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Cooked in a math lab, here's an open source LLM that knows the law Machine-learning researchers and legal experts have released SauLM-7B, which they claim is the first text-generating open source large language model specifically focused on legal work and applications....

Lots of pats on the back for the CHIPS Act too US president Joe Biden used the State of the Union address on Thursday to call for a ban on AI voice impersonation....

Chatting to Anmol Taploo about the race to develop tech for satellites Interview Will satellites be capable of generating their own thrust with propellant created out of thin air one day? Scientists at the George Washington University (GWU) and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory reckon so....

All too many 'smart' devices are security stupid Opinion I was one of the first people to use an Internet of Things (IoT) device. It was Carnegie-Mellon's Computer Science Department's Coke machine*. True, I didn't need to check on it since my school, West Virginia University, was 77 miles from CMU, but I thought it was really cool back in the 1970s that I could see what was what with the coke machine over the Internet. That was then. This is now. Today. I'm less than thrilled by the IoT....

Florida man would rather have app stay so as not to give gift to 'true enemy of the people' ... Zuckerberg Comment If you had to guess, who would you say former US President Donald Trump hates more: China or Mark Zuckerberg?...

Plus: CISA pulls plug on couple of systems feared compromised There's yet another group of miscreants out there hijacking insecure Ivanti devices: A new, financially motivated gang dubbed Magnet Goblin has emerged from the shadowy digital depths with a knack for rapidly exploiting newly disclosed vulnerabilities before vendors have issued a fix....

Some might say a blessing in disguise Nano, Google's smallest AI model in its generative Gemini series, will not be available on Pixel 8 handsets due to "some hardware limitations."...

'Luminous phenomena' on the cards, but half a ton of debris could survive A pallet of used batteries from the International Space Station (ISS) is due to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere at some point in the next day, and some parts of the 2.6 metric ton mass are likely to hit the ground....

And saying Starlink doesn't work inside Russian borders isn't sufficient... Starlink terminals are reportedly being used by both sides in Russia's war against Ukraine, but now Congressional representatives want to know why....

Still 'no evidence' of any compromised customer-facing systems, we're told Microsoft has now confirmed that the Russian cyberspies who broke into its executives' email accounts stole source code and gained access to internal systems. The Redmond giant also characterized the intrusion as "ongoing."...

Preview's promise ends in digital dust Microsoft has abruptly pulled a feature from OneDrive that allows users to upload files to the cloud storage service directly from a URL....

US spy-tech firm at center of UK health data systems applies its technology to altogether different ends Palantir has won a US Army contract worth $178.4 million to house a battlefield intelligence system inside a big truck....

Remaining services are expected to return in the coming weeks after $22M ALPHV ransom Change Healthcare has taken the first steps toward a full recovery from the ransomware attack in February by bringing its electronic prescription services back online....

Workforce aging, systems still mission-critical ... plus Big Blue looking out for its bread and butter IBM is pinning its hopes on some fresh initiatives - the Mainframe Skills Council and the IBM Z Mainframe Skills Depot - to address a shortage of engineers who have big iron expertise ....

Classified docs, readable passwords, and thousands of personal information nabbed in Xplain breach The Swiss government had around 65,000 files related to it stolen by the Play ransomware gang during an attack on an IT supplier, its National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) says....

Court of Justice of the European Union says consent identifers are personal info, subject to GDPR Online popup solicitations that seek consent for targeted ads in Europe represent personal information, according to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) - a decision characterized as either a "mortal wound" for online ad tracking, or a welcome clarification, depending on whom you ask....

A secret message or just random characters on a license plate? Microsoft veteran Dave Plummer has shared a photo of the Corvette bought by Zip folder support work in Windows and reminded us that, 30 years later, some of the code is probably still running in the operating system....

And soon learned he had won the argument On Call Welcome once more, dear reader, to On Call - The Register's Friday trawl through a mailbag containing stories of your tech support tales....

The Register speaks to the folks behind the AI Incident Database Interview False images of Donald Trump supported by made-up Black voters, middle-schoolers creating pornographic deepfakes of their female classmates, and Google's Gemini chatbot failing to generate pictures of White people accurately....

Redmond hasn't budged on deals that make its wares cheaper on Azure, and regulators are circling A group of cloud infrastructure providers in Europe has delivered an ultimatum to Microsoft: End the "unjustified feature and pricing discriminations against fair competition" or face legal action....

Networking silicon surges, Carbon Black to be kept in the fold Broadcom has told investors its strategy of forcing VMware customers to buy only big bundles of software will see revenue increase by "double-digit percentage sequentially, quarter over quarter, through the rest of the fiscal year."...

Who knew that unzipping a font archive could unleash a malicious file Online graphic design platform Canva went looking for security problems in fonts, and found three - in "strange places."...

Puts $1.2 billion on the table for AI skills and local LLMs, tells private enterprise it expects help India's government has approved a 10,300 Crore ($1.24 billion) funding package to bolster the nation's AI infrastructure....

CISA announces more help, and calls on app makers to step up The US government and some of the largest open source foundations and package repositories have announced a series of initiatives intended to improve software supply-chain security, while also repeating calls for developers to increase support for such efforts....

iPhone giant's $2B fine shows the bloc is serious about regulation Experts say Apple has made itself a target for regulators as the EU introduces stringent new rules under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which just went into effect....

Safety watchdog bemoans lack of cooperation with probe Boeing has come in for criticism from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) over documentation detailing who was responsible for failures in the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 door plug attachment....

'We refuse to operate as customer service representatives' A group of 41 US state attorneys general, tired of serving as a customer complaint clearinghouse for Facebook and Instagram users, have sent a letter to Meta asking it to figure out how to reduce a "dramatic and persistent spike" in account takeovers....

They can't have x86 goliath building military chips out in the open now can they? Intel is on track to receive $3.5 billion in US CHIPS Act funding to produce advanced semiconductors for American military and intelligence programs....

It looks like you're trying to update an operating system. Shall I be spectacularly unhelpful with that? Microsoft's legendary approach to Windows quality control is on show again with yet another update that is struggling to complete installation, this time on Windows 10 machines....

Under New Management is an early-warning system for potential poisoning of add-ons with malware Millions of Chrome users now have a way to guard against the threat of extension subversion, that is, if they don't mind installing yet another browser extension....

Alleged crim bought SmartScreen Killer, Cobalt Strike on dark-web markets A criminal claiming to be an ALPHV/BlackCat affiliate - the gang responsible for the widely disruptive Change Healthcare ransomware infection last month - may have ties to Chinese government-backed cybercrime syndicates....

If any mods are considering an anti-IPO blackout, you could be replaced by a bot Reddit is upping its AI game again, this time with the implementation of an LLM-powered harassment filter for the benefit of its army of volunteer moderators....

More than 1,000 servers remain unpatched and vulnerable Security researchers are increasingly seeing active exploit attempts using the latest vulnerabilities in JetBrains' TeamCity that in some cases are leading to ransomware deployment....

Losses could surpass 1B as 1,000 vehicles a day go unfinished Tesla's Berlin gigafactory, the company's only production plant in Europe, is still offline following a suspected arson attack days ago, and may remain so for another week....

Dutch lithography giant caught in crossfire amid escalating tensions ASML is again at the center of chip wars controversy with reports that Washington wants the Dutch government to stop the company servicing and repairing chipmaking equipment it has sold to customers in China....

No end in sight for 'horror show' even with EU's DMA Epic Games has followed the tried and tested approach of sharing executive email exchanges following the termination of its developer account by Apple....

Company reassures public it has enough beer, expects quick recovery before weekend Belgian beer brewer Duvel says a ransomware attack has brought its facility to a standstill while its IT team works to remediate the damage....

The pros and cons of some other Arm Linux distros for the pocket powerhouse The Raspberry Pi 5 is a capable little desktop computer, and some alternative distros give you more choices than the default Pi OS....

Now, who was it 'challenged' the NHS to go paperless by 2018? The UK's finance minister has promised the country's National Health Service (NHS) 3.4 billion ($4.33 billion) in IT investment, claiming it would unlock 35 billion ($44 billion) in efficiency savings by the end of the decade....

13M Instant Ink customers signed up and now a new plan is after millions more HP has 13 million customers signed up to the Instant Ink subscription program, and a recently introduced rental service that includes hardware is similarly forecast to extract "more value" from customers....

Costly project to switch supplier likely to continue into 2025, says watchdog A report on UK government debt reveals that a public sector bank relied on "people and paper" to process transactions during the pandemic as it struggled to replace outgoing service provider Atos....

Advocacy group wants more changes, starting with Device Neutrality On Thursday, Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into force, requiring large gatekeepers companies to play nice with smaller rivals....

Critical vulns in USB under ESXi and desktop hypervisors found by Chinese researchers at cracking contest Hypervisors are supposed to provide an inviolable isolation layer between virtual machines and hardware. But hypervisor heavyweight VMware by Broadcom yesterday revealed its hypervisors are not quite so inviolable as it might like....

Singaporean researchers note rising presence of ChatGPT creds in Infostealer malware logs Stolen ChatGPT credentials are a hot commodity on the dark web, according to Singapore-based threat intelligence firm Group-IB, which claims to have found some 225,000 stealer logs containing login details for the service last year....

The American mind must not be at the mercy of Chinese algorithms A group of US lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday that, if passed, would force Chinese internet concern ByteDance to divest TikTok - its most valuable property - or see it banned in the US....

With over 100 launches planned this year alone, matching Musk makes sense China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has promised to launch three new rockets this year alone, and may also start to send reusable boosters into space next year....

Korean champ promises solid state kit that makes Li-Ion look flat by 2027 Samsung's SDI battery-making unit has announced it will start mass production of solid state batteries in 2027, and that the parts it pushes will have energy density of 900 watt-hours per liter (Wh/L), a figure lithium-ion batteries struggle to match....

Play Store commissions are a nice little earner, wherever they come from Google has been accused of profiting from gift card scams....

Moonlighted for PRC companies after side-stepping Big G's security, allegedly A now-former Google employee has been charged with stealing the ad giant's AI trade secrets while quietly working for two Chinese companies - after easily defeating whatever security controls Big G had in place....

Prices stabilized, so buyers opened their wallets Shipments of consumer-grade GPUs are growing strongly, according to graphics-focused analyst firm Jon Peddie Research, but probably not due to the emergence of generative AI or the so-called AI PC....