The Register

Also: Tech players spin up white hat protection, this week's critical bugs, and more In brief Google on Friday released an emergency update for Chrome to address a zero-day security flaw.…

Plus: Warren Buffett’s TSMC worries; CHIPS Act bits China; Japan’s quantum investment; and more Asia in Brief China’s State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS) has reportedly allowed artificial intelligence to control a satellite.…

Not enough to meet the whole energy suck of sites, but 200 tonnes of CO nothing to sniff at Datacenter biz Digital Realty has several renewable energy projects on the go in the Asia-Pacific region, among them a pretty hefty solar buildout.…

Foreign minister says it's not afraid of the 'big bad wolf' up north Brazil took its first tentative steps towards a relationship with China's tech industry this week in defiance of US efforts to dissuade its erstwhile ally from siding with the Middle Kingdom.…

Where there's a will… The market for stolen ChatGPT accounts, and especially Plus subscriptions, is on the rise as miscreants in countries blocked by OpenAI try to hop the chatbot's geofences.…

And you thought patching your production environment was stressful NASA has successfully installed a major software update to its venerable Curiosity Mars rover, which has been rolling over the Red Planet's landscape for more than a decade.…

Let's go through all the proposed problematic powers, starting with surveillance and censorship Special report United Nations negotiators convened this week in Vienna, Austria, to formulate a draft cybercrime treaty, and civil society groups are worried.…

Actual features pending, please pay us now Elon Musk appears to be advancing his feud with newsletter service Substack by announcing he's turning Twitter into his very own version of the upstart, complete with the ability for users to monetize their followers and offer them long-form content.…

Maybe our prince has come at last A suspected Nigerian fraudster is scheduled to appear in court Friday for his alleged role in a $6 million plot to scam businesses via email.…

Few orbital boosts and we'll get the snaps in eight years The European Space Agency's Juice probe began its eight-year trek to study Jupiter and its major moons on Friday, after launching into space aboard an Ariane 5.…

OK, they're a bit old in terms of Intel kit, but these aren't your regular systems Fault-tolerant computing veteran Stratus has released the latest generation of its ftServer systems, which offer zero downtime for mission-critical applications, but lag behind the rest of the market in terms of the latest technology.…

Windows LAPS and legacy LAPS don't play nicely under certain conditions, Microsoft says Integrating the Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) into Windows and Windows Server that came with updates earlier this week is causing interoperability problems with what's called legacy LAPS, Microsoft says.…

How to PostgreSQL MongoDB out of the equation Halfway up a Himalayan mountain might not be the usual place to start a database company but then maybe FerretDB is not a usual company.…

Despite US blocks to advanced technology nodes Global sales of semiconductor fab equipment grew by 5 percent during 2022 to hit an all-time high, with China the largest buyer despite a fall in its investment amid the standoff with the US over access to chips and other technology.…

Yes, the week-long IT meltdown that sparked a multitude of sarcastic Reg headlines TSB's chief information officer during the British bank's incredible week-long 2018 meltdown didn't check the key supplier responsible for the migration was prepared to push the button before he assured the board that it was, regulators found yesterday.…

OK, here's my question: Would you like to have it on x86 Linux? Friday FOSS Fest If you're old enough to remember After Dark, you might appreciate this: a new screensaver. Yes, in 2023. It was never really about saving screens.…

Depending on use case, the efficiency gains can be significant Interview As chipmakers demand more power than ever, with some chips pushing 700 or even 1,000 watts in the case of some of Nvidia's upcoming parts, datacenter operators are having to get creative about the way they cool these chips.…

Redmond expands a digital ID process for its platform as Musk seeks cash for blue check marks As Elon Musk tears at Twitter's credibility by demanding businesses and individuals pay for their blue verification checks, Microsoft is pushing ts own free digital ID technology to companies and their employees on LinkedIn.…

Middle aged spread begins as it joins IBM Opinion When you turn 30, you're not a kid anymore. For some of us, 30 is a traumatic birthday. For Red Hat, which turned on March 27, it was a cause for celebration. From a business that got started in one of its co-founder's wife's sewing room, it became the first billion-dollar pure-play open-source company and then the engine driving IBM. …

An ill-considered cron job turned into a nasty 2AM job On Call With Friday upon us, and a weekend next on the schedule, The Register once again brings you an instalment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed tales of being dragged out at all hours to fix failures inflicted by the foolish, flummoxed, or fatuous.…

Kernel 6.2 ditched a useful defense against ghostly chip design flaw The Spectre vulnerability that has haunted hardware and software makers since 2018 continues to defy efforts to bury it.…

Chipzilla reportedly wants more cash. Germany wants a bigger facility. And the EU is lurking with a bigger offer If Intel wants larger subsidies for its Magdeburg mega-fab, German officials think the x86 giant should increase its investments to match.…

Pilot turned CISO says when admitting to an error isn't seen as a failure, improvement becomes easier to achieve To improve security, the cybersecurity industry needs to follow the aviation industry's shift from a blame culture to a "just" culture, according to director of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association Serge Christiaans.…

Raspboss Eben Upton teases products built on AI-enabled edge sensors Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation has revealed it’s made a “strategic investment” in Raspberry Pi Ltd, the designer of popular single board computers.…

Amazon Bedrock offers APIs for multiple models, plus EC2 to run 'em and create custom LLMs On Thursday Amazon Web Services announced a new API platform, named Bedrock, that hosts generative AI models built by top startups AI21 Labs, Anthropic, and Stability AI on its cloud services.…

Think the news has execs at Microsoft 365 or AWS quaking in their boots? A late March outage of Tencent's two major social platforms, WeChat and QQ, resulted in the firing of managers and directors, thereby proving that the hand of justice at the Chinese tech giant is, well, rather strong.…

Go on, take the money and run (Not actual legal advice) Google has — unfortunately for some — fixed a bug in its Pay mobile app that was handing out free money to people.…

Blueprints flogged off to Taiwan's MiTAC An Intel division responsible for designing and planning out server-grade systems is the latest victim on CEO Pat Gelsinger's chopping block.…

As Europe forms task force to steer probes into ChatGPT US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is lately bent on passing bipartisan legislation enabling independent public audits of commercial AI products before they're unleashed on the world.…

When bragging about your job on Discord gets just a little out of hand? The FBI has detained a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman suspected of leaking a trove of classified Pentagon documents on Discord.…

In Windows 11 it'll soon default to the Snipping Tool. And that's just fine with users, right? Now that Microsoft has put that whole "aCropalypse" privacy problem in the rear view, the software maker is ready to get the Snipping Tool feature in front of more Windows 11 users.…

Alleged killer said to be industry pal, faces one count of murder Updated San Francisco police have arrested a man in connection with the killing of tech executive Robert Lee.…

And not only because not considering their options makes them look bad Sustainability goals such as greater energy efficiency have risen up the agenda with telecoms operators, to the point where these concerns are now claimed to be affecting network architecture decisions for the next phase of 5G deployments.…

Musk's everything app begins to take shape ... by adding links to an outside service In what looks to be another move to turn it into Elon Musk's dream "everything app," Twitter will begin allowing its users to trade stocks via "social trading company" eToro.…

Both FreeBSD 13.2 and OpenBSD 7.3 are here New point releases of both the general-purpose Linux rival FreeBSD and the security-focused, traditional and rather minimalist OpenBSD have landed.…

You don't need alien asteroids, you just need a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and liquid hot magma A new research model shows that Earth's oceans could have formed from interactions between a hydrogen-rich early atmosphere and oxygen within the planet's magma.…

You could just watch less TikTok or Twitch, maybe go outside Analysis There's no denying the fact that streaming video is insanely popular – now accounting for upwards of 80 percent of all internet traffic, according to some estimates.…

We should know why we see what we see, not be left in the dark Column As it’s been about forty years since I’ve had pimples, it astounds me that YouTube’s recommendation engine recently served me videos of people with some really severe skin problems - generally on their noses. The preview images themselves are horrifying, and should really come with some sort of content warning. I immediately tell YouTube “I don’t want this” and “never recommend this channel.”…

Air by itself just doesn't cut it anymore European cloud operator OVHcloud has just celebrated 20 years of using water cooling technology in its datacenters, leading up to the development of a hybrid system that combines both water and immersion cooling to drive greater efficiency when operating demanding workloads.…

VSI releases OpenVMS 9.2-1 and x86 hobby licenses VMS Software Inc (VSI) has opened its hobbyist licensing scheme for the x86-64 version of one of the most reliable OSes in the business.…

We speak to professor deeply involved in multi-year, billion-plus-euro mission Updated On December 4, 1973, NASA's Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to observe Jupiter up close, zipping by at a distance of 82,000 miles above its swirling clouds. Its twin probe, Pioneer 11, followed a year later, and got three times closer to the gas giant. Now the European Space Agency is about to try for an even closer look at the biggest planet in our locale.…

And also, privacy safeguards Italy's privacy watchdog will lift the country's ban on ChatGPT if OpenAI agrees to enforce rules protecting minors and users' personal data by April 30, it announced on Wednesday. …

Strangling competition won't fly here, says Brussels The European Commission has filed a statement of objections regarding Broadcom's proposed purchase of VMware, which the EC said may be harmful to competition.…

Is this what the kids mean by owning the libs? In early 2002, then Microsoft chairman Bill Gates issued his Trustworthy Computing memo to ensure that computing "is as available, reliable and secure as electricity, water services and telephony."…

Senator Wyden warns full probe needed AT&T is "concealing vital cybersecurity reporting" about its FirstNet phone network for first responders and the US military, according to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who said the network had been dubbed unsafe by CISA.…

你好 [insert name], 我在 Ministry of Public Security 工作 [insert shakedown] Criminals posing as law enforcement agents of the Chinese government are shaking down Chinese nationals living the United States by accusing them of financial crimes and threatening to arrest or hurt them if they don't pay, according to the FBI.…

Need more speed? Just stuff it with custom ASICs Fortinet claims its latest firewall can secure an entire datacenter while consuming about a quarter the power of its competitors.…

Software fix coming – that'll be a braking change we'd actually like to see A mayhem of self-driving Waymo cars succumbed to San Francisco fog on Tuesday morning and came to a halt, briefly tying up traffic in the city's Balboa Terrace neighborhood.…

Please don't pair it with ChatGPT, please don't pair it with ChatGPT Video Two Digidog robots will return to New York City for police work despite earlier criticism that ended with the cops terminating a $94,000 contract and sending the remote-controlled machines back to Boston Dynamics.…

Maybe soon all our friends are electric America's Environmental Protection Agency today proposed a bunch of vehicle emissions standards that, while not banning gasoline-powered vehicles outright, could lead to automakers drastically speeding up EV adoption.…