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Taste at your own risk The Linux Mint project has released the beta version of version 22, codenamed "Wilma" and featuring the latest Cinnamon desktop....

There's a lot of room for improvement in modern computing, from the low end to the very high Two separate development efforts are improving both Raspberry Pi power management and memory efficiency - one using tools built for massive clusters....

Vodafone chasing Three, but BT's complained borged entity would have 'disproportionate' capacity UK telcos Vodafone and Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) have struck a new network sharing agreement with a provision that seems aimed at smoothing the path for Vodafone's planned merger with Three....

The war on the relic is finally won. Now on to fax machines? Japan's digital minister, Taro Kono, confirmed that the Japanese government has finally rid itself of floppy disks....

Promises no pink slips despite service desk in crosshairs BT Group expects to cut its use of third-party support staff in service desk roles after it has introduced GenAI technology from ServiceNow....

Tributes paid to passionate LGBTQ+ equality champion Obit Tech entrepreneur Bruce Wayne Bastian, co-founder of WordPerfect, died last month at the age of 76 at his home in Palmdale, California....

Chill out, no fridge required The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been investigating exotic materials in pursuit of solid-state cooling devices without needing refrigerants or moving parts....

AI is 'like the fast food of creativity' Web and app design toolmaker Figma has temporarily pulled its generative AI "Make Design" feature because it seems to think Apple's Weather app is the be-all and end-all of mobile forecasting....

Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf and more from orgs like IETF, W3C, IANA worry if techies are ignored the web could end up centralized Thirty-nine senior figures who have made significant contributions to the online world have written to the United Nations, urging it to reconsider some elements of its Global Digital Compact - an effort to "outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all."...

Outdated tech at Bureau of Industry and Security leaves licensing open to human error The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) - the agency Washington relies on to implement export licensing controls to ensure sanctioned technology doesn't reach certain nations - revealed on Tuesday it's struggling to handle a massively increased workload caused by the ever-growing number of Chinese companies added to the US Entity List, thanks to geriatric technology and systems....

Hype Cycle for datacenter techs also includes augmented reality, new types of memory, nuke power Analyst firm Gartner has published its 2024 Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies, and added virtual-to-physical migrations - aka "devirtualization" - to its list of ideas that are set to take off, thanks to Broadcom's licensing changes....

Slump in Surface sales suspected as one reason for move online Microsoft has closed its physical shops in mainland China, leaving sale of its products to partners and online sellers, including its own website....

AI datacenters blamed for the increase, even as Chocolate Factory bets on AI to fix it With six years left for Google to meet its 2030 "net zero" climate commitment, the web giant has admitted its carbon emissions are rising....

Talk about painfully invasive processes A Texas law requiring adults to show their ID to access online pornography will be heard by the US Supreme Court, setting up a potential domino effect that could undo - or reinforce - similar laws in 18 other states....

And hit AI operators 'with all the fines', says Cory Doctorow The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has proposed that the FTC apply rules prohibiting unfair trade practices to punish those operating deceptive chatbots....

How about a nice game of chess instead? The US Army is keen to integrate commercial private-sector AI algorithms into its operations and it's hoping industry can also figure out how to address the inevitable security concerns that will come from the move....

European neighbors say interference comes from Moscow and Kaliningrad, Kremlin claims it didn't find anything The UN's Radio Regulations Board (RRB) has asked Russia to play nice with Europe and not interfere with satellites....

Time to upgrade that receiver if you're one of the few Swiss that still don't have one able to receive DAB+ signals Swiss radio listeners will soon have to toss out their old sets, as the country plans to end analog FM broadcasting on December 31, 2024, in favor of a total conversion to digital....

Command injection bug being abused by suspected Chinese spies - patch up Cisco switch owners should probably apply the patch that just dropped for a vulnerability that was exploited in April as a zero-day to install malware on an array of its Nexus switches....

Wisdom of the oldies or just a traditional fear of malware? Nearly half of Americans are using third-party antivirus software and the rest are either using the default protection in their operating system - or none at all....

Anniversary time and both are going strong into their 30s The FreeDOS project celebrates its 1994 beginnings, about a week before Amazon - and just a year after FreeBSD got started....

Number of partners acknowledging data theft continues to rise The number of financial institutions caught up in the ransomware attack on Evolve Bank & Trust continues to rise as fintech businesses Wise and Affirm both confirm they have been materially affected....

And if court finds for gaming giant? It's-a me! Bankruptcy! Mario has tossed blue shells at what Nintendo alleges are two figures deeply involved in the piracy and circumvention of the Switch console ecosystem....

Board to take non-binding vote at mega SaaS haus into consideration Investors have turned down billionaire Marc Benioff's bid for greater compensation from Salesforce, the SaaS company he helped found 25 years ago, a proxy statement filed on Monday reveals....

Ta shoh scansh mie, son ymmyd Google is adding more languages to Google Translate - lots more. This time around, 110 of them, including Manx....

FOSS, AI, blockchain, and the cycle of empty nonsense Devconf.cz This year, along with all the usual in-depth technical talks about Linux at Red Hat's Devconf.cz developer conference, there were also several people there to promote AI-linked projects and the tech bros' previous favorites - blockchain projects....

Researchers expect treatment to be available clinically in around 5 years Researchers have shown a combination of special surgery and a bionic limb can enhance walking speed in some amputees by 40 percent, within the range of able-bodied individuals....

Dependency manager used in millions of apps leaves a bitter taste CocoaPods, an open-source dependency manager used in over three million applications coded in Swift and Objective-C, left thousands of packages exposed and ready for takeover for nearly a decade - thereby creating opportunities for supply chain attacks on iOS and macOS apps, according to security researchers....

Vultures chew over a busy few days in orbit with a transatlantic chat Kettle It's been a busy time for space, with Boeing's test pilots stuck (at time of writing) on the International Space Station due to a faulty capsule, and then being forced to take shelter from debris....

Notorious 'Andariel' crew takes a bite of HotCroissant backdoor for fresh attack A South Korean ERP vendor's product update server has been attacked and used to deliver malware instead of product updates, according to local infosec outfit AhnLab....

This is more than a thought bubble: Beijing aspires to dominate international standards China's government wants to develop a standard for brain-computer interfaces....

Nation turns once again to technology to help with declining population Japan has loosened its ride-sharing rules to allow more passengers to use the services when it rains....

As ever, terms and conditions apply YouTube has enacted privacy guidelines that allow people to request the removal of AI-generated videos that mimic them....

Matters like antitrust cases against AI players, Adobe's subscription mess, and net neutrality could be decided by judges - not experts Analysis The US Supreme Court has ruled that the judges should no longer defer to government agency interpretations of ambiguous laws - a decision with potential ramifications for some of the biggest cases against tech companies....

Euro nation's monopoly gendarmes cheesed off with GPU giant's dominance French regulators are reportedly poised to bring charges against Nvidia over alleged anti-competitive practices....

Sites and apps aren't given a say? That doesn't seem very free speech The US Supreme Court on Monday told lower courts to reconsider separate, conflicting rulings on social media laws in Florida and Texas because those courts failed to properly think about the free speech rights of internet platforms....

Why sell shovels when you can rent them In the AI gold rush, if you can't be the one selling the GPUs then the next best thing could be to rent them. This week, we learned that Lambda is seeking $800 million in funding to do just that....

Facebook, Instagram gobble up same data whether you hand over cash or not European Union antitrust regulators have accused Meta of violating the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA) with its "pay or consent" advertising model, a source of complaints since it was announced last year....

It's already sold out of stock for this year and next High bandwidth memory (HBM) is becoming a key technology in the continued AI investment race as SK hynix plans to spend billions on memory chip production and China's Huawei looks to develop its own in partnership with a local foundry....

Because the best place for a troubled supplier is beneath the wing of original parent company Nineteen years and a whole bunch of controversy later, Boeing has decided to reacquire Spirit AeroSystems, maker of parts including the door plug included in select Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft....

Must be hard to face a huge, unexpected bill, amirite? In one of the most massive patent verdicts in legal history, a federal jury in East Texas has ordered cellular giant Verizon to pay patentholder General Access Solutions $847 million....

Full system takeovers on the cards, for those with enough patience to pull it off Glibc-based Linux systems are vulnerable to a new bug (CVE-2024-6387) in OpenSSH's server (sshd) and should upgrade to the latest version....

Better management of critical materials or retaliation for sanctions? Beijing has decreed that rare earth metals belong to the state under new regulations said to be aimed at protecting supplies in the name of national security, but which will be seen as another shot in the ongoing tech wars with the US....

Project including SAP upgrade beset by cost increases and delays The UK's third-largest grocery retailer has spent 430 million ($544 million) on its IT separation from US giant Walmart....

Get 'em while they're hot A critical vulnerability affecting Juniper Networks routers forced the vendor to issue emergency patches last week, and users are advised to apply them as soon as possible....

There will always be bad actors in the system. We can always learn from the drama they create Opinion Libraries. Hushed temples to the civilizing power of knowledge, or launchpads of global destruction? Yep, another word tech has borrowed and debased. Code libraries are essential for adding just the right standard tested functionality to a project. They're also a natural home for supply chain attacks that materialize malware in the heart of the enterprise like shock troops of Klingons arriving by transporter beam....

Jen Easterly hopes CSRB's Microsoft report won't impede future private sector collaboration CISA director Jen Easterly says the Cybersecurity Safety Review Board (CSRB) "is not afraid to say when something is amiss" in response to questions about fears around private sector collaboration following the board's scathing Microsoft report....

With so many DB vendors to choose from, our vulture claws over the bewildering choices DataStax recently joined a growing band of database specialists in launching new tooling with the promise of helping customers build GenAI apps on its data platform. Yet the question remains for customers employing multiple databases: Which vendor - if any - should they choose as the main plank to support GenAI application development?...

Not much if wielded by the experienced and careful operator in this story - but he was not the only actor in this tale Who, Me? Yet again Monday is upon us, bringing the prospect of another working week filled with joy, opportunity, new horizons, and a fresh dose of Who, Me? - The Reg's weekly confessional in which readers share stories of jobs that had promising beginnings, and ... interesting ends....

10, 9, 8 ... hang on, did anyone check we bolted this thing down properly? Private Chinese launch outfit Space Pioneer has launched a rocket by mistake....