The Register

R&D tax relief campaign snares companies claiming in good faith Exclusive Software firms and other companies developing innovative code have been accused of fraud and had tax relief payments stopped as a result of a broad-based campaign executed by the UK tax collector.…

To avoid cloudy judgement, heed the weather forecast Opinion Simple sums can pack a punch. When the CTO of 37Signals got his $3 million cloud bill for 2022, and after the red mist had cleared, he sharpened his pencil to see if that was kosher.…

This is what happens when database field names are changed without proper documentation Who, Me? Ah, gentle readerfolk, welcome once again to Who, Me? in which Reg readers much like yourselves regale us weekly with tales of technical disasters of their own making narrowly averted – and sometimes not averted at all.…

You will soon know more about what your PC lockscreen is showing you Microsoft is working on new looks for the Windows Spotlight feature and redesigns for the graphics settings page as part of its latest Windows 11 Preview build.…

Vast and unpleasant – for Google – changes to the Android ecosystem remain a possibility Google has lost a court bid to avoid payment of fines levied on it by India's Competition Commission, and massive changes to the way it does business in India.…

Virginia welcomes $35 billion investment plan with $140 million grant to help things along Amazon Web Services will invest $35 billion in Virginia by the year 2040, expanding its presence in the state that houses its infamously flaky US-EAST-1 region.…

Also: US terrorist no-fly list found left on unsecured server, Russian dark web drug markets go to war In brief Nearly 3,000 immigrants seeking asylum in the United States have been released from custody after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials inadvertently published their personal information online.…

PLUS: Taiwan’s new supercomputer; China-linked cybercrims strike; Australian content clampdown; and more Asia In Brief India's IT minister has signaled he is willing to revisit a proposal to use government fact checkers to decide what is fake news that should be removed from social media.…

Plus: Academics debate citing ChatGPT as research co-author; Getty Images sues Stability AI In brief Consumer tech publisher CNET will pause publishing stories written with the help of AI software, after it was criticized for failing to catch errors in copy generated by machines.…

4,000km extension cords are hard to build Analysis A plan backed by Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes – aimed at providing 15 percent of Singapore's electricity needs using solar energy generated in Australia – has collapsed.…

Hacking the world with ML is Uncle Sam's job, buddy China's AI development program poses a serious threat to America and other countries' national security, or so says FBI Director Christopher Wray.…

How did the world's largest economy get stuck with retro measurement? Feature In 1793, French scientist Joseph Dombey sailed for the newly formed United States at the request of Thomas Jefferson carrying two objects that could have changed America. He never made it, and now the US is stuck with a retro version of measurement that is unique in the modern world.…

Please, sir. I don't want a 365 subscription Microsoft wants to know how many out-of-support copies of Office are installed on Windows PCs, and it intends to find out by pushing a patch through Microsoft Update that it swears is safe, not that you asked.…

26 megabytes of history are yours for the downloading Retro Tech Week Apple has given its blessing to the release of source code for its first mouse-powered marvel – the Lisa – to mark its 40th birthday.…

Light-powered droids are coming, one fraction of a millimetre at a time What do you get when you stretch mouse muscle tissue over a polymer skeleton and attach electronics capable of converting radio-frequency energy into light?…

Setting fire to an ecosystem like it's a spliff on a credulous podcast After leaving third-party developers of Twitter apps with no information about why their software had stopped working last week, Twitter this week offered an explanation of sorts.…

Our lives are in your hands, and you have butterfingers? The US Federal Aviation Administration says its preliminary investigation of last week's system outage that caused the first nationwide grounding of flights since September 11, 2001, has uncovered the cause: contractors accidentally deleted some essential files.…

And not even close to mapping it all Astronomers have mapped over three billion objects shimmering in the Milky Way, providing the most detailed survey of our galaxy yet.…

But the next day it laid off 10,000 staff Comment As Microsoft employees went to sleep on Tuesday not knowing that the next day their jobs would be on the line, company execs hobnobbing in Davos hosted a private performance by a geriatric popster.…

Tis the extended season for layoffs The same day Google is allowing staffers to work from home while they process the news that it's firing 12,000 of them, fintech biz Capital One has cut over 1,000 roles in its Technology segment.…

Oh, snap... next gen networks suddenly not a must-have in this economic climate Sweden's Ericsson missed earnings estimates for the last quarter after telco customers reined in spending on 5G network expansion amid uncertainty about the future direction of the economy.…

You’ve got 6 months to get into compliance, it tells yak-yak app Ireland's data protection authority has fined WhatsApp Ireland €5.5 million for breaches of the GDPR relating to its service and told it comply with data processing laws within six months.…

What is this... the Eurovision chip contest? Intel appears to be casting doubt on previous proposals to build a chip factory in Italy, as the company plays off European countries against each other for the privilege of hosting its production facilities.…

Spare a thought for the workers who read the worst content scraped from the internet to keep you safe OpenAI reportedly hired workers in Kenya – screening tens of thousands of text samples for sexist, racist, violent and pornographic content – to help make its ChatGPT model less toxic.…

Some potential good news for those unhappy with pandemic-era lead times, prices After surging 28 percent in 2022, foundry revenues are set to plunge over the next 12 months as wafer demand slows, inventory consumption slumps, and geopolitical conflict drives chip designers out of China, according to Trendforce.…

CEO says folks can work from home while they absorb the news, and 'dramatic' headcount growth in pandemic no longer matches 'economic reality' Google is to lay off 12,000 employees amid something of a pandemic reckoning for technology companies that recruited heavily in recent years and are now facing harsh realities of a cooling economy.…

RWAP Software owner Rich Mellor talks ZX81 sound cards and linking USB printers to parallel ports Retro Tech Week RWAP Software has been offering parts and upgrades for Sinclair Research computers since the mid-1980s. Owner Rich Mellor talked to El Reg about what got him into the business, what's kept him interested, as well as his new product – which is a very different beast.…

Surely there are quicker and more effective ways to end your co-workers Every office has one – the inexplicably cheerful, kind and generous co-worker who brings in cake and/or biscuits and leaves them somewhere for their weight-sensitive colleagues to graze on.…

Pet consultant took down the datacenter in attempt to find other people's errors On Call As the old saying goes, there are few certainties in life beyond death and taxes. But in this week's On-Call – The Register's regular reader-contributed tales of techies being asked to rescue the ridiculous – we shall consider another: new managers who needlessly change systems that work perfectly well.…

No principles or virtues, people accepting everything it says – this bot is perfect for political life OpenAI's conversational language model ChatGPT has a lot to say, but is likely to lead you astray if you ask it for moral guidance.…

Reed Hastings steps down as joint boss to become board chair The co-founder of vid-streamer Netflix, Reed Hastings, has announced he will step down as co-CEO.…

Thanks for putting all your data in one basket As enterprises around the world continue to move to the cloud, cybercriminals are following right behind them.…

Censors are on the lookout for showering under a waterfall of money, overeating, and more conventional sins The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has preempted celebrations for Lunar New Year – the Year of the Rabbit* commences on January 22 – by warning citizens to keep evidence of seasonal overindulgence off the internet.…

Google says don't worry, EFF warns of 'potentially horrific outcome' At least nine online pharmacies that sell abortion pills share information with Google and other third parties, such as search history and geolocation, that can be used to identify the websites' users, according to a ProPublica probe.…

Sixth snafu in five years? Crooks have this useless carrier on speed dial T-Mobile US today said someone abused an API to download the personal information of 37 million subscribers.…

Meanwhile, layoffs continue at Twitter, Meta, WeWork, many others Amazon on Wednesday emailed staff to explain what's said to be the largest layoff in the mega-corp's history.…

That passwordless option is looking really good right about now The personal information of 35,000 PayPal users was exposed in December, according to a notification letter sent to the online payment company's customers this week.…

Near 50% drop in extorted dosh ... or so it says here The amount of money paid to ransomware attackers dropped significantly in 2022, and not because the number of attacks fell.…

Investors use up all their continues, game over A California judge has tossed out a lawsuit filed by Activision Blizzard shareholders against the company's leadership accusing them of breaching fiduciary duties by allowing a hostile environment to develop that top brass tried to hide from the public.…

That'll definitely teach them to look out for their workers Amazon has been hit with a trio of citations from US safety inspectors who say their investigations found "serious violations" of the Occupational Safety and Health Act at warehouses in New York, Illinois and Florida.…

Lewis Rosenthal talks about why some companies still need to run OS/2 today – including on UEFI and GPT hardware Retro Tech Week Although the creator of OS/2 now owns Red Hat and has other fish to try, OS/2 lives on. The Reg spoke with Arca Noae's Lewis Rosenthal about the issues of updating OS/2 Warp for modern PCs in 2023 – and beyond.…

Hit up Cumulus Data if you want your racks running on low-cost, zero-carbon energy US-based Cumulus Data says it is constructing a datacenter campus adjacent to a nuclear power station in order to directly obtain low-cost, zero-carbon energy for prospective tenants.…

Bunfight over support for proprietary Unix operating system ends with a confidential whimper HPE and Oracle have settled their long-running legal case over alleged copyright infringement regarding Solaris software updates for HPE customers, but it looks like the nature of the settlement is going to remain under wraps.…

Great, now staff and students can stop scrolling and get back to work Faculty and students at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) this week became the latest members of a public US university to lose access to Chinese video app TikTok via campus networks.…

Controversial policy change forces chief product officer to speak out Adobe chief product officer Scott Belsky has responded to criticism of the company's content analysis policies by saying it has never used customers' creations to train generative AI models.…

Social engineering helped intruders break into customers' inboxes again Email marketing service Mailchimp has confirmed intruders have gained access to more than 100 customer accounts after successfully deploying a social engineering attack.…

Hey Siri, did you know know that swatting is a bug, not a feature? An Australian personal trainer's Apple Watch inadvertently summoned 15 police to a suspected shooting that was nothing of the sort.…

Bit factory giants see growth slimming in economically challenged times, but party still far from over Research from tech services membership and standards body The Uptime Institute is showing slowing growth in the major cloud providers, suggesting that the era of hyper-expansion is drawing to a close.…

Simulates the Sun's atmosphere, peers deep into Earth's interior, and can probably run Crysis Finland's LUMI supercomputer has hit a new milestone, successfully completing the pilot phase of its GPU partition that extends the processing power of the system.…

Get your eyepatch out: Cyber attacks on the high seas are trending A Norwegian maritime risk management business is getting a lesson in that very area, after a ransomware attack forced its ShipManager software offline and left 1,000 ships without a connection to on-shore servers. …