The Register

Dungeons and Dragons, high-waisted jeans, Cold War sabre rattling - the '80s are back, baby Updated Last night's launch of six Pentagon missile-detection satellites was well timed as fears mount that Russia is considering putting nuclear weapons into space....

Rolling back will cause data loss, Windows Insiders told Microsoft released a fresh Windows 11 build to the Canary and Dev Channels of the Windows Insider Program with a warning for developers - back up or risk losing data because a known issue with rolling back and Dev Drive is still there....

SpaceX doing some spring cleaning to deal with aging models before they fail SpaceX is set to deorbit about 100 of its older Starlink broadband satellites after identifying an issue that could cause them to malfunction and become unresponsive to ground control....

'They want a closed shop,' claims service provider Broadcom and Google have announced a license portability scheme for biz customers to run VMware workloads on Google Cloud. Broadcom is also trying to reassure VMware partners and users that all the changes are for the best, as rivals circle to scoop up any defectors....

Taking Disaster Recovery as a Service to lunar extremes NASA is taking another crack at a commercial mission to the Moon with the launch of the Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission this morning....

Hello, Mr. Frying Pan, meet Mr. Fire Google has weighed in on the controversy surrounding Microsoft's plans to render millions of Windows 10 PCs obsolete in 2025 by urging users to pop on a copy of ChromeOS Flex instead....

All desktop and mobile apps vulnerable to at least one of the vulnerabilities Video conferencing giant Zoom today opened up about a fresh batch of security vulnerabilities affecting its products, including a critical privilege escalation flaw....

After March, devs won't be able to create new application resources, in 2027 the system will be shut down Exclusive Out of the blue Microsoft has decided to retire a key plank of its Azure IoT platform, leaving developers currently building systems high and dry....

Deepfake-enabled attacks against Android and iOS users are netting criminals serious cash Cybercriminals are targeting iOS users with malware that steals Face ID scans to break into and pilfer money from bank accounts - thought to be a world first....

$800M charge facing network giant as customers work way through existing inventory Networking goliath Cisco has finally confirmed talk from earlier in the week that it is laying off thousands of staff, reflecting the cautious outlook that management are seeing in customers' spending projections....

Set up a register and strike them off for bad behavior Creating a register of licensed AI professionals to uphold ethical standards and securing whistleblowing channels to call out bad management are two policies that could prevent a Post Office-style scandal....

'This is an excellent way to piss off thousands of developers' End of life for the Authy Desktop authentication app is scheduled for March 19, rather than the August 2024 date previously announced....

Google Workspace hangout extended indefinitely The UK's Cabinet Office has paused its migration away from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, after ditching the current contract it signed with the Redmond headquartered biz last spring....

Reg metrics show Enrique Lores is worth a lot of ink The Reg family would like to extend our condolences to HP CEO Enrique Lores after his headline financial compensation package for 2023 declined more than 7 percent year-on-year to $19.46 million....

Now that's what you call dual-use tech Cyber baddies have turned to ad networks to measure malware deployment and to avoid detection, according to HP Wolf Security....

Surprising third-act twist as Russian case means more freedom for all The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that laws requiring crippled encryption and extensive data retention violate the European Convention on Human Rights - a decision that may derail European data surveillance legislation known as Chat Control....

The curious incident of the instrument cover on the Red Planet rover NASA's Perseverance is having trouble with one of its instruments - which could mean the rover will no longer be able to zap rocks with its laser....

Splunk deal may close early, but AI is a way off turning into a money fountain. Meanwhile, Cisco waits for you to finish projects Cisco has delivered mixed news to investors after its customers yet again struggled to deploy products they've already acquired....

$5k a month for the site. $3k for tech support. Infection with malware and funding a despot? Priceless North Korea's latest money-making venture is the production and sale of gambling websites that come pre-infected with malware, according to South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS)....

Zuck needs silicon smarts - and the energy experience of a former Enron exec Social networking company Meta has appointed Broadcom CEO Hock Tan to its board and added energy entrepreneur John Arnold too....

Anti-abortion group said to have used that monitoring to push ad campaign A pro-life group was able to specifically target visitors to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood facilities in 48 states in America with anti-abortion ads using location data from a broker called Near Intelligence, according to US Senator Ron Wyden....

Summarizes threads you just can't keep up with and beefs up search After nearly a year of testing, Salesforce-owned Slack has launched some generative AI features that may help enterprise users search, summarize, and ask questions about information in their conversations....

Claims what took weeks to do by hand, machine learning can do in hours On Tuesday AI startup Quilter picked up $10 million in series-A funding to use a combination of machine learning and high-performance computing (HPC) to make designing printed circuit boards a less grueling and manual experience....

You don't need us to craft phishing emails or write malware, super-lab sniffs OpenAI has shut down five accounts it asserts were used by government agents to generate phishing emails and malicious software scripts as well as research ways to evade malware detection....

Lina Khan may not even be in charge of watchdog by time case gets to trial, if it even goes that far The FTC's antitrust case against Amazon is headed to trial, though not anytime soon, with a federal judge scheduling it to begin on October 13, 2026....

Jeez, not now, Xi. Can't you see we've got an election and Ukraine and Gaza and cost of living and layoffs and ... The Chinese government's Volt Typhoon spy team has apparently already compromised a large US city's emergency services network and has been spotted snooping around America's telecommunications' providers as well....

MIT economist argues AI can moderate the inequalities of the Information Age The future described in OpenAI's mission statement, in which autonomous systems "outperform humans at most economically valuable work," sounds like a hellscape to MIT economics professor David Autor....

New Start Menu is a 'game changer' claims relentlessly cheerful vid Microsoft is again releasing a video to entice more Windows 10 users to make the leap to the brave new world of Windows 11, with market share figures indicating the majority of customers are still reluctant to do so....

Officer pay, limited command duties and writing 'code for your country' Skilled IT professionals considering a career change have a new option, as the US Air Force is reintroducing warrant officer ranks exclusively "within the cyber and information technology professions."...

Some company admin and customers data exposed, but bad guys were there for 'only' a day Prudential Financial, the second largest life insurance company in the US and eight largest worldwide, is dealing with a digital break-in that exposed some internal company and customer records to a criminal group....

Alphabet owned autonomous vehicle biz files voluntary recall report saying it tweaked wares via over-the-air update Self-driving car company Waymo - a subsidiary of Google owner Alphabet - has voluntarily filed a recall report after one of its vehicles collided with a truck in Pheonix....

Emergency impacting more than 100 facilities appears to be caused by incident at software provider The Romanian national cybersecurity agency (DNSC) has pinned the outbreak of ransomware cases across the country's hospitals to an incident at a service provider....

World's only EUV photolithography maker finished 2023 with order backlog worth 39B Even as the chip industry lifts itself out of the current deep downcycle, ASML is worried geopolitical developments outside its control could still have an unforeseen impact on business....

HeartBlocker extension aimed at the 'forever alone' crowd Opera is rolling out an extension to the gamer version of its eponymous browser aimed at users who would rather not be reminded of the significance of February 14....

The company also curiously disappears from Black Basta leak site UK utilities giant Southern Water admits between 5 and 10 percent of its customers have had their data stolen during a January cyberattack....

Who could possibly have predicted this backlash? When Netflix launched its ad-supported tier in November 2022, it tried to tempt viewers in with discounted rates, hoping to win new consumers and sell their eyeballs to ad-slingers. But Amazon Prime, well, it went a different route....

Trying to break in with malicious Word documents? How very 2015 of you The Bumblebee malware loader seemingly vanished from the internet last October, but it's back and - oddly - relying on a vintage vector to try and gain access....

Ready for cruising: successful deployment leaves the ball in the scientists' court NASA says its latest take on solar sail technology is ready for proposals for it to be flown on science missions....

DSL 2024 is not as svelte as it used to be - but who is? Seventeen years after its last major version, an old favorite, Damn Small Linux, is back with a new 2024 release....

Decades of obsessing about always going faster have left us in constant danger Column Before he woke up on the first day of February, one of my friends was robbed....

Did someone say a safety word? iMessage, Bing, Edge, Ads avoid gatekeeper restrictions The European Commission has reversed its decision that some Apple and Microsoft offerings qualify as "gatekeeper services" under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), meaning the bloc's toughest regulations won't be applied....

Of course it's bristling with Noctuas - how else do you cool a 1kW desktop? Nvidia's long-teased GH200 CPU-GPU Superchips are finally going on sale, and the 1,000-Watt chip - built to run in servers and handle hefty AI training and inference tasks - is even available in a workstation from German startup gptshop.ai....

Reckons OpenAI and Google are mere infrastructure players who don't understand apps or how AI will change them Airbnb sees AI as its ticket out of the travel industry ghetto, and a passport to expanding its services into other industries....

$1.3 billion lost as identity fraud - and greed - saw 57,000 or more seek unearned tax refunds One hundred and fifty people who worked for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) have been investigated - and some prosecuted - for participating in a tax refund scam promoted on Facebook and TikTok....

Scribes may have a point about unfair competition, will need to try again on infringement A US judge has dismissed some of the claims made by writers in a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, though gave the wordsmiths another chance to amend their complaint....

SAP, Adobe, Intel, AMD also issue fixes as well as Google for Android Patch Tuesday Microsoft fixed 73 security holes in this February's Patch Tuesday, and you better get moving because two of the vulnerabilities are under active attack....

Firefox Mobile also getting increased attention Firefox maker Mozilla has laid off "approximately 60" staff, or around five percent of its workforce....

'You don't have to do more than that to disconnect an entire network' El Reg told as patches emerge A single packet can exhaust the processing capacity of a vulnerable DNS server, effectively disabling the machine, by exploiting a 20-plus-year-old design flaw in the DNSSEC specification....

You can use neural networks to help, sure, but not do all the work The US Patent and Trademark Office this week repeated loud and clear it will only accept patent applications that list actual real humans as the inventor and not AI....

Two new flaws, one zero-day, countless different patches, but everything's fine! Network-attached storage (NAS) specialist QNAP has disclosed and released fixes for two new vulnerabilities, one of them a zero-day discovered in early November....