TheRegister
Who's watching the watchers? This Mozilla fellow, and her Surveillance Watch map
interview Digital rights activist Esra'a Al Shafei found FinFisher spyware on her device more than a decade ago. Now she's made it her mission to surveil the companies providing surveillanceware, their customers, and their funders.…
Microsoft's lack of quality control is out of control
OPINION I have a habit of ironically referring to Microsoft's various self-induced whoopsies as examples of the company's "legendary approach to quality control." While the robustness of Windows NT in decades past might qualify as "legendary", anybody who has had to use the company's wares in recent years might quibble with the word "quality."…
Meta can't afford its $600B love letter to Trump
Meta on Friday floated plans to invest $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs by 2028 as part of a massive datacenter expansion.…
ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok make very squishy jury members
Law students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law last month held a mock trial to see how AI models administer justice.…
Previously unknown Landfall spyware used in 0-day attacks on Samsung phones
A previously unknown Android spyware family called LANDFALL exploited a zero-day in Samsung Galaxy devices for nearly a year, installing surveillance code capable of recording calls, tracking locations, and harvesting photos and logs before Samsung finally patched it in April.…
AI benchmarks are a bad joke – and LLM makers are the ones laughing
AI companies regularly tout their models' performance on benchmark tests as a sign of technological and intellectual superiority. But those results, widely used in marketing, may not be meaningful.…
Blackwell a no-sell in China as trade deal fails to materialize
Nvidia's latest generation of Blackwell accelerators won't be available in China anytime soon, according to CEO Jensen Huang, who said there were no "active discussions" about selling the coveted chips to the Middle Kingdom.…
Bell bottom-era tape unearthed, could contain lost piece of Unix history
A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years. The question is whether researchers will be able to take this piece of middle-aged media and rewind it back to the 1970s to get the data off.…
China warns Dutch away from Nexperia as it lets chip exports resume
Tensions between China and the Netherlands over the state of chipmaker Nexperia have begun to ease, but the battle for company control doesn't appear to be entirely resolved yet. …
Google's Gemini Deep Research can now read your Gmail and rummage through Google Drive
Google's Gemini Deep Research tool can now reach deep into Gmail, Drive, and Chat to obtain data that might be useful for answering research questions.…
Cybercrims plant destructive time bomb malware in industrial .NET extensions
Security experts have helped remove malicious NuGet packages planted in 2023 that were designed to destroy systems years in advance, with some payloads not due to hit until the latter part of this decade.…
Researchers want to kill the vibe, propose better model for AI coding
A pair of MIT researchers have detailed a proposed new model for software that would help both humans and AI code generators alike create better and more transparent applications. No more vibing!…
Musk gets approval for bumper Tesla payout but, unlike his robot, there are strings attached
Tesla is awarding its CEO Elon Musk a package worth a possible $1 trillion, however, it relies in part on a dramatic increase in the value of the electric vehicle manufacturer.…
'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft Engineer says, explains how to fix it
Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has waded into the argument over where Microsoft has gone wrong with Windows, suggesting that perhaps the OS needs a hardcore mode to offset some of its fluffier edges.…
25 years of meatbags permanently in space on the ISS
Anyone turning 25 this week has never known a time when humans weren't living in space. The same might not be true when they're 30.…
Microsoft's data sovereignty: Now with extra sovereignty!
Microsoft is again banging the data sovereignty drum in Europe, months after admitting in a French court it couldn't guarantee that data will not be transmitted to the US government when it is legally required to do so.…
Bank of England says JLR's cyberattack contributed to UK's unexpectedly slower GDP growth
The Bank of England (BoE) has cited the cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) as one of the reasons for the country's slower-than-expected GDP growth in its latest rates decision.…
UK tax collector falls short on digital efficiency, watchdog says
The UK’s tax collector is yet to reach the levels of efficiency its investment in digital services has led auditors to expect, according to a new report.…
ISP help desk manager fell for ‘Internet Cleaning Day’ prank - then swore he got the joke
On Call Welcome to another instalment of On Call, The Register’s Friday reader-contributed column that celebrates the fine art of tech support.…
Foxconn hires humanoid robots to make servers at Nvidia's Texas factory
Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn has confirmed it will use humanoid robots to make Nvidia servers in America.…