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Public cloud expenses have businesses scrambling for alternatives that won't melt the budget Canalys Forums EMEA 2024 Organizations are being forced to rethink where they host workloads in response to ballooning AI demands combined with rising energy bills, and shoving them into the public cloud may not be the answer....

Ambition meets reality as geopolitical, technical, and logistical challenges loom analysis Over the last couple of weeks, TSMC's ambitious roadmap for its 2nm manufacturing process has sparked significant attention. The chipmaker is set to begin the mass production of its 2nm process node in 2025....

Second alleged intrusion on English NHS org systems this week Yet another of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) systems appears to be under attack, with a ransomware gang threatening to leak stolen data it says is from one of England's top children's hospitals....

Ofcom's Online Nation report drills into the UK's internet habits for 2024 Usage of Elon Musk's X social media platform is declining in the UK, and adult Brits aren't particularly interested in generative AI tools....

IT admins be warned: 13,000 tech suppliers coming for your employer's checkbook Canalys Forums EMEA 2024 When Microsoft needs to make a market, it turns to the channel - a nebulous term used for resellers, distributors and an assortment of other independent third party suppliers that sell wares and services. And by goodness Microsoft needs more feet on the street than ever if it's going to appease investors desperate to see returns on the billions of dollars it's betting on Generative Artificial Intelligence....

Looks better on your beloved's finger than a Blu-ray, too Researchers at China's University of Science and Technology published research this week in which they detail how they achieved record-breaking storage density of 1.85 terabytes per cubic centimeter by encoding information in diamonds....

Every time he needed help, he'd use a loudspeaker to ask for it On Call Welcome once more to On Call, the weekly reader-contributed column in which The Register tells your tales of tech support....

Digital clone of Knosuke Matsushita to dispense management advice to new generation Japanese multinational electronics mainstay Panasonic - founded in 1918 as Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works -has created an AI version of its long deceased founder, Knosuke Matsushita....

That will limit Chipzilla's ability to cash in and bail itself out Intel has quietly revealed that the $7.86 billion of cash coming its way thanks to the US CHIPS Act came with conditions that include Chipzilla retaining control of its foundries - an asset the struggling silicon giant may have intended to offload....

India unhappy about treatment of some games, Canada upset by adware monopoly Google on Thursday found itself facing competition probes from two of the world's biggest nations....

Also intros surveillance tweaks to protect very successful AN0M fake messaging app sting Australia's Senate on Friday passed a law that will require some social media platforms to "take reasonable steps" to ensure that people under 16 can't use their services, and another that aims to safeguard a very successful sting that caught criminals with a fake messaging app....

If at first you don't succeed, you might be on the Microsoft Exchange team Microsoft has resumed the rollout of an Exchange Security update that was paused following reports of broken transport rules and disrupted email flow....

Ten rules for maximizing your grindset! #1: Let a bot do your work for you If you've spent much time on LinkedIn, you've probably run into self-congratulatory posts, tips on how to maximize your "grindset," and other business lessons from alleged thought leaders. It's tiring, but a study of such posts has pulled the curtain off the wizard: More than half of such posts are written by AI....

El Reg has seen the presentation to CISPE members which sources say was intended to keep the lawsuit over licensing alive Exclusive Google Cloud dangled hundreds of million of euros worth of financial incentives to ally itself with an association of European cloud providers that had lodged a complaint against Microsoft, according to confidential documents seen by The Register....

Ayar Labs contends silicon photonics will be key to scaling beyond the rack and taming the heat SC24 Datacenters have been trending toward denser, more power-hungry systems for years. In case you missed it, 19-inch racks are now pushing power demands beyond 120 kilowatts in high-density configurations, with many making the switch to direct liquid cooling to tame the heat....

Systems are isolated and pulled offline, while scheduled procedures are canceled The ongoing cyber security incident affecting a North West England NHS group has forced sites to fall back on pen-and-paper operations....

BCS calls for digital literacy GCSE alongside Computer Science The UK's professional body for the IT workforce has called for a more "inclusive" digital literacy age-16 qualification alongside Computer Science, which it says is "theoretical and demanding."...

'I love this work. I love what I'm doing. It's so cool' Feature The Voyager probes have entered a new phase of operations. As recent events have shown, keeping the venerable spacecraft running is challenging as the end of their mission nears....

'See you in court', defendant posts Google filed a lawsuit last week against an Indian semiconductor engineer for allegedly posting trade secrets related to its Google Pixel chip designs online....

Scumbags play on victims' worst fears in phishing campaign referencing UK Employment Tribunal A current phishing campaign scares recipients into believing they've been sacked, when in reality they've been hacked - and infected with infostealers and other malware that means a payday for the crooks behind the scam....

120-meter colossus expected to be online in 2028 - around the same time the Square Kilometer Array A 120-meter diameter radio telescope is under construction in China and, once built, will be the world's largest fully steerable device of its kind, according to the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS)....

Investigation is apparently sweeping, but keen on info about AI, security, and cloud The US Federal Trade Commission appears to have launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft....

Memory and foundry businesses get new leaders as Chaebol seeks to enter HBM heaven Generative AI has created a once-in-a-generation surge in memory sales and semiconductor production - which Samsung Electronics has managed to flub, leading to a Wednesday announcement that it's named new senior leadership for its memory and foundry businesses....

Sure, it sent an email and FAQ saying it had - but that was a mistake, you see Broadcom has made an embarrassing mistake: sending an email in which it mistakenly announced the end of its VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification....

Let's see how this goes India has decided to rebuild the platforms it offers citizens to process their taxes and make the system paperless....

Plus, a brand-new backdoor, GhostSpider, is linked to the cyber spy crew's operations The reach of the China-linked Salt Typhoon gang extends beyond telecommunications giants in the United States, and its arsenal includes several backdoors - including a brand-new malware dubbed GhostSpider - according to Trend Micro researchers....

Funny what putting more effort and resources into IT security can do Attackers - possibly China's Salt Typhoon cyber-espionage crew - compromised an unnamed wireline provider's network and used this access to try to break into T-Mobile US systems multiple times over the past few weeks, according to its Chief Security Officer Jeff Simon....

Even if 98% say they're worried about energy availability and reliability Investors are increasingly concerned about the availability and reliability of power for datacenters, yet most are still confident that investment in the sector will expand over the next several years, driven by demand for AI and cloud services....

Researcher spotted open database before criminals ... we hope Exclusive More than 600,000 sensitive files containing thousands of people's criminal histories, background checks, vehicle and property records were exposed to the internet in a non-password protected database belonging to data brokerage SL Data Services, according to a security researcher....

Authorization conditional on operations not causing harmful interference Despite granting Starlink conditional authorization for direct-to-cell satellite-based phone services, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has deferred a request to operate at signal strengths beyond those allowed....

Bootkitty doesn't bite... yet Security researchers say they've stumbled upon the first-ever UEFI bootkit targeting Linux, illustrating a key moment in the evolution of such tools....

Confusion over Connected Experiences settings in 365 apps spark concerns Updated Microsoft's Connected Experiences option in its productivity suite has been causing consternation amid accusations that the default setting might allow Microsoft to train AI models using customers' Word and Excel documents and other data....

From post-Athlon 64 dive into near obscurity to chip market stalwart A decade ago, the landscape of the x86 processor market was nowhere near as competitive as it is now. AMD really wasn't the force in the processor market it is known as today....

Same form factor, more performance for industry The Raspberry Pi maker has rounded off a busy few weeks with the launch of an updated Compute Module 5 - it has the same form factor but considerably more power than the previous generation....

And the company is doing the right thing with its database Foursquare Labs is closing its venue-finding app, rather than the mobile game - but it's open sourcing the worldwide database it built....

$190 million project under scrutiny after reported failures Oracle's electronic health records system is under scrutiny by multiple Swedish authorities after a $190 million rollout in the Vastra Gotaland region (VGR) encountered significant issues....

Poor software projects among efforts to overhaul FCA that came up short, MPs find UK politicians have slammed the nation's financial regulator for failing to implement a transformation program underpinned by technology....

Cracked Labs report explores the use of motion sensors and wireless networking kit to monitor offices Office buildings have become like web browsers - they're full of tracking technology, a trend documented in a report out this week by Cracked Labs....

Thinks customers may have forgiven it after revenue hits a record CrowdStrike can't yet confidently predict the financial impact of the failed update to its Falcon software that crashed millions of computers around the world last July, but is confident its third quarter results show customers can't find a better security product....

But PCs and Nvidia are weak points, because you're not buying one and can't buy the other Dell believes its customers are consolidating server fleets to save energy and free up rack space for AI hardware - and has a giant jump in revenue to to prove it....

Provides insight to how China gets inside US systems, perhaps at Verizon and Infosys A 59 year-old Florida telco engineer was sentenced to 48 months in prison after he served as a spy for China and provided Beijing with details like his employer's cybersecurity, according to the US Department of Justice....

Software snafu took five minutes to roll back. The mess it made took hours to clean up Cloudflare has admitted that it broke its own logging-as-a-service service with a bad software update, and that customer data was lost as a result....

Connection will tie remote territory to Darwin in North Australia A Google-funded subsea cable will connect the Australian territory of Christmas Island to Darwin on the mainland....

You need to know in advance when your kit will be bricked or downgraded - it's the law Makers of software-enabled products have been put on notice by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for failing to disclose how long their products will receive software updates....

America's neighbors now face 25% because of fentanyl and immigration, China just 10% on top of existing duties President-elect Donald Trump's tariff threats have been formalized with a pair of social media statements that, while not nearly as steep as promised on the campaign trail, still threaten to complicate relations with the US's three largest trade partners....

Impact of AI-integrated notebooks on overall market remains limited for now, says TrendForce The global laptop market is forecast to grow by 4.9 percent during 2025, but commercial upgrade cycles and the looming Windows 10 end of life are driving this rather than demand for AI-capable PCs....

Complaint claims he trespassed, gave himself discounts, and sorted CCTV access... A Kansas City man who stands accused of having a disregard for basic opsec made his first court appearance on Friday over a series of alleged cybercrimes....

Scanners, printers, and... fax machines? Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11 24H2 has issues with USB-connected devices that support the Scanner Communication Language (eSCL) protocol. A compatibility hold has been applied to the hardware....

A mere 13 years since the last point release FLTK, one of the oldest and most stable FOSS toolkits for programming GUI apps, is back with new shiny....

In case anyone forgot about Change Healthcare American hospitals and healthcare organizations would be required to adopt multi-factor authentication (MFA) and other minimum cybersecurity standards under new legislation proposed by a bipartisan group of US senators....