TheRegister
LockBit takedown architect gets New Year award from King Charles
A senior British crimefighter has been awarded one of the country's highest tributes for public service for his role in the 2024 LockBit ransomware takedown.…
Safe CEO: AI is an assistant, not a replacement
Interview If AI can take on the role of a junior programmer, what happens when senior staff start retiring? Industry veteran and CEO of Safe Software, Don Murray, reckons the technology is becoming indispensable, but the human can never be removed from the loop.…
The Y2K bug delayed my honeymoon … by 17 years!
ON CALL Y2K Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register’s Friday column that shares your tech support stories. Over the holiday season we’re telling tales of the Y2K bug, and readers who spent December 31, 1999 on call in case the world’s computers caused calamities.…
Defusing space 'scope photobombs and more: Mitigating pollution from satellite RF transmissions
Interview Scientists and engineers have been taken aback by the amount of radio interference generated by satellite constellations, and many are calling on standards bodies to improve operator performance.…
Welcome to Wendy's! Before your order can be taken, you must first reset this kiosk
Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's example of bork-in-the-wild shows that Microsoft is not the only game in town when it comes to screens having an IT moment in public. No, there will be no orders on this Firefox-based drive-thru kiosk at Wendy's.…
How Microsoft gave customers what they wanted: An audience with Bill Gates
Microsoft had a special way of dealing with customers demanding to speak to its CEO. One that kept the customer happy without necessarily bothering His Billness.…
Nvidia DMs TSMC: please sir can I have some more? The Chinese are starved for H200s
With the sales ban lifted, Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance, are scrambling to secure orders for Nvidia's H200 graphics accelerators while they can. But will there be enough to satisfy demand?…
US Army seeks human AI officers to manage its battle bots
The US Army has been all-in on becoming an AI-powered outfit for some time, and now it's creating a career path for officers to specialize in making its automation dreams come true. …
European Space Agency hit again as cybercrims claim 200 GB data up for sale
The European Space Agency has suffered yet another security incident and, in keeping with past practice, says the impact is limited. Meanwhile, miscreants boast that they've made off with a trove of data, including what they claim are confidential documents, credentials, and source code.…
IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn’t taken over the world, but don't call it a failure
Feature In the early 1990s, internetworking wonks realized the world was not many years away from running out of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses, the numbers needed to identify any device connected to the public internet. Noting booming interest in the internet, the internet community went looking for ways to avoid an IP address shortage that many feared would harm technology adoption and therefore the global economy.…
Everybody has a theory about why Nvidia dropped $20B on Groq - they're mostly wrong
This summer, AI chip startup Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of $6.9 billion. Just three months later, Nvidia celebrated the holidays by dropping nearly three times that to license its technology and squirrel away its talent.…
The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere
Opinion COBOL turned 66 this year and is still in use today. Major retail and commercial banks continue to run core account processing, ATM networks, credit card clearing, and batch end-of-day settlement. On top of that, many payment networks, stock exchanges, and clearinghouses rely on COBOL for high‑volume, high‑reliability batch and online transaction processing on mainframes.…
Hong Kong’s newest anti-scam technology is over-the-counter banking
Hong Kong’s banks have a new weapon against scams: Accounts that require customers to visit a branch to access their funds.…
Cybersecurity pros admit to moonlighting as ransomware scum
A ransomware negotiator and a security incident response manager have admitted to running ransomware attacks.…
New York’s incoming mayor bans Raspberry Pi at his inauguration party
New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has invited the city’s residents to join him at a block party to celebrate his inauguration but told attendees not to bring a Raspberry Pi to the event.…
ServiceNow lays out possible co-CEO structure, but says no change imminent
ServiceNow’s amended employment contract with CEO Bill McDermott extends his time with the company into the next decade, but also provides possible next steps for the journeyman corporate leader, including the co-CEO role, a position he held at SAP in the years prior to joining the ITSM juggernaut.…
iPad kids are more anxious, less resilient, and slower decision makers
If you're thinking of plopping your infant in front of a screen to get some peace and quiet, you might want to reconsider - higher screen exposure in infancy was linked to longer decision times later on and higher anxiety symptoms in the teenage years.…
An early end to the holidays: 'Heartbleed of MongoDB' is now under active exploit
A high-severity MongoDB Server vulnerability, for which proofs of concept emerged over Christmas week, is now under active exploitation, according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.…
Banksy's Limitless limited by Windows Activation
Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's Bork comes courtesy of an exhibition dedicated to the UK street artist Banksy and demonstrates that "Limitless" does not always apply to Windows Activation.…
When the AI bubble pops, Nvidia becomes the most important software company overnight
Today, Nvidia’s revenues are dominated by hardware sales. But when the AI bubble inevitably pops, the GPU giant will become the single most important software company in the world.…