The Register

Provisional deal will mean companies cannot 'hinder repair' The European Parliament has reached a provisional deal on EU regulations to strengthen consumers' right to repair....

'We have it! Let's use it' proclaims the most warlike GPT-4-Base When high school student David Lightman inadvertently dials into a military mainframe in the 1983 movie WarGames, he invites the supercomputer to play a game called "Global Thermonuclear Warfare." Spoiler: This turns out not to be a very good idea....

The Future Circular Collider, if built, will be three times the size of the LHC CERN wants to build a next-generation particle accelerator that could cost up to 20 billion....

Just in time to cash in on VMware and Citrix uncertainty Microsoft has announced that its Azure Virtual Desktop offering is available on-prem....

What a surprise, said no one Samsung chairman Lee Jae-yong was acquitted of stock manipulation charges related to a 2015 company merger in Seoul Central District Court on Monday....

Australia's Appen boasted of clients including Amazon and Microsoft. Then work dried up, Gen AI arrived, and Google bailed AI is so hot right now, and assumed to be the future of everything. But troubles at an Australian AI developer show the field is not all sunshine and roses....

The stakes are high because the disputed items - photoresists - are essential for EUV lithography The Research Foundation for the State University of New York (SUNY RF) is suing a subsidiary of Japan's JSR Corporation over claims that photoresist materials developed by the foundation were commercialized and patented illegally....

Except for the data used for a controversial murder investigation. That stays. Forever Singapore's government announced on Monday it had deleted almost all the personal data collected from its COVID tracking systems - TraceTogether (TT) and SafeEntry (SE) - as of February 1. Almost....

Chocolate Factory matches Microsoft money for memory safety Google on Monday donated $1 million to the Rust Foundation specifically to improve interoperability between the language and C++....

Creeps on notorious bulletin board 4Chan reportedly decided to humiliate prominent women The viral lewd deepfake images of popstar Taylor Swift reportedly stemmed from an online competition on 4chan, challenging contestants to break AI software content filters....

At this point you might be better off just shutting the stuff down Various miscreants are attempting to exploit the latest Ivanti flaw, a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability tracked as CVE-2024-21893 that can be used to hijack equipment....

The melding of Neoverse cores and x86 giant's latest process tech was bound to happen eventually Intel Foundry Services (IFS) has found a customer in Faraday Technology, which plans to fab its Arm Neoverse-based processors using the x86 giant's 18A process tech....

What is on HHS paper will most likely become law, Google security boss says Interview If you are responsible for infosec at a US hospital or other healthcare organization, and you treat the government's new "voluntary" cybersecurity performance goals (CPGs) as, well, voluntary, you're ignoring the writing on the wall....

Supplier to beleagered US aerospace giant spots problem, which would not be an 'immediate flight safety issue' US aerospace giant Boeing is set to delay the deliveries of nearly 50 of its popular 737 Max aircraft after a supplier discovered a series of incorrectly drilled rivet holes....

Horse, meet stable door AnyDesk has copped to an IT security "incident" in which criminals broke into the remote-desktop software maker's production systems. The biz has told customers to expect disruption as it attempts to lock down its infrastructure....

Our survey shows you like your away-from-office comforts Every week we run a reader survey at the bottom of articles and the results for last week's question on home working made for interesting reading....

Buy 'em, rent 'em, smuggle 'em - export restrictions don't cover illegitimate means US trade restrictions have made it harder for Chinese companies and government agencies to get their hands on advanced semiconductor technologies, but apparently not impossible....

Look Ma: no tether! It is 40 years since the iconic image of Bruce McCandless II, floating free and untethered above the Earth while testing out the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), was snapped from the Space Shuttle Challenger....

It isn't just the price that makes your eyes look so weird Tech repair champ iFixit has disassembled Apple's newly released Vision Pro headset and came up with an explanation for why the EyeSight display looks so weird....

It's the second Chicago hospital to disclose a major incident in the same week For the second time in one week, cybercriminals have targeted a Chicago children's hospital, this time causing significant operational disruption....

Five months after cloud love-in, critics worry about costs of deploying Oracle hardware and DBs in Microsoft's cloud As the dust settles on Microsoft's decision to house Oracle hardware in its datacenters, experts keeping a close eye on Big Red's commercials are warning customers to tread carefully when choosing the transition....

Shares in French IT giant plummet 25% Ailing tech integrator Atos is in talks with creditors on refinancing options for debt following the cancellation of its 720 million ($774 million) rights issue and ongoing uncertainty over efforts to split the company to secure its future....

Plus: Another lawyer is in trouble for citing fake cases hallucinated by ChatGPT, and more AI In Brief More than half of undergraduates in the UK are using AI to complete their assignments, according to a study conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute....

You were warned AWS could rake in between $400 million and $1 billion a year from charging customers for public IPv4 addresses while migration to IPv6 remains slow....

CEO Peter Beck on the future of commercial launches and not raining debris over national reserves Interview Rocket Lab is a relatively small player in a launcher marketplace dominated by governments and billionaires. However, despite some notable anomalies, the company is starting 2024 with a packed schedule and grand plans for the future....

After car-crash implementation, Birmingham City Council must weigh up options after current problems are fixed Auditors of Europe's largest local government body say it's time to decide whether to grind on with a rollout of Oracle - an ERP project set to be five times over-budget and which has shattered the council's financial reporting - or choose another system....

The one thing you don't want your data security to be is, er, edgy Opinion Are you a Windows user? How many spoons do you own? Have you counted them lately? The reason we ask is due to the old adage, "the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." When it comes to the tech giants, they like to talk about their commitment to data security a whole lot, but by Jiminy they like rifling through your cutlery drawer while they're doing it....

What is it? It's an instrument used to train pilots, but that's not important right now who, me? Welcome once again, gentle reader, to another instalment of Who, Me? - the Monday missive in which Reg readers share stories of occasions on which their prowess didn't quite meet tech repair challenges....

Chap in charge hopes the Internet Archive is willing to pipe in historical search results as a substitute Google has stopped offering links to cached versions of web pages alongside search results....

Recordings of past vidchats suspected as source of fakery - so there's another class of data you need to lock down A Hong Kong-based finance professional at a multinational was reportedly swindled out of $25 million (HK$200 million) of company money when scammers created a deepfake of his London-based chief financial officer in a video conference call....

Paytm's bank has been locked out, edtech darling Byju's faces bankruptcy Two of India's tech leaders, both of which have been widely hailed as exemplars of local entrepreneurialism, are in deep trouble....

PLUS: more glibc vulns discovered; DraftKings hacker sentenced; and a hefty dose of critical vulnerabilities Infosec In Brief The recent indictment of a massive SIM-swapping ring may mean convicted crypto conman Sam Bankman-Fried is innocent of at least one allegation still hanging over his head: The theft of more than $400 million in crypto hacked from wallets belonging to his crypto firm, FTX, just before it declared bankruptcy....

PLUS: TikTok returns to Indonesian e-commerce; Chinese giants' EV battery swap scheme; India drops mobile tariffs APAC in Brief The eleven-nation ASEAN bloc has decided to create a regional network of submarine cables, and to push for interoperability of member governments' digital infrastructure....

Is there anything more terrifying than a 'smart' HR chatbot? Well, OK, yes, but ... Kettle This ongoing generative AI assistant hype-cycle already feels like it's been going on for a decade, with Big Tech pouring billions into systems that simultaneously are supposed to take away our jobs and enhance our working day....

Fans of the spec bemoan lack of transparency in Interop 2024 process Browser makers Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, alongside two software consultancies, celebrated a moment of unity and common purpose on Thursday with the announcement of Interop 2024, a project to promote web browser interoperability....

The closest thing we may ever get to a real-life Die Hard 2 scenario Criminals could remotely tamper with the data that apps used by airplane pilots rely on to inform safe takeoff and landing procedures, according to fresh research....

Remote work option will still be offered - but at the cost of career advancement Exclusive On Monday Dell is expected to send a "Return To Office" notification to all employees, a source familiar with the matter has told The Register....

So that's where all the laid-off semiconductor engineers went! After years of development, Meta may finally roll out its homegrown AI accelerators in a meaningful way this year....

Cloud software slinger admits no guilt, promises better basic security hygiene Blackbaud, which had data on millions of people stolen from it by one or more crooks, has promised to shore up its IT defenses in a proposed deal with the FTC....

Up until now watchdogs say they've just been guesstimating consumption The US government has just signed off an emergency probe into how much power cryptocurrency miners are drawing from America's electricity grid....

Danger of remote account takeovers leaves lead devs scared of releasing many details Mastodon has called admins to action following the disclosure of a critical vulnerability affecting the decentralized social network favored by erstwhile Twitter lovers....

Probe that started with 12 records six months ago has ballooned to 2,191 claims of failed 2023 Model 3 and Y steering An investigation of Tesla power steering problems was this week upgraded to an engineering analysis after initial probing turned up thousands more failures....

Letter: Budget cuts will 'essentially cancel' daring multi vehicle project unless reversed Members of the US Congress have signed a letter calling for a reversal of cuts made to the budget of NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR.)...

As extortion tactics evolve, operational shutdowns are the next step Feature The Colonial Pipeline ransomware infection has become a cautionary tale about how borking critical infrastructure can cause real-world pain, with fuel shortages leading to long lines and fistfights breaking out at gas stations....

References to future update found in Microsoft documentation Industry chatter over the fate of the Windows 11 brand in 2024 is again rising in volume following the discovery that a Windows 11 24H2 installation is most definitely on the way....

US govt isn't exactly in a hurry with the Chips Act money either Intel has seemingly postponed the completion date of its planned Ohio manufacturing site to late 2026, blaming the current weakness of the semiconductor market and delays in receiving CHIPS Act subsidy cash....

Efforts part of internationally coordinated operations carried out in recent months Interpol has arrested 31 people following a three-month operation to stamp out various types of cybercrime....

Microsoft named - again - by EU trade groups seeking to level the playing field New research is highlighting the restrictive licensing practices deployed to prevent businesses from switching cloud providers....

Biz boffins say bottom line and market cap didn't change post directive - but staff mood did Research has shed light on the profitability gains that the biggest US corporations experienced after issuing return to office mandates: There weren't any, and the policy made their staff unhappier....

But can it run Doom? Microsoft Excel was used for many purposes over the years from accounting to 3D rendering, yet implementing a 16-bit CPU in the spreadsheet is something else....