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Updated 2025-03-16 14:30
CrowdStrike update blunder may cost world billions – and insurance ain't covering it all
We offer this formula instead: RND(100.0)*(10^9) The cost of CrowdStrike's apocalyptic Falcon update that brought down millions of Windows computers last week may be in the billions of dollars, and insurance isn't covering most of that....
Sam Altman wants a US-led freedom coalition to fight authoritarian AI
Team America AI Police? Sam Altman has called for a US-led coalition of nations to ensure AI remains a vehicle for freedom and democracy, and not a tool for authoritarians to keep themselves in power and dominate others....
Beware of fake CrowdStrike domains pumping out Lumma infostealing malware
PSA: Only accept updates via official channels ... ironically enough CrowdStrike is the latest lure being used to trick Windows users into downloading and running the notorious Lumma infostealing malware, according to the security shop's threat intel team, which spotted the scam just days after the Falcon sensor update fiasco....
OpenAI unveils AI search engine SearchGPT – not that you're allowed to use it yet
Launching in Beta is so 2014. We're in the prototype limited sign-up era now After months of speculation, shy and retiring OpenAI has showed the world a glimpse of its very own web search engine powered by AI....
FYI: Data from deleted GitHub repos may not actually be deleted
And the forking Microsoft-owned code warehouse doesn't see this as much of a problem Researchers at Truffle Security have found, or arguably rediscovered, that data from deleted GitHub repositories (public or private) and from deleted copies (forks) of repositories isn't necessarily deleted....
NASA sends 4K video from a flying plane to the ISS using lasers
900 Mbps from Earth to orbit, and I still can't get reliable Wi-Fi in my backyard Jealous of the fact that the International Space Station has better internet than you do? Well, here's one more benchmark to envy: NASA has successfully streamed 4K video from an in-flight aircraft to the ISS and back again....
Oracle's Java pricing brews bitter taste, subscribers spill over to OpenJDK
Following licensing changes, 86% of users head for the door. Coincidence? Only 14 percent of Oracle Java subscribers plan to stay on Big Red's runtime environment, according to a study following the introduction of an employee-based subscription model....
Uncle Sam accuses telco IT pro of decade-long spying campaign for China
Beijing has a long history of recruiting US residents to carry out various espionage activities The US is looking to prosecute a Chinese immigrant over claims he has been drip-feeding information of interest to Beijing since at least 2012....
Microsoft adds generative search to its Bing engine
Looks a lot like Google's AI Overviews, hopefully without some of the early unfortunate summaries Microsoft is adding generative search to Bing despite the search engine's market share showing no increase after prior AI tech additions....
Apple Maps escapes orchard into web browser wilds
Chrome and Edge on Windows can now join the fun Apple has introduced its mapping technology to devices outside its ecosystem with a web version that works in Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs....
STMicroelectronics sees sharp decline in Q2 earnings amid weak auto sector demand
NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instruments also hit by slowdown Euro chipmaker STMicroelectronics saw revenue and net income slump in Q2 of this year, blaming low demand in the automotive sector while orders elsewhere failed to meet expectations, in a hint that the semiconductor industry is still in a rough patch....
You should probably fix this 5-year-old critical Docker vuln fairly sharpish
For some unknown reason, initial patch was omitted from later versions Docker is warning users to rev their Docker Engine into patch mode after it realized a near-maximum severity vulnerability had been sticking around for five years....
Adobe exec likened hidden cloud subscription exit fees to 'heroin', says FTC
Read the unredacted complaint against Photoshop giant and its software plans Adobe's controversial billing practices and punitive fees for those terminating their subscriptions early follow from the software titan's addiction to revenue, the FTC has said....
Kaspersky says Uncle Sam snubbed proposal to open up its code for third-party review
Those national security threat claims? 'No evidence,' VP tells The Reg Exclusive Despite the Feds' determination to ban Kaspersky's security software in the US, the Russian business is moving forward with another proposal to open up its data and products to third-party review - and prove to Uncle Sam that its code hasn't been compromised by Kremlin spies....
AI models face collapse if they overdose on their own output
Recursive training leads to nonsense, study finds Researchers have found that the buildup of AI-generated content on the web is set to "collapse" machine learning models unless the industry can mitigate the risks....
X.org lone ranger rides to rescue multi-monitor refresh rates
X11 isn't dead while people still keep working on it It isn't quite XKCD 2347, but it's close. At least one developer is still working away on the X.org codebase with an effort to improve variable refresh rate supportin several different OSes....
Datacenters guzzled more than a fifth of Ireland's electricity in 2023
Bit barns binge on Emerald Isle power Datacenters consumed more than a fifth of Ireland's electricity supply during 2023, according to the latest figures from the republic's Central Statistics Office (CSO). The news comes amid growing concerns over the expanding energy demands of the bit barn industry....
OpenBSD enthusiast cooks up guide for the technically timid
If you want a simple step-by-step, this is the best we've seen French BSD enthusiast Joel Carnat has written a how-to guide on setting up a laptop with OpenBSD for general use. It's worth a go for the Unix-curious....
Patch management still seemingly abysmal because no one wants the job
Are your security and ops teams fighting to pass the buck? Comment Patching: The bane of every IT professional's existence. It's a thankless, laborious job that no one wants to do, goes unappreciated when it interrupts work, and yet it's more critical than ever in this modern threat landscape....
You're not hallucinating: generative AI is helping IBM's mainframes grow
Big Blue brings in more cash and profit than predicted Generative AI's powers extend to helping the ancient concept of a proprietary enterprise OS and hardware stack to thrive, if IBM's Q2 2024 results are any guide....
India ditches its 'Google Tax' after US waved a big stick
Stakeholders found it an 'ambiguous' compliance burden and the world has moved on - or tried to India will eliminate its equalization levy - a charge imposed on digital services provided by non-resident companies, known as the "Google Tax."...
ServiceNow president leaves after policy breach related to public sector boss hire
But the books look good, because of real AI ServiceNow has parted ways with president and chief operating officer Chirantan "CJ" Desai after an internal investigation found he had violated company policy when hiring the former CIO of the US Army as the workflow vendor's public sector boss....
Things are going Z-shaped at Huawei: Chinese giant preps three-screen folding smartphone
Reports hint they'll be here by Christmas Huawei has reportedly developed a tri-fold smartphone that can be formed into a Z-shape, and will mass produce the machine before the end of 2024....
How a cheap barcode scanner helped fix CrowdStrike'd Windows PCs in a flash
This one weird trick saved countless hours and stress - no, really Not long after Windows PCs and servers at the Australian limb of audit and tax advisory Grant Thornton started BSODing last Friday, senior systems engineer Rob Woltz remembered a small but important fact: When PCs boot, they consider barcode scanners no differently to keyboards....
Mistral Large 2 leaps out as a leaner, meaner rival to GPT-4-class AI models
It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it Mistral AI on Wednesday revealed a 123-billion-parameter large language model (LLM) called Mistral Large 2 (ML2) which, it claims, comes within spitting distance of the top models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta....
The months and days before and after CrowdStrike's fatal Friday
'In the short term, they're going to have to do a lot of groveling' Analysis The great irony of the CrowdStrike fiasco is that a cybersecurity company caused the exact sort of massive global outage it was supposed to prevent. And it all started with an effort to make life more difficult for criminals and their malware, with an update to its endpoint detection and response tool Falcon....
AMD stalls Ryzen 9000 launch after chips fall short of quality controls
QA? In 2024? In this economy? How quaint! AMD has delayed the launch of its Ryzen 9000 desktop processors after discovering that production units initially shipped to channel partners weren't up to snuff....
Oops. Apple relied on bad code while flaming Google Chrome's Topics ad tech
Yes, you can be fingerprinted and tracked via Privacy Sandbox - tho the risk isn't as high as feared Apple last week celebrated a slew of privacy changes coming to its Safari browser and took the time to bash rival Google for its Topics system that serves online ads based on your Chrome history....
Microsoft wants fatter pipes between its AI datacenters, asks Lumen to make light work of it
Is this what the kidz call a glow-up? Microsoft has tasked network operator Lumen Technologies - formerly CenturyLink - with scaling up its network capacity as the Windows giant looks to grow its burgeoning AI services business, the duo revealed Wednesday....
Philadelphia tree trimmers fail to nip FTC noncompete ban in the bud
What a Trump-appointed judge taketh away, a Biden judge giveth The Federal Trade Commission's ban on noncompete agreements has been upheld after a second legal challenge, with a Philadelphia judge deciding that the FTC was well within its legal authority to prohibit such contract clauses....
Uncle Sam opens probe into CrowdStrike turbulence at Delta Air Lines
Concerns abound over why it has taken so long to recover compared to competitors The US Department of Transportation (DoT) is investigating Delta Air Lines over its handling of the global IT outage caused by CrowdStrike's content update....
Musk deflects sluggish Tesla car sales with Optimus optimism
Claims 'everyone on Earth is going to want one' Tesla profits were nearly halved in the second quarter of 2024, extending a run of woe for the company, lightened only by a surge in energy generation and storage....
Windows Patch Tuesday update might send a user to the BitLocker recovery screen
Not now, Microsoft Some Windows devices are presenting users with a BitLocker recovery screen upon reboot following the installation of July's Patch Tuesday update....
Oak Ridge casts nets in search of Frontier supercomputer's heir
US national lab expects Discovery to deliver 'three to five times more computational throughput' Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a successor to the Frontier supercomputer, just a couple of years after the world's first exascale system came online....
Data pilfered from Pentagon IT supplier Leidos
With numerous US government agency customers, any leak could be serious Updated Internal documents stolen from Leidos Holdings, an IT services provider contracted with the Department of Defense and other US government agencies, have been leaked on the dark web....
CrowdStrike fiasco highlights growing Sino-Russian tech independence
China is playing a long game, which could pay off on an enormous scale Analysis Some of the common arguments for moving away from proprietary operating systems are about increasing personal (or corporate) freedom and decreasing expenditure, but there are bigger things at stake....
Microsoft: Our licensing terms do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals' costs
Redmond comes out swinging as it files response to Competition and Markets Authority Updated Microsoft has responded to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) probe into public cloud services and licensing by insisting that its terms "do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals' costs."...
Kia Niro electric vehicle defies physics with record-breaking 114 million miles on the clock
At least that's what the app says... BORK!BORK!BORK! One criticism frequently leveled at electric vehicles is about their batteries: "Won't they wear out?"...
Tim Peake joins Axiom Space as an astronaut advisor
A new mission: Securing funding for Brits in orbit Former European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake has joined Axiom Space's astronaut team as a strategic advisor supporting a potential all-UK human spaceflight mission....
Apple's Clamshell iBook G3 at 25 – not just a pretty case
Remembering when laptops could be fun and fixable It is 25 years since Apple's Clamshell iBook G3 arrived, replete with iMac styling and an innovation - optional Wi-Fi connectivity via Apple's AirPort....
School gets an F for using facial recognition on kids in canteen
Watchdog reprimand follows similar cases in 2021 The UK's data protection watchdog has reprimanded a school in Essex for using facial recognition for canteen payments, nearly three years after other schools were warned about doing the same....
'Data embassies' promise bubbles of digital sovereignty, but India just cooled on the idea
Scratch the surface and they look more like a sales pitch - or a soft power play Embassies are bubbles of sovereignty that local authorities cannot freely enter and in which certain communications are privileged - an arrangement that is generally agreed as essential to facilitate international relations. And now the same protections are being suggested as needed to create a "data embassy" - datacenters that local authorities can't access and in which nations can store info and run software on foreign shores....
Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit
Web puzzles don't protect against bots, but humans have spent 819 million unpaid hours solving them Google promotes its reCAPTCHA service as a security mechanism for websites, but researchers affiliated with the University of California, Irvine, argue it's harvesting information while extracting human labor worth billions....
CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made
Something called 'Content Validator' did not validate the content, and the rest is history CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in its own test software for the mass-crash-event it caused last week....
Security biz KnowBe4 hired fake North Korean techie, who got straight to work ... on evil
If it can happen to folks that run social engineering defence training, what hope for the rest of us? Security awareness and training provider KnowBe4 hired a fake North Korean IT worker for a software engineering role on its AI team, and only realized its mistake once the worker started using his company-provided computer for evil....
VMware sends vSphere 7 into extra time by extending support for six months
A nice surprise, but some other vAdmins have an August 1 deadline to sort out subscriptions VMware users have had a little win, as the Broadcom business unit has extended the supported life of its flagship vSphere software....
Google keeps the cost of AI search flat, and kids are lovin' it
As the G-Cloud brings in big bucks and plentiful profit Google has managed to cap the costs it incurs when using AI to generate results....
Philippines wipes out its legit online gambling industry to take down scammers
President apologizes in advance for job losses The Philippines has decided to dismantle the worst of its offshored industries: the bits that run gambling and scam operations....
Meta claims ‘world’s largest' open AI model with Llama 3.1 405B debut
Zuck says he wants to mimic Linux and go open source, kind of Meta today released Llama 3.1 405B, its largest and most capable large language model yet, which the social network claims can go toe-to-toe with OpenAI and Anthropic's top models....
How did a CrowdStrike config file crash millions of Windows computers? We take a closer look at the code
Maybe next time some staged rollouts? A bit of QA too? Analysis Last week, at 0409 UTC on July 19, 2024, antivirus maker CrowdStrike released an update to its widely used Falcon platform that caused Microsoft Windows machines around the world to crash....
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