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Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis
Updated: 31 min 48 sec ago

IBM scraps rewards program for staff inventions, wipes away cash points

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 8:07pm
Big Blue staffers aren't pleased to lose out on potential bonuses

Exclusive  IBM has canceled a program that rewarded inventors at Big Blue for patents or publications, leaving some angry that they are missing out on potential bonuses.…

Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 6:15pm
'Search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam,' says study

Updated  No, it's not just you - search engine results really are getting worse as the internet is flooded with low-effort garbage from SEO farms and affiliate link sites, a group of German researchers has concluded. …

Chip wars could lead to oversupply as China increases domestic capacity

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 5:45pm
Middle Kingdom can make market moves too... as potential global price battles loom

China’s chip manufacturing capacity is expected to more than double within the next 5 to 7 years, according to TrendForce, and this could lead to a market oversupply that would spell trouble for semiconductor companies elsewhere.…

Can solar power be beamed down from space? Yes. Is it commercially viable? Not yet

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 4:46pm
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.…

NVMe consortium polishes its specs to support computational storage

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 4:00pm
Tech to shift storage to compute has so far failed to catch on in a big way

Updated  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.…

Could immutability be a Leap too far for openSUSE users?

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 3:31pm
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.…

What's worse than paying an extortion bot that auto-pwned your database?

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 3:00pm
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.…

AI investment still at the planning stage through 2024, Gartner says

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 2:35pm
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.…

AI political disinformation is a huge problem – but harder to fight than ever

Wed, 17/01/2024 - 2:00pm
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.…

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.…