The Register

Analyst says it's not a 'downward spiral' as sales are still defying predictions Shipments of PCs have finally slowed down after two years of double-digit growth, declining worldwide by 5.1 per cent year-on-year in Q1 2022, market research firm International Data Corp (IDC) said on Monday.…

Shouldn't a company from the same stable as Tata Consulting Services do better with a day one traffic flood? Giant Indian industrial conglomerate Tata has launched its attempt to rival Amazon.com and Walmart's e-commerce efforts, but suffered a bad case of the first day scalability jitters.…

Please dismiss any thoughts you had that increasing regulation might have hurt the economy China's Cyberspace Administration has published statistics to assert that the nation's big technology companies are growing and not laying off thousands of workers.…

Washington looks to private sector help for Open RAN ambitions The US Department of Defense is encouraging companies to build open and interoperable 5G, and it's willing to shell out a portion of $3 million to anyone who provides a solution.…

A model can improve overnight, it just takes pared-down scale and a little human intervention It turns out the machines still need us after all, at least for now. And while the largest systems get the most attention, the secret to truly useful, fair AI are best served small and with plenty of human input.…

The smallest artificial spin ice ever created could be part of novel low-power HPC Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich have managed to accomplish a technological breakthrough that could lead to new forms of low-energy supercomputing.…

ML master pitches trimmed-down deep learning for the masses In 2015, modern AI trailblazer Andrew Ng's recipe for success was to go big on neural networks, data, and monolithic systems. Now that recipe has created a problem: the technology is dominated by only a few rich companies with the money and headcount to build such immense systems.…

Do we have enough toner for barracks in Fort Bliss base in Texas? The US Department of Defense is to construct and try out the largest 3D-printed buildings in the Americas: three barracks in a Lone Star army base.…

FromSoftware's magnum opus, made with input from George R R Martin, invites new and veteran players alike The RPG Greetings, traveler, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. You'll forgive the lateness of this edition because there was really only one game that mattered in March – perhaps the entirety of 2022 – and that game's name is Elden Ring.…

Online attacks follow suspected airspace violation by Russian aircraft Cyberattacks took down Finnish government websites on Friday while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Finland's members of parliament (MPs).…

Microsoft OneDrive: Missing documents? Hold my beer Atlassian is still scrambling to recover from a recent software script fiasco and is hoping no customer data gets lost, which may be more than Microsoft can manage if OneDrive, as some have reported, has been intermittently corrupting large uploads for at least two months.…

Saturday rendezvous planned for historic commercial orbit ride A retired NASA astronaut and three space tourists are right now tucked inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule above Earth for the first-ever purely commercial mission to the International Space Station.…

Batteries, displays, cameras and more, apparently In a nod to right-to-repair efforts, Google is partnering with iFixit to offer spare parts for its Pixel smartphones dating all the way back to 2017.…

Double-standard rules have strengthened iGiant's gatekeeper power Apple's ramp up in iOS privacy measures has affected small data brokers, yet apps can still collect group-oriented data and identify users via device fingerprinting, according to a study out of Oxford.…

Software giant sinkholes systems used by Russian gang Microsoft this week seized seven internet domains run by Russia-linked threat group Strontium, which was using the infrastructure to target Ukrainian institutions as well as think tanks in the US and EU, apparently to support Russian's invasion of its neighbor.…

Goodness, gracious, lots of insights on great balls of fire The US Space Force is publicly releasing nearly 30 years of data on fireball meteors in the hopes it can improve the detection and impact prediction of near-Earth objects (NEOs).…

Special method for production gets cash injection from govt, vendors New techniques for producing lithium could play a vital part in making batteries for applications ranging from smartphones to electric vehicles that are more environmentally friendly than current methods of extraction.…

Some fear they'll lose workstation sales to Lenovo, AMD's exclusive launch partner for the T Pro 5000 Special report If you've been on the hunt for a pre-built workstation with AMD's Ryzen Threadripper processors, there's a chance you've noticed fewer options available and longer lead times from different PC system builders.…

12 years on, rebates-for-not-using-AMD-chips case isn't over yet... The European Commission (EC) is going ahead with an appeal against a court decision earlier this year to drop a $1.2 billion fine imposed against Intel for anti-competitive behavior.…

Default user gone, Bluetooth pairing during setup, and latest LTS Linux kernel An update to the Debian Bullseye-based Raspberry Pi OS is being rolled out with both quality-of-life improvements and one very important tweak: an overdue departure of the default user.…

Remember warning about hurried release to meet Brexit deadline? Never forget Updated A system vital to the flow of goods across the UK's border has suffered a devastating outage following a rush to implement it in time for the Brexit deadline.…

Agency upset YouTube hasn't removed 'fake' videos about activities it won't call 'war' Russia's communications scold is fed up with all the misinformation online, at least with regard to Google and its YouTube subsidiary.…

This week's column coming to you via hologram. Or a spaceship Something for the Weekend How can you tell if a fish is upset? It doesn't grind its pharyngeal teeth, clench its fins or utter moist oaths. And it's not as if you can see tears streaming down its face.…

Standard grants access to public hotspots without having to register each time The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has completed testing to prepare for the deployment of WBA OpenRoaming, a federation service built to give seamless access to Wi-Fi hotspots across Europe's municipal networks.…

Google says Topaz will lower latency, even though both nations already have shorter routes to bit barns Google has revealed it will fund a submarine cable connecting Japan and Canada.…

CWU wants 10% for members, cites biting inflation rises in UK The Communication Workers Union is lining up an industrial action ballot for members working at BT after rejecting the telecom company's offer of a flat rate £1,500 pay rise for 58,000 frontline workers.…

Beijing may have had a hand in attacks in Ukraine, too China has been accused of conducting a long-term cyber attack on India's power grid, and has been implicated in cyber attacks against targets in Ukraine.…

Back up your data, it's later than you think On Call It's a tale from before the times of Bitlocker and TPM in On Call today as a Register reader demonstrates the importance of knowing one's true worth.…

'Opaque and difficult' Google Ad rules cost biz 20 hours profit Google has failed in its bid to dismiss a €150 million fine ordered by France's monopoly watchdog in 2019 for exploiting its position in the search advertising market, a court ruled on Thursday.…

Office 365 and Windows 365 prices to rise in September – one SKU by much more than recent commercial increase Microsoft has hiked the price of Office 365 and Windows 365 versions it offers to non-profit customers, effective September 1, 2022.…

For now, a mere 80 million more citizens can trial the Digital Yuan China's central bank digital currency, the Digital Yuan, has been integrated with Tencent's flagship messaging app WeChat, and appears as a payment option when users employ the super-app shop.…

Appoints independent committee and gives angry investors most of what they want Toshiba has decided it will consider proposals to take the company private, and devise yet another strategy to improve its performance, suggesting alternative proposals for the company's future will be revealed – and perhaps decided - in late June.…

He's the third gangster in crew to face time behind bars Another member of notorious cybercrime ring FIN7 is headed to jail after the gang breached major companies' networks across the US and stole more than $1 billion from these businesses' customers.…

Automated HR in the cross-hairs over discrimination law A newly proposed amendment to California's hiring discrimination laws would make AI-powered employment decision-making software a source of legal liability. …

Plus: More financially motivated miscreants try to monetize invasion Facebook is fighting a surge in cyber-espionage attempts and misinformation campaigns related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a new report by parent group Meta.…

Equip Amazon rivals with flexible networking chips? Sounds Epyc With cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services increasingly building their own silicon, it's no surprise that large chip companies like Intel and AMD are trying to find new ways not just to remain relevant in the cloud but to become can't-miss vendors for next-generation architectures.…

Bundled version of Node.js simplifies executing downloaded code Adobe Creative Cloud Experience, a service installed via the Creative Cloud installer for Windows, includes a Node.js executable that can be abused to infect and compromise a victim's PC.…

Want that thing, but in a different color, and don't know the name? Multisearch has your back Google's latest feature is making its Lens visual search tool mingle with text for image searches for those difficult-to-describe vague queries.…

Datacenter operator with $2.3b value said to be discussing options a year after SPAC merger Datacenter operator Cyxtera is considering putting itself up for sale, according to reports.…

Fintech provider flaw could have hit dozens of U.S. banks, says Salt Security Salt Security spotted a vulnerability in a large fintech company's digital platform that would have granted attackers admin access to banking systems in addition to allowing them to transfer funds to their own accounts.…

Pressure on Congress to submit the America COMPETES Act ASAP The Biden administration wants the $52 billion CHIPS Act passed without delay, according to a classified briefing between senior officials and a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives.…

Improved defenses give organizations more room to negotiate but won't protect from lawsuits, says law firm An increased willingness on the part of enterprises to invest in cybersecurity may finally be starting to make a difference, according to US law giant BakerHostetler.…

Motion calls for repairability ratings and expected lifetime of products European lawmakers are voting in plenary on a Right to Repair resolution today amid calls for the initiative to go even further.…

Even notoriously tech averse stock market gambler can't resist piece of pandemic-boosted PC extravaganza Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has taken up a double-digit stake in PC and print biz HP Inc's stock worth about $4.2 billion, a move that sent the company's share price up by 10 percent.…

30-year-old software that first introduced Windows Registry and killed Real Mode Time flies whether you're having fun or simply trying to work out which Registry change left your system hopelessly borked, and before you know it, Windows 3.1 is turning 30.…

Semiconductor Alliance wants US R&D billions to be dished out fairly, broadly, objectively A newly formed group is calling for the US to ensure efforts and public funding to boost the nation's domestic semiconductor industry benefits a broad family of stakeholders, not just a few companies.…

No actual users harmed yet as dept tests safety of pushing water, telecoms services in single pipeline Parts of South Yorkshire are to get fiber broadband run through mains water pipes in a two-year trial to evaluate the viability of the technology for connecting more homes.…

Cicada's months-long global espionage campaign marks an expansion of team's capabilities A China-backed crew is said to be running a global espionage campaign against governments, religious groups, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) by, in some cases, possibly exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange servers.…

Optional update should apply to all users, says Vivaldi boss Microsoft's one-click default browser change under Windows 11 is being met with raised eyebrows from its browser rivals.…

Company cites data security and privacy as reasons for cleaning house Outdated apps will no longer be accessible on Androids that are either new or updated to the latest software starting November 1, thanks to a Google policy that was announced Wednesday.…