TheRegister
Debian's FreedomBox Blend promises an easier home cloud
Hands On Want to get off someone else's cloud, especially if it's hosted in a country you don't trust? FreedomBox is an off-ramp, and it's included in Debian in the form of a Blend.…
SAP scores £275M award from UK tax collector – sans competition
The UK tax collector has awarded SAP a £275 million ($370 million) contract to move the system, which handles over £800 billion (c $1 trillion) in tax revenue and payments annually, off an aging legacy platform and onto its latest software.…
British Army's drone degree program set to take flight
The UK government is investing in a defense-focused degree course to train both civilian students and soldiers to become drone technology specialists. However, it's only targeting a small number of people.…
Splash-screen memories from a Bangkok ticket machine
Bork!Bork!Bork! There's no keeping an obsolete operating system down, although keeping it operational can sometimes be a challenge, if public terminals are any indication. Today's bork uses an OS that dates back 26 years, but is still serving up train tickets.…
Anthropic writes Constitution for Claude it thinks will soon be proven ‘misguided’
The Constitution of the United States of America is about 7,500 words long, a factoid The Register mentions because on Wednesday AI company Anthropic delivered an updated 23,000-word constitution for its Claude family of AI models.…
eBay updates legalese to ban AI-powered shop-bots
eBay has decided to ban agentic shopping bots from its digital tat bazaar.…
Future jobs in AI will come with a hardhat and boots, tech bigshots argue
The leaders of the AI world descended on Davos, Switzerland, this week for the World Economic Forum, where they took turns lobbing their best guesses about what the next phase of AI would mean for jobs, as well as whether the AI bubble was real and when it may pop.…
AI networking startup Upscale scores $200M to challenge Nvidia's NVSwitch
AI networking startup Upscale AI on Wednesday announced it has raised $200 million in Series A funding to challenge Nvidia's dominance of switches for rack-scale AI systems, putting it in competition with the likes of Cisco and AMD.…
Davos discussion mulls how to keep AI agents from running wild
AI agents arrived in Davos this week with the question of how to secure them - and prevent agents from becoming the ultimate insider threat - taking center stage during a panel discussion on cyber threats.…
AI hasn't delivered the profits it was hyped for, says Deloitte
Making money isn't everything ... at least not when it comes to AI. Research from professional services firm Deloitte shows that, for most companies, adopting AI tools hasn't helped the bottom line at all. But researchers still sing the technology's praises.…
MIT boffins create device that 'paints' iridescent structural color in real time
The feathers of a hummingbird, the wings of a butterfly, and the sparkle of an opal are all examples of nature's ability to produce structural, iridescent colors that typically require lab-grade materials and techniques to replicate. An MIT team says it has found a way to make that process far more accessible.…
House GOP wants final say on AI chip exports after Trump gives Nvidia a China hall pass
President Trump's decision to green-light the sale of Nvidia H200 GPUs to China isn't sitting well with some of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives. These GOP politicians have proposed a bill that would give Congress final say over the export of AI chips to China and other countries of concern.…
Don't click on the LastPass 'create backup' link - it's a scam
Password managers make great targets for attackers because they can hold many of the keys to your kingdom. Now, LastPass has warned customers about phishing emails claiming that action is required ahead of scheduled maintenance and told them not to fall for the scam. …
Trump promises nuclear datacenter permits in 3 weeks, calls Greenland 'big beautiful ice'
Donald Trump and Jensen Huang both took the stage at Davos today, giving attendees a myriad of reasons to feel assured or panic stricken about humanity’s future, depending on your point of view.…
Social Security Administration admits it underreported DOGE dirty dealings
DOGE's mucking around at the Social Security Administration (SSA) has been heavily scrutinized, but now the SSA itself is admitting it slightly underreported the unofficial agency's improper activities within its systems. DOGE employees may have been asked to assist a political advocacy group using SSA data, prompting Hatch Act referrals.…
ESA puts ExoMars lander through its paces with eye on 2028 launch
The European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled a full-scale structural mock-up of the landing platform for its long-delayed ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover.…
We come in peace, OpenAI tells locals near gargantuan Stargate facilities
OpenAI wants every Stargate datacenter campus to come with its own community plan reflecting "local concerns," including a commitment not to cause a hike in electricity prices, minimizing water use, and protecting local ecosystems.…
Palantir CEO claims AI will mean western economies won't need immigration
Opinion Palantir CEO Alex Karp has an inimitable aptitude for sniffing out the politically sensitive topic about which, by his own admission, he should not be speaking, but which will also win him the most attention.…
Everest ransomware gang said to be sitting on mountain of Under Armour data
Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) says 72.7 million accounts registered with Under Armour were affected by an alleged ransomware attack in November.…
Concorde at 50: Twice the speed of sound, twice the economic trouble
It is 50 years since Concorde began scheduled passenger flights, with British Airways operating a London-Bahrain service and Air France flying from Paris to Rio de Janeiro.…