The Register

Insight could lead to better conflict resolution between our feline overlords Seeking insights into cat behavior, scientists turned to the internet and discovered that domesticated felines exhibit either "playful", "agonistic" or "intermediate" behavior.…

DIY store didn't get 'valid consent,' says Canada's regulator Canada's Home Depot has stopped using Meta's "Offline Conversions" tool, it confirmed to a regulator dealing with a man's complaint after he discovered his visits to the home improvement shop had been recorded.…

Uncle Sam well aware of strategic importance of lithography industry crucial to production nodes The Netherlands and Japan may be about to introduce tougher restrictions aimed at curbing China's ability to produce advanced semiconductors, egged on by pressure from the US.…

Join the queue, eh? AWS, Google and Microsoft are among creditors owed money after the FTX crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy in November.…

As per employee model replaces old subscription, user bills could soar Oracle stands accused of "predatory" licensing tactics after making changes to the Oracle Java SE subscription model that could force businesses to pay tens of thousands of dollars more each month for running the same software.…

Nothing good – the recent layoffs hit its best and brightest leaders hard Opinion Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be Evil"? I do. Even though Google dumped that phrase from its code of conduct in 2018, many of us still thought Google was a bit better than other companies.…

Even with instructions staring them in the face, this genius couldn't get it right On-Call In last week's edition of On Call, The Register's weekly column dedicated to readers' days being damaged by demands to deflect needless disaster, we wondered if the inevitabilities of death and taxes should be joined by meaningless managerial interventions. This week, we have a new candidate to join lists of iconic inevitabilities: users ignoring instructions and then complaining when their own actions create complications.…

What a tease A box-truck-sized asteroid has made one of the closest approaches by a near-Earth object ever recorded, brushing past our home world at a distance of a couple of thousand miles on Thursday. …

Welcome to the real world, kids. And for the rest of us, a future at which Meta is gulp! – better at large-scale analytics Here’s one from the “welcome to the real world, kids, we have no sympathy for your plight” files: social media giant Meta’s engineering team has bemoaned the complexity of migrating from legacy technology.…

Nice people on LinkedIn want to harvest logins from politicians, boffins, and defense types The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned of two similar spear-phishing campaigns, one originating from Russia, the other from Iran.…

U OK Pat? Asking cos client sales are down, server sales are down, and your forecasts are grim Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has expressed confidence in the company's trajectory despite posting a $700 million net loss on revenues that plunged 32 percent during the fourth quarter of FY 2022, to a measly $14 billion.…

If you yell 'death to America' and no one watches the video, does it make a sound? Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has burned more than 50,000 spammy fake news stories and other content posted by the pro-China 'Dragonbridge' gang.…

As much cash went into low-carbon as fossil fuels last year, apparently The world has reached a major tipping point in the transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy: 2022 was the first year global investments in low-carbon technologies matched spending on the fossil fuel industry.…

California-based chipmaking kit-maker Lam hit by DRAM decline, inability to export to Middle Kingdom The Biden administration's policy of restricting Chinese chip makers from accessing vital manufacturing equipment has caused damage at home, with California-based wafer fabrication equipment supplier Lam Research announcing it would layoff 1,300 employees, or about seven percent of its global workforce, as the company prepares for billions in lost revenues during the 2023 fiscal year.…

The irony, it burns On Tuesday, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) failed to open properly, disrupting and invalidating auction trading for more than 250 securities.…

Elon conflates 'popularity' on unrelated platform with successful year for EV maker Never mind the headlines. 2022 was Tesla's best year ever, Elon Musk claimed in the automaker's Q4 2022 earnings call this week.…

DARPA's Blake Bextine talks us through taking inventions commercial Interview You've heard of some of the world-altering technologies that have come out of the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, because you might not be reading this otherwise.…

Pinging search services in the US, China, Russia perhaps not ideal for privacy This just in: smart appliances are still not a bright idea for those who care about privacy.…

Uncle Sam doles out decryption keys to 300+ victims amid sting op The FBI said it has shut down the Hive's ransomware network, seizing control of the notorious gang's servers and websites, and thwarting the pesky criminals' ability to sting future victims.…

Intriguing move – just look at the software companies it has ditched... Dell is reportedly buying cloud orchestration company Cloudify for an estimated $100 million to give its own cloud services biz a shot in the arm and appeal more to organizations investing in DevOps.…

Maybe it'll be different this year as clamors of 'I told you so' accompany the proposal The US House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly to advance a bill that would create a task force to improve the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that was at the heart of the nationwide flight grounding earlier this month.…

Look, a semiconductor manufacturer that isn't whining about weak demand Chipmaker STMicroelectronics appears to be bucking the industry trend by beating analyst expectations and delivering revenues towards the upper end of guidance, driven by demand from the automotive and industrial segments, the company said.…

Nobody expects the British Inquisition. (This is a joke. Everybody expected it) A month after the EU decided to stick a probe into semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom's proposed buy of virtualization juggernaut VMware, the UK has said it will do the same.…

Calls to avoid C/C++ and embrace Rust grow louder Memory safety, a longstanding concern among serious software developers, has finally met with mainstream stardom.…

Tech behemoth says it will appeal 'certain aspects' of the decision Google appears to be ready to abide by an Indian court's antitrust verdict that it was exploiting its dominant position on Android, and will allow OEMs to license individual apps for pre-installation on devices and let users select their own default search engine.…

'Targeted restructuring' could have been worse, analyst points out SAP is targeting its CRM business with 3,000 job cuts despite full year 2022 revenue of €30.9 billion, up 11 percent.…

Last (failed) attempts at such an endeavor happened a decade ago, but AstroForge thinks it can do better Cast your mind back to the year 2012 and you might stumble upon a very similar story, but this isn't a flashback: There's a new startup in town that wants to mine asteroids, and this one claims to be ahead of the game.…

Software to support 46,000 users as group part of £900m program to simplify central government back end The UK government has kicked off procurement of an ERP system for eight Whitehall departments which consolidates nine different software systems – a project potentially more complex than a snake's wedding.…

Human Capital leaves the building IBM is the latest tech company to jump on the layoff bandwagon, with news it would reduce its workforce by around 3,900.…

Yeah, and make it something better than just asking Arm to dual-list in London... Tech industry luminaries have politely asked the UK Prime Minister to pull his finger out when it comes to delivering a strategy for the future of the UK semiconductor sector, or it may not have one at all.…

Looks like a reboot of SWIV Lockheed Martin this week showed that a 50kW laser being developed for air defense scenarios can be turned on to create a coherent beam, a milestone the defense giant calls "first light."…

If true, was it worth the $500k and prison jumpsuit? A man suspected of stealing personal data belonging to tens of millions of people worldwide and selling that info on cybercrime forums has been arrested by Dutch police.…

Unless it's hooking up all those panels to your PCs and servers With just seven years left to achieve its 100 percent renewable energy goals, Microsoft said it would add as much as 2.5 gigawatts of solar power to its operations under a partnership with South Korea's Hanwha Qcells.…

Second system to be knocked offline The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is currently offline, and all science observations using the instrument will have to be rescheduled as engineers try to repair the thing.…

Nokia radio units working with Ericsson distribute units? What's next? Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wants to prevent supply chain challenges and vendor lock-in that might get in the way of US carrier's 5G rollouts.…

You know when we all said quit using MD5? We really meant it Most Windows-powered datacenter systems and applications remain vulnerable to a spoofing bug in CryptoAPI that was disclosed by the NSA and the UK National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and patched by Microsoft last year, according to Akamai's researchers.…

Nice of someone to give SpaceX a little competition Video Rocket Lab this week successfully launched its first Electron rocket from American soil, and put three satellites into low Earth orbit.…

No, it's not install Fedora Linux, sadly Microsoft has offered a workaround of sorts for Windows 10 and 11 users who've noticed their Start menu is suddenly unresponsive and that some applications won't open or work correctly.…

Life in the fast lane, surely make you lose your mind Tesla's Autopilot "self driving" technology has slipped to the middle of the active driver assist (ADA) software pack, says the nonprofit Consumer Reports, as companies like Ford and General Motors have overtaken the Musketeers in the automotive code lane.…

More of them used by baddies since Redmond blocked VBA macros Microsoft in March will start blocking Excel XLL add-ins from the internet to shut down an increasingly popular attack vector for miscreants.…

Toys that can then be purchased at... you guessed it, say critics in letter to watchdog Rights organizations have asked a US children's ad watchdog to audit an app from Walmart, claiming it is "deceptively marketing" to young children who play Roblox by way of an "advergame" called Walmart Universe of Play.…

Reports suggest Don Johnson left after 6 months in charge of strategic unit The head of Oracle Health engineering has abruptly left the business, according to reports.…

Two facilities to cost $3.6B, some truckers unimpressed with the machines Tesla's original gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada is getting a $3.6 billion makeover that will add two fresh facilities and thousands of additional jobs, the electric automaker has confirmed.…

Atlassian thinks it’s made that possible by extending automation from Jira to Confluence Atlassian has extended the automation it acquired from Code Barrel in 2019, and has run in Jira for most of the time since, to its Confluence collaboration environment.…

Netherlands still facing pressure from US to ban exports to China Dutch producer of chipmaking equipment ASML beat financial analysts' estimates for Q4 of 2022, and expects continued momentum for the year ahead, despite the likelihood of further export restrictions increasing.…

So is AI artwork copyrightable? Not quite as case remains up in the air A glitch in the record-keeping software being piloted by the US Copyright Office (USCO) accidentally revoked the copyright registration of an AI-generated graphic novel.…

Version 3.7 shows Google's cross-platform, Dart-based UI framework maturing Flutter developers gathered on Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya, and at stream-fed screens elsewhere in the world to learn about the alpha release of Dart 3 and Flutter 3.7, the next iteration of Google's open source Dart-based UI toolkit.…

GMB union demands 45% pay rise as members struggle with cost of living Brits have never been afraid to strike, and the wave of industrial action hitting various sectors over the crushing cost of living has found its way over to Amazon for the first time in the UK.…

TCI Fund run by Brit billionaire Chris Hohn also wants ad biz to slash salaries The billionaire hedge fund manager who runs a major Google investor isn't satisfied with the record 12,000 redundancies the US tech giant is making, and wants to see thousands more forced out of the organization.…

Fission reactor rocket should get them going quite fast US research agencies NASA and DARPA are teaming up to create a nuclear thermal rocket engine in hopes the tech will one day carry crewed missions to Mars.…