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You're probably using cloud providers bespoke chips already and not even know it As cloud datacenters grow ever larger and complex, providers are increasingly developing their own chips to eke out performance, efficiency, and cost savings over their competitors....

Remember Microsoft's first attempt at an Android foldable? Of course you don't Microsoft has drawn a discreet veil over another of its attempts to become relevant in the mobile hardware space. The original Surface Duo has dropped out of support, meaning it is bereft of support as well as users....

Accused software giant of MFA error that rendered work address useless The New Jersey attorney who sued Microsoft for $1.75 million claiming verification gremlins had cut him off from his paid work email filed for voluntary dismissal on Friday....

Flipping the script to a control plane Interview Cloud software automation generally begins with scripts, but at some point, according to Oren Teich, chief product officer of Upbound, that approach becomes unmanageable....

Promised change to allow Windows system links open in the actual default browser not yet evident Last month, Microsoft said that for customers in Europe, its Insider build of Windows 11 now opens web links associated with Windows system components in the user's actual default browser instead of in Microsoft Edge....

Claims it's already comparable to finance industry pros and capable of recommending insurance plans Alibaba's fintech arm, Ant Group, has unveiled a large language model and related applications for the financial services industry that it thinks can offer advice to both professionals and consumers....

IPO-hungry chip biz promises to donate copies to universities - may also demand a reprint Reverse-engineering expert Maria Markstedter, whose domain names were wrestled from her by Arm the other week for trademark reasons, has said the British processor design biz's lawyers are now reviewing her Arm assembly language book for any trademark violations - and may make her issue a reprint....

You can't take a machine to lunch or put it to sleep with PowerPoint, but you can try to shape its worldview Billions of new buyers of goods and services will emerge in coming years, but salespeople won't be able to woo them all with slideware, gifts, football tickets, or lunch - because many of these new customers are machines....

Open AI boss to get 'red carpet' at immigration OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been granted Indonesia's first ever golden visa - entitling him to reside in the archipelagic nation for up to ten years - in recognition of his potential to generate inbound investment....

Hundreds more iconic props set to go on sale from collection of late Hollywood model maker Greg Jein A long-lost model of an X-Wing Fighter used in the climactic Death Star battle sequence of 1977's Star Wars has been discovered - and it's for sale if you have a spare $400,000 (320K) to meet the opening bid....

Musk snaps up Nvidia GPUs even as he builds Dojo. Finance bods foresee SaaSy AI, rivers of cash Tesla's forthcoming Dojo supercomputer could add as much as $500 billion to the automaker's valuation - which currently sits at $875 billion - according to a Morgan Stanley Research note....

On one hand, it's private-public cooperation. On the other, it's heavy-handed state intervention. We take a look at this important unfolding case Analysis The USA's Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has narrowed a lower court ruling that ordered the US government not to pressure social media companies to moderate user-posted content....

Would be a new low, even for these lowlifes Cybercrime crew BianLian claims to have broken into the IT systems of a top non-profit and stolen a ton of files, including what the miscreants claim is financial, health, and medical data....

Mull it over, think tanks, while we roll out this tech into every corner of life Google has put together a $20 million to fund studies into how artificial intelligence can be developed and used responsibly and have a positive impact on the world....

Ransomware? Some would be willing to bet on that MGM Resorts has shut down some of its IT systems following a "cybersecurity incident" that the casino-and-hotel giant says is currently under investigation....

In its rush to lead the generative ML world, Redmond may have developed a datacenter drinking problem Microsoft's water consumption surged 34 percent to 6.4 million cubic metres in 2022 and a generative AI guzzle may be to blame....

It's not hip to be this Square Square says the widespread outage that hit its payment terminals last week was caused by a DNS failure and not a cyberattack nor an intrusion....

Akamai reckons traffic flood peaked at55.1 million packets per second Akamai says it thwarted a major distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack aimed at a US bank that peaked at55.1 million packets per second earlier this month....

AB 587's true purpose is to eliminate speech the government finds objectionable, lawyers argue A California social media transparency law is being challenged in court by Elon Musk's X Corp on the grounds that it violates the US Constitution's First Amendment right to freedom of speech....

The clock is ticking for Windows troubleshooters, plus Microsoft's preparing a new OS release As the arrival of the next version of Windows 11 looms, it is also time to prepare a not-so-fond farewell to the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) and its troubleshooters....

Kubernetes configuration laid bare by chatbot, customer context next on roadmap Kubernetes management platform vendor D2iQ has become the latest vendor to stir generative AI into its product....

Samsung's KSMBD server hitting primetime has several significant implications The next release of the Linux kernel, 6.6, has hit release candidate status. As usual, it contains a number of new features, but we think one has more potential ramifications than all the others put together....

Concept will need to be scaled up to keep more than a small dog alive NASA has called time on the oxygen-generating experiment bolted to its Mars Perseverance rover....

The origin story of the 'in case u need to lose a boner fast' tweet Comment Elon Musk's Weltanschauung isn't so much "forgive and forget" as it is "resent and remember" - then post a nasty meme on the internet about the person who "wronged" you....

Daniel Zhang does different handover to the one expected Alibaba boss Daniel Zhang has abruptly exited the megacorp and world's fourth largest infrastructure service provider months before he was due to head the breakway cloud division into an IPO....

Deposit in 19-million-year old caldera could dwarf sources in Bolivia, Chile and Australia A lithium find in the McDermitt Caldera region on the border between US states of Oregon and Nevada has excited media attentions with the promise of lithium deposits exceeding those in Bolivia, which make up nearly a quarter of the world's resources....

Go native or go home: End of servicing plan rolled out for legacy printer drivers in fresh update Microsoft has made it clear: it will ax third-party printer drivers in Windows....

Plus: Google CEO says AI will be biggest tech shift in our lives, new official AI words on Dictionary.com AI in brief The US Internal Revenue Service has said it will use AI software to go after wealthy individuals and corporations violating tax laws....

Plus: Spending on AI model training infra now the top priority among datacenter operators Feature Cloud-based infrastructure services date back at least as far as 2006, when AWS introduced its S3 storage platform, followed by Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances. Since then, cloud has become a global industry topping $100 billion in size, but some customers have begun to question the move to these services and started to bring workloads back in house....

Oracle's repeated public sector failures prove a different approach is needed Opinion Fill in the blank: "_______ project fails, costing millions." Five points if you chose "Government IT," five points for "Oracle," and a gold star if you had both....

A subtle change to a vital piece of equipment almost derailed a major project Who, me? Welcome once again gentle reader to another Monday morning, and with it an instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers cushion your entry to the working week with tales of things going not quite right....

Leaders settle for modest action on issues including AI, stablecoins, cross-border payments The annual G20 leaders' summit has delivered a tame set of resolutions regarding technology, with a 2027 target year for the implementation of a planned CryptoAsset Reporting Framework (CARF) the most impactful proposal as it is designed specifically to take into account the crypto sector's aim of providing an alternative to established and regulated financial institutions....

Managers warn company goals can't be achieved unless coders get more face time and less FaceTime IBM Software has mandated a swift return to the office for staff globally, telling those living within a 50 mile (80km) radius of a Big Blue office to be at their desks at least three days a week - to "spend more meaningful time together."...

It's not 'Alexa: build me a K8s cluster' but could become Ansible or Chef using models trained on log files to recommend what your app needs Generative AI boosters are beginning to explore how the technology could be used to augment infrastructure as code tools, according to Arun Chandrasekaran, a distinguished VP analyst at Gartner....

ALSO: Alibaba Cloud succession plan overturned; Fujtisu's Thai takeaway; Australia takes on PayPal Asia In Brief The ban on using iPhones in some central Chinese government agencies is reportedly more extensive than first chronicled by Tthe Wall Street Journal. Japan's Nikkei last Friday reported that local governments and state-owned companies also frown upon their staff using iThings in the office....

ALSO: Verizon turns self in for reduced fine, malvertising comes to macOS, and this week's critical vulnerabilities In brief Watch out, cyber security researchers: Suspected North Korean-backed hackers are targeting members of the infosec community again, according to Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG)....

Soldiers, first responders may eventually be able to phone home from their clothes The US government is investing in network-connected garments through a program called - we kid you not - SMART ePANTS....

Any other monthly plans want to cancel themselves? BMW has decided to stop charging car owners a subscription fee to use their heated car seats, though the German automaker remains committed to paid on-demand services....

NixOS event organizers say community unhappy about funding from Pentagon contractor On Monday, the organizers of NixCon, which celebrates the NixOS Linux distribution, welcomed Anduril Industries as a sponsor of the event....

No patch yet - but you've got strong creds and MFA enabled anyway, yeah? Heads up: ransomware slingers are exploiting a Cisco zero-day weakness in some of its VPN products. The networking giant has issued an interim workaround to address the oversight as it works on a full patch....

AtariAge is older than the current Atari incarnation - retro enough for you? Planning a bit of retro fun over the weekend? The news that Atari is to acquire retro gaming forum AtariAge might dampen your enthusiasm or raise your spirits, depending on your point of view....

Gas-guzzling US favors hybrids while Europe prefers battery power Shipments of electric cars - both battery and plug-in hybrid vehicles - are set to grow by 19 percent in 2024 to hit 17.9 million units worldwide, according to Gartner....

As it reaches Release Candidate status, one change among many will have more visible impact GNOME 45 has reached the RC stage, but it has a change that will impact more users: it's altering the way extensions work, which will impose strict versioning requirements....

Watchdog finds space agency has no plans to measure SLS production costs NASA has received another kick from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) as space agency officials said the quiet part out aloud: "The SLS program is unaffordable."...

Boss Mark Liu says silicon ready but advanced packaging isn't Bad news for anyone looking to get their hands on Nvidia's top specced GPUs, such as the A100 or H100: it's not going to get any easier to source the parts until at least the end of 2024, TSMC has warned....

No user interaction needed for this one as Pegasus turns up via iMessage Apple devices are again under attack, with a zero-click, zero-day vulnerability used to deliver Pegasus spyware to iPhones discovered in the wild....

Tax collector's DALAS waits in wings to tackle humongous legacy estate IBM spin-off Kyndryl has won a 15-month contract from the UK tax collector to manage its mainframe estate and prepare the services for cloud migration....

Southampton top for connectivity flops, says Uswitch research Suffered from broadband blackouts over the past 12 months? You aren't alone because an estimated 22 million Brits endured outages of three hours or more, and are paying a higher monthly subscription for the pleasure....

Armbian 23.08 is out, and adds preliminary support for this ultralight Snapdragon laptop Review The latest release of Armbian helps with the non-trivial problem of installing and running an arbitrary Linux distro on Arm computers....

Banks aren't very creative, which became an issue for one customer On Call With Friday once more upon us, another week has descended from the energetic optimism of a Monday to the deflated downtime of Friday. To ease that slump The Register as always presents a new instalment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column that shares tells of tech support triumphs and terror....