TheRegister
UK tax collector plans £2B tech binge as legacy systems refuse to die
The UK's tax collector is budgeting to spend more than £2 billion on new tech deals in the next couple of years, including a contract set for AWS and another for Capgemini to be awarded without competition.…
Britain's Ministry of Defence signs on the dotted line with Palantir
The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has directly awarded a £240.6 million contract to US technology company Palantir to continue to licence and support its data analytics work.…
ATM flashes a port or two for the enterprising hacker
Bork!Bork!Bork! Behold an ATM crying out for a man-in-the-middle attack. An obsolete Microsoft operating system cannot be blamed here. This is all about the hardware.…
Paranoid WhatsApp users rejoice: Encrypted app gets one-click privacy toggle
Users of Meta's WhatsApp messenger looking to simplify the process of protecting themselves are in luck, as the company is rolling out a new feature that combines multiple security settings under a single, toggleable option. …
ICE knocks on ad tech’s data door to see what it knows about you
It's not enough to have its agents in streets and schools; ICE now wants to see what data online ads already collect about you. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week issued a Request for Information (RFI) asking data and ad tech brokers how they could help in its mission.…
Nudify app proliferation shows naked ambition of Apple and Google
The mobile app emperors have no clothes. Apple and Google have made millions of dollars from AI apps that let users undress people even as both companies claim to ban such software from their stores, according to a new study.…
Let them eat sourdough: ShinyHunters claims Panera Bread as stolen credentials victim
ShinyHunters says it stole several slices of data from Panera Bread, but that's just the yeast of everyone's problems. The extortionist gang also claims to have stolen data from CarMax and Edmunds, in addition to three other organizations it posted to its blog last week.…
Penguin in your pocket: Nexphone dual boots into Linux, Windows 11
For most mobile devices, the OS is either Android or iOS, but a pair of new systems promises a host of additional OS options you can dual boot into. The Android phone can run Linux and boot into Windows 11 where it functions as a PC while the tablet runs a smorgasbord of Google-free OSes.…
Clawdbot sheds skin to become Moltbot, can't slough off security issues
Security concerns for the new agentic AI tool formerly known as Clawdbot remain, despite a rebrand prompted by trademark concerns raised by Anthropic. Would you be comfortable handing the keys to your identity kingdom over to a bot, one that might be exposed to the open internet?…
European firms push on with AI pilots even as payoff doubts grow
Despite a growing number of reports that AI is not benefiting many businesses, Lenovo and IDC say that firms in EMEA are pushing ahead with pilot deployments and still expect it to drive growth and transform how they operate.…
Micron continues fab spending spree with $24B NAND storage plant in Singapore
Flush with cash from skyrocketing memory prices, Micron continued its fab expansion this week, this time breaking ground on a $24 billion manufacturing complex that will eventually produce chips used in storage devices.…
Salesforce signs $5.6B deal to inject agentic AI into the US Army
Salesforce is getting cosier with the US Army via a deal worth up to $5.6 billion, selling cloud analytics as the groundwork for a future agentic AI push across the service and the wider DoD.…
Pope warns flock to raise their faces, protect their voices in fightback against AI
Catholics need to develop critical thinking skills to counter the dark side of AI and counter unnatural attachments to chatbots, the pope said this week in a message marking the Church's social communications day.…
China-linked group accused of spying on phones of UK prime ministers' aides – for years
Chinese state-linked hackers are accused of spending years inside the phones of senior Downing Street officials, exposing private communications at the heart of the UK government.…
Watchdog says US weather alerts are getting lost in translation
US spending watchdogs have called on the National Weather Service (NWS) to deliver an updated plan for its AI language translation project to reduce the risk posed by extreme weather events to people not proficient in English.…
NASA begins formal anomaly review after MAVEN probe lost in space
NASA is setting up an anomaly review board to look into the fate of its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which was last heard from on December 6.…
France to replace US videoconferencing wares with unfortunately named sovereign alternative
France has officially told Zoom, Teams, and the rest of the US videoconferencing herd to take a hike in favor of its own homegrown app.…
Succession: Linux kernel community gets continuity plan for post-Linus era
The Linux kernel project has finally answered one of the biggest questions gripping the community: what happens if Linus Torvalds is no longer able to lead it?…
Japan doubles down on Trump's Genesis AI supercomputing effort
Japan's RIKEN scientific research institute and Fujitsu are working with America's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Nvidia to build and operate next-gen compute infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), in line with President Trump's Genesis Mission.…
Microsoft illegally installed cookies on schoolkid's tech, data protection ruling finds
Microsoft illegally installed cookies on a school pupil's devices without consent, according to a ruling by the Austrian data protection authority (DSB).…