The Register

Nearly a billion dollars in rural broadband subsidies wouldn't go amiss The Chairman of the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, James Comer, is investigating the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) decision to revoke an award of almost $900 million in rural broadband subsidies to Elon Musk's Starlink....

Perhaps the power-draining tech is the solution after all, posits former Google CEO Google's former chief Eric Schmidt thinks we shouldn't let AI's ballooning power consumption worry us, because putting AI to work on climate change issues will be our best shot at solving them....

Stability? Predictability? Reliability? Where's the fun in that? EuroBSDcon 2024 One of Stefano Marinelli's NetBSD boxes sat quietly serving for a decade, because everyone forgot about it. This is how Unix is meant to be....

Juniper Research argues the only way to beat them is to join them E-commerce fraud is expected to surge in the next five years thanks to AI, and merchants are advised to respond with ... AI....

Linux contributors told to sort out their grammar lest they be actively corrected Picture this. A developer submits a patch to improve the kernel's performance, only to be met with the scornful gaze of Linux chieftain Linus Torvalds, who declares: "Ah, but your participle is dangling! How do you expect the kernel to thrive under such conditions?"...

The SaaS-only provider and Cognizant snag 144.3M in gov software shake-up A cluster of government departments has opted for Workday HR and finance software, as Oracle and Microsoft make up the vendors losing out to the SaaS-only provider....

How do you indent yours? Veteran Microsoft engineer Larry Osterman is the latest to throw his hat into the "tabs versus spaces" ring....

AI is showing the way to new possibilities after a tricky first year A year after winning the rights to build machines based on Intel's Next Unit of Compute (NUC) mini-PC spec, Taiwan's Asus claims it has stabilized the product line and the team that makes it - and is poised to innovate....

Pro-Ukraine hackers claim credit for Russian state broadcasting shutdown Ukrainian hackers shut down Russian state news agency VGTRK's online broadcasting and streaming services on Monday - president Vladimir Putin's 72nd birthday - as Kremlin officials vowed to bring those responsible for the "unprecedented" cyber attack to justice....

XenServer fork plans to make its next version a better target for VMware migrations Vates, the developer behind Xen Server fork XCP-NG, has thanked Broadcom for increasing interest in its work, and criticized Citrix for presenting challenges to its efforts....

Profit doesn't pop despite AI-inspired memory boom, leading to executive mea culpa Samsung Electronics has issued an apology to customers, investors and employees after releasing disappointing preliminary results Tuesday....

Improved security features teased in May now appearing around the world Google has apparently started a global rollout of three features in Android designed to make life a lot harder for thieves to profit from purloined phones....

Plus: Google, Oracle, spend $9.5 billion on Asia datacenters; Philippines to tax clouds; Vietnam infosec praised; and more In Brief Chinese authorities have reportedly let local orgs know they should satisfy their need for AI accelerators by shopping locally - not from Nvidia....

A couple million will do for a start ... but Kim's crews are suspected of stealing much more The US government is attempting to claw back more than $2.67 million stolen by North Korea's Lazarus Group, filing two lawsuits to force the forfeiture of millions in Tether and Bitcoin....

Chocolate Factory vows to appeal A US court has ordered Google to refrain from a wide variety of business practices the web giant uses to bolster its Play Store, as a consequence of its December 2023 antitrust defeat against Epic Games....

Struggling chipmaker scores another win In breaking trends news, Inflection AI revealed its latest enterprise platform would ditch Nvidia GPUs for Intel's Gaudi 3 accelerators....

It's still safe to drink, top provider tells us American Water, which supplies over 14 million people in the US and numerous military bases, has stopped issuing bills and has taken its MyWater app offline while it investigates a cyberattack on its systems....

Is that a sparkler attached to the bottom of your rocket or just something falling off? An unusual event occurred during United Launch Alliance's (ULA) second launch of the Vulcan Centaur at the end of last week. One of the twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) lost its nozzle, but the vehicle still made it into space as planned....

This comes after Tesla owner griped of dropped policies on X Geico confirmed to The Register that, following whispering on social media, the US insurance firm is most definitely not canceling all coverage on Tesla Cybertrucks....

Withholding exculpatory evidence from suspects isn't a great look when the tech is already questionable Police around the United States are routinely using facial recognition technology to help identify suspects, but those departments rarely disclose they've done so - even to suspects and their lawyers....

But not hard to believe of business units with over $2 billion in operating losses in 2023 Despite reports of poor demand and mounting losses, Samsung says it has no plans to spin off its foundry business or chip design operation....

D-Wave and Rigetti dip below $1 as AI steals the spotlight The harsh realities of the quantum ecosystem are dawning on markets as two prominent quantum vendors acknowledge they are at risk of being delisted following shares dropping below the $1 mark....

Salt Typhoon may have accessed court-ordered wiretaps and US internet traffic Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies were among the US broadband providers whose networks were reportedly hacked by Chinese cyberspies, possibly compromising the wiretapping systems used for court-ordered surveillance....

They put more risk in a single box than most of us are equipped to handle Opinion Intel recently teased a 128-core Granite Rapids Xeon 6 processor, and your humble vulture thinks you can ignore them - indeed, ignoring them might be your safest course of action....

Chip boom continues as demand surges, but challenges remain A reported hefty increase in sales is no doubt welcome news for the semiconductor industry, which still remains on precarious footing given the continued supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions, especially around US-China trade relations....

Optical communications not just for night owls NASA's Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) technology demonstration has notched up another performance milestone as it approaches a year in space....

Just don't call it an alternative to RISE with SAP SAP has developed an alternative way of shifting customers' legacy systems running on Microsoft's SQL Server database to the cloud, a method that is outside of its preferred RISE with SAP program....

Support expiry clock ticks for Windows 10 - PC makers won't be happy with latest stats Windows 11 migration projects, long hoped for by Microsoft and PC chums, are picking up. But a report from asset management biz Lansweeper indicates the rush is on with "millions" of devices still running Windows 10....

Ailing IT services giant still in hot pursuit of agreement on Big Data & Security unit Struggling IT services giant Atos says it is continuing discussions with the French state after failing to reach an agreement for the government to buy key assets from its Big Data & Security (BDS) division....

Vivaldi and others line up behind Opera to request a rethink The European Commission's decision not to designate Microsoft Edge as a core platform service has rival browser makers and engineers up in arms....

Also, rooting for Russian cybercriminals, a new DDoS record, sneaky Linux server malware and more Infosec In Brief The critical vulnerability in the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) reported last week might have required some very particular circumstances to exploit, but Akamai researchers are warning the same vulnerabilities can easily be exploited for mass DDoS attacks....

Voda users have to fall back to 2G in some places after 3G switchoff, docs claim Vodafone and Three UK are desperately trying to convince Britain's competition regulator to approve their merger, going so far as to denigrate their own network services - at least in some regions - as outdated....

A couple of FOSS goodies that should be ready for the festive season The next version of Xfce, the oldest FOSS Unix desktop environment around, is nearly ready - and should have preliminary, "minimally usable" Wayland support....

Struggle ye not with cookies, lest ye become a cookie monster Opinion The people are defeated. Worn out, deflated, and apathetic about the barrage of banners and pop-ups about cookies and permissions....

You had one job - doing extra is nice, but dangerous Who, Me? On Monday, The Register readers have two jobs: survive the day, and read the fresh instalment of Who, Me? - the column based on your less-marvellous moments....

Despite amazing battery life and lovely speed, this one has flaws that may annoy Desktop Tourism Across the 30 years I've used laptop PCs, they've always made me anxious about battery life. Dell's XPS 13 9345 Copilot+ PC powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite X is the first Windows PC to relieve me of that worry and let me confidently leave my desk for a full working day without carrying any charging apparatus whatsoever - but it still has unwelcome baggage....

This may help Switchzilla hit $1B AI sales goal by FY25 Analysis Cisco reportedly plans to throw its weight behind CoreWeave in a deal that would boost its valuation to $23 billion and potentially cement the network giant's place in the rent-a-GPU outfit's cloud....

El Reg gets its claws in multimodal models - and shows you how to use them and what they can do Hands on Meta has been influential in driving the development of open language models with its Llama family, but up until now, the only way to interact with them has been through text....

Irish data watchdog opens probe after 'numerous complaints' Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has launched an inquiry into Ryanair's Customer Verification Process for travelers booking flights through third-party websites or online travel agents (OTA)....

It now seeks 10K supporters for Expert Review A working Turing Machine was this week submitted to Lego Ideas, consisting of approximately 2,900 parts and a bucketload of extreme cleverness....

Radioactive hazards and cyber failings ... what could possibly go wrong? The outfit that runs Britain's Sellafield nuclear waste processing and decommissioning site has been fined 332,500 ($440,000) by the nation's Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) for its shoddy cybersecurity practices between 2019 and 2023....

WordPress supremo Mullenweg channels Churchill: Never let a good crisis go to waste Matthew Mullenweg, CEO of WordPress biz Automattic and co-creator of the open source software, says he feels "much lighter" after 159 employees departed in the wake of his controversial attempt to pressure WP Engine to license trademarks the rival has used for years....

Cable giant says ransomware involved, FBCS keeps schtum Comcast says data on 237,703 of its customers was in fact stolen in a cyberattack on a debt collector it was using, contrary to previous assurances it was given that it was unaffected by that intrusion....

10 seconds to Elon blaming this on Kamala or something Tesla has submitted another safety recall for the Cybertruck, this time over problems with its backup camera - an essential feature, considering the bulky vehicle's barely functional rearview mirror....

Activists, ex-insider sound the alarm as operator says all is under control Analysis A shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant is going to need a lot of work to get back online, according to atomic watchdogs. But its operators say the project is still on track despite extensive steam tube damage....

AST SpaceMobile partners 'provide zero technical support for their opposition,' letter to FCC rages The competition to deliver satellite-based phone connections is getting nasty, with SpaceX accusing AST SpaceMobile of a misinformation campaign....

Arizona looks like the place to be for US semiconductor manufacturing Taiwan's TSMC has inked a deal with US semiconductor outfit Amkor Technology to beef up advanced chip packaging on American soil....

Not a great look when the iGiant just launched its first password manager Apple just fixed a duo of security bugs in iOS 18.0.1 and iPadOS 18.0.1, one of which might cause users' saved passwords to be read aloud. It's hardly an ideal situation for the visually impaired....

No spaceplane in the payload, but it won't be a wasted mission Updated United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur is ready to blast off from Florida this morning, the second flight to space for the rocket....

For the IT professional who has to take work home The Long Term Service Channel (LTSC) version of Microsoft Office 2024 is being joined by a version aimed at consumers and small businesses that want to avoid paying subscription fees....