TheRegister
The world is one bad decision away from a silicon ice age
Opinion For a world economy driven by consumerism, it's become markedly unkind to consumers. This goes double – literally – for digital tech, where memory prices have increased by between 100 and 250 percent in six months. If you think GPUs are pricey now, you'll only have to wait six weeks, during which both AMD and Nvidia are expected to demonstrate supply-side economics much as the Road Runner demonstrated gravity to Wile E Coyote.…
Ofcom officially investigating X as Grok's nudify button stays switched on
Ofcom is investigating X over potential violations of the Online Safety Act, Britian's comms watchdog has confirmed.…
How CP/M-86's delay handed Microsoft the keys to the kingdom
A blog post by programmer Nemanja Trifunovic, The Late Arrival of 16-bit CP/M, is on the face of it an interesting little excursion into the late delivery of a long-forgotten bit of software – one that turned out to be pivotal for the entire computer industry.…
Windows 2000 still earning its keep running a rail ticket machine in Portugal
Bork!Bork!Bork! It isn't only a computer's software underbelly exposed during a bork. Sometimes the poor thing's innards are on show as engineers attempt to wring a little more life from long-expired systems.…
Tories vow to boot under-16s off social media and ban phones in schools
The Tories have pledged to kick under-16s off social media, betting that banning teens from TikTok and Instagram will fix what they see as a growing crisis in kids' mental health and classroom behavior.…
2026 brings a bumper crop of Microsoft tech funerals
2026 has begun with the familiar sound of Microsoft's software Grim Reaper sharpening a blade as administrators peer glumly at the calendar of carnage ahead.…
Techie banned from client site for outage he didn’t cause
Who, Me? Welcome to Monday morning and another instalment of “Who, Me?” - the weekly reader-contributed column in which we share your stories of what not to do at work, and how to get away with it.…
Cloudflare CEO threatens to make the Winter Olympics a political football after Italy slugs it with a fine
Cloudflare’s CEO has threatened to pull the company out of Italy, and to withdraw free services it intends to provide to the Winter Olympic games, after the nation’s communications regulator slugged it with a fine equal to one percent of its annual revenue for violating anti-piracy regulations.…
India’s government denies it plans to demand smartphone source code
India’s government has denied that it is working on rules that would require smartphone manufacturers to provide access to their source code.…
Malaysia and Indonesia block X over failure to curb deepfake smut
Asia in Brief The governments of Malaysia and Indonesia have suspended access to social network X, on grounds that it allows users to produce sexual imagery without users’ consent.…
Meta admits to Instagram password reset mess, denies data leak
infosec in brief Meta has fixed a flaw in its Instagram service that allowed third parties to generate password reset emails, but denied the problem led to theft of users’ personal information.…
AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them
Alarmed by what companies are building with artificial intelligence models, a handful of industry insiders are calling for those opposed to the current state of affairs to undertake a mass data poisoning effort to undermine the technology.…
Brussels plots open source push to pry Europe off Big Tech
The European Commission has launched a fresh consultation into open source, setting out its ambitions for Europe's developer communities to go beyond propping up US tech giants' platforms.…
UK government exempting itself from flagship cyber law inspires little confidence
ANALYSIS From May's cyberattack on the Legal Aid Agency to the Foreign Office breach months later, cyber incidents have become increasingly common in UK government.…
Artificial brains could point the way to ultra-efficient supercomputers
New research from Sandia National Laboratories suggests that brain-inspired neuromorphic computers are just as adept at solving complex mathematical equations as they are at speeding up neural networks and could eventually pave the way to ultra-efficient supercomputers.…
Accenture bets AI will ring up retail sales with Profitmind investment
Accenture is betting that the future of retail will run through AI with an investment in Profitmind, an agent-based platform that automates pricing decisions, inventory management, and planning. …
How hackers are fighting back against ICE surveillance tech
While watching us now seems like the least of its sins, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was once best known (and despised) for its multi-billion-dollar surveillance tech budget.…
Most devs don't trust AI-generated code, but fail to check it anyway
Talk about letting things go! Ninety-six percent of software developers believe AI-generated code isn't functionally correct, yet only 48 percent say they always check code generated with AI assistance before committing it.…
CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more
CES 2026 From disposable electric candy to voice-activated refrigerators without physical handles, CES was crammed full of enshittified, intrusive, insecure, and wasteful technology this year – just like it is every year. …
Meta reacts to power needs by signing long-term nuke deals
Meta is writing more checks for nuclear investment, even though the new capacity tied to those deals is unlikely to come online until around 2030. The company says it will need the new power to run its hyperscale datacenters.…