The Register

His job is to modernise Japan but Googling electoral trivia to ensure accurate answers is not allowed Japan's digital minister, Taro Kono, faced a backlash on Monday after he attempted to use his smartphone to look up info during a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Councilors, contravening meeting rules....

'Meta knows what it is doing is bad for children ... it is now there in black and white' Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of vetoing a proposed ban of Instagram and Facebook image filters that simulate the effects of plastic surgery, despite being told that such software may cause mental harm for children....

Back to plan A, then, eh? Some US lawmakers have tabled alternative legislation to reauthorize the Feds' favorite snooping tool, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, before it expires at the end of the year....

Advertisers may be surprised to find where their banners appear Google Search ads paid for by US and EU government agencies and legislators, and by major companies, have been spotted in embarrassing and legally dubious places, including sexually explicit websites, plus sites in Iran and Russia in possible contravention of economic sanctions....

Anthropic CEO also rocks up on stage for reasons Re:Invent AWS CEO Adam Selipsky previewed Amazon Q to 50,000 re:Invent attendees in Las Vegas on Tuesday, touting it as a chat-based generative AI assistant whose scope includes suggesting cloud infrastructure to suit business needs, outputting blog posts, helping with application code, and searching and analyzing enterprise data....

Grandma is watching what?! A Plex "feature" has infuriated some users after sharing with others what they are watching on the streaming service - and it appears this functionality is on by default....

Also hedging its bets with a healthy dose of Nvidia chips too Re:Invent On Tuesday Amazon Web Services has unveiled its next-gen Graviton4 CPUs and Trainium2 AI accelerators at its Re:Invent shindig, which it claims will deliver a healthy boost in performance and efficiency in machine learning....

Will timber tech take root or just go up in flames? Datacenter infrastructure biz Vertiv is offering a wooden version of its prefabricated modular structures, claiming these have a reduced carbon footprint compared to steel alternatives....

The legacy lives on, but best not mention that landing, eh? This week marks the 40th anniversary of the first launch of the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Spacelab module aboard astronaut John Young's final Space Shuttle mission....

Google's AI offshoot finds copy-cat robots capable of aping human mentors A team of machine learning researchers from Google's DeepMind claim to have demonstrated that AI can acquire skills in a process analogous to social learning in humans and other animals....

Urges US cell tower giant to reverse 'value-destructive strategy' Elliott Investment Management is taking a close interest in US wireless cell tower provider Crown Castle, disclosing a $2 billion stake in the company and pushing for a change of leadership to counter a "value-destructive strategy."...

Scrolling through endless humblebrags without targeted ads is a fundamental right, according to privacy expert Privacy activist group noyb (None Of Your Business) has filed a data protection complaint against Meta over the "Pay or Okay" subscription model, one it reckons is now being considered by many of Meta's rivals....

A few low-level stragglers remain on the loose, but biggest fish have been hooked International law enforcement investigators have made a number of high-profile arrests after tracking a major cybercrime group for more than four years....

Bing grows but Google remains top dog, according to Ofcom report There was good news for Microsoft and bad news for Musk in the 2023 Online Nation report by the UK's data regulator. It seems Brits are falling out of love with X - formerly Twitter....

DBaaS update aimed at customers looking for live analytics on apps Document database Couchbase is adding a columnar side-car to boost analytics performance for users who want more insight into their real-time data....

The 'Azure RTOS' used in millions of Raspberry Pis is now FOSS Microsoft is open sourcing the realtime operating system that it acquired with Express Logic, donating it to the Eclipse Foundation....

OpenAI led by the Swedish Chef? Musk aims for Mars and hits Venus instead? What are your predictions? Competition Another year has passed, and another of Microsoft's Christmas sweaters is seeking a new home. Come up with a suggestion for OpenAI's next CEO, and our retro Paint-themed monstrosity could be yours....

Or your wallet Review Logitech's latest take on ergonomic keyboards is a divisive device. It will delight users seeking palm rests but annoy key bashers more accustomed to chiclet or mechanical models....

Aeroflot fleet still has a smoking section, but not for tobacco Ukrainian government cyber snoops claim they've infiltrated the computer systems of Russia's federal air transport agency Rosaviatsiya, and stolen data that shows the invading nation's civil aviation sector is on the "verge of collapse."...

Exec who led memory and battery businesses to global dominance gets the job of defining Chaebol's future Samsung Electronics has established a "Future Business Planning Group" to figure out what's next for the manufacturing giant....

What was it they say about folks in silicon houses? After lambasting Nvidia's efforts to limbo-dance under US export restrictions against China, the CEO of chips-for-AI outfit Cerebras, Andrew Feldman, is back in the spotlight amid revelations one of his largest customers, G42, may be aiding the Middle Kingdom, to the ire of Uncle Sam....

Activists worry investigations may stay secret, and then there's those odd incident reporting requirements India's government has granted its Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, immunity from Right To Information (RTI) requests - the nation's equivalent of the freedom of information queries in the US, UK, or Australia....

Park user data in Amazon's servers for ML-generated insights and actions - yea or nay for you? Re:Invent AWS has previewed AppFabric for productivity, which promises to use generative AI to "provide personalized insights and recommended actions generated from context across a user's other applications."...

Ghosted authorities after complaint during hotly contested referendum Australia's Digital Industry Group (DIGI), the industry association for organizations that invest in online safety, privacy, and cyber security, has decided to withdraw X's place in the voluntary code that oversees efforts to stop the spread of misinformation....

Anna? Oh, she was just a demo persona, says organizer Presenters at the DevTernity software developer conference have been told the gig, scheduled to begin December 7, has been canceled after allegations emerged that one or more fake profiles had been added to the speaker list....

Crook did everything from SIM swaps to fake verified badge scams A Los Angeles man has been jailed after pulling off SIM-swap attacks on victims, hijacking social media accounts, committing fraud with Zelle payments, and impersonating Apple support....

TikTok parent reportedly gives hundreds the tintack TikTok parent ByteDance is expected to sashay away from its attempts at being a major video game maker, with studio division Nuverse reportedly set to shutter operations in the coming months....

Integration woes delay Nvidia's hopes of maintaining grip on Middle Kingdom Nvidia has reportedly delayed the launch of its latest Chinese-market AI accelerators until early next year over issues integrating the chip into server platforms....

Sparks fly as Elon's Musketeers sue for license plate liberation Tesla is suing the Swedish government to force it to take action against widespread strikes that have crippled the electric car maker's operations....

Mitigations require mix of updating libraries and manual customer action ownCloud has disclosed three critical vulnerabilities, the most serious of which leads to sensitive data exposure and carries a maximum severity score....

Less is more, as hyper heterogeneous computing heats up Server unit shipments for 2023 could crash by up to 20 percent on last year, despite revenue growing. The cause is hyper heterogeneous computing which is driving up the silicon content of systems, according to Omdia....

Bonuses for bums on seats is a new one for us at Vulture Towers A pair of Japanese tech startups are taking a new approach to the challenge of bringing reluctant employees back into the office by sweetening the pot with small bonuses for in-person working....

17 countries agree to adopt vision for artificial intelligence security as fears mount over pace of development The UK's National Cyber Security Agency (NCSC) and US's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have published official guidance for securing AI applications - a document the agencies hope will ensure that safety is inherent in AI's development....

Funding follows FDA approval for human trial Elon Musk's Neuralink has secured an additional $43 million in venture capital to help develop its digital interface to the human brain....

An option for after sun sets on Windows 10, but Microsoft might have a problem A new version of Tiny11 - a stripped-down version of Microsoft's flagship operating system - is here, now in full 23H2 guise....

Three guesses where DAMO plans to focus research from now on. Yep, you guessed it...AI China's cloud and e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing laboratory and laid off a number of researchers in what appears to be a bid to cut costs....

The horror of logging in only to find everything since May has vanished Google Drive users are reporting files mysteriously disappearing from the service, with some posters on the company's support forums claiming six or more months of work have unceremoniously vanished....

But the one-stop shop vision fails to take it far beyond the competition Analysis At Microsoft's Ignite conference, CEO Satya Nadella called Fabric perhaps the company's biggest data product launch since SQL Server, the third-highest-ranked database in the world....

Also: Qakbot on verge of permadeath, Australia can't deliver on ransom payment ban (yet), and Justin Sun's very bad month Infosec in Brief Cybercriminals working out of Russia go to great lengths to conceal their real identities, and you won't ever find the state trying to unmask them either - as long as they keep supplying the attacks on Axis nations. It's the reason why we found it so amusing that of all the ways the identity of an organized cybercrime gang leader could be revealed, it was Russian state media that may have recently outed someone of note....

Plus: Russia will soon be Putin up with lagging West, fake influencers and more AI in Brief Amazon launched AI Ready, a program that aims to train two million people in AI skills by 2025, and started the initiative by offering free courses and scholarships this week....

Unique institutions need unique security. Instead, they're fobbed off with the same old, same old Opinion The British Library's showpiece site, in a listed red brick building in St Pancras, is presided over by a large bronze sculpture depicting Isaac Newton poring over a document he's working with, measuring it with dividers....

Your brain and heart do not enjoy Zooming, Teamsing, or Webexing Feeling especially drained after a day on Zoom is not a figment of your imagination - videoconferencing fatigue (VCF) is real, according to a study penned by a quartet of Austrian investigators....

They're basically skyscrapers, says Charles Fortin. But they could be ships, cars, or rocks Charles Fortin can't get excited by 30-storey skyscrapers....

Hey Google, are the jails nicer in South Korea or the US? Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon - a wanted man in both South Korea and the United States - will soon face extradition from Montenegro after a court gave approval for his removal....

$195 a pop, delivered, pre-provisioned ready to stream desktops or apps re:Invent Amazon Web Services has announced the WorkSpaces Thin Client - a device dedicated to connecting to its WorkSpaces desktop-as-a service offering and based on Amazon's own "Fire Cube" smart TV box....

They get access to both China's internet and global platforms, and cash in on both China is offering foreign influencers access to its vast market in return for content that sings its praises and helps to spreads Beijing's desired narratives more widely around the world, according to think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)....

PLUS: Japan, UK, Italy, collab on new fighter jet; Korea's CBDC trial; Toshiba to delist Asia In Brief Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of contract manufacturer Foxconn, has ended his campaign to be elected as president of Taiwan....

Stout heart a requisite for software engineers in days of yore Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has recalled a time when Windows developers encountered the trundling terror of the USB Cart of Death following an unfortunate mistake live on stage during a Windows 98 keynote....

Hey Cortana: Why is David Tennant back as the BBC's longest lived space alien? The BBC is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its long-running science fiction series, Doctor Who, by popping a Surface Duo into the hands of actor David Tennant's latest take on the humanoid alien....

You may never have heard of it, but you almost certainly use it, possibly many times a day New versions of this amazingly versatile tool, used in most streaming video services and devices, don't come along very often....