The Register

It's Friday. Quit the doomscrolling. Distract yourself with IT infra news

Developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, ST Micro detailed a new photonic integrated circuit (PIC) on Thursday that it says will support pluggable optics capable of shuttling bits around the datacenter at up to 1.6 Tbps.…

If you don't need to think about easy questions, will you be able to answer complex questions?

Opinion  I don't want to sound like an aging boomer, yet when I see junior programmers relying on AI tools like Copilot, Claude, or GPT for simple coding tasks, I wonder if they're doing themselves more harm than good.…

Researchers say there's dissent in the ranks. Plus: An AI tool lets you have a go yourself at analysing the data

Hundreds of thousands of internal messages from the Black Basta ransomware gang were leaked by a Telegram user, prompting security researchers to bust out their best Russian translations post haste.…

License To Kill -9 ... For Your iPhone Only ... AI Another Day ... The name's Bezos, Jeff Bezos

As part of its quest for world domination, Amazon has bought the creative rights to fictional British spy James Bond.…

Who knew a script could make RAM re-appear?

On Call  Another Friday is upon us, and The Register understands some of you would rather not retain memories of the last week. That's why we offer another instalment of On Call, our reader-contributed column that revives your happier recollections of wreaking revenge on colleagues who caused you tech support trauma.…

Enterprise hardware biz produced record revenue, just $1M of profit, but execs think losses are behind it

Lenovo believes its enterprise hardware business is finally on track to achieve consistent profits, if its customers can secure sufficient energy to buy more AI servers.…

It comes amid a major crackdown on the abusive industry that started during COVID

Thailand is preparing to receive thousands of people rescued from scam call centers in Myanmar as the country launches a major crackdown on the pervasive criminal activity across its border.…

Don't think this is SaaS and you can relax: Redmond wants a few of you to check your websites

Microsoft has fixed a security flaw in its Power Pages website-building SaaS, after criminals got there first – and urged users to check their sites for signs of exploitation.…

Said bugs 'can have significant implications' – glad to hear that from Redmond

Microsoft is so concerned about security in its Copilot products for folks that it’s lifted bug bounty payments for moderate-severity vulnerabilities from nothing to a maximum of $5,000, and expanded the range of vulnerabilities it will pay people to find and report.…

A painful loss for young company that's yet to generate revenue

A NASDAQ-listed US minerals company says cybercriminals broke into its systems on Valentine's Day and paid themselves around $500,000 – money earmarked for a vendor.…

Bosses bragged about Duo Chat bot, buyers weren’t buying it – claim

For the third time in five months, GitLab or its execs have been sued over allegedly misleading investors about AI capabilities and demand.…

Not just a matter of time but a matter of Majorana fermions, too

Microsoft says it has developed a quantum-computing chip made with novel materials that is expected to enable the development of quantum computers for meaningful, real-world applications within – you guessed it – years rather than decades.…

Apple, Dell made some progress, but MacBooks are still the worst to crack open, says PIRG

The right to repair movement has gained momentum, yet laptop makers have largely stalled on improving repairability.…

Hot air or a 50% energy saving? Exoscale datacenter runs proof-of-concept to test veracity of Digger's claims

A1 Digital is testing liquid cooling tech for power-intensive AI servers that is claimed to save 50 percent of the energy previously required for cooling, doing away entirely with the need for air conditioning.…

Locals see red as public cloud's service health dashboard shows green

Norwegians fell victim to a prolonged Microsoft Azure outage today, which impacted businesses and took down multiple government websites delivering online services to citizens.…

Lucky there isn't an asteroid headed for Earth for which a demoralized space agency might need to mount a redirect mission

Comment  The US space agency, NASA, is famous for looking to the future. However, the fiasco of the last few days has cast doubt on the present, let alone what the coming weeks, months, or years might hold.…

Bugs fixed, updating to the latest version is advisable

Security sleuths found two critical vulnerabilities in a third-party library that MongoDB relies on, which means bad guys can potentially steal data and run code.…

Chipzilla's design and manufacturing limbs said to be on the table

Venture capitalists are circling Intel amid talk that the beleaguered chip giant may be carved up between Broadcom and TSMC, with one taking the design biz and the other the manufacturing fabs.…

IT giant doing whatever it takes to reach $300 a share

IBM is looking to reduce expenses through what's described as a co-location program that, according to current and former employees who spoke with The Register, appears to be designed to drive out older, more expensive workers.…

It's probably fine

As the risk corridor narrows for asteroid 2024 YR4, the possibility of a collision with Earth in 2032 has increased.…