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Crany' also captured with three 'ghost guns' A California man has been charged with using a DJI drone to distribute drugs, which resulted in a fatal overdose....

But first stop is Mars for a speed boost, then back to Earth for the final push The Europa Clipper has unfurled its solar panels and is on its way to Jupiter, but it's taking a circuitous route by way of Mars....

Also, new EU cyber reporting rules are live, exploiters hit the gas pedal, free PDNS for UK schools, and more In Brief - Updated A critical security update for the near-ubiquitous WordPress plugin Jetpack was released last week. Site administrators should ensure the latest version is installed to keep their sites secure....

Musk's camera-only approach may not be a great idea after all? Tesla is facing yet another government investigation into the safety of its full self driving (FSD) software after a series of accidents in low-visibility conditions....

Another raft of reasons to ponder your social media presence Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter) has updated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to direct disputes to a federal court in Texas and allow third parties to train AIs on user posts....

It's our way or the highway AWS CEO Matt Garman has reportedly told workers that if they don't like the company's five-day-a-week return-to-office policy, they can look for work elsewhere....

The indirect branch predictor barrier is less of a barrier than hoped Six years after the Spectre transient execution processor design flaws were disclosed, efforts to patch the problem continue to fall short....

Google, Amazon, Microsoft dive into costly deals that aren't generating anything yet Nuclear power contracts signed by hyperscalers show they're desperate for reliable "clean and green" energy sources to feed their ever-expanding datacenter footprints, however, investment bank Jefferies warns that these tech giants are likely to end up paying over the odds to get it....

SIM swappers strike again, warping cryptocurrency prices An Alabama man faces five years in prison for allegedly attempting to manipulate the price of Bitcoin by pwning the US Securities and Exchange Commission's X account earlier this year....

No Zero-G shenanigans, but a fully stocked bar and spectacular views Richard Branson is taking to the skies again, this time hitching a ride to the top of the Earth's atmosphere in a Space Perspective balloon....

Says 'limited' incident isolated to 'partner company' ESET denies being compromised after an infosec researcher highlighted a wiper campaign that appeared to victims as if it was launched using the Slovak security shop's infrastructure....

Step forward Workday after mega long procurement to support system that went live 22 years ago More than two and a half years after it began talking to vendors, a city council in northern England has awarded a contract to Workday for 10.7 million ($14 million) to create a finance and HR system that will replace the ageing Oracle ERP installation....

HashiConf shindig oddly reluctant to mention impending IBM acquisition HashiCorp's annual HashiConf shindig wrapped up in Boston with a Big Blue elephant in the room and a hissed instruction: "Don't mention IBM!"...

If you bluff your way out of unpaid bills, there's a chance someone could call you on it On Call By the end of a working week, it can be tempting to just blow up whatever tech you've toiled for days to tame. Which is why each Friday The Register offers a (hopefully) cathartic instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which you share your tetchiest tech support tales....

Finds two more reasons Musk should have known he was on the hook for datacenter kit Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wiwynn has added two more counts to its complaint against Elon Musk's social network X, alleging hasn't paid for hardware it had contracted to buy....

Chipzilla says it obeys the law ... which could mean anything Intel has responded to Chinese claims that its chips include security backdoors at the direction of America's NSA....

'My webcam isn't working today' is the new 'The dog ate my network' It's a pattern cropping up more and more frequently: a company fills an IT contractor post, not realizing it's mistakenly hired a North Korean operative. The phony worker almost immediately begins exfiltrating sensitive data, before being fired for poor performance. Then the six-figure ransom demands - accompanied by proof of the stolen files - start appearing....

Government hardens up infosec to stop this - as you would when Samsung and SK hynix are massive parts of your economy South Korea announced new measures on Thursday to prevent future leaks of technology from its patent office, after noticing increasing incidence of leaks and worrying that it could hurt local companies when stolen IP goes overseas....

Laundry and dining provider still investigating cause and scope Healthcare Services Group (HSG) has disclosed "unauthorized activity within some of its systems" in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing....

Propaganda op focuses on anti-West narratives to meddle with elections The US has placed a $10 million bounty on Russian media network Rybar and a number of its key staffers following alleged attempts to sway the upcoming US presidential election....

Raised $141k+ crowdfunding, but now powered down The SEC has reached a deal with defunct Destiny Robotics after investors lost all their capital when the startup failed to produce the promised product....

Globe Life claims blackmailers shared stolen into with short sellers US insurance provider Globe Life, already grappling with legal troubles, now faces a fresh headache: an extortion attempt involving stolen customer data....

It's the third strike, yet all they get is a slap on the wrist? Sports broadcasting network ESPN faces a proposed fine for using emergency alert service (EAS) attention sounds without authorization - again, apparently....

Five months in, only 200 units reached customers, Qualy tells El Reg Qualcomm has officially pulled the plug on its Snapdragon for Windows Dev Kits less than five months after the X-Elite powered mini-PCs were announced....

Production slated for Q1 2025, barring any hiccups Samsung has finally stolen a march in the memory market with 24 Gb GDDR7 DRAM being released for validation in AI computing systems from GPU customers before production - expected early next year - kicks off....

OpenVMM touts stronger security, but not ready for prime time just yet Microsoft earlier this month published code for a new hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor (VMM), written in Rust....

Snags controlling stake in Motivair Corporation, rest to come by 2028 Schneider Electric is taking a controlling interest in Motivair Corporation, a specialist in liquid cooling and thermal management tech for high-performance computing (HPC) systems....

India-based stockbroker Zerodha pledges $1M a year for open source projects Zerodha, an India-based stock brokerage, has launched a fund to support open source software, to which the company attributes its existence and success....

Microsoft tells us it is investigating the issue... Phew, that's ok then Microsoft says it is looking into reports that certain Western Digital SSDs are causing trouble for users of Windows 11 24H2 on some devices....

Early stage opsec failures lead to landmark arrest of suspected serial data thief Brazilian police are being cagey with the details about the arrest of a person suspected to be responsible for various high-profile data thefts....

Update for Skyline phone brings selective distraction blocking A couple of months after launch, an OS update has delivered one of the Nokia HMD Skyline's headline features....

Biggest semi contract manufacturer -and Nvidia supplier - building out capacity in US and Europe Taiwan's semiconductor giant TSMC has reported a good third quarter with revenue up 36 percent over a year ago, due to strong demand from chip companies for smartphone and AI-related silicon....

As 'heat' built from campaigners, tech boss kept telling MPs everything was fine The former CTO of the Post Office had "nagging doubts" about the Horizon system at the center of one of the most far-reaching miscarriages of justice in UK history, yet he continued to sign off statements to MPs attesting to its security and reliability....

When you look behind the headlines, you'll find unfulfilled commitments Opinion I live in Asheville, North Carolina. You may have seen my hometown in the news over the last few weeks after Hurricane Helene wrecked the place....

CLEAR group calls for VAT to be dropped on spare parts, repairs, labor A newly formed group of UK electronics companies is advocating for the removal of VAT on electronic spare parts, repairs, and labor in the government's upcoming autumn budget, claiming this would encourage consumers to get kit repaired instead of replacing it....

No attacks possible, but enough issues to cause concern Messaging giant WeChat uses a network protocol that the app's developers modified -and by doing so introduced security weaknesses, researchers claim....

Gang said to have developed its evilware on GitHub - then DDoSed GitHub Hacktivist gang Anonymous Sudan appears to have lost its anonymity after the US Attorney's Office on Wednesday unsealed an indictment identifying two of its alleged operators....

DMA gatekeeper status denied, meaning X can carry on without extra compliance chores The EU has said it won't classify Elon Musk's X as gatekeeper" - the bloc's designation for the most significant digital platforms- because it doesn't think the social network is that big a deal....

Bots that learn to peel potatoes is a lot less scary than Black Mirror Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced on Wednesday they're partnering to combine the former's multi-jointed athletic humanoid, Atlas, with TRI's large behavior models (LBM)....

Long-term research program includes building Moon bases, finding habitable exoplanets, and probing 'space-time ripples' China yesterday revealed its space exploration plans between now and the year 2050, and one of the nation's goals is finding habitable planets beyond our solar system....

India's services giants think their consultants can serve you from wherever Indian IT outsourcer Wipro bucked recent trends this week, when it announced it would allow its employees remote work....

The Uptime Institute rates availability. The 'Uptime Council' ... apparently doesn't exist Updated It's one thing to stretch the truth in your marketing material, but allegedly lying about your datacenter's qualities to lure the US Securities and Exchange Commission as a customer is a whole other matter....

Resolves allegations it improperly stored screenshots containing PII that were later snaffled A US government contractor will settle claims it violated cyber security rules prior to a breach that compromised Medicare beneficiaries' personal data....

Layoffs follow more than 7,500 voluntary departures, early retirements Intel this week handed out pink slips to more than 2,000 workers across the United States....

It's called leaving the door wide open - especially in Proxmox A critical bug in Kubernetes Image Builder could allow unauthorized SSH access to virtual machines (VMs) thanks to default credentials being enabled during the image build process....

The German car giant appears to be unconcerned The 8Base ransomware crew claims to have stolen a huge data dump of Volkswagen files and is threatening to publish them, but the German car giant appears to be unconcerned....

Welcome to the oidashi beya, aka expulsion rooms The next time you feel dehumanized by rumors of surprise HR meetings popping up on calendars amidst layoff rumors, be glad you don't work at game studio Bandai Namco in Japan....

Another blow for IT software house and its customers A critical, hardcoded login credential in SolarWinds' Web Help Desk line has been exploited in the wild by criminals, according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has added the security blunder to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog....

It 'will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money' The US Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday announced a final "click-to-cancel" rule that aims to simplify the process of ending unwanted subscriptions to products and services....

Uncle Sam having a secret way into US tech? Say it ain't so A Chinese industry group has accused Intel of backdooring its CPUs, in addition to other questionable security practices while calling for an investigation into the chipmaker, claiming its products pose "serious risks to national security."...