The Register

All fun and games until the chip factories are in the crosshairs US President Joe Biden has heralded an Indo-Pacific trade deal signed by several nations that do not include Taiwan. At the same time, Biden warned China that America would help defend Taiwan from attack; it is home to a critical slice of the global chip industry, after all. …

Firewall isn't a made-up word from the Hackers movie, people A large number of servers running the Kubernetes API have been left exposed to the internet, which is not great: they're potentially vulnerable to abuse.…

High-performance platform choices are going beyond the ubiquitous x86 standard Arm-based servers continue to gain momentum with Gigabyte Technology introducing a system based on Ampere's Altra processors paired with Nvidia A100 GPUs, aimed at demanding workloads such as AI training and high-performance compute (HPC) applications.…

GitOps fans can take a spin on the free tier for pull-based deployment One-stop DevOps shop GitLab has announced version 15 of its platform, hot on the heels of pull-based GitOps turning up on the platform's free tier.…

Not everyone needs it, but those who do need to consider 3 things, says Asim Razzaq The push is on to get every enterprise thinking they're missing out on the next big thing if they don't adopt a multicloud strategy.…

As staff churn at 27% a year, senior execs offered lots of shares to keep growth coming Infosys has extended Salil Parekh's term as CEO and managing director for an additional five years, according to a stock exchange filing made on Sunday.…

Dev Channel Insiders get Windows Subsystem for Android updates Microsoft is continuing to lavish love on Android for Windows with an update to Android 12.1 that disables telemetry by default, although, as Microsoft notes, "this update may cause some apps to fail to launch."…

A sign that the company is taking data sovereignty concerns more seriously Google has established a European Advisory Board for Google Cloud made up of executives drawn from across industry in the region.…

Notorious selfie-scraper must pay $9.43 million – less than half of predicted fine – says data regulator Updated The UK's data protection body today made good on its threat to fine controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI, ordering it to stop scraping the personal data of residents from the internet, delete what it already has, and pay a £7.5 million ($9.43 million) fine.…

<movietrailer voice>The world was not ready for this gift. It is still not ready for this gift. Coming soon to a Gopherspace near you An announcement about a new handheld games console a few days ago caused confusion, because it was online but not on the web. It was published on Gopher.…

With web apps, Apple insists on taking the pith helmet Opinion It has been 14 years since Apple opened its App Store with its shiny shopfront of tempting toys and gloomy back office of rules and rentier revenues, but only now has the proposed EU Digital Markets Act threatened to end Apple's web browser engine monopoly. …

Not so much process privilege rings, more circles of hell Who, Me? Be careful what humorous messages you leave in your app, for you never know who might see them. Welcome to Who, Me?…

Security engineer outlines self-help strategy for keeping software supply chain safe Following the recent disclosure of a technique for hijacking certain NPM packages, security engineer Danish Tariq has proposed a defensive strategy for those looking to assess whether their web apps include dependencies tied to subvertable email domains.…

Survives all manner of indiginities in Reg tests but may stuggle to cross over from boots to suits If you drop Dell's Latitude 5430 laptop from hip height onto vinyl flooring that covers a concrete slab, it lands with a sharp crack, bounces a little, then skitters to a halt. Drop it two meters onto sodden grass and it lands with a meaty squish on its long rear edge. The impact pushes a spray of water and flecks of mud through the crack between the screen and keyboard, with a spot or two of each making it onto the keyboard's ASDF row.…

Redmond claims the numbers are scary, but won't release them Microsoft has sounded the alarm on DDoS malware called XorDdos that targets Linux endpoints and servers.…

AM5 socket to bring desktop CPUs to life in late 2022, mid-range laptop CPU to follow AMD has revealed more details of its Zen 4 processor architecture, a desktop CPU that puts it to work, and a socket to house that product.…

Less than two weeks into his new gig, Yoon cozies up to Biden as China and DPRK loom US president Biden and South Korea's new president Yoon Suk Yeol have pledged further co-operation in many technologies, including joint efforts to combat North Korea.…

Michael Dell could be the key to any deal Broadcom is in early talks to buy VMware, according to The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Reuters.…

Adds 'feature activation' for Intel silicon, but Chipzilla still isn't saying what that means Linus Torvalds has released version 5.18 of the Linux kernel.…

Big OEMs hogging production and COVID causing supply issues The system-on-chip (SoC) side of the semiconductor industry is poised for growth between now and 2026, when it's predicted to be worth $6.85 billion, according to an analyst's report. …

Plus: Next PyTorch release will support Apple GPUs so devs can train neural networks on their own laptops In brief Miscreants can easily steal someone else's identity by tricking live facial recognition software using deepfakes, according to a new report.…

How? Founder tells The Register 'Robots… lots of robots' Imagine a future where racks of computer servers hum quietly in darkness below the surface of the Moon.…

Also, Chinese IT admin jailed for deleting database, and the NSA promises no more backdoors In brief The notorious Russian-aligned Conti ransomware gang has upped the ante in its attack against Costa Rica, threatening to overthrow the government if it doesn't pay a $20 million ransom. …

Because Beijing isn't above covert ops to accomplish its five-year goals Chinese cyberspies targeted two Russian defense institutes and possibly another research facility in Belarus, according to Check Point Research.…

Trade watchdog, and President, reminds that COPPA can ban ya The US Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said it intends to take action against educational technology companies that unlawfully collect data from children using online educational services.…

Chinese joint venture's ousted CEO tries to hang on - who will get control? The saga surrounding Arm's joint venture in China just took another intriguing turn: a mysterious firm named Lotcap Group claims it has signed a letter of intent to buy a 51 percent stake in Arm China from existing investors in the country.…

High pricing, lack of software make smartNICs a tough sell, despite offload potential SmartNICs have the potential to accelerate enterprise workloads, but don't expect to see them bring hyperscale-class efficiency to most datacenters anytime soon, ZK Research's Zeus Kerravala told The Register.…

China refuses to share benchmarks, US sharpens focus on developing optimized software The US is racing to catch up with China in supercomputing performance amid fears that the country may widen its lead in exascale computers over the next decade, according to reports.…

With any other portable, this would be bad news for existing owners Laptop vendor Framework Computer has launched new faster models. Unlike in the case of any other laptop maker, if you already have one, this is good news.…

A couple of thruster failures shouldn't affect the Calamity Capsule's second attempt at reaching space station Two and a half years after its first disastrous launch, Boeing has once again fired its CST-100 Starliner capsule at the International Space Station.…

Factory is a model for one the company has planned in Texas US president Joe Biden kicked off his first Asian tour since taking office in South Korea, where he visited a Samsung semiconductor fab said to be the model for the company's planned plant in Taylor, Texas.…

How to make a free messaging platform bought for $22 billion profitable At Meta's first Conversations keynote yesterday, the company announced the WhatsApp Cloud API, aimed at improving the customer service experience for businesses of all sizes.…

May 10 update addressed serious vulns but also had problems of its own Microsoft has released an out-of-band patch to deal with an authentication issue that was introduced in the May 10 Windows update.…

Customers at other Sungard datacenters are not affected UK customers of datacenter and colo service provider Sungard Availability Services are to be transferred to Daisy Corporate Services, part of the Daisy Group, months after Sungard went into administration.…

The granddaddy of FOSS UNIX just keeps on trucking – and is a lot easier to install this time round The latest version of FreeBSD, 13.1, was released this week for both 32 and 64-bit forms of x86, Arm, POWER – and 64-bit RISC-V.…

Research claims it fails to autofill certain names in Han characters, Microsoft says it's technical error Updated Microsoft search engine Bing censors terms deemed sensitive in China from its autosuggestion feature internationally, according to research from Citizen Lab.…

Hopefully an end to '... and you'll never guess what happened next!' Something for the Weekend Another coffee, please. Yes, I know we're about to start. There is always time for one more coffee. It's good for your brain. Thanks.…

Network? What's that when it's at home? On Call This week we bring you a shocking incident for a Register reader who was party to an electrical engineer's earthly delights.…

Startup QuSecure is the latest vendor to jump into the field with its as-a-service offering Analysis Startup QuSecure will this week introduce a service aimed at addressing how to safeguard cybersecurity once quantum computing renders current public key encryption technologies vulnerable.…

Gitee apologises but won't explain why this is happening China’s approved GitHub clone, Gitee, has warned users that it will make all existing repositories private pending a mysterious review of their content.…

Browser makers line up for Google's extension system but complaints persist Mozilla on Wednesday launched a Developer Preview program to solicit feedback on Firefox extensions that implement Manifest v3, a Google-backed revision of browser extension architecture.…

Ban on shopping from September, rip and replace order with 2024 deadline The Canadian government has joined many of its allies and banned the use of Huawei and ZTE tech in its 5G networks, as part of a new telecommunications security framework.…

But also makes it plain that offshore entities must comply India has slightly softened its controversial new reporting requirements for information security incidents and made it plain they apply to multinational companies.…

Two becomes one as ThinkPad P16 stands alone and HX replaces mobile Xeon Lenovo has halved its range of portable workstations.…

Well, that clears things up? Maybe not. The US Justice Department has directed prosecutors not to charge "good-faith security researchers" with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) if their reasons for hacking are ethical — things like bug hunting, responsible vulnerability disclosure, or above-board penetration testing.…

AI chips are sucking down 600W+ and the solution could be to drown them. Intel this week unveiled a $700 million sustainability initiative to try innovative liquid and immersion cooling technologies to the datacenter.…

Swiss banks cough up around half of the proceeds of crime The US government has recovered over $15 million in proceeds from the 3ve digital advertising fraud operation that cost businesses more than $29 million for ads that were never viewed.…

Running ad auctions while also buying and selling ads may be outlawed for large firms A bipartisan group of US lawmakers has proposed legislation that would likely force Alphabet's Google, Meta's Facebook, and Amazon to divest portions of their ad businesses.…

Cupertino's 51% control is why NA market grew while the world shrunk, says Canalys Smartphone markets the world over are in decline, but that news doesn't appear to have reached North America, where the market grew by 4 percent in the first quarter of 2022.…

With few options, Russia will look to half-fast chips from Chinese maker With Russia cut off from foreign processor makers Intel and AMD, the country has been scrambling to switch to more local CPUs and components.…