The Register

They're taking the data from IRSengard, claim Dems; officials tell us that's not true

A coalition of House and Senate Democrats has sent an aggressive letter to Palantir CEO Alex Karp questioning whether the controversial data intelligence biz is breaking federal law by allegedly helping the IRS build a searchable "mega database" of taxpayer information, and, likening his firm to US companies accused of aiding human rights violations in apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the People's Republic of China. …

Plus adds a ton more security capabilities for cloud customers at re:Inforce

Amazon Web Services hit a major multi-factor authentication milestone, achieving 100 percent MFA enforcement for root users across all types of AWS accounts.…

A symbolic political move

Taiwan has added China's leading foundry operator Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. (SMIC) and IT giant Huawei to its export control list. The move effectively blacklists the duo from doing business with the chip manufacturing mecca.…

DoD says deal covers 'warfighting'. OpenAI merely mentions healthcare and 'supporting proactive cyber defense'

The US Department of Defense has contracted OpenAI to run a pilot program that will create "frontier AI," but it's not clear what they're building together.…

The group has previously threatened to SWAT cancer patients and leaked pre-op plastic surgery photos

UPDATED  An extortion gang claims to have breached Freedman HealthCare, a data and analytics firm whose customers include state agencies, health providers, and insurance companies, and is threatening to dump tens of thousands of sensitive files early Tuesday morning.…

Third time's a charm?

Apple has escaped a $300 million patent infringement damages penalty – for now – due to what a trio of judges said comes down to faulty jury instructions.…

Amazon's satellite constellation hits another snag as ULA rocket aborts on pad

A hardware glitch on United Launch Alliance's (ULA) workhorse Atlas V rocket delayed the launch of the second batch of Project Kuiper satellites.…

Hardcoded passwords and path traversals keeping bug hunters in work

Security researchers have issued a warning about a pre-authentication exploit chain affecting a CMS used by some of the biggest companies in the world.…

Layoffs loom at Foundry biz despite CHIPS Act relief on the horizon

Intel is reportedly set to shed 15 to 20 percent of its fabrication plant staff from next month, blaming company finances for the move, but the chip giant may get a boost from increased tax credits in a draft bill passing through the US Senate.…

Promises silos for VMs, storage, and networks are out. Happy cloud-like days are in, without hyperscale complications

573 days after closing the acquisition of VMware, Broadcom has released the product that expresses its vision for the virtualization giant's future and what it claims is the template for a modern private cloud.…

Out-of-band getting out of hand

Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to deal with a Surface Hub problem introduced with June's Patch Tuesday fixes.…

Still buying B200s and MI300Xs? Don't feel bad, Nvidia and AMD's NVL72 and Helios rack systems aren't really for the enterprise anyway

Analysis  With all the hype around Nvidia's NVL72, AMD's newly announced Helios, and Intel's upcoming Jaguar Shores rack systems, you'd be forgiven for thinking the days of eight-way HGX servers are numbered.…

Forms Library blamed for issues experienced by some users

Microsoft is so keen for users to migrate to the New Outlook email client that it has broken Classic Outlook again. This time, affected users are unable to open or create a message.…

Penalty follows year-long probe into flaws that allowed attack to affect so many

The UK's data watchdog is fining beleaguered DNA testing outfit 23andMe £2.31 million ($3.13 million) over its 2023 mega breach.…

Parent company Mozilla's not my fave either

Opinion  I know some people still love Firefox. But, folks, it's a bad relationship, and the problems have been going on for a while now.…

GLAM-E Labs report warns of risk to online cultural resources

Bots harvesting content for AI companies have proliferated to the point that they're threatening digital collections of arts and culture.…

Last of Whitehall-wide ERP overhaul will not kick off until next year

The UK's Ministry of Defence has delayed procurement of a £92 million contract to implement Oracle's Fusion cloud-based ERP system.…

Flights still flying - just don't count on the app or website working smoothly

updated  Canadian airline WestJet is warning of "intermittent interruptions or errors" on its app and website as it investigates a cybersecurity incident.…

A moment of panic as some customers thought the free tiers were going away

On Monday, Railway, a provider of cloud infrastructure services, decided to throttle software builds by customers in its lowest paying tiers to accommodate unexpected demand for service following the Google Cloud Platform outage last week.…

Preferred and secured creditors walk away with nothing

Brit-based ruggedized phone maker Bullitt Group's liquidation has finally wrapped up – and the firm was in such dire straits that none of its creditors received any recovered funds.…