The Register

The same Beijing-backed cyber spy crew the feds say burrowed into US critical infrastructure It looks like China's Volt Typhoon has found a new way into American networks as Versa has disclosed a nation-state backed attacker has exploited a high-severity bug affecting all of its SD-WAN customers using Versa Director....

Telum II Processor and Spyre Accelerator set to boost performance and expand IO capacity IBM has unveiled a more powerful processor for its famed mainframe systems, promising enhanced on-chip AI acceleration for inferencing plus integrated data processing unit (DPU) to boost IO handling....

Faster than you can read? More like blink and you'll miss the hallucination Hot Chips Inference performance in many modern generative AI workloads is usually a function of memory bandwidth rather than compute. The faster you can shuttle bits in and out of a high-bandwidth memory (HBM) the faster the model can generate a response....

Twitchy roll resolved, landing gear works on one-third size demonstrator Aircraft biz Boom Supersonic completed the second test flight of its XB-1 demonstrator vehicle on Monday, during which the landing gear was retracted and extended for the first time and its new roll damper was tested....

'The government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,' says Facebook founder Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is giving ammunition to conspiracy theorists with a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he claims the Biden administration pressured his company on multiple occasions to censor posts related to COVID-19....

Cracked Labs examines how workplace surveillance turns workers into suspects Software designed to address legitimate business concerns about cyber security and compliance treats employees as threats, normalizing intrusive surveillance in the workplace, according to a report by Cracked Labs....

Claims just two management consoles will emerge VMware Explore VMware by Broadcom has opened its annual user conference by teasing version nine of its flagship Cloud Foundation (VCF) suite - a major upgrade touted as delivering on past promises of an easy-to-consume hybrid cloud suite - but hasn't said when it will arrive....

As users wail, Microsoft tweaks its text to drop the word 'deprecated' Microsoft has updated its Windows system configuration tools document and excised all references to deprecating the venerable Control Panel in the wake of an outcry from Reg readers....

Teaming up with Sage Geosystems, house of Facbook plans to tap into Earth's fiery underbelly Meta and Sage Geosystems are striking a deal under which geothermal energy provided by Sage will be used to deliver renewable power for Meta's US datacenters, intended to help reduce their carbon dioxide footprint....

Must launch to catch the red planet alignment window despite occasional testing 'anomalies' Jeff Bezos's rocket venture, Blue Origin, has set a date of no earlier than October 13 for the inaugural mission of the New Glenn rocket, with a payload set for Mars....

Despite early promises, moving between providers remains a complex and costly endeavor Analysis One of the promises of the public cloud was that customers would be able to migrate workloads if they wished, taking advantage of market freedom to switch to a different provider if it offered lower costs or some other advantage. What happened to that dream?...

The return of Windows Recall is more than a bad flashback Opinion Companies love to use familiar words in unorthodox ways. "We value your privacy" is really the digital equivalent of a mugger admiring your phone. And "partnering"? Usually, it means "The one with more money is bribing the one with more cred."...

It's all about your chemistry Noted anthropologist Dr Helen Fisher, who lead groundbreaking research into how the brain deals with love and passion, has died at the age of 79 after suffering endometrial cancer....

With a warning: Words have power A Pakistani court on Monday acquitted a man of cyber terrorism charges after he allegedly spread fake news on social media websites that sparked riots across the UK earlier this month....

But they have to show for unpaid training, or lose their jobs-in-waiting Infosys CEO Salil Parekh has promised to honor job offers made over two years ago to graduates yet to be employed by the outsourcing giant....

Kingdom sees growing demand for hard disks and drives to maintain global dominance The Kingdom of Thailand yesterday approved Western Digital's plans to expand its hard disk manufacturing facilities in the nation....

Lasted longer than expected, but hasn't been heard from since late April Japan's Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) has ended operations of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) that it landed on Earth's sole natural satellite in January....

Hallucinating AI models excel at defamation Microsoft Bing Copilot has falsely described a German journalist as a child molester, an escapee from a psychiatric institution, and a fraudster who preys on widows....

Legitimate emails misclassified in software snafu Updated Many administrators have had a trying Monday after getting spammed out with false malware reports by Microsoft....

Also working to clean up inconsistent APIs and lack of SSO across vSphere, vSAN, NSX, SDDC Manager, vRealize and more VMware Explore VMware by Broadcom is working on a unified SDK for its core products and will deliver it before the major release of its flagship Cloud Foundation (VCF) suite that the virtualization giant has previously said will express its strategy of offering a unified hybrid cloud suite....

National security data up for grabs, Office of the Inspector General finds update The FBI has made serious slip-ups in how it processes and destroys electronic storage media seized as part of investigations, according to an audit by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General....

No word yet on if ransomware is to blame The Port of Seattle, which operates the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, is investigating a "possible cyberattack" after computer outages disrupted the airport's operations and delayed flights....

Multiple lawsuits doesn't mean investors are coming for the board yet, but better safe than sorry, right? Worried shareholders may drag it kicking and screaming into directions unknown, Intel has reportedly been meeting with advisors to hash out an anti-activist game plan....

Second sensitive info theft claimed by the same crims since June Digital data thieves have reportedly breached AMD's internal communications and are offering the allegedly stolen goods for sale....

The ride-sharing provider insists it broke no rules during the three-year legal gap Privacy authorities in the Netherlands have imposed a 290 million ($324 million) fine on ride-share giant Uber for sending driver data to servers in the United States - "a serious violation" of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)....

A few lines of Python is all it takes to get a model to use a calculator or even automate your hypervisor Hands on Let's say you're tasked with solving a math problem like 4,242 x 1,977. Some of you might be able to do this in your head, but most of us would probably be reaching for a calculator right about now, not only because it's faster, but also to minimize the potential for error....

Unprotected database with 12 years of biz records yanked offline Exclusive Nearly 2.7 TB of sensitive data - 31.5 million invoices, contracts, HIPPA patient consent forms, and other business documents regarding numerous companies across industries - has been exposed to the public internet in a non-password protected database for an unknown amount of time....

Sueball suggests outsourcer went out of bounds by developing competing product A subsidiary of IT outsourcer Cognizant filed a lawsuit on Friday in Texas federal court alleging that rival Infosys was involved in stealing trade secrets and engaging in anticompetitive behavior....

Buying PCs off the gray market can (literally) blow up in your face Who, Me? Welcome, gentle reader, to another Monday morning. We here at The Reg hope your working week is starting well - or at least better than it went for the protagonist of this week's instalment of Who, Me?...

It needs to - Virtzilla's customers, allies, and enemies are all pondering off-ramps and trying to lure unhappy users VMware Explore Adopting - or increasing the use of - a proprietary computing architecture like IBM's POWER is a very niche thing to do in 2024. Yet in June, Big Blue suggested doing just that: employing its single-supplier stack as a replacement for the VMware stack....

Rumors swirl that lack of content moderation has angered authorities The founder and CEO of made-in-Russia messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France on Saturday - and subjected to further detention the next day - apparently over his company's failure to follow content moderation laws and assist with several criminal investigations....

Plus: Microsoft issues workaround for dual-boot crashes; ARRL cops to ransom payment, and more Infosec in brief Deniss Zolotarjovs, a suspected member of the Russian Karakurt ransomware gang, has been charged in a US court with allegedly conspiring to commit money laundering, wire fraud and Hobbs Act extortion....

Plus: Glowing reports for Fukushima wastewater; New datacenters in Fiji, Malaysia & South Korea; and more ASIA IN BRIEF India's Telecom Regulatory Authority last Friday admitted the nation has fallen "much below" its target to deploy ten million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022, and a further goal of 50 million hotspots by 2030 is in peril....

Eight days going on eight months for pilots stuck on orbiting space station +Comment NASA has decided the Boeing Starliner pilots stuck on the International Space Station will return to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon pod next year - after the US agency's engineers could not clear the Starliner's thrusters for the return trip....

If you guessed TOPS and FLOPS, that's only half right Feature Ready to dive in and play with AI locally on your machine? Whether you want to see what all the fuss is about with all the new open models popping up, or you're interested in exploring how AI can be integrated into your apps or business before making a major commitment, this guide will help you get started....

And still step on in the dark Hands on Having admired the Concorde perched atop the Sinsheim Museum, we wanted one of our own but had to settle for the next best thing - the LEGO(R) Concorde....

Spending returns to pandemic levels as tech deals make up bulk of framework agreements UK public expenditure on management consultancies has returned to COVID-era levels, despite repeated plans by the previous government to reduce dependency on external expertise....

Cupertino quits screwing around with defaults - for those in the EU Analysis Apple has agreed to change the way it implements web browser choice screens and browser capabilities to comply with Europe's monopoly-busting Digital Markets Act....

Algorithm just a fancy way to collude using private info, prosecutors say The Justice Department and the Attorneys General of eight states in the US on Friday filed a civil antitrust complaint against real estate service firm RealPage for providing landlords with software that maximizes rent at the expense of renters....

For 100 concurrent users, the card delivered 12.88 tokens per second-just slightly faster than average human reading speed If you want to scale a large language model (LLM) to a few thousand users, you might think a beefy enterprise GPU is a hard requirement. However, at least according to Backprop, all you actually need is a four-year-old graphics card....

Because everyone has a box of mystery computer bits they simply can't part with Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer took a trip down memory lane this week by building a functioning PDP-11 minicomputer from parts found in a tub of hardware....

A glimpse into the rapidly advancing world of Chinese open source After a couple of years in development, Linux Deepin 23 arrives, with some new shiny that throws shade on the leading Western desktop distros....

Decision time arrives for NASA bigwigs A big weekend lies ahead for Boeing's CST-100 Starliner as NASA prepares to make a call on whether the crew will be returning in the spacecraft, as originally planned, or as part of the Crew-9 mission in 2025....

Rap sheet spells out major no-nos after disgruntled staff blow whistle The US is suing one of its leading research universities over a litany of alleged failures to meet cybersecurity standards set by the Department of Defense (DoD) for contract awardees....

Orgs are accessing restricted tech, raising concerns about more potential loopholes More claims are emerging that developers in China are using US-based cloud services to bypass measures intended to block its access to advanced chips and other technologies for accelerating AI development....

As VC-owned fauxpen source biz yells 'show me the money,' more may follow to the peril of the community Opinion Repeat after me: Open source is not a business model. It is a programming model. Still businesses keep trying to make it one, and far more often than not, they fail....

Over 20 years into a 2-year mission, but all good things come to an end The first of the European Space Agency's Cluster satellites is set to return to Earth next month after an extraordinarily long mission. The spacecraft is destined to burn up over the South Pacific....

Mature, stable - and can rescue corrupt files The second LibreOffice release of 2024 is here, with additional spreadsheet functions, improved presentation layouts, better searching, and more....

A tale of retro tech - have you heard of Trivector computers? - and a very troubled tech support journey On Call Every IT pro has a story filed away about the time they were asked to provide tech support under odd circumstances, which is why each Friday The Register brings you one such story in a fresh instalment of On Call - the reader-contributed column that celebrates odd circumstances....

As results from 2023's Chandrayaan-3 mission suggest south pole Moon magma India's Department of Space has outlined plans to send its first astronaut to space next year, establish a space station by 2035, and land an Indian on the Moon by 2045....