The Register

Act passed in 2015 is due to lapse unless a continuing resolution passes - and that's unlikely Barring a last-minute deal, the US federal government would shut down on Wednesday, October 1, and the 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act would lapse at the same time, threatening what many consider a critical plank of US cybersecurity policy....

Consultancy says machine learning advice is making bank ai-pocalypse AI is proving to be a gold mine for mega tech consultancy Accenture, but if staff can't use it, then it's time to pack up their desks....

Oversight efforts have been rebuffed, says Democratic report, 'putting Americans' personal data at risk' A trio of federal executive agencies targeted by DOGE cost-cutters either don't know or won't say what the group is doing inside their operations, according to a Senate investigation that concludes DOGE is acting without legal authority or oversight....

Aptly named spacecraft might never make it to the orbital outpost after all NASA and Sierra Space have modified the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract, which originally called for the Dream Chaser spaceplane to be used to supply the International Space Station (ISS)....

Study finds microgrids with wind, solar, and batteries can be built years sooner and at lower cost than SMRs Renewable energy sources could power datacenters at a lower cost than relying on nuclear generation from small modular reactors (SMRs), claims a recently revealed study....

Upgraded nasty slips into Xcode builds, steals crypto, and disables macOS defenses The long-running XCSSET malware strain has evolved again, with Microsoft warning of a new macOS variant that expands its bag of tricks while continuing to target developers....

CRM giant denies security shortcomings as claims allege stolen data used for ID theft Salesforce is facing a wave of lawsuits in the wake of a cyberattack that exposed customer data....

Move comes as Snowflake and Databricks chase the same all-in-one analytics dream Google is promising a single notebook environment for machine learning and data analytics, integrating SQL, Python, and Apache Spark in one place....

Researchers say tens of thousands of instances remain publicly reachable Security researchers have confirmed that threat actors have exploited the maximum-severity vulnerability affecting Fortra's GoAnywhere managed file transfer (MFT), and chastised the vendor for a lack of transparency....

Operation Cronos didn't kill LockBit - it just came back meaner Trend Micro has sounded the alarm over the new LockBit 5.0 ransomware strain, which it warns is "significantly more dangerous" than past versions due to its newfound ability to simultaneously target Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi environments....

As exorcist convention decries AI's potential for 'necromancy' The CEO of a software testing company told a panel at Catholic University of America that AI will not create mass unemployment - though it could make people more stupid....

More fun with AI agents and their security holes A now-fixed flaw in Salesforce's Agentforce could have allowed external attackers to steal sensitive customer data via prompt injection, according to security researchers who published a proof-of-concept attack on Thursday. They were aided by an expired trusted domain that they were able to buy for a measly five bucks....

The downstream consequences of Miljodata's ransomware attack continue to affect major organizations Volvo North America is the latest large organization to announce attackers accessed employee data after a ransomware attack struck its HR system provider....

Meanwhile, Katalyst wins $30M contract to stop Swift telescope falling out of the sky NASA has made progress with plans to boost the rapidly decaying orbit of the Swift observatory while calling an abrupt halt to an attempt to reboost the International Space Station (ISS) using SpaceX's Dragon....

Debuted in 2007, an old feature is coming back hands on If you're tired of staring at the same old static wallpapers in Windows 11, there's help on the way. Microsoft has just added support for animated video backgrounds in the latest Insider builds of its popular operating system, heralding their likely appearance in a production update soon....

CISA gives feds 24 hours to patch, NCSC urges rapid action as flaws linked to ArcaneDoor spies Cybersecurity agencies on both sides of the Atlantic are sounding the alarm over Cisco firewall vulnerabilities that are being exploited by an "advanced threat actor."...

Prime Minister Starmer revives controversial scheme despite past denials, sparking civil liberties backlash The UK government plans to issue all legal residents a digital identity by the end of the current Parliament, which could run until August 2029, with its use required to get a job....

It's amazing the number of calls Jo, Helen, and Ian get through The UK's data protection watchdog fined two Brit businesses with offshore call centers 550,000 (c $735,000) over illegal automated marketing calls....

Consumer org forces Redmond to expunge list of requirements for free ESU in Euro Economic Area, just need a Microsoft account Microsoft will give consumers in the European Economic Area no-strings extended support for the soon-to be-EOL Windows 10....

Companies must realize they can be more than pure consumers, and public sector ought to go beyond 'promotion' Feature It is 2025. Linux will turn 34 and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) 40. For the EU and Europe at large, which is famously experimental with government deployments of open source tech, behind initiatives to promote open licensing, and whose governments promote equal opportunity for FOSS vendors in public tendering, it's a crunch point....

Manager's quality control priorities were upside down On Call Welcome again to On Call, The Register's weekly column in which readers share stories of earnestly trying to fix broken tech, and end up feeling broken afterwards....

They would say that, wouldn't they? Apple and Google have both urged the European Union to revisit its Digital Markets Act (DMA), which both tech giants say is failing....

Apple prices meet Dell style Dell has entered the earbud market with a product you can manage from the cloud....

Accident causes major copper mine to suspend operations, as commodity and share prices soar In recent years technology buyers have endured hardware price rises due to a pandemic and its impact on supply chains, the global wave of inflation that followed, tariffs, and surging demand for AI technologies that allowed vendors to charge higher prices. Now, 800,000 tons of mud has pushed copper prices higher....

Chipzilla seeks investment from its top fab frenemy Intel has reportedly sought an investment from rival chipmaker TSMC....

You'll see the results next year, but it's not the end of Googly lappies Video Google has confirmed it will merge its ChromeOS and Android operating systems, and that the mobile OS will emerge triumphant....

Brad Smith says 'we do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians' The president of Microsoft has said it's cutting parts of the Israeli military off from Azure after reports that the army was using the platform in a mass surveillance operation against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza....

Plus the Snapdragon 8 Elite turns 5 Qualcomm revealed the second act in its bid to overtake Intel and AMD as the leading laptop CPU maker this week with the paper launch of its Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme processors. The company seeks to bring the kind of battery life and performance Apple has gotten out of its Arm-based M-series silicon to the Windows market....

Keeping Pyongyang's coffers full North Korean-linked crews connected to the pervasive IT worker scams have upped their malware game, using more advanced tools, including a backdoor that has much of the same code as Pyongyang's infamous Lazarus Group deploys....

Former FTC chair Khan not happy her legal wrath ended in settlement worth just 14% of Amazon's quarterly net Amazon has settled the Federal Trade Commission's case against it for making it too hard to quit Prime, and while it naturally didn't admit to any wrongdoing, it's still going to pay out one of the largest settlements in FTC history to make the matter go away....

Elon Musk's AI appears to be more ideological than competitors Despite protest letters, concerns that it's biased and untrustworthy, model tweaks to appease its billionaire boss, and even a past incident where it called itself "MechaHitler," xAI's Grok is still being made available to government agencies for mere pennies....

Images of toddlers and home addresses leaked in reprehensible landmark attack A cyber criminal crew has targeted Kido International, a preschool and daycare organization, leaking sensitive details about its pupils and their parents....

Productivity gains promised, but humans still expected to audit the bots At its Unscripted event in London, DevOps company Harness presented its latest AI-driven modules, including an AI pipeline builder, AI test automation, autonomous code fixing when builds fail, AI AppSec (application security) and even AI-driven chaos testing, where resiliency is tested by introducing random failures....

New research program seeks energy-aware' ML that balances performance with power draw It's notoriously difficult to consistently measure the energy usage of AI models, but DARPA wants to put an end to that uncertainty with new "energy-aware" machine learning systems....

While EC suspects vendor's practices stifle competition, it argues it is in line with industry standards The European Commission has launched a formal investigation into SAP's behavior in the aftermarket for maintenance and support services in Europe....

Ruby Central is accused of ousting maintainers from core gems under pressure from Shopify Ruby Central is said to have quietly snatched control of several flagship Ruby open source projects from their long-time maintainers without their consent, following pressure from Shopify, one of its biggest backers....

Mountain View gripes over slow-moving regulators while Redmond rakes it in Google is like a dog with a bone over Microsoft's cloud licensing policies, not letting Euro regulators forget about what it sees as anti-competitive practices that penalize those wanting to run Windows software on rival cloud platforms....

Ballooning leverage and shaky customer funding could strain Big Red's balance sheet Oracle has raised $18 billion in debt, which could help fund massive datacenter investments aimed at meeting surging demand from AI model builders and enterprise customers....

The latest in a run of serious networking bugs gives attackers root if they have SNMP access Cisco has confirmed a new IOS and IOS XE zero-day, the latest in a string of flaws that attackers have been quick to weaponize....

Performance of new version mostly good, but future uncertain The bcachefs file system, now "externally maintained" outside the Linux kernel codebase, offers packages of its first version to be loadable on the fly....

Business Suite nostalgia unlikely to ease customers' public cloud journey SAP experts are doubting the enterprise software giant's message that it is simplifying licensing after the changes were discussed at the German-speaking user group conference....

Biometric Entry/Exit System phased in from October to 29 Schengen countries Travelers including Britons and Americans visiting most European countries will have to register their fingerprints and faces under a system that goes live next month....

Supermarket says the hack that shut down systems and emptied shelves has turned profits into losses The Co-operative Group has revealed the cyberattack that knocked its systems offline earlier this year will leave it nursing an 80 million hangover....

Guidance follows privacy complaints over sharp increase in police searches of travel doc and visa pic libraries The Home Office has told police forces to check their own photo databases before asking it to search its libraries of passport and visa facial images, as well as avoiding urgent requests "unless it is absolutely necessary."...

Big performance on offer, but be prepared to spend $200 HANDS ON Raspberry Pi has unveiled a fully loaded version of its computer-in-a-keyboard, featuring oodles of RAM, an SSD, and a clicky, mechanical keyboard. However, you'll pay a relative premium for these features....

By supporting efficient video codecs in hardware, which to be fair will also help punters Google, Meta, and Vodafone have called on chipmakers and smartphone manufacturers to support the AV1 video codec in hardware, especially in midrange devices, a suggestion that's not entirely altruistic....

As ban on under-16s using some sites looms, cyber-safety regulator sends Microsoft's code locker a letter Australia's eSafety Commissioner has written to GitHub to ask it to consider if it's a social network that endangers children....

More datacenters in familiar territories, too, and AI everywhere Alibaba Cloud yesterday announced its first datacenters in Brazil, France, and The Netherlands, plus expansion of its presence in five other countries outside China....

Redmond wants more flavors of ML than OpenAI can cook up Microsoft has sealed a deal with Anthropic to give users of Microsoft 365 Copilot the option to use the Claude AI engine....

Chipzilla can't say it's changed much, but could be a handy backup to TSMC After a painful breakup and a bout of financial turmoil, Intel is looking to rekindle the relationship with its old flame Apple....