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Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis
Updated: 23 min 3 sec ago

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 1:15pm
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.…

Microsoft touts migration to Windows 11 as painless, though wallets may disagree

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 12:30pm
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."…

Windows Server 2022 patch is breaking apps for some users

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 11:45am
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.…

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 11:00am
...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.…

BT to spell out contract price hikes in pounds and pence

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 10:15am
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.…

Home improvement marketers dial up trouble from regulator

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 9:30am
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.…

YouTube video lag wrongly blamed on its ad-blocking animus

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 8:34am
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.…

What are our top picks from the vast world of retro tech? Let's find out

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 7:26am
Stand by 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.…

Combination of cheap .cloud domains and fake Shark Tank news fuel unhealthy wellness scams

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 6:29am
.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.…

Google updates Chrome's Incognito Mode data slurp disclaimer in early browser build

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 5:33am
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.…

Working from home never looked better: Leopard stalks around Infosys and TCS campuses

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 4:29am
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.…

Nokia walks the walk about its RAN to play on Uncle Sam’s China fears

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 2:59am
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.…

FBI: Beware of thieves building Androxgh0st botnets using stolen creds

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 1:29am
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).…

Boss fight between Donkey Kong champ and leaderboard org ends with settlement

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 12:50am
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.…

Pentagon using ChatGPT? Oh sure, for cyber-things and veterans, says OpenAI

Tue, 16/01/2024 - 10:32pm
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.…

How 'sleeper agent' AI assistants can sabotage your code without you realizing

Tue, 16/01/2024 - 9:30pm
Today's safety guardrails won't catch these backdoors

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.…

Google AI chatbot more empathetic than real doctors in tests

Tue, 16/01/2024 - 8:30pm
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.…

JPMorgan latest to pile into quantum upstart with $5B valuation

Tue, 16/01/2024 - 8:00pm
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.…

US Supreme Court doesn't want to hear Apple, Epic's gripes about in-app purchases

Tue, 16/01/2024 - 7:12pm
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.…

Patch now: Critical VMware, Atlassian flaws found

Tue, 16/01/2024 - 6:09pm
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.…