TheRegister
Teach an AI to write buggy code, and it starts fantasizing about enslaving humans
Large language models (LLMs) trained to misbehave in one domain exhibit errant behavior in unrelated areas, a discovery with significant implications for AI safety and deployment, according to research published in Nature this week.…
US regulator tells GM to hit the brakes on customer tracking
The Federal Trade Commission has banned General Motors and subsidiary OnStar from sharing drivers' precise location and behavior data with consumer reporting agencies for five years under a 20-year consent order finalized January 14.…
Woman bailed as cops probe doctor's surgery data breach
The UK's West Midlands Police has released a woman on bail as part of an investigation into a data breach at a Walsall general practitioner's (GP) surgery.…
Wine 11 runs Windows apps in Linux and macOS better than ever
The latest version of the Wine Windows app runner arrives a year after version 10. Given its annual release cycle, its magic is starting to seem almost boring and routine, but it's far from it.…
Raspberry Pi 5 gets LLM smarts with AI HAT+ 2
Raspberry Pi has launched the AI HAT+ 2 with 8 GB of onboard RAM and the Hailo-10H neural network accelerator aimed at local AI computing.…
Microsoft taps UK courts to dismantle cybercrime host RedVDS
Microsoft has taken its cybercrime fight to the UK in its first major civil action outside the US, moving to shut down RedVDS, a virtual desktop service used to power phishing and fraud at global scale.…
Ofcom keeps X under the microscope despite Grok 'nudify' fix
Ofcom is continuing with its investigation into X, despite the social media platform saying it will block Grok from digitally undressing people.…
Microsoft's 'From SA' scheme on trial as license resale row refuses to die
Microsoft's From Software Assurance (SA) program is the subject of a disclosure application as the long-running spat between Microsoft and ValueLicensing over the resale of software licenses rumbles on.…
AWS flips switch on Euro cloud as customers fret about digital sovereignty
Amid continued trade and geopolitical volatility between Europe and the US, Amazon Web Services is making its European Sovereign Cloud generally available today and plans to expand so-called Dedicated Local Zones.…
Dell wants £10m+ from VMware if Tesco case goes against it
Exclusive Dell has filed a claim against VMware in the software licensing dispute brought by supermarket giant Tesco and wants the virtualization giant should fork over at least £10 million under certain circumstances.…
China's Z.ai claims it trained a model using only Huawei hardware
Chinese outfit Zhipu AI claims it trained a new model entirely using Huawei hardware, and that it’s the first company to build an advanced model entirely on Chinese hardware.…
AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics
Interview Analyst firm Forrester’s vice president and principal analyst J. P. Gownder remains unconvinced that AI will revolutionize productivity.…
Maker fight! SparkFun cuts ties with Adafruit in harassment dispute
Retailer SparkFun Electronics last month said it would no longer do business with electronics kit-maker Adafruit Industries, citing violations of SparkFun's Code of Conduct during online interactions.…
CrowdStrike shareholders lose battle to recoup losses from 2024 outage
A group of CrowdStrike shareholders who sued the company over losses sustained following its 2024 global outage will have to head back to the drawing board if they hope to recoup losses, as a Texas judge has deemed they failed to adequately state a claim.…
Google offers bargain: Sell your soul to Gemini, and it'll give you smarter answers
Google on Wednesday began inviting Gemini users to let its chatbot read their Gmail, Photos, Search history, and YouTube data in exchange for possibly more personalized responses.…
New Linux malware targets the cloud, steals creds, and then vanishes
A brand-new Linux malware named VoidLink targets victims' cloud infrastructure with more than 30 plugins that allow attackers to perform a range of illicit activities, from silent reconnaissance and credential theft to lateral movement and container abuse. …
Ignore rosy datacenter expansion projections – there isn't enough power
A looming shortage of electrical power is set to constrain datacenter expansion, potentially leaving many industry growth forecasts looking overly optimistic.…
There was so much fraud on COVID loans, the feds trained an anti-fraud AI on the applications
A fraud-detection AI model trained on COVID-19 loan data could have flagged potentially tens of billions of dollars in payments before they went out, reducing the feds' pay-and-chase cleanup, the US government's Pandemic Response Accountability Committee told Congress on Tuesday.…
France fines telcos €42M for sub-par security prior to 24M customer breach
The French data protection regulator, CNIL, today issued a collective €42 million ($48.9 million) fine to two French telecom companies for GDPR violations stemming from a data breach.…
Hasta la vista! Microsoft finally ends extended updates for ancient Windows version
Microsoft has quietly maintained support for an OS that's nearly 18 years old, but its time has finally passed - the Windows Vista-powered Windows Server 2008 took its last breath this week.…