The Register

Something something £100M cost savings, something something staying competitive Exclusive BT is launching a voluntary redundancy program for the merging Enterprise and Global divisions – something of an inevitability since the £100 million cost-cutting move was confirmed in December.…

Maybe he shouldn’t have built a naughtily-named website where users could get the fix? On Call Welcome, dear reader, to yet another instalment of On-Call, The Register's weekly column featuring readers' tales of being asked to show up and save the day.…

Probe shows that – to absolutely no-one's surprise – big biz isn't playing ball Websites often provide visitors with the opportunity to opt out of data collection. This is not out of their abundant concern for your privacy – it's the law and they're forced to do it. But according to a trio of privacy researchers, opting out doesn't always work – visitor data still gets collected.…

Robot adventurers drop mesh network 'breadcrumbs' to keep connected To explore the subterranean lava tubes and caverns of the Moon or Mars we ought to consider the lessons learned by Hansel and Gretel, boffins have suggested, albeit with mesh networking technology the pair of unfortunate children didn't have.…

US comes in second, rest of the world is a distant third in fields from biotech to batteries Think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has published an update to its Critical Technology Tracker, and asserted that China has taken the lead in research on 37 of 44 critical or emerging technologies.…

$206 million for breaching 2019 settlement – and DoJ warns it won't be afraid to do this again The US Department of Justice has slapped Ericsson with a $206 million fine for breaching terms of the deferred prosecution deal it struck in 2019 when the Swedish outfit was found to have spent years using illegal business practices.…

US isn't the only country splashing out the cash for fabs Embattled memory vendor YMTC is getting a 49 billion yuan ($7 billion) infusion of funds from Chinese state-backed investors in the wake of sweeping trade restrictions against the company by the US and its allies.…

SpaceX overcomes ground systems issue that halted previous launch attempt SpaceX successfully launched four astronauts from the US, Russia, and United Arab Emirates on Thursday, on a mission to the International Space Station.…

Security features in AMD Epyc chips push confidential computing effort Microsoft is taking advantage of hardware-based security features in AMD's Epyc processors for its confidential containers running in Azure, as part of its push into confidential computing.…

Intros 'universal licenses' that can be deployed anywhere and include extra support sweeteners Citrix has announced a licensing scheme that's bad news for holders of so-called perpetual licenses because the vendor will stop maintaining products sold to "larger customers" under that scheme.…

Just-revealed US cybersecurity strategy 'has fangs' for catching crafty criminals and crummy coders Analysis Technology providers can expect more regulations, while cyber criminals can look for US law enforcement to step up their efforts to disrupt ransomware gangs and other illicit activities, under the Biden administration's computer security plan announced on Thursday.…

With great speed comes great insecurity SCSW CI/CD over the past decade has become the cornerstone of modern software development.…

It's still coming soon ... just like it was in 2019, and 2020, and 2021, and 2022 Despite years of proclamations by Elon Musk that human tests were just around the corner, it turns out his Neuralink brain-implant startup has already asked the US Food and Drug Administration for permission to conduct human tests – and been rejected.…

Fifth of server warehouse operators polled didn't employ a single female worker Datacenter operators' investments in inclusion and diversity have done little to shift the balance of workers in the historically male-dominated field, an Uptime Institute report found.…

It not only told everyone I died but tried to fake my obit. Are we ready for this machine-driven future? Comment “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”…

No new cars, unanswered questions, and FSD goals still looming in distance may be why stock is tanking Yesterday's four-hour Tesla PR marathon, rather than exciting investors as it was supposed to, ended up a snoozefest.…

Lack of route to domestic semiconductor supply best of British stuffup, says Urquhart Another of Arm's founders has criticized the UK government over its technology strategy, or rather the lack of it, as the country's long-awaited semiconductor blueprint has still yet to be published.…

Along with better integration for all three editions Linux Mint project lead Clement Lefebvre has shared some more details about the forthcoming version 21.2, including new versions of both Cinnamon and Xfce.…

Oi! Organoid Intelligence could be more data- and power-efficient than AI A new field of research dubbed "organoid intelligence" is emerging as scientists look to build computers from lumps of brain cells grown in a petri dish.…

'Toxic' environment requires reboot to restore confidence following failed satellite launch Regulatory delays – rather than technical failures – are set to threaten the UK commercial space launch industry, a committee of MPs heard yesterday, as the industry described a "toxic" environment for investment.…

Neat! Everything's gonna be just like Call of Duty! As the arch-nerd hangout of the web, we love a bit of sci-fi here at The Register, so imagine our surprise when we heard that the UK Ministry of Defence has tapped the writing talents of sometime collaborators PW Singer and August Cole.…

Less than a year after Funky Pigeon leaked data of greetings cards biz Less than a year after its online greetings card subsidiary Funky Pigeon was attacked, WH Smith has admitted someone broke into its systems.…

Opera founder's outfit continues to push the browser functionality envelope There are plenty of Chromium-based browsers out there, but few of them fit in as many new features as Vivaldi manages to, or run on as many devices… including cars.…

977 EliteBook x360 830 G6 Notebooks makes one Enrique Lores PC and print biz HP paid its CEO more than $20 million in the corporation's fiscal 2022 calendar, a 12 month period when revenue dipped and profit plunged in the face of weakening economies around the globe.…

Recoil from DART impact changed Dimorphos's orbit more than expected Plumes of dust and rocks kicked up from the surface of asteroid Dimorphos after NASA's DART spacecraft smashed into it altered the space rock's orbit more than the kinetic impact alone, according to research published on Wednesday.…

Candidates supported by Morocco-backed group fail to win a single seat on Executive Council Candidates advocating for a major overhaul of the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) have failed to win any of the four seats available on the organization's Executive Council, and current members are welcoming changes aimed at preventing future attempts to stack the board.…

Infosec also needs to widen its tlent pool or miss out Interview It's a tough economy to ask for a bigger security team or larger budget to buy technology to protect against cyberattacks. …

Iberians were using heavy metal on hard rock way before it was cool It's time to update the history books again. A group of researchers in Germany have shown that steel tools were being used in the Iberian peninsula at least as long ago as 900 BCE – far earlier than it was believed knowledge of the metal had made its way to the region.…

'Continuous innovation' means it's time to refine your WSUS skills unless you want users doing all sorts of weird stuff Microsoft has quietly announced a change to the feature release cadence for Windows 11: it will add features every month, if it wants to.…

Revenue rocks, but boosting margins means five year old servers and four year old PCs CRM giant Salesforce has decided to sweat its infrastructure for an extra year, and make employees wait the same period before giving them new PCs.…

Buys GK Software and intends to put 1,600 new people on staff – some of them oldies Japanese IT services giant Fujitsu announced on Wednesday that not only does it plan to hire 1,600 employees, it is also acquiring German software-for-retailers provider GK Software to grow its cloud and software-as-a-service business.…

But Carnegie Endowment worries a handful are real, and that the ITU is 'susceptible to manipulation' China's attempts to influence technical standards groups have mostly been uncoordinated, unsophisticated and unsuccessful – but the US needs to keep watch on Beijing's activities, especially at the International Telecommunications Union.…

Pre-existing mental health issues and the stress of working in Cuba are more likely culprits Havana Syndrome – the inexplicable illness experienced by some US intelligence and diplomatic personnel – is almost certainly not caused by energy weapons, according to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It has, rather, attributed the malady to pre-existing mental health challenges exacerbated by environmental conditions.…

'This has to be a loss-leader to lock out competitors' After a limited trial OpenAI has unleashed its ChatGPT and Whisper models on developers, who can now integrate chatbot interaction and speech-to-text conversion into their own applications through API calls.…

Pretty awkward for Samsung, SK Hynix and their Middle Kingdom fabs A requirement barring recipients of America's $53 billion CHIPS subsidies from expanding their operations in China for a period of 10 years is proving to be a sticking point for the South Koreans.…

It works! Now let's cut staff by 8% Alphabet's Waymo subsidiary says its driverless cars have driven more than one million miles on public roads with no human at the wheel.…

If you're using ExplorerPatcher or StartAllBack, this is why your computer won't start The massive update to Windows 11 rolled out this week is proving to be a headache for users who are running some third-party UI customization applications on their devices.…

All part of the Japan's Society 5.0 project AI systems specialist SambaNova has been chosen by Japan’s RIKEN scientific research institute to provide a DataScale system for the Fugaku supercomputer to assist with research into Japan’s “Society 5.0” vision.…

The myth 'is now a reality' BlackLotus, a UEFI bootkit that's sold on hacking forums for about $5,000, can now bypass Secure Boot, making it the first known malware to run on Windows systems even with the firmware security feature enabled.…

Celebrated, unhinged search tool pushed in latest OS update Microsoft is continuing its efforts to foist upon us its controversial OpenAI-powered chat-driven Bing search bot.…

No more dog whistles or empty threats for caustic tweeps, but what does it matter if no one can post? Twitter has announced a zero-tolerance violent speech policy, but its enforcement might be difficult given today's outage – and the growing list (both in quantity and frequency) of other interruptions.…

Latest claim comes days after Dept of Energy waved finger in China's direction Days after it emerged that the US Department of Energy deemed the COVID-19 pandemic to have sprung from a lab incident, FBI director Chris Wray says that the bureau agrees.…

All part of the cloud provider's Confidential Computing push Cloud slinger Civo has hooked up with Intel to enable Kubernetes to operate in a secure enclave using Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and intends to make this available to its public cloud customers.…

Next version of Red Hat's bleeding-edge distro won't drop all the older tech it had hoped to The shape of Fedora 38 continues to get clearer as next month's planned release approaches. The latest meeting of the Steering Committee (FESCo) has decided some stuff just isn't ready to remove yet.…

Interstellar Boundary Explorer isn't listening and Surface Water Ocean Topography mission off to unlucky start NASA is scrambling to fix glitches affecting its Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) and Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) missions.…

Job cutting plan expected to ease pressures later this year Now remains a good time to buy a relatively cheap personal computer – not that pricing promotions are helping out the executive leaders at HP who are doing all they can to rapidly slash operating expenses.…

Gartner finds pandemic-related trend is becoming the norm By the end of 2023, only 9 percent of knowledge workers worldwide will be fully remote, but 39 percent will combine remote and office-based work, according to analysis by Gartner.…

Entrance of SpaceX and others into airline Wi-Fi eases worries. Next stop: US and EU regulators The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally approved Viasat's planned multibillion-dollar purchase of fellow satellite builder Inmarsat, yet the proposal has other regulatory hurdles to clear.…

Framework offers refurb kit and parts – for instance, to upgrade a decades-old subnotebook If you are lucky enough to own an IBM ThinkPad 701C, with its famous "butterfly" keyboard, options are appearing to help you bring it back to life – and some are quite dramatic.…

This could have practical applications for human technology, say boffins Scientists have discovered that the tiny insects commonly known as sharpshooters use superpropulsion to ensure they can efficiently eject the huge volumes of urine they produce each day.…