The Register - On-Prem

I can fix this PC, boss, but I’ll need to play games for hours to do it (Fri, 03 May 2024)
Loyal Wingman has fond memories of memory register exceptions On Call  The working week is no game, which is why The Register eases readers into the weekend with a fresh instalment of On Call – our weekly reader-contribute tales recalling the lighter side of tech support.…
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Indonesia sneakily buys spyware, claims Amnesty International (Fri, 03 May 2024)
A 'murky' web sees many purchases run through Singapore in a way that hides potential users Indonesia has acquired spyware and surveillance technologies through a "murky network" that extends into Israel, Greece, Singapore and Malaysia for equipment sourcing, according to Amnesty International.…
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Apple sales slip, but investors offered bite of $110B stock buyback (Fri, 03 May 2024)
Mac sales rose, iPads predicted to soar, and AI is riding to the rescue Apple has announced the biggest stock buyback in US history: a $110 billion plan to slurp shareholders' scrip.…
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Chinese government website security is often worryingly bad, say Chinese researchers (Fri, 03 May 2024)
Bad configurations, insecure versions of jQuery, and crummy cookies are some of myriad problems Exclusive  Five Chinese researchers examined the configurations of nearly 14,000 government websites across the country and found worrying lapses that could lead to malicious attacks, according to a not-yet-peer-reviewed study released last week.…
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Starlink geofence appears to have some gaping holes (Fri, 03 May 2024)
I guess the brains down in Africa gonna take some time to do the things they never should have had Starlink’s self-imposed end of April deadline to crack down on roaming users who abuse the service has come and gone without appearing to have worked.…
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Prof asks court to protect his Unfollow Everything 2.0 extension from Facebook's ire (Fri, 03 May 2024)
You've got to fight for your right to personalize A professor has asked the US courts to confirm he has the right to release a browser extension to help people disengage with Facebook by automatically changing certain settings.…
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Florida man gets 6 years behind bars for flogging fake Cisco kit to US military (Thu, 02 May 2024)
Operation busted after dodgy devices ended up at Air Force Miami resident Onur Aksoy has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for running a multi-million-dollar operation selling fake Cisco equipment that ended up in the US military.…
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Huawei's hidden hand in optics research competition shocks scholars (Thu, 02 May 2024)
US universities awarded money from a company they had severed ties with Updated  Huawei sponsored an optics technology research competition run by the Optica Foundation, and donated at least a million dollars to the organization.…
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Lights about to go out on US Affordable Connectivity Program (Thu, 02 May 2024)
A partial benefit in May then subsidy gets unplugged once and for all The end is nigh for the US Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) as funds finally run out after months of warnings.…
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SK hynix's high bandwidth memory buffet fully booked till 2025 (Thu, 02 May 2024)
Micron also riding the AI wave with 128 GB DDR5 RDIMMs Memory chipmaker SK hynix has already sold all the high bandwidth memory (HBM) it will manufacture this year and most of its expected 2025 production, citing increased demand driven by the AI craze. Micron is also getting in on the act with availability of 128 GB DDR5 RDIMMs for servers.…
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Microsoft confirms spike in NTLM authentication traffic after Windows Server patch (Thu, 02 May 2024)
Still using ancient protocol suite? April update might make you wish you weren't Microsoft's April 2024 security update blues continue with confirmation of a "significant increase" in NTLM authentication traffic in Windows Server.…
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A no fear future for data storage (Thu, 02 May 2024)
How Pure Storage can take the pain out of power and space issues Webinar  Running non-stop on a hamster wheel can be fantastic for your waistline but might be a miserable way to spend your working life.…
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Alibaba Cloud details storage tech that's doubled its VMs per host (Thu, 02 May 2024)
Using one disk as a write cache eases stresses created by manycore CPUs Exclusive  Alibaba Cloud has detailed the tech it developed to run local storage in its servers and bust bottlenecks created by new-generation manycore processors.…
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Think tank: China's tech giants refine and define Beijing's propaganda push (Thu, 02 May 2024)
Taking down TikTok won't stop the CCP's attempt to control global narratives Chinese tech companies that serve as important links in the world's digital supply chains are helping Beijing to execute and refine its propaganda strategy, according to an Australian think tank.…
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REvil ransomware scum sentenced to almost 14 years inside, ordered to pay $16 million (Thu, 02 May 2024)
After extorting $700 million from thousands of victims A Ukrainian man has been sentenced to almost 14 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $16 million in restitution for his role in infecting thousands of victims with REvil ransomware.…
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Japan will use AI to find out what bears do in the woods (Thu, 02 May 2024)
Because nobody wants a big surprise Japan's Toyama Prefecture is launching an AI bear monitoring system, following a recent string of encounters with the wildlife.…
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Anthropic goes after iPhone fans with Claude 3 chatbot app (Wed, 01 May 2024)
Also adds a Teams plan that's still under development Anthropic, flush with funds from Amazon and Google, has made its Claude chatbot service available in an iOS app and introduced a business-oriented Teams plan.…
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BMC's $1.6B victory over IBM is TKO on appeal (Wed, 01 May 2024)
Always read the terms and conditions carefully IBM has managed to overturn a $1.6 billion judgment against it after an appeals court decided the IT giant was well within its rights to replace software on a customer mainframe belonging to rival BMC with its own code.…
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Miss your morning iPhone alarm? It's not just you, and Apple is looking into it (Wed, 01 May 2024)
Dear _____, please excuse _____’s tardiness. Their alarm didn’t go off for (see below). Sincerely, The Register iPhone failing to get you up on time lately? You're not alone – reports have been spreading of just such an issue. …
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Google pulls RISC-V support from generic Android kernel (Wed, 01 May 2024)
Not a great omen if you were hoping to own a future RV smartphone – tho web giant says it hasn't totally given up Support for RISC-V was dropped from Android's Generic Kernel Image (GKI) thanks to a patch successfully merged today.…
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AWS customer faces staggering charges over S3 bucket misfire (Wed, 01 May 2024)
Open source tool fingered for 100 million PUT requests and $1,300 in a day AWS looks set to intervene after a customer highlighted a flaw that allows S3 bucket owners to be stung with potentially massive charges for attempted accesses they have no control over.…
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Tesla maps out new territory in China with Baidu deal (Wed, 01 May 2024)
U-turn necessary to comply with Chinese law Despite Elon Musk's insistence that high-definition maps aren't necessary for self-driving cars, Tesla's vehicles in China will technically rely on them now through a partnership with Baidu.…
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Microsoft's FOMO after seeing Google AI drove investment in OpenAI (Wed, 01 May 2024)
Historical email in antitrust case shows execs 'very, very worried' about capability gaps A fascinating insight into Microsoft's inner workings has been thrown up in some redacted document dumps related to the ongoing Google antitrust trial in the US.…
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AMD datacenter sales surge 80% in Q1 despite market's lukewarm reception (Wed, 01 May 2024)
Chip giant forecasts strong GPU growth amid mixed financial results AMD's datacenter revenue grew 80 percent and it hopes to make at least $4 billion from its GPUs this year, but shares took a hit as this failed to impress market analysts and the company reported a lackluster first quarter overall.…
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Intel, Ampere show running LLMs on CPUs isn't as crazy as it sounds (Wed, 01 May 2024)
If you lower you expectations, of course. Think more Llama2-7B, less GPT-4 Popular generative AI chatbots and services like ChatGPT or Gemini mostly run on GPUs or other dedicated accelerators, but as smaller models are more widely deployed in the enterprise, CPU-makers Intel and Ampere are suggesting their wares can do the job too – and their arguments aren't entirely without merit.…
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Bill advances to exonerate hundreds in Post Office Horizon scandal (Wed, 01 May 2024)
'Their convictions wiped clean from the slate,' minister promises The mass exoneration of wrongfully convicted Post Office managers caught up in the Horizon IT scandal has come a step closer in the UK after MPs passed the third stage of a government bill.…
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Musk axes two more senior Tesla leaders, guts public policy team – report (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
It's not like you need wonks to put driverless robotaxis on public roads or anything The organizational tree at Tesla keeps shedding leaves, and a surprising number keep falling from the top with two more high-profile executives reportedly leaving the firm. …
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IBM quantum system elbows into Arm-powered Fugaku supercomputer (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
Slotting in the module for ambitious next-generation compute goals Japan's Arm-based Fugaku supercomputer is to be paired with a newly developed quantum system from IBM as part of a project to research and develop future computing systems.…
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Building the power grid of tomorrow (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
Balancing growing demand with changing generation models Commissioned  The energy sector is undergoing a monumental shift as the power grid struggles to accommodate growing demand and the complexity of modern energy systems.…
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EU duties might not be enough to hold off flood of Chinese EVs (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
15 to 30% won't touch the sides... 50%? Now you're talking Import duties of 40 to 50 percent will be needed to shield the European auto industry from China-based producers, according to a new report.…
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Satellite of love: SES and Intelsat finally tie the knot in $3.1B acquisition (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
Second time lucky as competition from Starlink and pals increases Satellite operator SES is to acquire Intelsat for $3.1 billion, creating an entity with more than 100 Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and 26 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites.…
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Elon Musk's latest brainfart is to turn Tesla cars into AWS on wheels (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
There are many reasons why this is likely more trouble than it's worth EV carmaker Tesla is considering a wonderful money-making wheeze – use all of that compute power in its vehicles to process workloads for cash, like a kind of AWS on wheels.…
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Vantage enters crowded Irish datacenter market with new Dublin site (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
On-site generation plant aims to 'alleviate pressure on energy demand from the grid' Vantage Data Centers is joining the crowded Irish datacenter market with its first site in the Emerald Isle due to come online in 2024. In view of ongoing power constraints in the country, the project is to include on-site power generation.…
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Politicians call for ban on 'killer robots' and the curbing of AI weapons (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
'This is the Oppenheimer moment of our generation' Video  Austria's foreign minister on Monday likened the rise of military artificial intelligence to the existential crisis faced by the creators of the first atomic bomb, and called for a ban on "killer robots".…
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Here’s another thing AI can do: Return Samsung’s memory biz to profit (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
HBM will help too. Foundry biz? On track for 2nm but bruised Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions unit reported on Tuesday a 68 percent year-on-year increase in sales for Q1 2024, largely thanks to its memory sales – a result that confirms what many had predicted: an AI and server boom has brought the chip shop out of the lows experienced in 2023.…
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Australia to fund $620M quantum computer claimed to be first at 'utility-scale' (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
PsiQuantum's coming home Australian researchers pioneered the development of solar panels, but the nation now imports them in huge quantities – a situation that's become emblematic of the nation's poor record of turning local innovation into jobs and profits across the supply chain.…
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The hiring frenzy is over at India's services giants (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
Headcounts are down for the first time in ages, margins are up, and CEOs are happy When India's top four outsourcers – Wipro, HCL Tech, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – announce their results, they often mention plans to hire thousands of new workers to both grow headcount and replace departed workers. But across 2023 and into 2024, that changed.…
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AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile US fined $200M for selling off people's location info (Tue, 30 Apr 2024)
Carriers claim real culprits are getting away with it - the data brokers The FCC on Monday fined four major US telcos almost $200 million for "illegally" selling subscribers' location information to data brokers.…
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Ford's BlueCruise driving assistant probed by US watchdog after deaths (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Electric Mustang tech active right up to moment of crashes The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating an electric car maker whose self-driving-ish software was involved in a pair of fatal collisions. It's not Tesla this time, instead it's Ford's turn in the hot seat.…
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Open source Z80 clone seeks to help bring classic chip back from the dead (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Whether the project will bear fruit is perhaps questionable Zilog's classic Z80 chip is soon to be dead, though it might not be gone forever if one open source project succeeds in its goal to clone the legendary processor.…
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Musk schmoozes Chinese Premier as Tesla Full Self-Driving remains parked (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Automaker could really do with the training data Tesla boss Elon Musk met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing to discuss electric vehicles and self-driving cars.…
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Intel tells mobo makers to go easy on the BIOS settings amid CPU instability reports (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Do not disable safeguards by default, says chipmaker Intel is reportedly telling motherboard manufacturers to use its recommended BIOS settings by default to stop CPU instability issues with 13th and 14th Generation chips.…
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UK government faces £17.5M shortfall from UKCloud liquidation (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Cabinet Office letter also reveals department lost money on unfinished database project The UK Cabinet Office has confirmed it is £17.5 million out of pocket after underwriting the official receiver of UKCloud, which went into liquidation in 2022.…
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The chip that changed my world – and yours (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Zed 80 is dead baby, Zed 80 is dead.... vulture claws over the astounding tech Opinion  It lasted 50 years, but history finally claimed it. Zilog has called time on the Z80 CPU. Readers may have owned one in an 8-bit microcomputer or showered coins on one in an early arcade video game.…
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Software support chap survived breaking his customer (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Sometimes there's more than enough blame to go around Who, Me?  Welcome once again, gentle reader, to the safe space we like to call Who, Me? wherein Reg readers may unburden themselves with tales of times their tech prowess might have let them down.…
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Alibaba Yitian 710 rated fastest Arm server CPU in the cloud (for now) (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
Researcher finds it beats Intel's Xeons for speed on one database-related tests, joins AWS Gravitons in cost-efficiency win The homebrew Yitian 710 CPU developed in 2021 and deployed by Alibaba Cloud is the fastest Arm server processor for rent in hyperscale clouds when handling database-related tasks, according to research published this week in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal Transactions on Cloud Computing.…
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Teardown confirms Huawei's Pura 70 contains SMIC 7nm process node (Mon, 29 Apr 2024)
'Remarkably similar' to the Kirin 9000 processor that shocked many last year A teardown of Huawei's Pura 70 smartphone by an IC research firm revealed the Chinese tech giant is relying on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp's (SMIC) HiSilicon Kirin 9010 processor, likely because US sanctions mean the Chinese company can't buy from other sources.…
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State-by-state is the best approach for right to repair, says advocacy leader (Sat, 27 Apr 2024)
Gay Gordon-Byrne of the Repair Association says US at least is nearing a tipping point Interview  There's a lot of momentum behind the right-to-repair movement, and if anyone should know, it'd be Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association and longtime repairability advocate.…
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Raspberry Pi adds more memory to the Compute Module 4S (Sat, 27 Apr 2024)
Compute Module 5 still on track for later this year New memory variants were this week launched for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module family. Customers can now specify a 4S with 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, as well as the original 1GB version.…
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Big Cloud is still making bank – Is this AI adoption, price rises, or what? (Sat, 27 Apr 2024)
Shareholders are loving it. What are customers getting out of it all? Kettle  This week a chunk of Big Tech reported its latest quarterly financial figures, and our beady eyes were on whether the ongoing AI obsession will pay off for these mega corporations.…
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