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Break out the tinfoil hats: Boffins' experimental tech improves computer mind reading There's a lot of noise to signal in the machine-learning model world, but this demo is genuinely impressive – or scary, if you are given to recreationally climbing into MRI scanners.…

Playing catch-up with Western allies, federal government to initiate rip 'n replace for mobile operators The nation of Germany looks set to belatedly join the ban on Huawei and ZTE equipment being used in national telecoms networks, after years of stubbornly resisting pressure from the US to comply.…

'Firemode reset' sees Interstellar Boundary Explorer back on the job NASA engineers have managed to restore the Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft to working condition by using the oldest trick in the computing book.…

Admirer - said to be Baring Equity Asia - couldn't raise funds in current climate DXC Technology has ended discussions with a suitor that expressed interest in taking over the beleaguered infrastructure services and consultancy but was unable to raise sufficient funds in these uncertain economic times.…

DBs aren't just about theory – they are complex systems designed to perform demanding tasks Register Debate Welcome back to the latest Register Debate in which writers discuss technology topics, and you the reader choose the winning argument.…

Who needs deepfakes when you've got makeup and 'element of surprise'? Pro-Russian scammers using social engineering and impersonation to trick prominent western commentators into conducting recorded video calls have kicked these campaigns "into high gear" over the past 12 months, according to security researchers.…

Microsoft doesn't even want you to use these unstable releases, will migrate you to them anyway Microsoft has created a fourth channel for test versions of its Windows operating system and recommended Windows Insiders don't use it – even though they'll be migrated to it by default.…

Retirement of Windows 10 should eventually drive recovery in 2024 and 2025 The PC and tablet markets are in such a bad slump that analyst firm IDC has lowered its 2023 shipment forecast by 26 million.…

Software scans to give rovers a clue AI-infused algorithms developed to find signs of life in extreme terrestrial environments could help robotic rovers sent to other planets search for signs of alien life, scientists suggested in new research published in Nature Astronomy on Monday.…

Nations edge closer to an acceptable settlement on reparations for forced labor Japan and South Korea have edged closer to a resolution of a dispute that has its roots in World War II, and their efforts may also improve tech supply chains.…

Meanwhile, TikTok analog Douyin cleans up 5,000 misbehaving e-commerce accounts The number of Chinese netizens who use short video platforms has passed one billion, according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).…

Destroyed after second stage failed to ignite, making the mission impossible Japan's space exploration agency (JAXA) has destroyed the first of its next-gen H3 boosters after it went off course during its maiden test flight.…

Collaboration upstart previously said it would 'moderate' hiring and use layoffs elsewhere to boost its talent pool Atlassian has announced a five percent reduction in its workforce as part of an effort it founders described as a "rebalancing" that will allow the collaboration upstart to focus on its changing priorities.…

GeForced into a coldwar The Biden Administration is reportedly weighing new trade restrictions that would end Trump-era exemptions allowing the sale of US-made chips, including those made by Nvidia, to Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei.…

Bringing Embrace, Extend, Extinguish to a business workforce near you Microsoft has dosed its Dynamics 365 business apps with "AI capabilities" to help human workers delegate tedious tasks to machines.…

Don’t let miscreants poison the wells The US government is requiring states to assess the cyber security capabilities of their drinking water systems, part of the White House's broader efforts to protect the nation's critical infrastructure from attacks by nation-states and other cyber threats.…

Millions extorted from victims, one attack left hospital patient dead German and Ukrainian cops have arrested suspected members of the DoppelPaymer ransomware crew and issued warrants for three other "masterminds" behind the global operation that extorted tens of millions of dollars and may have led to the death of a hospital patient.…

Good news: Jobs for all! Bad news: Employer may be invaded by China Updated TSMC is capitalizing on the recent trend for tech layoffs, which have left thousands of engineers out of work.…

Crunch licensing talks with rivals may ease antitrust fears Microsoft may be catching a break on its contentious bid to buy game maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.…

Once again, the status page is oblivious Elon Musk's Twitter got off to a bad start on Monday when it introduced further unexpected changes in the form of broken links and images.…

But it has a point about the achievability of goal of '75%' European cloud A proposed EU Cloud Certification Scheme has met with further criticism from a European policy think tank, although it turns out its report was commissioned by a Washington-based IT industry lobby group.…

Yay for investors, eek for customers? Last week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff promised he had received expert advice in tackling the company's problems – ones that have seen it resort to cutting around 10 percent of its workforce – by committing to following the Oracle playbook.…

Arianespace Vega-C rocket failure sent two Airbus satellites into the Atlantic Ocean In December of last year, two of Airbus’ Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging satellites intended for a polar Sun-synchronous orbit aboard an Arianespace Vega C rocket ended up in the Atlantic Ocean instead.…

Chip outfit reportedly afraid it would have to report any transaction with a SoftBank company to UK regulator Arm's decision not to list on the London Stock Exchange for its public offering is being blamed by some on financial rules, or rather on the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) not being sufficiently flexible in waiving those rules.…

And a choice of ways to get the latest KDE too, if that's your thing For significant subcomponents of Ubuntu – and its derivatives – you don't need to wait for the next release to appear. You can upgrade major parts on the fly.…

When you need something reliable that won't drop out of support, open is the way to go Energy grid operators could increase the reliability of their networks by adopting software designed to manage nuclear fusion experiments, claims the UK's Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).…

Plus: Drops 'carbon-neutral' hints on successor processor with the moniker MONAKA Fujitsu's Arm-based A64FX processor may have driven the most powerful supercomputer in the world, but it looks like its successor will be a more general-purpose chip that will focus on energy efficiency.…

Two experts go head-to-head – then you decide Register Debate Welcome to the latest in our series of Register Debates, in which writers discuss technology topics, and you the reader choose the winning argument. The format is simple: we propose a motion, the arguments for the motion will run this Monday and Wednesday, and the arguments against on Tuesday and Thursday. During the week you can cast your vote on which side you support using the poll embedded below, choosing whether you're in favor or against the motion. The final score will be announced on Friday, revealing whether the for or against argument was most popular.…

Wake up and smell the cortex Opinion In Hollywood, brains in jars mean three things. Mad scientists at work, we are tampering with forces we cannot control, and something monstrous is coming. We are now making brains in jars for real: the mad scientists are at Johns Hopkins University and the forces they are tampering with include video gaming. Yes, there will be new monsters, but some old ones will be slain along the way.…

Fat-fingered admin escaped because the last false alarm was caused by a frozen pizza and a toaster oven who, me? Welcome once again, gentle reader, to the quiet corner of The Register we call Who, Me? in which readers unburden themselves by confessing tales of work-related mishaps and narrow escapes.…

Falcon Shore will be late. Rialto Bridge and Lancaster Sound cancelled. Will Chipzilla ever nail its XPU plan? Intel has used a quiet Friday announcement to reveal delays and deletions to its GPU and high-performance computing roadmap.…

Then they plunged properly like all other client devices PC sales may have slumped during 2022, but a record number of workstations – 7.7 million – were snapped up by buyers, delivering 2.1 percent year-on-year growth.…

Plus: OpenAI says it won't train on customer data, and Microsoft rolls out new Bing AI modes In brief Elon Musk is reportedly trying to recruit developers to build a large language model that will be less restrictive and politically correct than OpenAI's ChatGPT.…

Also, Royal ransomware metastasizes to other critical sectors, and this week's critical vulnerabilities In Brief If you can't join them, then you may as well try to beat them – at least if you're a talented security engineer looking for a job and you happen to be a woman. …

Loongson, China’s most advanced chipmaker and a desktop contender, also added to entity list The US Department of Commerce last week added Inspur Group to its entity list of Chinese businesses that US orgs can only work with after securing a licence – a move with the potential to cause significant strife for US tech giants.…

PLUS: Grab's custom GitOps; Alipay's RISC-V payments push; NTT Data's solar wrap plan; and more Asia In Brief The full session of China's National People’s Congress – the annual meeting of the nation's supreme legislative body – has seen officials announce accelerated plans to achieve scientific self-sufficiency.…

Know the ingredients before mixing the code. Oh and pay open source maintainers for goodness' sake... SCSW The common analogy when talking about software bills of materials (SBOMs) is the list of ingredients found on food packages that lets consumers know what is in the potato chips they're about to eat.…

Whatever happened to small government that stays out of our lives A proposed Texas state law would make it a criminal offense for internet service providers (ISPs) to provide access to websites that sell abortion pills or provide information about the procedure.…

Good thing we've got a great rapport with Tehran, no? Lithium, sometimes hyped as white gold, has been highly sought after for its role in battery production, and other things.…

Investigations 'at risk' from sloppy surveillance uncovered by audit probe The US Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agencies have failed to follow the law and official policy regarding the use of cell-site simulators, according to a government audit.…

'Understanding your inventory is absolutely No. 1' he tells The Reg SCSW On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest risk, Snap Chief Information Security Officer Jim Higgins rates software supply chain risk "about 9.9"…

Record number of gripes from suppliers vying for slice of this procurement pie The US government's efforts to spend $50 billion on IT services continues to be hit by challenges owning to the size and complexity of the procurement.…

Feds propose $7.8M payment and ban on revealing 'sensitive' data to settle complaint Even if you don't know anyone who has used BetterHelp's services, podcast fans will recognize it from its annoying adverts for its online therapists. American regulators, however, allege the company's relationship with the advertising industry is more perverse than a mere irritating jingle, claiming it betrayed loyalties that should lie with customers by passing on their mental health info to Facebook, Snapchat and others.…

Big brains worry investment explosion could hit astronomy Research published this week shows increasing interference with astronomical images caused by commercial satellites, adding to concern over the effects of the private space industry on science.…

Crime-as-a-service vendors mix and match components as needed by client A malicious package discovered in the Python Package Index (PyPI) is the latest example of what threat hunters from Kroll called the continued "democratization of cybercrime," with the bad guys creating malware variants from the code of others.…

Beware, it only has 3GB free and may go up to – yikes! – $23 A Chinese vendor is offering a pocket calculator that runs a full copy of Android 9 – complete with Wi-Fi. It costs ¥69, about 10 bucks.…

Vid-chat-biz ditches Greg Tomb as head-rolling continues Pandemic work communications darling Zoom has unceremoniously axed the president it hired less than a year ago "without cause," the company has confirmed in a regulatory filing.…

Server sector still challenging and storage sales cycles lengthening again There’s some life in the enterprise datacenter industry judging by the financials reported by Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the problem for Dell is that its group growth is being weighed down by crappy PC sales.…

Foreign-owned chip business gets even less British, no dual listing for now Arm has confirmed its shares will be listed only in New York following its initial public offering (IPO), dashing hopes of the UK government and others - for now at least - of a dual list on the London Stock Exchange.…