The Register

OpenAI's language model GPT-4o can be tricked into writing exploit code by encoding the malicious instructions in hexadecimal, which allows an attacker to jump the model's built-in security guardrails and abuse the AI for evil purposes, according to 0Din researcher Marco Figueroa. 0Din is Mozilla's generative AI bug bounty platform, and Figueroa is its technical product manager. Guardrail jailbreak - finding ways to bypass the safety mechanisms built into models to create harmful or restricted content - is one of...

41 minutes ago

The Register

A Russian court has ruled that Google owes Russian media stations around $20 decillion in fines for blocking their content, and the fines could get bigger. To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google might be one of the most valuable businesses on the planet, but even if Sundar Pichai rummages around the back of the sofa he won't be able to raise the...

about 2 hours ago

The Register

Video Masayoshi Son, the Japanese billionaire behind Softbank, has predicted that an artificial superintelligence 10,000 times smarter than a human brain will be created within about a decade - but at quite a cost. Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, Son said that a scaled-up version of AI could add around 5 percent of global economic output by 2035, but it'll need a massive investment in chips and power. For this reason Nvidia - currently the...

about 3 hours ago

The Register

Unlike most AI training clusters, xAI's Colossus with its 100,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs doesn't use InfiniBand. Instead, the massive system, which Nvidia bills as the "world's largest AI supercomputer," was built using the GPU giant's Spectrum-X Ethernet fabric. Colossus was built to train xAI's Grok series of large language models, which power the chatbot built into Elon Musk's echo chamber colloquially known as Tw..., right, X. The system as a whole is massive, boasting more than 2.5 times the number...

about 4 hours ago

The Register

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, thinks the majority of marketing circulated by the industry on Generative AI is simply fluff with no real substance - and it may take many years before the tech is proven. The reformed potty mouth was speaking at the Open Source Summit in Vienna last month to “video-focused storytelling platform” TFiR when he was asked for thoughts on modern technologies, specifically GenAI. READ MORE “I think AI is really interesting and I think...

about 5 hours ago

The Register

The US Army is testing a new AI product that it says can identify threats from a mile away, and all without the need for any new hardware.  Called Scylla after the man-eating sea monster of Greek legend, the Army has been testing the platform for the past eight months at the Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD) in eastern Kentucky, a munitions depot and former chemical weapons stockpiling site, where it's been used to enhance physical security at the installation. ...

about 6 hours ago

The Register

International law enforcement officials have arrested two individuals and charged another in connection with the use and distribution of the Redline and Meta infostealer malware strains. Various police forces led by the Dutch Politie announced yesterday that the Redline and Meta malicious software strains were disrupted, servers seized, and domains shuttered in their latest efforts to tackle major global cybercrime. Today, officials said two people were cuffed in Belgium following a series of house raids. Details of the individuals have...

about 7 hours ago

The Register

Analysis Today, most GenAI models are trained and run on GPUs or some other specialized accelerator, but that doesn't mean they have to be. In fact, several chipmakers have suggested that CPUs are more than adequate for many enterprise AI use cases. Now Google has rekindled the subject of CPU-based inference and fine-tuning, detailing its experience with the advanced matrix extensions baked into Intel's 4th-Gen (Sapphire Rapids) Xeon cores. In its testing, the search and advertising giant determined it was...

about 8 hours ago

The Register

If you're running an application built using the Spring development framework, now is a good time to check it's fully updated – a new, critical-severity vulnerability has just been disclosed. Tracked as CVE-2024-38821, the vulnerability affects apps developed using Spring WebFlux only, and when exploited can lead to security rules being bypassed. An application is only considered vulnerable to CVE-2024-38821, in this case, if WebFlux is used, if the app is using the framework's static resources support, and a non-permitAll...

about 9 hours ago

The Register

The US treasury department finalized a rule on Monday that limits domestic entities' investment in Chinese semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and AI. The original rules were proposed in June after being introduced in August 2023 on grounds of national security. In addition to prohibiting transactions considered to be an acute threat, the regulations also require US-based individuals and companies to notify the Treasury about others that may contribute to security risks. Those notifications can be completed using electronic...

about 10 hours ago

The Register

One of the UK's major commercial property developers says it would be pumping investment into new datacenters if it could just secure the energy supply needed for those facilities, reflecting a growing problem worldwide. David Sleath, chief executive of Segro, said in an interview with The Times that he would be investing "hundreds of millions and more" in building new bit barns, but for the issues with getting the projects wired up to the national grid. "The single biggest constraint...

about 11 hours ago

The Register

The chair of America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) foresees a single network future where space-based comms will be integrated with terrestrial networks to ensure connectivity anywhere. Jessica Rosenworcel was speaking as part of a discussion at the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, New Jersey late last week. Predicting the future is a dangerous business, she joked, and even smart people can get it wrong – really, really wrong. As examples, she noted McKinsey & Company's forecast in the...

about 12 hours ago

The Register

The French equivalent of the US Secret Service may have been letting their guard down, as an investigation showed they are easily trackable via the fitness app Strava. An investigation by Le Monde has shown that members of the Security Group for the Presidency of the Republic (GSPR) have been openly displaying their location on the popular software during their workout sessions. Since they travel with President Emmanuel Macron, this makes it fairly easy to work out his location. A...

about 13 hours ago

The Register

The UK's Home Office has launched a procurement for tech support and services to oversee border control and immigration via a contract estimated to be worth up to £195 million ($253 million). A competition notice confirms the Home Office is looking for system management and development support partners for its Border Crossing system; its Borders Platforms unit; and Helios, which maintains and shares security watchlist data. The existing applications run on diverse technological stacks and ... are expected to evolve...

about 14 hours ago

The Register

Cyber security agencies from the Five Eyes nations have delivered on a promise to offer tech startups more guidance on how to stay secure. The Five Eyes nations – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US – are best known for their unusually close intelligence-sharing arrangements and joint commitments to defend each other's interests. But in October 2023 the group participated in a summit at which they outlined the extent of the threat posed by Chinese IP theft and...

about 15 hours ago

The Register

Microsoft has alleged that a new group of cloud providers and users is a front for Google – a notion the ads and search giant rejects. Microsoft made the accusation in a Monday post penned by deputy general counsel Rima Alaily, who wrote "This week an astroturf group organized by Google is launching. It is designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public." Alaily further claimed "Google has gone through great lengths to obfuscate its...

about 16 hours ago

The Register

While the wages paid by governments seldom match those available in the private sector, it appears that the UK's intelligence, security and cyber agency is a long way short of being competitive in its quest for talent. In a recent job advert, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) sought a lead cyber security expert and advertised annual pay of £41,935 ($54,408). It's also looking for a senior cyber security expert willing to sign up for £50,937 ($66,085). The role is in...

about 17 hours ago

The Register

NASA has released an updated list of nine potential landing spots near the lunar south pole for Artemis III – the mission that will hopefully see the first humans set foot on the Moon in over 50 years. A return to the Luna has been an ambition for decades, and the Artemis program was named in 2019 before a 2022 decision to target the Moon's south pole. At that time, 13 potential sites were identified after NASA analyzed data collected...

about 18 hours ago

The Register

Chinese scientists have found a novel use for the Raspberry Pi: detecting voids in the linings of railway tunnels that could lead to structural damage, or even collapse. News of the Pi's potential new role appeared last week in the journal Buildings – the organ of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction – in a paper penned by authors from Gansu Road & Bridge Construction Group Co, and the School of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering,...

about 20 hours ago

The Register

Drugs that prevent or reverse the effects of ionizing radiation have long been a sci-fi pipedream, but the gene sequencing of a newly discovered species of tardigrade could change all that. Tardigrades – also known as "water bears" – have an incredible tolerance for extreme conditions, including their ability to survive doses of radiation nearly 1,000 times higher than that which would kill a human. Just how the microscopic eight-legged critters survive is a mystery, but Chinese researchers mapping the...

about 22 hours ago

The Register

The US Copyright Office has published a new list of exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), including one for retail food machines that was requested to deal with the perennial problem of broken ice cream makers at McDonald's. Under the terms of the DMCA, manufacturers can block attempts to investigate and tinker with hardware and software that the maker has deemed a trade secret. In the case of McDonald's, this has meant that their ice cream machine supplier,...

about 23 hours ago

The Register

Bluesky says it has hauled in more than 13 million users, up from about three million when it opened to the public in February 2024. Word of user growth came late last week, accompanied $15 million in financing. This should help keep the lights on while the nascent social media network, which appears to have disavowed advertising, develops a subscription-based business model "for features like higher quality video uploads or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames." The Bluesky team...

1 day ago

The Register

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has allegedly cut off shipments to Chinese chip designer Sophgo over allegations it was attempting to supply components to Huawei in violation of US sanctions. The report comes roughly a week after TSMC alerted US officials to what they believed was an attempt by Huawei to subvert US export controls on advanced manufacturing technologies and AI accelerators through the use of proxy companies. TSMC raised the alarm after a customer placed orders for a chip closely...

1 day ago

The Register

JPMorgan Chase has begun suing fraudsters who allegedly stole thousands of dollars from the bank's ATMs after a check fraud glitch went viral on social media. The so-called "infinite money glitch" exploded on X and TikTok over the summer, after customers abused a technical issue affecting ATMs nationwide that allowed them to deposit fake checks and then withdraw massive sums of money before the checks bounced. A spokesperson for the largest bank in the US declined to answer The Register's...

1 day ago

The Register

The feds are investigating Chinese government-linked cyberspies breaking into the infrastructure of US telecom companies, as reports suggest Salt Typhoon - the same crew believed to be behind those hacks - has also been targeting phones belonging to people affiliated with US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, along with Republican candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance. On Friday, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said they "immediately notified affected companies, rendered technical assistance, and...

1 day ago

The Register

Google is reportedly looking to sidestep the complexity of AI-driven automation by letting its multimodal large language models (LLMs) take control of your browser. According to a recent report published by The Information, citing several unnamed sources, "Project Jarvis" could be available in preview as early as December and allow the model to harness a web browser to "gather research, purchase a product, or book a flight." The service apparently will be limited to Chrome and from what we gather...

1 day ago

The Register

There's a literal shitshow erupting in Moscow, where a skyscraper-high plume of sewage has erupted in the Russian capital, just months after Ukrainian hackers hit related systems. Several Russian Telegram channels spilled news of the gut-wrenching geyser this morning, which erupted in the Kommunarka region of Moscow. Video of the explosion shows a tower of suspicious brown liquid shooting up higher than nearby buildings, presumably blanketing the area in less-than-fresh scents.  Youtube Video According to reports on Telegram - which...

1 day ago

The Register

German HPC vendor ParTec is taking legal action against Nvidia for alleged patent infringement, seeking an injunction to stop its GPUs being sold in 18 countries that are participants in the Europe-wide unitary patent system. ParTec - involved in the Jupiter project to build Europe's first exascale system plus other supercomputers such as MareNostrum5 at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - confirmed this morning in a statement to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (auf Deutsch) that the patents in question are European...

1 day ago

The Register

In a surprise announcement on Monday, Apple unveiled a rainbow of new iMacs powered by its M4 processor with 16 GB of memory as standard, a 12 MP webcam, and no shortage of AI gimmicks… er… features. The systems themselves haven't changed much from when the M1 variant first made its debut in mid-2021. Perhaps the biggest cosmetic change this time is around the 24-inch 4.5K display, which can be had with new nano-texture antiglare coating — if you're willing...

1 day ago

The Register

Intel is expanding its packaging and testing base in Chengdu, a move that signals its intent to remain firmly rooted in the Chinese market, despite geopolitical pressures. Chipzilla confirmed via social media on Monday morning that relevant planning and construction has already begun on the 21-year-old facility. The expansion will introduce packaging and testing services for server chips and establish a "customer solutions" center that promotes digital transformation and "provides customized solutions based on Intel architecture and products to industry."...

1 day ago

The Register

Computational boffins' research claims GenAI is set to create nearly 1,000 times more e-waste than exists currently by 2030, unless the tech industry employs mitigating strategies. The study, which looks at the rate AI servers are being introduced to datacenters, claims that a realistic scenario indicates potential for rapid growth of e-waste from 2.6 kilotons each year in 2023 to between 400 kilotons and 2.5 million tons each year in 2030, when no waste reduction measures are considered. The team...

1 day ago

The Register

Exclusive Brazen crooks are selling people's pilfered financial information on Meta's Threads, in some cases posting full credit card details, plus stolen credentials, alongside images of the cards themselves. SpyCloud security researcher Kyla Cardona says she spotted some of these posts while scrolling her feed. "I was like, what is this? This is fullz information - sensitive PII that could be used for phishing, fraud, any type of cyberattack and cybercrime," Cardona said in an exclusive interview with The Register. A...

1 day ago

The Register

Beleaguered Boeing is hoping millions of new shares and billions of dollars in convertible securities can stave off a credit downgrade as it leaks cash during an ongoing strike. The aerospace biz today announced plans to sell 90 million new shares and $5 billion in depositary shares that will mature into common stock in 2027. Based on stock prices at last week's close, 90 million new shares could net Boeing around $14 billion, meaning the company could stand to make...

1 day ago

The Register

Delta Air Lines is suing CrowdStrike in a bid to recover the circa $500 million in estimated lost revenue months after the cybersecurity company "caused" an infamous global IT outage. Delta, a major US carrier, was among the most vocal victims of the outage in July, reporting thousands of canceled flights which affected more than a million customers, and explored legal avenues to recoup the lost funds early on, hiring David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner. Delta had to cancel...

1 day ago

The Register

Comment Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that, at SatNad's request, the Microsoft board agreed to halve his incentive package, but then more than made up for that with the rest of his compensation award. According to the documents Nadella made the unusual request himself, saying that "his personal commitment to security and his role as the CEO" meant it was justified and would "reflect his personal accountability for the focus and speed required for the changes that...

1 day ago

The Register

Just over half the global population now has access to mobile internet, but the rate of growth is slowing. While some of the remainder live in hard-to-reach areas, most are found in low and middle-income countries that aren't hurting for mobile broadband support. These are some of the findings from the State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report for 2024 published by the GSM Association (GSMA), the industry body that represents the interests of mobile network operators. The 93-page report also...

1 day ago

The Register

Dutch police (Politie) say they've dismantled the servers powering the Redline and Meta infostealers – two key tools in a modern cyber crook's arsenal. The Politie announced the news of Operation Magnus' success on Monday in what appears to be a continuation of law enforcement's cyber-bust template: Mocking those involved and slowly releasing details of the operation over the course of multiple days. The same approach was taken with LockBit and Operation Endgame earlier this year. "This is the final...

1 day ago

The Register

Microsoft has reshuffled its EMEA team, moving Clare Barclay from UK CEO to president of enterprise and industry, EMEA, while effectively swapping roles with Darren Hardman. Barclay, who has worked for Microsoft in the UK since 1998, was also appointed chair of the UK’s industrial strategy group last week. Microsoft said that as CEO of Microsoft UK, Barclay had built notable partnerships associated with its AI products, including arrangements with the London Stock Exchange Group, telco Vodafone and retailer Sainsbury’s....

1 day ago

The Register

Interview Peter Kyle, the UK’s new Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, has been in America this week promoting British expertise in AI and other areas. He took the time to sit down with journalists on Friday to explain his plans. On Thursday, Kyle met with tech giants in Seattle and he has now brought his message down south. He's also promoting the UK's AI Safety Institute, which is opening an offshoot in San Francisco staffed by British...

1 day ago

The Register

Opinion Launching a new mobile OS is what professional historians of technology refer to as a dumb move. It is so shatteringly stupid that even Microsoft stopped bothering after three or four goes – did we all just imagine the Kin? Apple and Android have all the apps, all the hardware, all the market, and between them have wrung the sponge of innovation dry. What sort of delusional outfit from Planet Wibble would lay siege to that scene? Huawei. Until...

1 day ago

The Register

Who, Me? Greetings and salutations, dear reader, welcome to yet another fun-filled Monday at The Register. As you well know, each Monday (which is today) The Register (which you're reading) brings you an instalment of Who, Me? – our reader-contributed tales of tech gone wrong. This is that very column. To tell you again would surely be redundant. As it happens, redundancy is at the core of today's horrifying tale – which our hero, whom we shall Regomize as "Clint",...

1 day ago

The Register

Organisers of WordCamps, community-organized events for WordPress users, have been ordered to take down some social media posts and share their login credentials for social networks. The order to share creds came from an employee of Automattic, the WordPress host whose CEO happens to be by Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress. A letter sent to WordCamp organizers explains that the creds are needed due to "recurrent issues with new organizing teams losing access to the event's social media accounts." So...

1 day ago

The Register

China's first space tourism venture took a small step toward commercial reality last week, when it sold the first tickets on its rocket to space. Deep Blue Aerospace used a livestream on Chinese e-commerce site Taobao to sell two seats on its first sub-orbital flights for just ¥1,000,000 ($140,000) – a deep discount, given future flights are expected to cost ¥1,500,000 ($210,000) per seat. The discount is understandable, given the flight is not expected to launch for another three years...

1 day ago

The Register

Fresh from debuting a version of its software for open source VMware alternative Proxmox, data management vendor Veeam has developed a prototype to backup another virtualization platform: the Xen Server fork XCP-NG. News of the prototype emerged in Veeam's forums, where earlier this month Olivier Lambert – CEO and co-founder of Vates, the French outfit that's the driving force behind XCP-NG – inquired if Veeam was contemplating support for the platform. On October 7, Veeam senior veep for product management...

2 days ago

The Register

If you've lost track of what Microsoft's calling its AI assistant this week, Microsoft MVP Loryan Strant has created just the resource you need: a site called Let me correct that for you! The site was born out of his frustration at seeing members of the Microsoft community write product names incorrectly. Often. Microsoft famously rebrands stuff at quite a clip and isn't always consistent. In the case of Copilot, it started life as "Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365" before...

2 days ago

The Register

ASIA IN BRIEF Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, has banned the import of Apple's iPhone 16. Industry minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita last week reportedly told local media that Apple's latest handset hasn't been approved for use in Indonesia and is "illegal" to use, or import. The minister cited Apple's unfulfilled promises to invest in Indonesia, and failure to meet requirements for locally produced components, as the reasons for the ban. Apple is not a top five smartphone vendor...

2 days ago

The Register

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized a rule that requires banks, credit card issuers, and most other financial firms to provide consumers with access to their personal financial data - and to help them transfer it, generally at no cost. When the rule eventually takes effect – anywhere from 2026 to 2030 depending upon financial firm assets and revenue, with the largest institutions having the least time to comply – it aims to make financial services more...

2 days ago

The Register

in brief Senate intelligence committee chair Mark Warner (D-VA) is demanding to know why, in the wake of the bust-up of a massive online Russian disinformation operation, the names of six US-based domain registrars seem to keep popping up as, at best, negligent facilitators of election meddling.  Warner sent letters to NameCheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, NewFold Digital, NameSilo, and Versign last week following the Biden administration's seizure of 32 domains used to spread pro-Russian propaganda, many masquerading as well-known Western news...

2 days ago

The Register

The streets of Soho aren't alive with disco or bellbottoms anymore, so maybe it's time to ditch another '70s icon we should have outgrown by now, says the British Sleep Society (BSS). A group of researchers in the UK affiliated with the BSS published a paper this week calling for the permanent abolition of Daylight Saving Time (DST) and adherence to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in large part because modern evidence suggests having that extra hour of sunlight in the...

3 days ago

The Register

The AlmaLinux team unveiled a new distribution, but don't get too excited. It's not meant to be a new flavor or intended for production use. AlmaLinux OS Kitten is a new variety of AlmaLinux, but not a new distro, or a new version, or anything that is really intended for real deployment or use. "Kitten" is more like a public prototype of what will in time become AlmaLinux 10. Kitten, combined with the project's other announcement, is in part due...

3 days ago

The Register

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday published guidance advising businesses that third-party reports about workers must comply with the consent and transparency requirements set forth in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was enacted in 1970 to ensure the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of information in profiles maintained by credit reporting agencies. But it also includes provisions that apply when a consumer report is used to make employment decisions. The Bureau (CFPB) is...

4 days ago

The Register

BORK!BORK!BORK! As large and cheap LCD displays become ever more common, techies on the move can see there is no rest for the IoT signage silage – but this does not seem to be the case if your name is Mr Biz Daemon. Spotted by Register reader Ian Thompson, today's example of technology in distress is an electronic sign at Festival Place in the UK town of Basingstoke. A pop-up warns us that Biz Daemon is not responding. As well...

4 days ago

The Register

Datacenter operators worried about securing enough energy supplies should turn to on-site generation such as gas turbines in the short term, while longer-term answers may include sources like small nuclear reactors – but there is no catch-all silver bullet solution. Schneider Electric's veep of Innovation and Datacenter, Steven Carlini, shared his thoughts on the choices facing bit barn developers and operators in the short, medium, and long-term scenarios in a posting on the company site. READ MORE Demand for extra...

4 days ago

The Register

Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI has hit back at a lawsuit claiming that it's unfairly harvesting data from Dow Jones & Co and the New York Post to feed its AI engine, as well as stealing and mangling content. At the start of the week, News Corp took legal action on behalf of its publications, claiming in court documents [PDF] that Perplexity was posting whole chunks of the newspaper's articles, wrongly attributing facts to the sources, and that Perplexity ignored...

4 days ago

The Register

Opinion If you believe Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's AI large language model (LLM) Llama 3 is open source. It's not, despite what he says. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) spells it out in the Open Source Definition, and Llama 3's license – with clauses on litigation and branding – flunks it on several grounds. Meta, unfortunately, is far from unique in wanting to claim that some of its software and models are open source. Indeed, the concept has its own name: open washing. ...

4 days ago

The Register

Drivers passing through San Francisco have a new roadside distraction to consider: billboards calling out businesses that don't cough up for the open source code that they use. The signs are the work of the Open Source Pledge – a group that launched earlier this month. It asks businesses that make use of open source code to pledge $2,000 per developer to support projects that develop the code. So far, 25 companies have signed up – but project co-founder Chad...

4 days ago

The Register

In June, Apple used its Worldwide Developer Conference to announce the creation of the Private Cloud Compute platform to run its AI Intelligence applications, and now it's asking people to stress test the system for security holes. Apple has revealed that the platform (PCC) runs on custom-built server hardware and runs a specially hardened operating system derived from the same code base as iOS and macOS. It's also issued a security guide to the system, and pentesters can set up...

4 days ago

The Register

When LinkedIn asked its European users for their personal data, it did not receive "informed" nor "freely given" consent for the business to ship it off to third parties for generating targeted advertising, a Euro data watchdog has said. Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is responsible for regulating Linkedin's operations because the Microsoft subsidiary has its European headquarters there, imposed a fine of €310 million ($335 million). LinkedIn will also have to bring its data practices into compliance. This...

4 days ago

The Register

While most industry attention is focused on cutting-edge silicon, China continues to ramp up production of so-called mature nodes, leading to overall capacity increasing by 6 percent in 2025, according to TrendForce. The Taiwan-based research outfit says that Chinese foundries are set to drive most of this mature process capacity growth next year, thanks to Beijing's domestic semiconductor substitution policies. The latter are long-term plans to reduce the country's reliance on imported chips, especially in light of efforts by the...

4 days ago

The Register

Scientists have developed a new approach to using DNA as a data storage medium, slashing the cost and time of writing to the biological substance. For decades, scientists have been studying the potential of deoxyribonucleic acid, which contains the genetic instructions for the development and function of an organism, as a material for data storage owing to its phenomenal data density. In theory, a single gram of DNA could store 215,000 terabytes of data, but since the first demonstration of...

4 days ago

The Register

Datacenter power consumption across Europe could roughly triple by the end of the decade, driven by mass adoption of everyone's favorite tech trend: AI. "In the last two decades, no technology has driven the need for accelerated power infrastructure development in Europe more than AI," analysts wrote in a McKinsey report published on Thursday. At the current rate of adoption, the consultancy estimates that European datacenter power consumption will reach 150 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2030 – up from about...

5 days ago

The Register

Fujitsu Japan's client computing operation claims to have seized the title of world's lightest laptop, after launching the 634-gram "FMV Zero." Manufacturers' attempts to make lightweight laptops have often resulted in compromised bills of materials. Not so with the FMV Zero, which boasts a 14-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200) LCD. Under the hood you'll find a Core Ultra 5 125U or Core Ultra 7 155U processor, depending on your whims. Both are Meteor Lake parts built on the Intel 4...

5 days ago

The Register

On Call Welcome to another edition of On Call, the weekly reader-contributed column in which Reg readers share tech support tales in which they triumph over terrible and tyrannical taskmasters. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Bill" who told us about the time he wrote "a fairly simple stock control system for a hardware shop." Bill told us the job was quite straightforward, but the customer soon complained the program didn't work because it reported that goods were...

5 days ago

The Register

OpenAI has lost another senior staffer, and on his way out the door this one warned the company – and all other AI shops – are just not ready for artificial general intelligence. The departing exec is Miles Brundage who on Friday will cease working as senior advisor for AGI readiness. AGI – artificial general intelligence – is the term used to describe AI that appears to have the same cognitive abilities as a human. Like people, AGIs could theoretically...

5 days ago

The Register

Google Cloud apologized on Thursday after its europe-west3 region – located in Frankfurt, Germany – experienced an outage lasting half a day. The incident began at 02:30 local time on Thursday, October 24 and ended at 15:09 – a total of 12 hours and 39 minutes. "We apologize for the inconvenience this service disruption/outage may have caused," wrote the cloudy giant. Google identified the root cause as a power failure and cooling issue that led to parts of one of...

5 days ago

The Register

A Polish radio station has ditched its on-air talent for AI in what its editor-in-chief calls an experiment on the effect of AI in society, though it looks like like a bid to save cash.  OFF Radio Krakow, an online and DAB+ subsidiary of the larger Radio Krakow station, announced this week that it was going all-in on AI, with new shows hosted by a trio of gen-Z AI talking heads, "Emi," "Kuba" and "Alex," all with their own biographies...

5 days ago

The Register

The billionaire founder and CEO of Australian SaaS giant WiseTech Global, Richard White, has stepped down after a week of allegations of improper conduct. WiseTech provides the Cargowise logistics software and since its founding in 1994 has grown to AU$1 billion ($660 million) revenue, almost 3,500 employees, boasts of licence-holders in 183 countries, and market capitalization of AU$38 billion ($25 billion). That makes it one of Australia's bigger tech success stories, and has made White a respected figure. In June...

5 days ago

The Register

Russian, Iranian, and Chinese trolls are all ramping up their US election disinformation efforts ahead of November 5, but – aside from undermining faith in the democratic process and confidence in the election result – with very different objectives, according to Microsoft. In a Wednesday report [PDF], Redmond's Threat Analysis Center suggested all three nations' cyber influence operations gangs are gearing up for even more fake news and social media trolling in the final two weeks before election day. And all...

5 days ago

The Register

US elected officials are urging the Commerce Department to take action to prevent Huawei from building a network of "clandestine semiconductor facilities used to circumvent US law."  The letter, published on the website of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, urges Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to take action against Chinese chip firms that Huawei has been using as cover to acquire semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) since it was hit by US sanctions. "We write to respectfully seek...

5 days ago

The Register

Amazon Web Services has fixed a flaw in its open source Cloud Development Kit that, under the right conditions, could allow an attacker to hijack a user's account completely. The Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is an open source framework, developed by AWS, that allows developers to define cloud application infrastructure as code using programming languages such as Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Go and others, and then provision these resources through AWS CloudFormation. Bug hunters at Aqua spotted the CDK issue on...

5 days ago

The Register

One hundred and twenty astronomy researchers on Thursday sent a letter asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to end the "absurd" environmental review exemption given to SpaceX's Starlink and other firms launching large constellations of satellites. The letter [PDF] notes that the FCC was advised in November 2022 by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) to rethink its environmental review process for satellite swarms. The comms watchdog has been approving applications to launch satellite mega-constellations without considering requirements under the...

5 days ago

The Register

Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, has made a surprising confession - he has been driving a Chinese-made electric vehicle, and he loves it. "I don't like talking about the competition so much, but I drive the Xiaomi," he said in the Everything Electric Show. "We flew one from Shanghai to Chicago, and I've been driving it for six months now, and I don't want to give it up." Youtube Video People have been talking about an Apple car for years,...

5 days ago

The Register

Hugging Face this week announced HUGS, its answer to Nvidia's Inference Microservices (NIMs), which the AI repo claims will let customers deploy and run LLMs and models on a much wider variety of hardware. Like Nvidia's previously announced NIMs, Hugging Face Generative AI Services (HUGS) are essentially just containerized model images that contain everything a user might need to deploy the model. The idea is that rather than having to futz with vLLM or TensorRT LLM to get a large...

5 days ago

The Register

Cisco has patched an already exploited security hole in its Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) software that miscreants have been brute-forcing in attempted denial of service attacks. The bug, CVE-2024-20481, is a medium-severity flaw that's due to resource exhaustion, earning a 5.8 CVSS rating. According to Cisco, it only affects devices that have the remote access VPN (RAVPN) service enabled. Plus, Cisco noted it is "aware of malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in...

5 days ago

The Register

Imagine that your USB flash drive came with software that lets an unknown cloud platform scan its contents and upload files, inform your friends about whatever you publish, and then them download your stuff for themselves. Got that picture in your head? Then you've just imagined the concept behind USB Club and the $180, 1TB SSD "Transport" drive it made available yesterday.  There's little in the way of specs to justify Transport's $180 price tag, with the only figure given...

5 days ago

The Register

Huawei Cloud has released a huge trove of data describing the performance of its serverless services in the hope that other hyperscalers use it to improve their own operations. The Chinese giant detailed its ops in a recent pre-press paper [PDF] that reveals Huawei's YuanRong serverless platform has been deployed for over three years across nearly 20 datacenter regions, and processes 30 billion requests each day. Each of the regions Huawei operates is divided into four clusters. "Clusters provide virtual...

5 days ago

The Register

San Francisco's Muni Metro could be finally getting ready to wave goodbye to the antiquated and archaic floppy disk-based train control system. Yes, we're talking about the good old 5.25-inch floppy disk, which is somehow still being utilized for something as important as a critical function of a public transport network within a major city. In a move that many are wondering why and how it took this long to get around to it. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency...

5 days ago

The Register

Analysis Shortly after the launch of AMD's first-gen Epyc processors codenamed Naples in 2017, Intel quipped that its competitor had been reduced to gluing a bunch of desktop dies together in order to stay relevant. Unfortunately for Intel, that comment hasn't exactly aged well as a few short years later, the x86 giant was reaching for the glue itself. Intel's Xeon 6 processors, which began rolling out in phases this year, represent its third generation of multi-die Xeons and its first...

5 days ago

The Register

Thousands of unionized Boeing machinists will remain on strike after rejecting their employer's latest contract offer, dealing a swift blow to recovery plans CEO Kelly Ortberg outlined yesterday.  Boeing shares plummeted in after-hours trading, erasing gains made when a possible deal was announced over the weekend. The new contract was rejected by 64 percent of union members the same day Boeing announced a dreadful quarter capped off by $6.1 billion in losses, which the company largely blamed on the International...

5 days ago

The Register

European nations need to invest more in artificial intelligence if they want to close the gap between the US and China, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a visit to Copenhagen on Wednesday to inaugurate Denmark's shiny new Gefion supercomputer. "The EU has to accelerate the progress in AI," he said, according to Reuters. "There's an awakening in every country realizing that the data is a national resource." Naturally, Huang believes the vehicle for closing this gap is AI infrastructure,...

5 days ago

The Register

Intel has a spot of good news for a change. The EU Court of Justice has upheld an earlier ruling that canceled a €1.06 billion ($1.1 billion) fine against the chipmaker imposed in 2009 for anti-competitive practices. The Court of Justice is the highest court of the European Union, and it has now dismissed an appeal by the European Commission against a ruling in 2022 by the General Court that found fault with parts of the original case and annulled...

5 days ago

The Register

SK hynix posted on Wednesday what it called its "highest revenue since its foundation" for Q3 2024 as it pledged to continue minuting more AI chips. Revenue totaled ₩17.6 trillion ($12.7 billion), up 94 percent year-on-year. Operating profit stood at ₩7 trillion ($5 billion) after only last year reporting a ₩1.8 trillion ($1.3 billion) loss in the same quarter. Net profit was ₩5.8 trillion ($4.2 billion) with a margin of 33 percent. All three values were described as "new records."...

5 days ago

The Register

The UK government has begun to introduce its latest update to data protection laws it claims will boost economic growth and public sector efficiency. The government said it expects it will keep the UK in line with the EU's GDPR. Critics, on the other hand, have said the legislation could affect current privacy protections, allow automated decision-making that affects people's livelihoods, and potentially scrap safeguards for patient data. Introduced in the House of Lords yesterday, the Data Use and Access...

5 days ago

The Register

The Arm/Qualcomm spat just got a little spicier, after the UK chip designer repeated its allegation the US SoC giant has breached its licenses. Arm's salvo came after it yesterday reportedly warned Qualcomm it will cancel licenses to use its chip designs in eight weeks if a dispute is not resolved. In response to that threat, Qualcomm told The Register: "This is more of the same from Arm – more unfounded threats designed to strongarm a longtime partner, interfere with...

5 days ago

The Register

The Bitwarden online credentials storage service is changing its build requirements – which some commentators feel mean it's no longer FOSS. The question has been highlighted by a new issue on the project's GitHub page, with the strong title "Desktop version 2024.10.0 is no longer free software." This is because of a new build requirement, added in a pull request a couple of weeks ago titled "Introduce SDK client." This SDK (software development kit) is required to compile the software...

5 days ago

The Register

Ransomware infected 389 US healthcare organizations this fiscal year, putting patients' lives at risk and costing facilities up to $900,000 a day in downtime alone, according to Microsoft. In a report published Tuesday, Redmond recounts the surging costs – both in terms of patient care and dollars, with the average admitted payment now up to $4.4 million – to hospitals hit by a ransomware attack as well as those nearby. Keep in mind, these monetary figures are averages. UnitedHealth spent...

6 days ago

The Register

The European Union's NIS2 Directive came into force on January 16, 2023, and member states had until October 17, 2024, to transpose it into national law. Yet many organizations still don't meet the required standards two years after it was approved. According to survey from backup shop Veeam carried out shortly before the deadline, as many as two-thirds (66 percent) of organizations were going to miss the October 17 cutoff, despite nine in ten admitting that they faced incidents that...

6 days ago

The Register

Vivaldi has updated its eponymous browser – it now has a refreshed user interface and a dashboard packed with widgets. While the browser engine remains based on Chromium (as are most desktop browsers), the customizable interface around it has long been a hallmark of Vivaldi, alongside the company's obsession with user privacy. However, the interface, despite the customization possibilities (and there are a lot of those), has been starting to look distinctly long in the tooth, and so a revamp...

6 days ago

The Register

The sales pitch for software-as-a-service is that you get powerful applications without having to worry about their underlying infrastructure. But SaaSy workflow vendor ServiceNow will, quietly, let you run its wares on-prem. The Register learned this when we caught up with senior veep for product engineering Robert Krohn last week at the company's World Forum in Melbourne, Australia, and suggested he'd been busy rebuilding software to run on the Postgres database that now backs its SaaS. Krohn remarked that he...

6 days ago

The Register

Scammers, rejoice. OpenAI's real-time voice API can be used to build AI agents capable of conducting successful phone call scams for less than a dollar. There have been concerns that letting AI models interact with convincing, simulated voices might lead to abuse. OpenAI in June delayed its advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, which supports real-time conversation between human and model, over safety concerns. This was after OpenAI demonstrated a voice that sounded like celebrity Scarlett Johansson, only to withdraw it...

6 days ago

The Register

In its last few quarterly results announcements, IBM has trumpeted unexpectedly strong growth in its mainframe business, and that's helped the technology titan to just-about deliver promised mid-single-digit revenue growth in constant currency. But in its Q3 results announcement on Wednesday, Big Blue revealed mainframe revenue fell 19 percent – and that overall growth came in at just one percent or two percent in constant currency. IBM's mainframe business is cyclical: buyers spend up big when new machines debut. The...

6 days ago

The Register

Hong Kong’s government has updated infosec guidelines to restrict the use of Chinese messaging app WeChat, alongside Meta and Google products like WhatsApp and Google Drive, on computers it operates. On Tuesday, secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong discussed the matter [VIDEO] during an appearance on public broadcasting service Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK). Yesterday, Hong Kong's Digital Policy Office posted news of the rule change. "Although various government departments have deployed multiple cyber security defense measures, the...

6 days ago

The Register

The latest version of AI startup Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet model can use computers – and the developer makes it sound like that's a good thing. "Why is this new capability important?" the AI biz wonders aloud in its celebratory blog post. Then it answers its own question: "A vast amount of modern work happens via computers. Enabling AIs to interact directly with computer software in the same way people do will unlock a huge range of applications that simply...

6 days ago

The Register

Tesla stock is on the up after America's most valuable automaker reported its third quarter results – including the news that the beleaguered Cybertruck "achieved a positive gross margin for the first time." Here's the results rundown [PDF]: Revenue – $25.18 billion, slightly below analysts' expectations but still up 8 percent year-on-year. Net income – $2.17 billion, up 17 percent on 12 months ago. Earnings per share – $0.62 dividend for shareholders was were also up 17 percent. Deliveries –...

6 days ago

The Register

An unknown attacker is abusing exposed Docker Remote API servers to deploy perfctl cryptomining malware on victims' systems, according to Trend Micro researchers. Sunil Bharti, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, told The Register that his team's honeypots trapped two such attempts after would-be crooks deployed perfctl. This is the same malware that, earlier this month, Aqua security researchers warned had likely targeted millions with a victim count in the thousands, and declared that "any Linux server could be...

6 days ago

The Register

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) this week released the final regulations for tiltrotors and other vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, including electric variants, the first time the org has established a new category of aircraft since it permitted helicopters to fly. “This final rule addresses regulatory barriers to introducing powered-lift as a new category of aircraft into operations in the NAS [National Airspace System],” explained the FAA. The FAA's "powered-lift" category refers to aircraft that take off like helicopters...

6 days ago

The Register

A nasty bug in Samsung's mobile chips is being exploited by miscreants as part of an exploit chain to escalate privileges and then remotely execute arbitrary code, according to Google security researchers. The use-after-free vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2024-44068, and it affects Samsung Exynos mobile processors versions 9820, 9825, 980, 990, 850, and W920. It received an 8.1 out of 10 CVSS severity rating, and Samsung, in its very brief security advisory, describes it as a high-severity flaw. The vendor...

6 days ago

The Register

Pennsylvania State University has agreed to pay the Justice Department $1.25 million to settle claims of misrepresenting its cybersecurity compliance to the federal government and leaving sensitive data improperly secured.  The settlement order between the DoJ and Penn State resolves allegations from a court case filed two years ago by a former university CIO who blew the whistle on the matter. Filing a case on behalf of the government (known as a qui tam complaint), Matthew Decker alleged that his...

6 days ago

The Register

Fortinet has gone public with news of a critical flaw in its software management platform. The security vendor apparently began informing customers privately about the issue a few days ago but has since opened up about the issue in its FortiManager control software. The vulnerability, CVE-2024-47575, has a CVSS score of 9.8 and would allow a remote attacker to run code on unpatched systems – and, given the application's management tools, possibly spread further over a network. "A missing authentication...

6 days ago

The Register

Comment A gaggle of ex-Intel board directors have called on the chipmaker to spin off its floundering foundry business while glossing over the fact that a company bleeding billions each quarter is unlikely to survive on its own. Instead, the former directors, David Yoffie, Reed Hundt, Charlene Barshefsky, and James Plummer, argued in a letter published in Fortune on Tuesday that breaking Intel in two is the only way to save America's most important manufacturer. During its disastrous Q2 earnings...

6 days ago