The Register

Poor security and segregation of duties also worry auditors Massive local authority Birmingham City Council went live with new Oracle Fusion ERP software in April last year, knowing the system was likely to fail....

Plus: Have you updated to the latest version of Bloated Fetal Sacs? Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has taken viewers deep into the source code for Windows Task Manager while debunking a distressing Icelandic sobriquet for Microsoft's flagship operating system....

LightningCan evades infosec tools in new and interesting ways The Lazarus Group, the cybercrime gang linked to the North Korean government, has been named as the perpetrator of an attack against a Spanish aerospace firm, using a dangerous new piece of malware....

Where are the bolts of light? Why are the low-frequency radio waves lightning makes going backwards? Contrary to a decades-old hypothesis, there may be very little lightning in the atmosphere of Venus - or even none at all - according to researchers analysis of data collected by NASA's Parker Solar Probe....

At least in the tropics, say Equinix and the National University of Singapore Proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are more efficient than other alternative generator technologies as a way to provide backup power to datacenters in certain climates, according to a recent study....

That's $1.3 billion - pocket change compared to CHIPS Acts elsewhere Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, has confirmed it will fund Micron Technology's planned memory plant in Hiroshima to the tune of 192 billion ($1.3 billion), labelling the sum an investment in the nation's semiconductor industry....

For now, chaebol will manufacture AI startup's 4nm Quasar AI chip startup Tenstorrent announced on Monday that it will use Samsung's foundry to manufacture its next generation of products, with both partners alluding to potential future RISC-V collaborations....

Putin Zuck out of business is one goal of this repeat effort to close off internet tunnels Russia intends to prohibit VPNs being offered in the nation's app stores starting in 2024....

Meta, the project's maintainer, shrugs A trio of now-patched security issues in TorchServe, an open-source tool for scaling PyTorch machine-learning models in production, could lead to server takeover and remote code execution (RCE), according to security researchers....

Victim in critical condition A woman in San Francisco is in critical condition after being first struck by a hit-and-run driver, and then falling in front of a driverless Cruise car, which ran her over and trapped her under its wheels....

After people's funds go up in smoke, ex-CEO seeks cash to foot legal bills The first of two US government prosecutions of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried commenced in New York on Monday, only a day after the cryptocurrency tycoon sued his own insurance company for failing to cover his legal costs....

x86 giant eyes outside cash injections, IPO for Programmable Systems Group within three years Sandra Rivera is off as executive veep of Intel's Datacenter and AI group, and will instead be CEO of the x86 giant's now-soon-to-be-spun-off FPGA business....

End of the road for those hoping to cut 3-year permit back down to 12 months The US Supreme Court has handed foreign students, the tech industry, and academic institutions, a final victory in their fight to keep a work authorization program for international STEM students alive by declining to hear an appeal over the case....

As Qualcomm warns of similar fixes coming for its chips Commercial spyware has exploited a security hole in Arm's Mali GPU drivers to compromise some people's devices, according to Google today....

Exploited open source maintainers get broader payment pleading options GitHub today said it has linked its open source software donation program Sponsors to the funding platform Patreon in an attempt to get unappreciated developers patronized for the work they do....

Compiles learning and code to pass - but not necessarily with flying colors ChatGPT was put to the test via a series of humdrum freshman C/C++ programming tasks and it passed - though not with honors....

You can't bling out the inevitable If you're still wearing an original Apple Watch, we have bad news: the Series 0 is being moved to Apple's "obsolete" category, meaning owners will no longer be able to get service of any kind for their eight-year-old wrist computers....

It looks like you spent hours tuning your settings - shall I reset them for you? Another day with a "y" in it, another Windows update issue. This time, it's AMD gamers complaining about Microsoft's legendary quality control....

Red dragon's semiconductor market share continues to grow The US is set to update its export restrictions on semiconductor tech to China, tightening loopholes on chipmaking tools as well as chips used in AI, according to reports. However, analysts still expect China to grow its share of the semiconductor market over the next several years....

Plan is to mix a dose of sustainability into bit barn foundations Microsoft is exploring ways of cutting carbon dioxide emissions from its datacenters, including using building materials that lower the overall embodied carbon in concrete....

FCC wants $150K after EchoStar-7 missed its orbital graveyard US television provider DISH is facing a $150,000 penalty from the US Federal Communications Commission after one of its satellites was dumped into the wrong orbit at the end of operational life....

Alleges it achieved dominance through nefarious means - but who would do such a thing? The sound of the world's smallest violin could be heard playing as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took to the stand yesterday to testify in the US government's antitrust trial against Google....

spidermanpointingmeme.jpg The wisdom of Twitter's pivot to X under Elon Musk has been repeatedly questioned and now those chickens are coming home to roost with a lawsuit brought by Florida ad agency X Social Media....

Having seen how conventional computers changed the world, can you really afford to bet against it? Analysis The early 1940s saw the first vacuum tube computers put to work solving problems beyond the scope of their human counterparts. These massive machines were complex, specific, and generally unreliable....

With more constellations on the horizon, scientists call for better approval of launches A recently launched 5G satellite periodically becomes the brightest object in the night sky, alarming astronomers who reckon it sometimes becomes hundreds of times brighter than the current recommendations....

Chrome's second zero-day of the month puts fed security at 'significant risk' The US's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added the latest actively exploited zero-day vulnerability affecting Google Chrome to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog....

Users get three-year deprecation and migration warning Microsoft will deprecate the classic edition of its Azure Virtual Desktop desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) and has given customers three years to keep using the service before they'll need to find an alternative....

Nobody expects more flexible string parsing Python 3.12, the latest stable release of the Python programming language, was released on Monday, offering developers a handful of new capabilities and the removal of some cruft....

Detailed design and long lead contracts signed off for SSN-AUKUS project The UK government has signed off on contracts worth 4 billion ($4.8 billion) to start the design and long lead phase for building the next generation of nuclear-powered attack submarines....

Yet history tells us it's an ever present temptation to grab greater chunks of the stack Rather than MongoDB's AI-powered SQL converter, natural language queries, or ML visualization releases, it's the document database company's strategy for vertical markets that is catching one analyst's eye....

Ofcom to refer findings to CMA - which insiders say will home in on egress fees, interoperability and licensing The Reg can reveal that UK's comms regulator Ofcom is expected to refer the findings of its six-month inquiry into the health of Britain's cloud computing landscape to the Competition Markets Authority later this week for a deeper probe....

Just because you're paranoid... We're sure you'll be pleased to know Microsoft Defender has stopped mistakenly breaking the latest version of Tor Browser. The antivirus tool had flagged and quarantined the application's core tor.exe program as a trojan, causing the software to stop working as desired....

Eurolauncher won't fly again until 2024 as it awaits another redesign The Vega-C rocket will not return to launch until late 2024 because a test on a redesigned nozzle failed, the European Space Agency revealed on Monday....

Some may be made in India, where the Big G has teamed to make kit with HP Google has added a 'Plus' designation to its Chromebook spec that requires machines to offer at least an Intel Core i3 12th Gen or above, or AMD Ryzen 3 7000, plus 8GB of memory and 128GB of onboard storage....

CYNEX Alliance brings industry, government, and academia together to share info and devise tools Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology yesterday launched the CYNEX Alliance - an entity charged with fostering local development of security tools and encouraging their adoption by local industry to reduce dependence on imported infosec tools....

Plus: Philippine state health insurance knocked offline by ransomware, China relaxes data export laws, and more Asia in brief Zhu Su, co-founder of fallen crypto business Three Arrows Capital (3AC), was arrested last Friday at Changi Airport in Singapore as he attempted to leave the country....

Fixes about to flow, perhaps along with an iSearch engine Apple has warned that a bug in the iOS 17 software powering its latest iPhone 15 Pro model is causing smartphones to overheat....

End-of-life systems still in use, poor inventory control, and China's hunting The US Department of State has largely failed to implement an effective cybersecurity risk program, auditors concluded in a report last week. That means a crucial arm of the American government is potentially wide open to cyberattacks it may not be able to identify or stop....

Basically, it's 'not going to work' Exclusive In July, the White House announced that seven large tech players have committed to AI safety measures, including the deployment of watermarking to ensure that algorithmically-generated content can be distinguished from the work of actual people....

Better late than never, we guess An urgent ransomware warning from the Feds has some industry analysts scratching their heads and wondering if Uncle Sam's noggin has been buried in the sand for too long....

I'm not a smart man, but I know it should be cast away A dental healthcare advert featuring what looks like a younger Tom Hanks dressed in a black suit is fake and AI-generated, the Forrest Gump actor has warned....

A petabyte or more a day of readings? No problem, pal In preparation for its latest round of ion-smashing tests, CERN boosted its storage array for the experiments to more than one million terabytes in total size....

One (very) small leap for humanity's future in space NASA has announced plans to fund eight short-term research projects aimed at improving our understanding of space's effects on the human body, but all eight will have to share just $1.5 million in funding to accomplish their goals....

Keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' The openSUSEproject is undergoing changes that, to us at least, indicate a multiplicity of future directions for the code base....

Irony alert: Complaint cites defendant as claiming X 'did not even pay rent for such period' Elon Musk's X Corp is suing a former subtenant for breach of contract, saying it owes X nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in unpaid rent and early lease termination fees - ironic as Twitter itself is being sued for not allegedly paying rent on the same building....

Agency boss warns enemies trying to nick AI advances and 'corrupt our application of it' The US National Security Agency (NSA) is trying to head off trouble early by opening an office to oversee the development and integration of AI capabilities into defense and national security systems....

It looks like you're a perpetual Office user who needs a hidden feature disabled. Would you like help? Microsoft has issued a patch to resolve an unwanted Outlook prompt that urges users to reopen items from a previous session....

Good news: More science. Bad news: Somebody has to pay for it NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which performed a flyby of Pluto in 2015, is being granted a mission extension through 2029....

Early signs emerge after Progress Software said there were no active attempts last week Security researchers have spotted what they believe to be a "possible mass exploitation" of vulnerabilities in Progress Software's WS_FTP Server....

No formal moves yet, but massive demand for GPUs has drawn its attention The European Commission is said to be monitoring the AI-driven chipmakers for potential anticompetitive practices, though no formal investigation has been announced....