The Register

You look like Windows, and you look like Windows and you look like Windows ... Analysis As a mainstream desktop OS, Linux is doing better than ever. The Year of Linux on the Desktop came some time ago, and it is ChromeOS (Chromebooks were outselling Macs until recently). But there's a problem – there is almost no diversity of design.…

Singapore's safety scheme measures scam-combatting capability A newly implemented e-commerce rating system in the city-state of Singapore has rated Facebook's Marketplace as the least trustworthy e-commerce platform, behind Amazon and its Alibaba-owned Asian analogue Lazada.…

More types of biz fall under expanded rules – and fines for those who fall short Europe has moved closer toward new cybersecurity standards and reporting rules following a provisional network and information systems agreement dubbed NIS2 by the European Council and Parliament. …

The GSMA would say that, yet Big Tech is making it harder for carriers to turn a quid Telcos risk missing out on revenue needed to fund new networks, despite demand for their services soaring – and Big Tech is to blame.…

If his surgery was as bad as his opsec, this chap has caused a lot of trouble The US Attorney’s Office has charged a 55-year-old cardiologist with creating and selling ransomware and profiting from revenue-share agreements with criminals who deployed his product.…

'Brushing' tops the list, as quantity of forbidden content continue to rise China’s Ministry of Public Security has revealed the five most prevalent types of fraud perpetrated online or by phone.…

Appeal petition as doomed as the Itanic chips at the heart of decade-long drama The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Oracle's appeal to overturn a ruling ordering the IT giant to pay $3 billion in damages for violating a decades-old contract agreement.…

Estimated $42bn vanished with collapse of UST, Luna – we explain what all this means TerraUSD, a so-called "stablecoin," has seen its value drop from $1 apiece a week ago to about $0.09 on Monday, demonstrating not all that much stability.…

Cloud biz says it is reacting to customer mix largely shifting from lone devs to SMBs DigitalOcean attempted to lessen the sting of higher prices this week by announcing a cut-rate instance aimed at developers and hobbyists.…

Fine-print crucially deemed contractual agreement as well as copyright license in smartTV source-code case The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has won a significant legal victory in its ongoing effort to force Vizio to publish the source code of its SmartCast TV software, which is said to contain GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 copyleft-licensed components.…

Citizen allegedly moved $10m-plus in BTC into banned nation US prosecutors have accused an American citizen of illegally funneling more than $10 million in Bitcoin into an economically sanctioned country.…

Why be a customer when you can develop your own custom semiconductors Analysis Here's something that should raise eyebrows in the datacenter world: Facebook parent company Meta has hired a veteran networking chip engineer from Intel to lead silicon design efforts in the internet giant's infrastructure hardware engineering group.…

Report says $42b will need to be poured into industry over next decade Growing demand for lithium for batteries means the sector will need $42 billion of investment to meet the anticipated level of orders by the end of the decade, according to a report.…

Still think we're ready for that autonomous future? Autonomous cars may be further away than believed. Testing of three leading systems found they hit a third of cyclists, and failed to avoid any oncoming cars.…

Catching compromise attempts before kicking off that recovery plan Kubecon Veeam acquisition Kasten kicked off this year's Kubecon with an updated version of its K10 product, aimed at securing the Kubernetes container orchestration platform.…

'Most challenging element of migration likely remains' warns analyst Spanish financial giant Santander has migrated 80 percent of its core banking IT infrastructure to the cloud as part of its $20.8 billion (€20 billion ) modernization programme, with the help of in-house software created by resident developers.…

<5% figure was based on 100 accounts, if you're wondering Updated Last week Elon Musk hit pause on his Twitter acquisition over the platform's "less than 5 percent" bot figure.…

Instagram, Microsoft responsible for lifts coming in version 3.11 and beyond The next version of the standard Python interpreter, CPython, is expected in October. It will include significant performance improvements and support for running inside the browser.…

Agenda includes warning system for disruptions, and avoiding 'subsidy race' for chip investments The EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) is meeting in Paris today to discuss coordinated approaches to global supply chain issues.…

Plus: DeepMind launches new generalist AI system, and Apple boffin quits over return-to-work policy In brief Facial recognition bans passed by US cities are being overturned as law enforcement and lobbyist groups pressure local governments to tackle rising crime rates.…

Arm shows us that even total domination doesn't always make stupid levels of money Opinion Interviews with chip company CEOs are invariably enlightening. On top of the usual market-related subjects of success and failure, revenues and competition, plans and pitfalls, the highly paid victim knows that there's a large audience of unusually competent critics eager for technical details. That's you.…

Bill McDermott thinks companies need workflow on top of enterprise apps, whether they replace them or not Interview In a month that has seen nearly a fifth wiped from his company's share price, Bill McDermott is remarkably cheerful.…

Bye-bye bottlenecks. Hello composable infrastructure? Interview Compute Express Link (CXL) has the potential to radically change the way systems and datacenters are built and operated. And after years of joint development spanning more than 190 companies, the open standard is nearly ready for prime time.…

Plus: Tech giants commit $30m to open-source security, miscreants breach DEA portal, and US signs cybercrime treaty In brief San Francisco police have been using driverless cars for surveillance to assist in law enforcement investigations.…

Concerns raised over government drive to implement distinct post-Brexit policy Legal experts say UK government plans to create new data protection laws will make more work and add costs for business, while also creating the possibility of challenges to data sharing between the EU and UK.…

If I get in early and work hard, everyone will notice, right? Who, Me? "The early bird trashes the business" is a saying that we've just made up, but could easily apply to the Register reader behind a currency calamity in today's episode of Who, Me?…

IT giant may be shifting its focus to software and services, but systems remain the foundation Analysis At this month's Dell Technologies World show in Las Vegas, all the usual executives were prowling the keynote stages, from CEO Michael Dell to co-COOs Chuck Witten and Jeff Clark, all talking about the future of the company.…

Researchers find widespread harvesting of info without consent Tracking, marketing, and analytics firms have been exfiltrating the email addresses of internet users from web forms prior to submission and without user consent, according to security researchers.…

AA-battery-sized biological photovoltaic cell touted as ideal for IoT applications Researchers at the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry have run an Arm CPU for six months using algae as a power source.…

Is state-approved Ubuntu distro how the Middle Kingdom will replace PCs with home-grown kit? China's military-derived and government-approved Linux distribution, Ubuntu Kylin, has revealed plans to target a second RISC-V platform.…

Hires external advisors to bolster decision making capacity and hints it could consider multiple buyout plans Ailing Japanese giant Toshiba has revealed it has 10 potential suitors for its possible sale.…

Markets outside China are doing better, but at home vendors have huge component stockpiles Demand for chips needed to make smartphones and PCs has dropped "like a rock" – but mostly in China, according to Zhao Haijun, the CEO of China's largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).…

Sometimes a half-sized shipping container at the base of a cell tower is all you need Analysis Colocation facilities aren't just a place to drop a couple of servers anymore. Many are quickly becoming full-fledged infrastructure-as-a-service providers as they embrace new consumption-based models and place a stronger emphasis on networking and edge connectivity.…

For those that want to keep their data in the homeland Quantum computing outfit D-Wave Systems has announced availability of an Advantage quantum computer accessible via the cloud but physically located in the US, a key move for selling quantum services to American customers.…

US publishes technical guide to help organizations avoid violating Americans with Disabilities Act The Biden administration and Department of Justice have warned employers using AI software for recruitment purposes to take extra steps to support disabled job applicants or they risk violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).…

Your US tax dollars at work The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has spent about $2.8 billion over the past 14 years on a massive surveillance "dragnet" that uses big data and facial-recognition technology to secretly spy on most Americans, according to a report from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology.…

You robot kids, get off my LAN AI will completely automate the network within five years, Juniper CEO Rami Rahim boasted during the company’s Global Summit this week.…

We speak to scientists involved in historic first snap – and no, this isn't the M87* Astronomers have captured a clear image of the gigantic supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy for the first time.…

We take a look at low, low subscription prices – not that we want to give anyone any ideas A Tor-hidden website dubbed the Eternity Project is offering a toolkit of malware, including ransomware, worms, and – coming soon – distributed denial-of-service programs, at low prices.…

Touting info on 6,700 compromised systems will get you four years behind bars A Ukrainian man has been sentenced to four years in a US federal prison for selling on a dark-web marketplace stolen login credentials for more than 6,700 compromised servers.…

David Harville is seventh to cop to harassment campaign David Harville, eBay's former director of global resiliency, pleaded guilty this week to five felony counts of participating in a plan to harass and intimidate journalists who were critical of the online auction business.…

Nvidia, AMD, Apple et al may be forced to pass cost on to customers Just as costs for some components have started to come down, TSMC and Samsung, the two largest contract chip manufacturers in the world, are reportedly planning to increase prices of production, which may affect Nvidia, AMD, Apple, and others that rely on the foundries.…

Demand for PostgreSQL and Kafka driving interest in cloud service, CEO tells The Register Finnish open-source-as-a-service provider Aiven received $210 million in funding this week, adding $1 billion to its nominal valuation in just nine months.…

Adds infosec regulation coming to more industries but with a light touch, more collaboration Black Hat Asia Software made unsafe by dependencies should be fixed without users needing to interact with the source of the problem, according to US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, who serves in the Executive Office of the President.…

The idea? To get investors muttering: DRAM, those gross margins are stable... Memory and storage maker Micron Technology has revealed a new business model intended to address the volatility in the memory market that has resulted in sharp swings in pricing over the past several years.…

Nine out of ten organizations would do it all over again, keeping attackers in business Almost nine in 10 organizations that have suffered a ransomware attack would choose to pay the ransom if hit again, according to a new report, compared with two-thirds of those that have not experienced an attack.…

The internet is now the first battleground of any new war – before the shooting starts Black Hat Asia Cyber war has become an emerged aspect of broader armed conflicts, commencing before the first shot is fired, cybersecurity expert Kenneth Geers told the audience at the Black Hat Asia conference on Friday.…

'This is not recommended for production development. It may be unstable and it will have bugs' Canonical has begun slinging daily builds of Ubuntu at Windows Subsystem for Linux. We took a look at the not-for-production code.…

Khamenei, can you just not? Not right now, fam The Iran-linked Cobalt Mirage crew is running attacks against America for both financial gain and for cyber-espionage purposes, according to Secureworks' threat intelligence team.…

Yes/No/Cancel culture at its worst Something for the Weekend "We all know what we're doing today? Good. Do your best!"…