The Register

Katie Moussouris tells it like it is Black Hat With the world's largest collection of security folk gathering in Las Vegas for the Black Hat conference there are encouraging signs that the US government might actually be getting smarter about hiring.…

'If your business model depends on more aggressive surveillance, maybe you need a new business model' Private Facebook chats between a Nebraska mother and her daughter has been used by law enforcement to build a criminal case against the teen for getting a now-illegal abortion in her home state.…

Attack origins point to April 2021 first strike on Japanese target The Maui ransomware that has been used against US healthcare operations has been linked to Andariel, a North Korean state-sponsored threat with links to the notorious Lazarus Group.…

Leave it to the economy to throw another wrench into the semiconductor supply chain In the US, chipmakers and suppliers are scrambling to find a place in line for the more than $52 billion in subsidies and tax breaks up for grabs but that surge in semiconductor demand appears to be faltering.…

Supermaterial created from heated scales. Sorry about the smell Scientists in Japan have figured out a new way to create sustainable LEDs: by microwaving fish.…

Well, until they find out that you've left, but at least they won't be immediately notified of your every move Many years ago, in the bowels of Silicon Valley, some genius realized that people enjoy getting notifications through social media – those little pings of dopamine that make you feel like you matter.…

Disclosing exploits, however, will earn you $100k Simply finding vulnerabilities and patching them "is totally useless," according to Google's Eduardo Vela, who heads the cloud giant's product security response team.…

Older operating systems excluded from the 4.8.1 release party Microsoft has updated its venerable .NET Framework once more, this time to add native Arm64 support while also removing support for some older operating systems.…

Market immediately reacts as tech titan looks to free up cash for 'unlikely' Twitter deal Tesla supremo Elon Musk has sold $6.88 billion worth of shares in the auto company, saying it is in case some equity partners exit ahead of an eventual Twitter deal, with both events deemed "unlikely."…

Attack was foiled by content delivery network's hardware security keys Cloudflare says it was subject to a similar attack to one made on comms company Twilio last week, but in this case it was thwarted by hardware security keys that are required to access applications and services.…

Business travel, outside training, and picnic overheads all under watchful gaze of Redmond's accountants Microsoft is telling staff across the entire business to cast a more watchful eye over expenses in the face of economic uncertainty.…

Researchers cue up AI sims, code and workloads for Argonne Lab's most powerful beast Argonne National Laboratory has declared its Polaris supercomputer operational, providing the scientific and engineering community with a powerful new research tool, but also serving as a testbed to prepare for the upcoming Aurora exascale system.…

SkyDrive? Placeholders? Outages? Yes, it's all gone swimmingly Opinion Microsoft is celebrating 15 years of its cloud storage service, OneDrive, with a refreshed OneDrive Home but, strangely, no mention of SkyDrive, the placeholder fiasco or the multiple issues suffered by the service over the years. Lucky we're here, eh?…

International relations are hot as chips, and Taiwan cannot afford to empower China Taiwanese electronics manufacturer and Apple supplier Foxconn will likely be forced to back out of a $800 million investment in Chinese chipmaker and foundry operator Tsinghua Unigroup, thanks to rapidly deteriorating international relations.…

It makes perfect sense for enterprises as well as enthusiasts. Just ask GitLab Opinion I've been preaching the gospel of the Linux desktop for more years than some of you have been alive. However, unless you argue that the Linux desktop includes Android smartphones and ChromeOS laptops, there will be no year of the Linux desktop.…

The game of corporate poker continues but CWU may find investors more interested in dividends The union representing BT Group workers protesting over their latest pay award are trying to pull as many levers as possible to force further negotiations, including setting up meetings with the telco's biggest investors.…

Need a cold shower? This is xNix like Windows users imagine it still is Version 9.3 of NetBSD is here, able to run on very low-end systems and with that authentic early-1990s experience.…

Too much junk in the orbital trunk Debris from a Russian anti-satellite missile is causing chaos in orbit, with shards of ex-spacecraft circling the Earth at perilous speeds.…

Chinese game devs targeted – maybe data protection laws too Game engine vendor Unity has announced it will commence operations in China, and has attracted a who's who of local tech giants as investors.…

Feels some actions may amount to coercion to stick with giants' own payment schemes South Korea's Communications Commission (KCC) said on Tuesday it is investigating Google, Apple and domestic app store operator One Store Co. over sneaky ways the companies may be dodging the country's in-app payment laws.…

Sees sunlit uplands ahead with plans for factory and ITaaS expansions Lenovo's Infrastructure Solutions Group has reported a third straight quarterly profit, and the company sees better days ahead in the field so has ordered expansion of plants in Mexico and Hungary.…

Interferometry will be used to turn six toaster-sized satellites into one giant solar observatory NASA has plans to build a telescope six miles (9.66km) wide in Earth orbit, comprised of a constellation of six toaster-sized satellites. The first of those toasters has just been finished. …

Trade minister says to expect more of this sanctions-busting stuff starting in September Iran has announced it used cryptocurrency to pay for imports, raising the prospect that the nation is using digital assets to evade sanctions.…

If you're looking for free speech or privacy, move along GitHub over the past week has tested the trust of its users by enacting policies that call into question its commitment to free speech and privacy.…

Hopes to tap expected growth as it levels up to match rivals' presences Google Cloud has announced it will build facilities in Thailand, Malaysia, and New Zealand.…

Far East Cable acted as a broker in between ZTE and Iranian companies, it's alleged The US Bureau of Industry and Security has accused China's Far East Cable Co. of violating export controls by selling telecommunications equipment to Iran on behalf of supplier ZTE.…

The memory biz is bracing for a recession-fueled drop in demand Micron committed to investing $40 billion in new semiconductor manufacturing capacity in the US over the next decade, even as the company warns of financial headwinds due to slipping product demand.…

Oh, and that critical VMware auth bypass vuln? Miscreants found it, too August Patch Tuesday clicks off the week of hacker summer camp in Las Vegas this year, so it's basically a code cracker's holiday too. …

Car crunch bites, but relief looks likely As the chip shortage rolls on, automakers are still hitting the brakes on production, cutting 180,000 vehicles from production worldwide this week alone.…

On the same day the United States kickstarts one of its own China’s semiconductor investment fund — better known as the Big Fund — has become mired in controversy over the past few weeks as the country’s corruption watchdog continues to sniff out allegations of misconduct.…

American semiconductor manufacturing is back, baby! On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law.…

Covid lockdowns, Chinese regulations and SEC threats make Alibaba's job numbers worrying Alibaba's woes continue, with the Chinese tech giant's latest financial reports indicating it cut nearly 10,000 jobs, or around 3.8 percent of its workforce, in the second quarter of 2022. …

SpaceX to pick up the slack while the rocket is updated yet again Russia's invasion of Ukraine is being felt at Northrop Grumman, forcing it to make alternative plans that now include asking Firefly Aerospace to build the first stage of its Antares rocket.…

AMD Zen chips, meanwhile, are vulnerable to side-channel data scrying A group of computer scientists has identified an architectural error in certain recent Intel CPUs that can be abused to expose SGX enclave data like private encryption keys.…

Alliance will hopefully give students path to job as well as backing Intel's Ohio fab plans A dozen US midwestern research colleges and universities have signed up to a project intended to bolster the semiconductor and microelectronics industries with combined research and education to ensure work for their students in high-tech industries.…

Campaign group Dawn Project results calculated from small sample size, test done without hands on the wheel The latest version of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta has a bit of a kink: it doesn't appear to notice child-sized objects in its path, according to a campaign group.…

Plus: Crooks swimming around your network, looking for a way in, says Incident Response Threat Report Security teams are facing down more cyberattacks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and sophisticated crooks are using double-extortion techniques and, increasingly, deepfakes in their strikes.…

Patrolling quadrupeds not fitted with 7.62mm tank machine guns – yet Space Force, the sixth branch of the US military has tasked robot dogs with patrolling its base at Cape Canaveral.…

SIGGRAPH 2022: Lenovo's ThinkStation P620 only desktop workstation powered by AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Lenovo has unveiled new mobile workstations based on AMD Ryzen processors, comprising a mid-range model with a 15.6 inch screen, and a 14 inch system pitched as Lenovo's lightest mobile workstation.…

'AES-based operations might be two times slower' without latest updates Microsoft has warned that Windows devices with the newest supported processors might be susceptible to data damage, noting the initial fix might have slowed operations down for some.…

Company had hoped deal would grant access to $300m trust account, but shareholders cleared it out Quantum computing pioneer D-Wave Systems has completed its planned merger with DPCM Capital, taking the company public on the New York Stock Exchange.…

Deployment plan includes unified data governance platform Purview Barclays Bank has selected Microsoft Teams as its preferred collaboration platform, meaning that up to 120,000 of the company's employees and partners globally could be using the service soon.…

Running Windows apps on your M1 Mac just got a bit more expensive Corel-owned Parallels has put out an update for its Windows-on-a-Mac Desktop product with a few neat new features and an eye-watering price.…

Cyberspace Administration of China closes accounts and removes to 'rectify the chaos' China's internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) vowed on Tuesday to clean up what it sees as bad and blatantly misleading marketing of virtual currencies.…

Telco promises uplift in capacity and speed once deployed BT has tested operating four carrier components (4CC) on a 5G Standalone network, and claimed it is the first in Europe to demonstrate this on a live network. The technology will deliver higher capacity and speed to end user devices when eventually rolled out across the entire mobile network.…

Lords cite 'frequent' policy changes, lack of metrics, post-Brexit funding as top issues How's the UK doing in its ambitions to become a sci-tech "superpower" by 2030? According to a report by the Lords Science and Technology Committee, it's currently on track to make the phrase an "empty slogan."…

Many sources become one Multimodal AI models, trained on numerous types of data, could help doctors screen patients at risk of developing multiple different cancers more accurately..…

Have it your way – whether you want it or not Burger King has just served spam to many of its customers, who have complained they received an emailed receipt to advise them of a non-existent order for no food.…

Ring-fenced tests planned, despite previous regulatory skepticism about the need for fiat digi-dollars Australia"s Reserve Bank (RBA) has announced it will try to find applications that justify the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).…

Encourages 'eco friendly' consumer choices in exchange for discounts Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba launched a tool on Monday that encourages "eco-friendly consumer behavior" by rewarding customers for purchases and "green" activities on its apps with discounts on more stuff.…