The Register

Caltech looks back on the highs and lows of the SSPD-1 project A year after the launch of the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is revealing the highs and lows of the mission....

Tech to shift storage to compute has so far failed to catch on in a big way The NVM Express consortium has updated its specifications by adding a Computational Storage Feature, creating a standardized way for applications to talk to storage devices that include some processing capability....

Update on Linux distro's next major version heralds big changes ahead The future of openSUSE is firming up, but possibly not in the direction that existing users of the distro will enjoy....

Paying one that lied to you and only saved the first 20 rows of each table Publicly exposed PostgreSQL and MySQL databases with weak passwords are being autonomously wiped out by a malicious extortion bot - one that marks who pays up and who is not getting their data back....

Imagined impact of GenAI on GDP is over-optimistic, analyst firm says Gartner thinks the ever-expanding GenAI ecosystem is being hyped with real customer deployments not emerging in earnest until next year....

How OpenAI, Microsoft, and others are trying to combat deepfakes and more Analysis Tackling AI disinformation is more crucial than ever for tech companies this year as they brace for the upcoming US presidential election....

CEO stays tight-lipped in front of MPs while Fujitsu admits moral responsibility for compensation Post Office chief exec Nick Read left British politicians shocked with his evidence before a Parliamentary committee yesterday after he admitted he could not say when the public body at the center of the historic miscarriage of justice knew when its system was at fault....

Millions have perfectly serviceable PCs running Windows 10 at home Microsoft's desperation to persuade customers that migrating to Windows 11 is a painless process has taken a new turn, thanks to a relentlessly perky video: "Make Your Move to Windows 11 Easier."...

Uninstall the update or edit the Windows registry to restore order The latest Windows Server 2022 patch has broken the Chrome browser, and short of uninstalling the update, a registry hack is the only way to restore service for affected users....

...though bonkers conspiracies on solving date-field problem never died down Retro Tech Week Forty years ago, both Jerome and Marilyn Murray saw their brainchild reach the light of day. In 1984, their book, Computers in Crisis, was published, becoming the first authoritative guide to the Millennium Bug coding problem, which, in the final year of the century, would consume media, political and business attention....

None of this inflation-linked percentage nonsense, says Ofcom Updated BT is ditching mid-contract price hikes linked to inflation before Britain's comms regulator issues a blanket ban in pursuit of greater transparency for customers....

ICO slaps penalties on two businesses that collectively made more than 3 million cold calls Another week and yet another couple of pesky cold callers face fines from the UK's data privacy watchdog for "bombarding" unsuspecting households with marketing messages about home improvements....

Slowdowns apparently due to a bug afflicting browser extensions, not retaliation against filters Google claims users of popular ad-blocking extensions have wrongly blamed YouTube for slow video streaming speeds - and that the content filters themselves are the reason for stuttering playback....

Standby to be amazed: Lotus Notes is still being developed Kettle It's Retro Tech Week here at The Register, and we've got four of our vultures together to talk about old computers and software that, in one form or another, thankfully refuses to die....

.SBS gTLD once owned by Australian broadcaster is another source of strife Scammers are buying up cheap domain names to host sites that sell dodgy health products using fake articles, according to cybercrime disruption outfit Netcraft....

After settling privacy lawsuit now admits you're observable even when trying for anonymity Google has altered the text describing data collection when users employ Incognito Mode in its Chrome browser....

No consultants were mauled or eaten but some were quite scared Indian forestry authorities have laid traps for a leopard that was spotted prowling near campuses used by tech services giants Infosys and TCS....

It pays not to be Huawei, and the US military can be lucrative, too Comment A vendor establishing a business unit dedicated to government sales is not new or unusual. But Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia's decision to do so in the USA this week tells a bigger story about Washington's paranoia regarding the security of critical communications infrastructure security....

Infecting networks via years-old CVEs that should have been patched by now Crooks are exploiting years-old vulnerabilities to deploy Androxgh0st malware and build a cloud-credential stealing botnet, according to the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)....

Video game record keepers Twin Galaxies finish messy four-year fight with Billy Mitchell Retro Tech Week The world-beating video game scores of self-styled arcade legend Billy Mitchell have been reinstated following a settlement with record-keeping org Twin Galaxies, which had wiped his achievements in 2018 following allegations of cheating....

Just days after ban on 'military and warfare' applications goes away, Davos hears the details OpenAI is developing AI-powered cybersecurity capabilities for the US military, and shifting its election security work into high gear, the lab's execs told the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this week....

Today's safety guardrails won't catch these backdoors, study warns Analysis AI biz Anthropic has published research showing that large language models (LLMs) can be subverted in a way that safety training doesn't currently address....

No, that does not mean machines can replace primary care physicians An AI chatbot was better at diagnosing medical ailments and communicating results than human physicians in text-based conversations, a research paper from Google claims....

Banking giant believes Quantinuum key to optimizing investment portfolios The wave of generative AI may have captured the world's attention, but that hasn't stopped the flow of capital into quantum computing as JPMorgan Chase and others plow more cash into the emerging tech....

Get ready for links to non-Cupertino payment systems, America, hopefully Updated Apple fans in the US may soon see links appearing in some of their iOS apps to non-Apple payment systems through which they can purchase stuff. That's because the nation's Supreme Court has decided not to hear appeals from the iGiant and Epic Games in the pair's long-standing spat over this processing of in-app payments....

You didn't have anything else to do this Tuesday, right? VMware and Atlassian today disclosed critical vulnerabilities and, while neither appear to have been exploited by miscreants yet, admins should patch now to avoid disappointment....

Makes sense since the global market fell 11% in 2023 China's imports of semiconductors and integrated circuits were hit by their largest ever drop last year, although chips are said to remain the country's biggest import item....

Majority of public-facing devices still unpatched against critical vulns from as far back as 2022 More than 178,000 SonicWall firewalls are still vulnerable to years-old vulnerabilities, an infosec reseacher claims....

SpaceX gets chance to prove the FCC was wrong for rejecting its $885m rural broadband subsidy bid Farm equipment maker John Deere has signed a deal with SpaceX to use its Starlink satellite internet service to keep combines and other farm equipment connected to the internet in underserved rural areas....

Unlikely to be a stop-the-slurpage button, but look at the wallpaper A visualization of what Windows 12 - or whatever Microsoft decides to call its upcoming OS - might look like has arrived, and it is expectedly heavy on AI integration....

Shipments grow in Q4 after near two years of declines, and Huawei making a comeback in China Apple's iPhone is the frontrunner in the global smartphone market for the first time after demand finally returned to a sector that has shrunk for almost two years....

Customers still patchless and mitigation only goes so far There's a "reasonable chance" that Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) VPN users are already compromised if they didn't apply the vulnerability mitigation released last week, experts say....

Not all batteries like subzero temperatures This week's frigid winter conditions in North America exposed the shortcomings of certain electric vehicles, particularly Teslas....

Calls for stronger team play in the global economic tournament The EU needs to get serious and act more decisively and collectively if it wants economic security, especially in advanced technology, as it is trailing global rivals such as Japan, China, and the US....

AI for customers and staff, while Euro bitbarns shifted to Azure Microsoft and Vodafone have inked a 10-year deal worth $1.5 billion, resulting in the telecommunication giant shuttering physical datacenters across Europe in favor of virtual ones using Azure....

Good progress for penguinistas keen on Macs The Asahi Linux team has followed up the release of Fedora Asahi Remix with a post detailing the progress of the project to bring Linux to Apple silicon....

Spending watchdog slams reliance on outdated systems and poor governance The UK's chief auditor has claimed the government could save at least 20 billion by modernizing IT systems and other measures....

Compatible hardware and peripherals are still on sale, four decades after its launch Retro Tech Week Two weeks before Apple launched the Macintosh, Sir Clive Sinclair launched his unprecedentedly powerful yet affordable Motorola-powered SOHO computer - starting a line of hardware and software that, remarkably, is still going....

Octopus Energy wants to back server-cooling, district heating projects Datacenter operator Deep Green has bagged 200 million ($254 million) from power provider Octopus Energy to help scale deployments that give municipal sites free heat in exchange for cooling its IT hardware....

Playing Colossal Cave Adventure on an ICL 2966 and coding on the last Elliott 803 Retro Tech Week Keeping old computers running for everyone to enjoy is getting increasingly difficult as the years pass. Parts get harder to obtain, and the skills needed start fading away....

Korean giant wants a local source of the stuff needed to build batteries Samsung's battery unit may have found part of a solution to sourcing the raw materials needed for the products it packs into gadgets and cars: buy a nickel mine. Or part of a nickel mine, at least....

The only PC with a keyboard so dreadful it challenged the ZX80, now even less usable Retro Tech Week Judges pondering contenders for the title of World's Worst PC Keyboard, Ever", seldom look too far beyond Sinclair's ZX80, which offered a membrane that caused attached screens to flicker with every keystroke....

Desktops escape regulations, laptops and servers don't, no reasons explained India's Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has announced that import restrictions targeting PCs will not include desktop computers, adding another twist to the strange saga of the nation's plan to require import licenses for many types of computers....

Inaccessible and autonomous armed group territories' host crooks who use tech to launder cash, run slave scam gangs, and more Global crime networks have set up shop in autonomous territories run by armed gangs across Southeast Asia, and are using them to host physical and online casinos that, in concert with crypto exchanges, have led to an explosion of money laundering, cyberfraud, and cybercrime across the region and beyond....

Intros Pro' AI for creators, ditches 300-seat requirement for business use Microsoft has revealed new versions of its OpenAI-powered Copilot services, at prices around triple the cost of its flagship M365 suite....

Billionaire suggests a payload would have solved the problem. And we have a suggestion for who that payload could be SpaceX boss Elon Musk has blamed a lack of payload coupled with the venting of liquid oxygen for last year's fiery end to the second flight of the company's Starship and Super Heavy combo....

Yet more support for the argument to adopt memory-safe languages More than 11,500 Juniper Networks devices are exposed to a new remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, and infosec researchers are pressing admins to urgently apply the patches....

Doing science and still alive ... but not for long Astrobotic has confirmed that the doomed Peregrine Lunar Lander's mission will end on Thursday, January 18 with the spacecraft burning up in the Earth's atmosphere....

The bug with a perfect 10 severity score has been ripe for exploitation since May GitLab admins should apply the latest batch of security patches pronto given the new critical account-bypass vulnerability just disclosed....

Web giant retorts that researchers simply used its publicly available APIs Web giant Baidu's stock is down 12 percent after a report linked its AI platform with the Chinese military, amid separate claims the Middle Kingdon's armed forces are sidestepping US sanctions to buy Nvidia GPUs....