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This just after Amazon started charging for Alexa's free home security Guard It looks like Amazon has finally started to get serious about generative AI, and if the company's outgoing director of Alexa and Echo devices is right, that means Alexa is about to get way better - as long you're willing to pay for it....

Route 404: Human driver requirement not found California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a state bill that would have required autonomous trucks on state roads to be chaperoned by a human safety operator....

Yakety Yak - AI talks back Update Following an upgrade, ChatGPT will allow users to upload images, speak to the chatbot, and hear it talk back....

Cloud provider blamed for loss of 20% of exchange's capital Mixin Network confirmd on Monday that it has "temporarily suspended" all deposit and withdrawal services after hackers broke into a database and stole about $200 million in funds from the Hong-Kong based cryptocurrency firm....

Finally, we've arrived in the future The US Patent and Trademark Office is soliciting ideas for a radical transformation of its tech stack: the replacement of its on-premise fax systems with a cloud-based alternative....

Big Brother wants to watch your big data The US government is considering measures to keep tabs on those who may be using lots of cloud resources to train advanced AI models....

Review board: Mega project is way over budget, needs cash, and senators want it axed NASA is delaying some of the components of its ultra ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission after receiving a problem-filled report from an Independent Review Board....

Data quality, system complexity and SAP's future rely on cloud adoption, CEO relays to German-speaking user group Facing users angered by SAP's decision to introduce its "newest" innovations only in the cloud, the German software giant's CEO promised not to leave any customers behind in his mission to move them off-prem....

One way to get preferential access to OpenAI rival's tech Amazon is strengthening ties with OpenAI rival Anthropic via an investment of up to $4 billion in the company, as AWS becomes the primary cloud provider and the home for Anthropic's foundation models....

New fabs won't achieve much without specialized staff to fill them Intel and community colleges in Ohio are introducing a one-year "stackable, shareable and transferrable" semiconductor certificate program to address the skills crunch looming on the horizon....

Gets blanked again Automobile manufacturers are pleading with the EU to delay a 10 percent tariff on electric vehicle exports into Britain....

Big Red's 'big announcement' strives to bring LLM technique to the business data arena Oracle's efforts to bring natural language vector search capabilities to the relational data in business systems is being met with approval among analysts, with one placing it as an early leader in the field....

Plus: Microsoft GitHub release Copilot Chat to all developers on VS Code, and more AI in brief OpenAI will release the latest version of its text-to-image tool DALLE in October....

Envisions a 'comprehensive small modular reactor and microreactor integration roadmap' Microsoft is hiring a "Principal Program Manager Nuclear Technology" to oversee its efforts to power datacenters with nuclear reactors....

Projects take so long that tech is out of date before it enters service, industry says The UK's procurement processes are not fit to bring AI into the nation's military capabilities, lawmakers heard at a parliamentary hearing....

46Gbps to our sofas. At last, freedom from the nightmare of a mere 9.6 Magicians, management, and marketing depend on misdirection. A deception that doesn't quite qualify as a lie, it implies something they want you to believe while drawing attention away from questions that would destroy that perception. It's worth learning how to spot these as they highlight exactly the questions you should be asking....

Techie tried to dunk on a co-worker, and found himself absolutely soaking wet who, me? Welcome once again, valued reader, to Who, Me? - The Register's comfy Monday nook wherein we share stories of times readers weren't quite so clever as they imagined....

Molto Bennu NASA's first asteroid sample return mission delivered on Sunday, when the OSIRIS-REx capsule touched down in the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City....

The blind think this is not a visionary decision Google will discontinue the Basic HTML version of its Gmail service in January 2024....

As VMware emits a significant update to the vSphere suite that wrangles the accelerators Dell has decided that users of its older servers deserve the chance to run data processing units (DPUs, aka SmartNICs) - cards that combine networking hardware with enough compute and storage to run chores like encryption and free up CPU cores for more productive uses....

PLUS: Trojan hidden in PoC; cyber insurance surge; pig butchering's new cuts; and the week's critical vulns Infosec in brief T-Mobile US has had another bad week on the infosec front - this time stemming from a system glitch that exposed customer account data, followed by allegations of another breach the carrier denied....

PLUS: Micron breaks ground in India; Hong Kong goes for green fintech; Taiwan to launch first sub; and more ASIA IN BRIEF Fujitsu last week announced it will move out of its Tokyo headquarters and consolidate its other offices in the capital....

We guess it's OK it did Systems Approach With the annual SIGCOMM conference taking place this month, we observed that congestion control still gets an hour in the program, 35 years after the first paper on TCP congestion control was published. So it seems like a good time to appreciate just how much the success of the internet has depended on its approach to managing congestion....

Can you blame it? Europe's Digital Markets Act, which goes into effect next year, will require that companies designated as gatekeepers provide users of most popular operating systems with browser choice screens that ask them to select a default browser....

The eyes don't have it, but you're all ears Analyst firm IDC has forecast strong growth for virtual reality headwear, but even stronger growth for more modest wearables, with the latter to vastly outsell the former for years to come....

Meanwhile, GlobalFoundries scores $3B DoD contract to fab chips for military, aerospace The Biden Administration on Friday said it had finalized guardrails to ensure payouts from the $50 billion CHIPS Act don't flow into the hands of the Chinese or into any other country or company of concern....

By the time they graduate, employers will be making them use LLMs anyway Some universities are opting out of using Turnitin-made software designed to detect whether text in essays and assignments submitted by students was written by AI....

Is this the engine maker's final continue? Game engine maker Unity on Friday walked back part of its controversial plan to charge developers a fee based on the number of game downloads installed....

Video watching habits and other data just handed over, lawsuit claims A lawsuit brought against IBM's Weather Company claims the website "knowingly and willfully disclosed its users' personally identifiable information - including a record of every video viewed by the user - to unrelated third parties, mParticle and AdNexus," now known as Microsoft's Xandr....

Holes in iOS, macOS and more fixed following tip off from Google, Citizen Lab Apple emitted patches this week to close security holes that have been exploited in the wild by commercial spyware....

Hey, ESA: Can Juice get there any faster? The search for alien life in our Solar System has heated up with the discovery of carbon dioxide on the surface of Europa, the Jupiter moon that is believed to house a massive, salty liquid water ocean beneath its frozen surface....

This surely can't be related to that crash debacle over the weekend, right? The reason a US Marine Corps pilot ejected from his F-35B stealth fighter jet last weekend remains unknown, but a government agency report on the dismal state of the F-35 fleet's maintenance provides a few clues....

Have you seen orbit? There's junk everywhere The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed rules for commercial space launch companies to address orbital debris, a growing threat to spacecraft and satellites....

So much for sovereignty then The UK has used a statutory instrument to introduce new rules designed to allow the sharing of personal data between the island nation and the US in compliance with data protection law....

And Meta's tapping up Big B too - it's big bucks for this silicon giant Comment A now-challenged report that Google wants to end its reliance on Broadcom has drawn attention to the role the San-Jose-based electronics giant plays in the production of custom silicon for hyperscale clouds....

What a difference a year makes: in June '22 it was asking for half a billion in interest back after a successful appeal Updated The European Commission has re-imposed a fine of 376.36 million (about $400 million) on chipmaker Intel for abusing its dominant position in the x86 processor market. The move is the latest twist in an antitrust saga that has been now running for more than two decades....

Travelers told routine work being performed nationwide Updated Thousands of travelers are stuck at UK airports as the dual gremlins of "planned maintenance" for eGates and air traffic control restrictions led to delayed and canceled flights along with long queues at the border....

Meet gaming's power couple, with Ubisoft the third wheel. Now competition watchdog must ensure Windows biz keeps promises Microsoft is busy plumping cushions in anticipation of its new gaming bedfellow Activision Blizzard after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority said most of its concerns about the merger had been addressed....

A decade of support is a much better deal than what Microsoft or Apple will give you Opinion I run my computers until they die. I'm cheap that way and it's one reason why I'm a Linux fan. Thanks to Linux, I have PCs that are closing in on 20 years of useful life....

If you throw enough mud, some of it will stick ... and crash a server On Call Welcome once again to On Call, the Register column in which readers recall how they dug themselves out of holes while delivering tech support....

Alex Stamos: 'We don't really know what's gonna go wrong with AI yet' DataGrail Summit Generative AI is uncharted territory, and those wishing to explore it need to be aware of the dangers, privacy shop DataGrail warned at its summit this week in San Francisco....

SK hynix and Samsung do so much memory-making in China, ending sanction exemptions would be extraordinary South Korean and US officials met this week to discuss the future of Chinese export controls as the clock ticks down on exceptions enjoyed by Samsung and SK hynix....

IRIS oversight deal signed as constellation's schedule slips, and Ariane 6 hits another snag The European Space Agency has signed up to build and launch the European Union's Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite constellation....

Federated social network adds n00b-friendly features to the 'Fediverse' Mastodon, the open source Twitter-like federated social network server, has issued a major release that adds features aimed at making life easier for new users....

Fanboi numbers are well down - but Apple's queueing system, rather than apathy, is likely the cause First Fondle The iPhone 15 is predictably lovely - but the larger models may be too much to handle, and the smaller machines feel a little undersized....

Somehow still 'committed to providing the best possible reading and publishing experience' Amazon has given authors" who crank out books license to "write" and publish up to three tomes every day via its platform, even if they use AI, and asserts that limit protects its customers....

Staff with short 'runways' told to take off amid shift to corporate chatbots, it's claimed IBM, which last year insisted "there was (and is) no systemic age discrimination" at the mainframe giant, has again been sued for age discrimination....

National defense files can earn you $55K ... and espionage charges A US government worker has been arrested and charged with spying for Ethiopia, according to court documents unsealed Thursday....

Windows gets its own Copilot to help operate the operating system - Edge, Bing, Outlook, 365 not spared, either Microsoft on Thursday further co-opted its GitHub subsidiary's Copilot brand and heralded the arrival of its own Microsoft Copilot as "your everyday AI companion."...

Parents and players alike can now apply for a piece of the $245m pie The US Federal Trade Commission has opened up a website so that anyone who feels they were tricked into spending money in Epic Games' hit shooter Fortnite can ask for a share of a $245 million settlement pie....