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Microsoft fixed 36 flaws. Adobe addressed 212. Apple, Google, Cisco, VMware and Atlassian joined the party It's the last Patch Tuesday of 2023, which calls for celebration -just as soon as you update Windows, Adobe, Google, Cisco, FortiGuard, SAP, VMware, Atlassian and Apple products, of course....

Mining industry looking for greener credentials in the future Automaker General Motors and construction equipment manufacturer Komatsu have partnered to turn one of the world's largest trucks into an emissions-free, hydrogen-powered behemoth....

The wages of sin are almost certainly much, much higher OpenAI's non-profit arm reported revenues of just $44,485 in its latest US tax filing, despite its for-profit business likely making millions from ChatGPT....

Arena Group seeking 'the Uberization of Content' The Arena Group, publisher of Sports Illustrated, fired CEO Ross Levinsohn on Monday, characterizing the decision as a strategic business move that has nothing to do with the AI scandal that rocked the sports title recently....

Don't expect supply, or prices, to ease until 2025 at the earliest Kettle Over the last week AMD has been extolling the virtues of its latest kit, including the MI300 which Su's crew claim is the fastest AI processing package on the market....

Now he's got two years behind bars to think about his bad choices An ex-First Republic Bank cloud engineer was sentenced to two years in prison for causing more than $220,000 in damage to his former employer's computer network after allegedly using his company-issued laptop to watch pornography....

Poor cybersecurity hygiene in the military? Surely not! There was only one US Air National Guardsman behind the leak of top-secret US military documents on Discord, but his chain of command bears some responsibility for letting it happen on their watch....

Irish software projects gear up for latest iterations Devs at well-loved distros Mint and Zorin are hard at work, with Mint 21.3 expected before the holidays, although Zorin OS 17 may take a little longer. Their respective betas show both are shaping up nicely and boast attractive desktops....

Still, Ellison talks up cloud margins, says 100 datacenters don't cost more 'to run' than 10 Oracle has seen its market valuation dip on the back of lower than expected revenue growth for Q2 of its fiscal 2024 ended November 30....

We used to use Edlin. And we were happy Microsoft is considering adding a text editor back into the command line world, thus risking some heated discussions on the subject....

Officers potentially targeted by dissidents can't afford to relocate for their safety, while others seek support to change their names An official review of the Police Service of Northern Ireland's (PSNI) August data breach has revealed the full extent of the impact on staff....

And it's not just inflation... it's inflation plus an additional percentage, it turns out Brit telecoms regulator Ofcom is proposing fresh rules that take a swipe at companies who impose inflation-linked price rises in the middle of a contract, saying pricing should be more transparent for customers....

We speak to Andy Warfield, AWS distinguished engineer re:Invent At the recent AWS re:Invent conference, the hype was all around AI, but the big launch for many users was S3 (Simple Storage Service) Express One Zone - a S3 tier offering much lower latency than standard S3 buckets. This means S3 can be used directly by a wider range of applications, altering the storage cost and performance calculations....

Dev claims to have fixed 'issue that caused messages not to be sent or received' The developer behind Beeper Mini just released an updated version of the standalone Android app that users say can sidestep the block Apple put in place over the weekend....

A mis-merged patch causing corruption on ext4 volumes is to blame The Debian maintainers have identified a problem in kernel 6.1 that can cause corruption on ext4 volumes. As a result, the planned 12.3 release won't happen....

Board and incoming CEO decide reorganizing is better than splitting BlackBerry has decided its plan to split into two separate companies is not a good idea and will instead reorganize itself into two independent divisions....

Let's choo-choo-choose safety, folks Space weather can wreak havoc on electronic systems, but while most folks focus on protecting datacenters or the power grid, a group of UK researchers are warning that relatively mild solar storms could bork train signaling systems....

Scum lure folks with promises of good jobs in crypto and then won't let them leave Hundreds of suspected people smugglers have been arrested, and 163 potential victims rescued from servitude, as part of an Interpol-coordinated operation dubbed "Turquesa V" that targeted cyber criminals who lure workers into servitude to carry out their scams....

Takes huge stake in local superapp Tokopedia, for the good of the small business community A mere two-and-a-half months after Indonesia imposed a ban on social commerce, made-in-China social media giant TikTok and local super-app company GoTo have announced a "strategic e-commerce partnership" in a form that appears to evade the ban....

Interstellar Glory Space Technology gets a boost - even though it's yet to reach orbit Chinese private space biz i-Space (not to be confused with Japanese aerospace concern iSpace) has recycled a rocket just 38 days after its previous flight....

Fortnite dev hails 'a win for all app developers and consumers around the world' Epic Games has won its antitrust battle against Google....

Expanded service provider definition could force cafes and hotels to spy for the feds Many US businesses may be required to assist in government-directed surveillance - depending upon which of two reform bills before Congress is approved....

Also kills perpetual licenses, adds a vSphere bundle for smaller users +COMMENT Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division has announced what it's described as "a dramatic simplification of our product portfolio," plus the end of perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions - some at half their previous price....

This one weird trick works every time, most of the time Investigators at Indiana's Purdue University have devised a way to interrogate large language models (LLMs) in a way that that breaks their etiquette training - almost all the time....

Redmond reassures AFL-CIO workers they won't be pushed out by technology Microsoft is partnering with the largest US union group - representing 60 unions and more than 12 million workers - to explore how AI will impact labor, and help shape policies to support workers as the technology threatens to disrupt jobs....

More awards imminent agency says British arms dealer BAE Systems will be among the first beneficiaries of the $53 billion US Chips and Science Act....

Elon's biz claims 1st Amendment rights It may have taken more than a year, but Tesla has finally responded to the California Department of Motor Vehicles allegations that it misrepresented Autopilot's capabilities, arguing that it's free to do so under the US Constitution....

AlphV lays claims to the intrusion Norton Healthcare, which runs eight hospitals and more than 30 clinics in Kentucky and Indiana, has admitted crooks may have stolen 2.5 million people's most sensitive data during a ransomware attack in May....

Elsewhere, BAE Systems bags first CHIPS Act funding Upstate New York is set for a $10 billion semiconductor research facility to work on next-generation chip manufacturing, with IBM and Micron part of the scheme....

Latest offensive cyber group to switch to atypical programming for payloads Research into Lazarus Group's attacks using Log4Shell has revealed novel malware strains written in an atypical programming language....

Why would FTC call that antitrust, it asks in dismissal request Amazon is asking a judge to dismiss the antitrust case filed against it by the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states, arguing the case fails to allege any anticompetitive conduct or harm to consumers from its behavior....

Hey Bing, how can I invest billions in a company but not break antitrust laws? Microsoft's OpenAI headaches might not be going away following reports that now the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering an investigation into the Windows giant's investment in the company....

Lack of awareness still blamed for patching apathy despite it being among most infamous bugs of all time Two years after the Log4Shell vulnerability in the open source Java-based Log4j logging utility was disclosed, circa one in four applications are dependent on outdated libraries, leaving them open to exploitation....

Mission to the Moon likely to slip to 2024 following dress rehearsal issues United Launch Alliance's heavy-lift launch vehicle Vulcan Centaur is facing yet another delay after the company was unable to complete a Wet Dress Rehearsal on December 8....

Chip giant claims demo tech could 'significantly' improve device density Intel is looking to new options for its future chips including 3D stacking of transistors to enable greater density, extending backside power, and use of gallium nitride for greater power delivery....

Ofcom opens consultation on resilience requirements... power backup for mobile networks, anyone? Britain's comms regulator is asking telecoms providers for updated guidance on how resilient their networks are, given modern society's increasing reliance on digital services....

Also: 'well-known Bay Area tech' firm's laptops stolen and check out some critical vulns Security in brief The saga of 23andMe's mega data breach has reached something of a conclusion, with the company saying its probe has determined millions of leaked records originated from illicit break-ins into just 14,000 accounts....

Almost 100M in handouts available for LEO connectivity projects UK government may subsidize Brit companies working on low Earth orbit satellite connectivity projects - the aim being to support comms for remote parts of the country and boost the domestic satellite industry....

Keeping the lights on with an enterprise product while staying true to your roots Interview Monitoring biz VictoriaMetrics is relatively unusual in its field. It is yet to accept external investment, preferring instead to try to grow organically rather than being forced to through a private equity meat grinder by committing to grow by X every year until the investor exits....

Better than a Pi? It's an open and shut case Opinion Space junk grabs headlines. There's a lot of space hardware alive and dead - 9,064 objects at the time of writing according to the Orbiting Now tracker - and cleaning it up at end of life is the focus of a number of bizarrely nautical technology proposals like sails, harpoons and nets, more at home on an 18th century whaling ship than Low Earth Orbit....

Vast battery life, zippy performance, and rich speakers make an impressive package Desktop Tourism When I speak to laptop-makers about their wares, they often admit that the benchmark in their field is the MacBook Air. Ever since its 2008 debut, Apple's minimalist portable has been the standard others aspire to match, despite changing little from the formula of a gently tapering aluminum clamshell with screens of between 11 and 13 inches....

Nice ridiculously redundant drive you've got there - what a pity if something ...happened to it Who, Me? Heavens to Betsy, dear reader, are you back again? It feels like only a week since we last met in the corner of The Register we call Who, Me? to share the schadenfreude of a fellow Regizen's misfortune....

Big Tech plays the 'this might hurt innovation' card for rules that bar predictive policing, workplace emotion assessments The European Union (EU) on Saturday reached provisional agreement on the AI Act - a broad legal framework limiting how artificial intelligence can be used....

And the joy of slaughtering demons as John Romero himself delivers a frag-tastic new level Seminal first-person shooter Doom marked the thirtieth anniversary of its release on December 10, and co-creator John Romero marked the occasion by releasing new levels for the game and celebrating its role as the genesis of many IT careers....

First to wear it will be an M.2 connector that draws power from PCIe The Raspberry Pi project has released the first revision to its Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) spec, along with an update to the RPi 5's PCIE handling tools....

PLUS: The AI companies that will use AMD's latest GPUs, and more AI In brief Google wowed the internet with a demo video showing the multimodal capabilities of its latest large language model Gemini - but some of the the demo was faked....

PLUS: Japan Moon landing scheduled; Mastercard's APAC pay-by-face trial; Scammers feast on restaurant QR code Microsoft last week announced price hikes for its software and services, with the biggest rises to be felt across Asia....

Silicon carbide production for EVs among key targets Silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors are getting a lot of attention of late and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry doesn't want to be left out....

Proposals now due in 2024 for a launch 5 years later NASA has tweaked the contract and shuffled the dates for its procurement notice covering a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station (ISS.)...

Microsoft spots surge in pro-Russia exploits of video platform to spread propaganda An unknown pro-Russia influence group spent time recruiting unwitting Hollywood actors to assist in smear campaigns against Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky....