one day spring to life again With it battery depleted and the lunar night approaching, the private-built Moon lander Odysseus has shut down quite possibly for good....

Turns out bragging on Discord has unfortunate consequences Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking dozens of classified Pentagon documents, is expected to plead guilty in a US court on Monday....

/* Hope no one ever reads these functions lmao */ NSO Group, the Israel-based maker of super-charged snoopware Pegasus, has been ordered by a federal judge in California to share the source code for "all relevant spyware" with Meta's WhatsApp....

$10M bounty for anyone with info leading to Alireza Shafie Nasab's identification or location The US Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment accusing an Iranian national of a years-long campaign that compromised hundreds of thousands of accounts and attempting to infiltrate US defense contractors and multiple government agencies....

Feds allege EV maker talked up pre-orders for trucks it didn't have parts for Bankrupt electric truck maker Lordstown Motors Corp will have to pay out $25 million to shareholders, settling SEC claims it misled investors and broke anti-fraud and reporting rules in US federal securities laws....

Not bad considering exec had said '2024 didn't go as planned' due to declining overall sales The mesmeric power that AI holds over Wall Street was in evidence again last night as Dell homed in on the huge backlog of orders for "AI-optimized" servers rather than fiscal 2024's overall declining sales, and the share price soared....

GPT-4 has already reached AGI, and Microsoft shouldn't get its paws on it, court docs allege Tesla CEO and SpaceX supremo Elon Musk has launched a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging a breach of contract in its move away from open technology and its original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity....

Worse than having no tech would be having the wrong tech AI PCs due to land this year could increase businesses' risk of buying the wrong tech as there is still no current AI standard for software to work with and confusion remains over what makes up an AI PC....

No more freebies - Google signs up to improve Gemini's programming abilities Stack Overflow has launched an API that will require all AI models trained on its coding question-and-answer content to attribute sources linking back to its posts.And it will cost money to use the site's content....

Data watchdog reprimands police force for confusing 2 people with same name and birthday to disastrous results The UK's Information Commissioner's Office has put the West Midlands Police (WMP) on the naughty step after the force was found to have repeatedly mixed up two people's personal data for years....

Running proof of concepts to pick out the right models Lenovo's chief operating officer has told The Reg it is formalizing a scheme to sell certified refurbished hardware as more customers seek ways to cut their carbon footprint and save money....

Watchdog says taxpayer assistance is getting worse Phone services for the UK tax authority continue to deteriorate, and the digital systems that were supposed to take up the slack aren't good enough....

Just 13% of provisioned CPUs, 20% of memory utilized, study finds Cloud optimization biz CAST AI says that companies are still overprovisioning resources and paying too much as a consequence. It claims that in Kubernetes clusters of 50 or more CPUs, only 13 percent of provisioned CPUs and 20 percent of memory is typically utilized....

Tough guy act was flimsy: our readers fleeced him, then dropped him in it On Call Welcome once more, dear reader, to On Call, The Register's reader-contributed tales of delivering tech support amidst feuds, foolishness, and folly....

'Computer-says-no' to be replaced by summaries written by LLMs trained on government data The UK government will trial large language models to help ministers analyze and draft documents as part of a push to overhaul public services using AI....

Even when Nvidia delivers, customers struggle to get datacenters ready to handle the heat HPE has blamed disappointing revenue for the quarter on shortages of GPUs and warned investors its previous growth predictions probably won't happen....

No mere mea culpa would suffice after 9.2 million records leaked over a decade, warnings were ignored, and lies were told NTT West president Masaaki Moribayashi announced his resignation on Thursday, effective at the end of March, in atonement for the leak of data pertaining to 9.28 million customers that came to light last October....

Hopes to get itself off an international naughty list - as you would when you want foreign investment in your chip sector Vietnam's Ministry of Finance has raised the prospect of prohibiting or regulating virtual assets by May 2025, as part of a drive to boost anti-money laundering (AML) efforts....

So much for the 'commitment to support news organizations' made in just 2020 Meta has killed its Facebook news service in the United States and Australia....

Everybody's so happy they're not mentioning start dates, subsidy levels, or other useful details India's government has approved the construction of the nation's first semiconductor wafer fabrication plant, to be built by Taiwanese foundry-as-a-service outfit Powerchip (PSMC), together with Indian giant Tata's electronics business....

Court order means ad giant will have to cough evidence of possible market manipulation It has not been a great week for Google's Ad business. After being served a 2.1 billion lawsuit in Europe, Canadian regulators have expanded an investigation into whether it abused its market position to quash rival platforms....

Cloned then compromised, bad repos are forked faster than they can be removed A malware distribution campaign that began last May with a handful of malicious software packages uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) has spread to GitHub and expanded to reach at least 100,000 compromised repositories....

$675 million to accelerate development of machine that can lift, but can't keep up with humans If you thought blue collar jobs were safe from AI, think again. Robotics startup Figure aims to replace millions of workers with its humanoid automatons and has just received $675 million in funding to accelerate development....

Workers allege discrimination, missing payments To say Elon Musk's business empire is having a week of legal woe may be an understatement, after filings revealed yesterday suggest his social network X and electric car outfit Tesla both face potentially expensive court battles....