TheRegister
AI researchers map models to banish 'demon' persona
Researchers from Anthropic and other orgs have observed situations in which LLMs act like a helpful personal assistant, and are trying to study the phenomenon further to make sure chatbots don't go off the rails and cause harm.…
Mozilla starts offering RPMs of Firefox Nightly
If you can't wait to get the bleeding-edge version of Firefox, we have good news. Mozilla is offering native RPM packages of Firefox Nightly for Linux distros in the greater Red Hat and SUSE families.…
Remember VoidLink, the cloud-targeting Linux malware? An AI agent wrote it
VoidLink, the newly spotted Linux malware that targets victims' clouds with 37 evil plugins, was generated "almost entirely by artificial intelligence" and likely developed by just one person, according to the research team that discovered the do-it-all implant.…
Dead batteries cough up lithium after a bath in CO₂ and water, boffins say
Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, and recycling them cleanly and safely at scale is still hard. Now, a Chinese research team claims to have discovered a way to recycle Li-ion batteries using carbon dioxide and water. Just don't expect it to revolutionize the market overnight.…
Power scarcity drives datacenters to Texas, where the juice is
Everything's bigger in Texas, including the amount of available power. That's why the Lone Star State is set to become the leading bit barn market within a few years, and why hyperscalers and colocation providers now expect roughly a third of datacenter campuses to rely entirely on onsite power by 2030.…
Rackspace tests customer loyalty with brutal email price hike
Rackspace is giving a masterclass in how to annoy customers after an eye-watering price hike for email hosting.…
OpenAI is still figuring out how to make money, but wants you to believe in it
This week, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar took to the internet to make a bold pitch for the company's future, which she claims is bright, despite what the current numbers say.…
Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge
More than half of CEOs report seeing neither increased revenue nor decreased costs from AI, despite massive investments in the technology, according to a PwC survey of 4,454 business leaders.…
AI framework flaws put enterprise clouds at risk of takeover
Two "easy-to-exploit" vulnerabilities in the popular open-source AI framework Chainlit put major enterprises' cloud environments at risk of leaking data or even full takeover, according to cyber-threat exposure startup Zafran.…
Windows 11, not AI, kick-started the PC upgrade cycle
If 2025 proved anything about PCs, it's that corporate IT will upgrade hardware out of necessity long before it does so out of AI-fueled excitement.…
Anthropic quietly fixed flaws in its Git MCP server that allowed for remote code execution
Anthropic has fixed three bugs in its official Git MCP server that researchers say can be chained with other MCP tools to remotely execute malicious code or overwrite files via prompt injection.…
For the price of Netflix, crooks can now rent AI to run cybercrime
Cybercrime has entered its AI era, with criminals now using weaponized language models and deepfakes as cheap, off-the-shelf infrastructure rather than experimental tools, according to researchers at Group-IB.…
Microsoft veteran explains the one weird trick that made Windows 95 restart faster
Microsoft's Raymond Chen has explained why holding down Shift during a Windows 95 restart would get the system up and running again far faster than a full reboot.…
Global economy shrugs off US tariff shock, tech spending does heavy lifting
The global economy has proved more resilient than many expected in the wake of US tariff shocks, with the International Monetary Fund now projecting worldwide growth of 3.3 percent in 2026 as a surge in AI investment helps offset trade disruption.…
Manchester ATM ups PIN requirement to full Windows login
Bork!Bork!Bork! Just because Microsoft has ended support doesn't mean an operating system will suddenly disappear. Take this crusty ATM running Windows 7 in the fair city of Manchester, England.…
MPs ask who's responsible when AI crashes the UK finance system
UK financial regulators must conduct stress testing to ensure businesses are ready for AI-driven market shocks, MPs have warned.…
England's Department of Health and Social Care offering £285k for new tech director
England's Department of Health and Social Care is recruiting a head of technology, digital and data at a maximum salary of up to £285,000 a year, well above that most recently advertised for the department's boss.…
£45B savings remain theoretical as UK digital roadmap delayed again
The UK government has delayed publication of its long-promised digital roadmap, a plan it says could eventually help save up to £45 billion of taxpayers' money by modernizing creaking public sector IT.…
UK gambling regulator accuses Meta of lying about its struggle to spot illegal ads
The head of the UK’s Gambling Commission has accused social media giant Meta of lying about its ability to proactively detect operators of illegal casinos advertising on its services.…
Akamai CEO wants help to defeat piracy, reckons he can handle edge AI alone
Interview After Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently threatened to disrupt the Winter Olympics to protect free speech after Italian authorities fined his company for not disrupting pirate video streams, rival CDN provider Akamai’s CEO Dr. Tom Leighton fired back with what reads a lot like thinly veiled criticism.…