The Register

Will stop accepting ads instead before TTPA comes into force Google has decided the European Union's Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising will be so hard to comply with it's better off not trying....

Emails and tool-tracking software weren't heeded, but nothing scary happened - except to the nylon tool An Airbus A380 operated by Australian airline Qantas clocked over 290 hours of flight time despite a tool having been left inside one of its engines, according to a report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau....

Four-core crawler can't beat current - or ancient - AMDs or Intels Lenovo's Chinese operation has created a premium laptop based around a slow and out-of-date x86-compatible processor - but at least it's locally designed....

Revised sueball over WordPress brawl tries Sherman Antitrust Act on for size WP Engine, a hosting provider for websites running open source WordPress software, has revised its legal complaint against rival Automattic and its CEO Matthew Mullenweg to include antitrust allegations....

Because life's not weird enough in the United States these days Video The US government has known about aliens since the 1940s, but kept the truth from us all, according to testimony offered at a Wednesday session of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability....

Plus a bonus hard-coded local API key A now-patched, high-severity bug in Fortinet's FortiClient VPN application potentially allows a low-privilege rogue user or malware on a vulnerable Windows system to gain higher privileges from another user, execute code and possibly take over the box, and delete log files....

And there's no OTA patching your way out of faulty drive inverter MOSFETs The Tesla Cybertruck is closing in on an average of a recall every two months this year, as it notified the NHTSA last week of a sixth fix that can't be software patched away....

Serial extortionist of medical facilities stooped to cavernous lows in search of small payouts A rampant cybercrook and repeat attacker of medical facilities in the US is being sentenced to a decade in prison, around seven years after the first of his many crimes....

Good news for supporting Windows on Arm devices and adding new ones Microsoft is making ISO images of Windows 11 on Arm available at last, years after the hardware architecture made its debut....

Yes, the heat shield has been tweaked. But there's also a banana for scale SpaceX has transported its Starship spacecraft to the launchpad in preparation for a scheduled flight test on November 18....

Despite 49% surge in shipments, buyers seem unconvinced Warehouses in the IT channel are stocking up with AI-capable PCs - industry watcher Canalys claims these made up 20 percent of all shipments during Q3 2024, amounting to some 13.3 million units worldwide....

Until compatibility issues are properly addressed, it'll never stand up to x86 Analysis Qualcomm has set its sights on Arm-based Windows laptops, which, in theory, offer notable advantages. The company's Arm-powered Snapdragon processors promise exceptional battery life that puts x86 machines to shame, fanless designs, and integrated 5G connectivity that leave Intel and AMD looking dated. By betting on a mobile and connected world, Qualcomm aims to position Arm-based Windows laptops as the future....

And yes, that does include commercial use in production Broadcom has made its desktop hypervisors freeware - even for production use. Not open source, but free stuff is still good, right?...

Out with the old, in with the nucleus ... if ever finished Increasingly, datacenter operators are putting their faith in the promise of miniaturized nuclear power plants - better known as small modular reactors (SMRs) - to fuel their ever-growing energy demands....

Other subscriptions also set for updates in the name of 'cash flow flexibility' Microsoft is introducing flexible billing for Microsoft 365 Copilot starting next month to spread the cost of an annual subscription. For a price....

It's the Heinz of Linux - but that only boasted 57 varieties At the end of October, Fedora 41 came out, with more different variants than ever before: 29 by our count, not including all the architectures and download options....

Full details exposed, putting shoppers at serious risk of fraud Updated Children's shoemaker Start-Rite is dealing with a nasty "security incident" involving customer payment card details, its second significant lapse during the past eight years....

From guidance to firm action... no more WhatsApp, Meta's Messenger, Signal, Telegram and more The full list of messaging apps officially blocked by Brit banking and insurance giant NatWest Group is more extensive than WhatsApp, Meta's Messenger, and Skype - as first reported....

British grocer's workers called back to office as clock ticks for contractors The head of tech security at Asda, the UK's third-largest food retailer, has left amid an ongoing tech divorce from US grocery giant Walmart....

Slack patching remains a problem - which is worrying as crooks increasingly target zero-day vulns The cyber security agencies of the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have issued their annual list of the 15 most exploited vulnerabilities, and warned that attacks on zero-day exploits have become more common....

Dam, the consequences Updated An academic journal has retracted two papers because it determined their authors used unlicensed software....

Consumer champion Which? not amused by fruit-based giant's alleged preference for its own cloud storage service UK consumer group Which? has filed a 3 billion action against Apple over alleged competition law breaches related to its iCloud service....

Probably a relic of a Japanese WWII naval site TSMC has confirmed that workers were evacuated from one of its construction sites in Taiwan after discovery of an unexploded bomb....

Government both excited and cautious about benefits of Muskband Starlink is in the process of procuring clearances for operation in India according to the nation's telecom minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia....

Don't worry, existing users have another year to use 'em or lose 'em Amazon Web Services is pulling the plug on its Snowcone data migration devices and will sunset all but the latest crop of its Snowball edge appliances....

Feds don't name Salt Typhoon, but describe Beijing band's alleged deeds The US government has confirmed there was "a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign" conducted by China-linked snoops against "multiple" American telecommunications providers' networks....

'Department of Government Efficiency' expected to do little more than suggest changes, Congress will still decide Comment Well, it's official(ish): US president-elect Donald Trump has made good on a campaign promise to appoint Elon Musk to the head of "the Department of Government Efficiency" - or DOGE....

Plus: CISA's ScubaGear dives deep to fix M365 misconfigs Bitdefender has released a free decryption tool that can unlock data encrypted by the ShrinkLocker ransomware....

Anything could happen in the next half ... decade Kettle Despite countless warnings that the US presidential election would lead to a months-long battle, with a decisive win by Donald Trump and his party, we can immediately look ahead to how the next four years of Republican rule might change the tech industry....

Allegedly it's hard to get ahead at the chipmaker unless you speak Mandarin Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has been accused of pervasive discrimination" against some of its workers in the USA....

We call this lead degeneration What's claimed to be more than 183 million records of people's contact details and employment info has been stolen or otherwise obtained from a data broker and put up for sale by a miscreant....

Budget constraints result in 'painful but necessary adjustments' NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will need to lose hundreds more workers as managers seek to meet the current FY'25 budget allocation....

Cortex-powered front end for easier access to insights across multiple sources Snowflake is set to preview a new platform it claims will help organizations build chatbots that can serve up data from its own analytics systems and those external to the cloud data platform vendor....

American Associated Pharmacies yet to officially confirm infection American Associated Pharmacies (AAP) is the latest US healthcare organization to have had its data stolen and encrypted by cyber-crooks, it is feared....

LLM, LLM on the wall, who will be laid off first of all? AMD has confirmed plans to cut approximately four percent of its global workforce - about 1,000 jobs out of a total headcount of roughly 26,000....

Sore about cores no more Microsoft has resolved two issues vexing Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025 users among the many security updates that emerged on Patch Tuesday....

Diablo Canyon gets nifty new tech to ... speed up document retrieval? A California startup is deploying what it says is the first commercial installation of generative AI at a US nuclear power plant, but don't get too excited (or worried) about what it's going to be doing quite yet - it's a pretty run-of-the-mill use in an enterprise environment....

Is Huang leaving even more juice on the table by opting for mid-tier Blackwell part? Signs point to yes Analysis Nvidia offered the first look at how its upcoming Blackwell accelerators stack up against the venerable H100 in real-world training workloads, claiming up to 2.2x higher performance....

A former exec believes in the non-profit's mission, says the battle lines have changed Mozilla's Firefox browser clocked its second decade over the weekend, an event celebrated by Mozilla Corporation CEO Laura Chambers....

We do these things because we can and because we must The dark arts of overclocking remain alive and well. And one master of the practice has turned their attention to the Raspberry Pi 5 with the intention of getting the diminutive computer all the way to 4 Ghz via various exotic and gloriously impractical means....

Meanwhile, HPE's new ProLiant servers offer choice of Gaudi, Hopper, or Instinct acceleration If you thought Nvidia's 120 kW NVL72 racks were compute dense with 72 Blackwell accelerators, they have nothing on HPE Cray's latest EX systems, which will pack more than three times as many GPUs into a single cabinet....

Datacenter demand estimated to inflate by 160% over next two years AI-driven datacenter energy demand could expand 160 percent over the next two years, leaving 40 percent of existing facilities operationally constrained by power availability from 2027....

iFixit teardown finds a removable SSD. Time to party like its 2010? Updated The iFixit team has pulled apart Apple's new Mac Mini, revealing replaceable storage and a slightly more modular design - concessions to repairability that warrant an impressive provisional score....

With plant platforms and neural circuits on the program, Aria's leadership hope cross-party concensus continues The UK's ambitious efforts to mimic the wild success of US research and security outfit DARPA has just a few months to prove its worth, a parliamentary committee heard yesterday....

Four bidders chosen to submit tenders for SMR program The UK government's nuclear energy agency has embarked on detailed negotiations with four shortlisted bidders to supply small modular reactors (SMRs) to bolster the country's power generation....

Ofcom opens floodgates for turbocharged 5G in cities Britain's mobile telcos will get to bid for mmWave spectrum to provide high-speed wirelessservices next year, according to Ofcom, which just published the final draft of the regulations governing the auction....

Ever try to change your account's registered country? It's nigh impossible The European Union has demanded more platform changes from Apple - this time accusing it of violating anti-geoblocking rules in several of its media services....

Korea wants to get rid of overtime cap while Japan splashes cash with vague funding Analysis Multiple Southeast Asian nations - including South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam - have recently opened up on efforts to rework or amend their semiconductor strategies....

Don't be a turkey - get these fixed Patch Tuesday Patch Tuesday has swung around again, and Microsoft has released fixes for 89 CVE-listed security flaws in its products - including two under active attack - and reissued three more....

Ohm, for flux sake China's Volt Typhoon crew and its botnet are back, compromising old Cisco routers once again to break into critical infrastructure networks and kick off cyberattacks, according to security researchers....