TheRegister
In '90s Microsoft, you either shipped code or shipped out
Microsoft has made headlines for mass layoffs in recent times, but former company engineer Dave Plummer has explained how things were done a quarter of a century ago – and what it was like living through the tech giant's notorious stack ranking system.…
UK rethinks offshoring ban for £8M online procurement system
The UK government has signaled its intention to allow a supplier providing maintenance to its online procurement platform to subcontract offshore, having previously said that this was off-limits due to security concerns.…
Windows 11 update knocks out USB mice, keyboards in recovery mode
Microsoft has confirmed a bug that disables USB mice and keyboards in the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) after installing security update KB5066835, released October 14.…
Like Apollo before them, ESA astronauts hone lunar landing skills in helicopters
European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts have completed a helicopter training course to prepare them for upcoming lunar landings.…
Benioff backs off: Salesforce chief says sorry for Trump troop talk
Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff has apologized for backing President Donald Trump's proposals to send the National Guard to San Francisco, where the company is based and holds its annual conference.…
Lloyds Banking Group claims Microsoft Copilot saves staff 46 minutes a day
Lloyds Banking Group claims employees save 46 minutes daily using Microsoft 365 Copilot, based on a survey of 1,000 users among nearly 30,000 deployed licenses.…
The real insight behind measuring Copilot usage is Microsoft's desperation
Opinion The quantum theory of management includes an analogy for the physical law of the observer effect, where observing a system changes its state. When you make a metric a target, it is not useful as a metric. Instead of reflecting whatever underlying behavior it was intended to measure, the metric becomes a measure of how well the benchmark is being gamed.…
Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet
A major outage is affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS), with even Amazon's own web page reported to be offline and dozens of other online services and websites affected, including disruption in the UK.…
A simple AI prompt saved a developer from this job interview scam
INFOSEC IN BRIEF Engineer David Dodda says he was just "30 seconds away" from running malware on his own computer after nearly falling victim to a North Korea-type job interview scam with a "legitimate" blockchain company. …
Tribunal wonders if Microsoft has found a legal hero after pivot to copyright gambit
The long-running legal battle between ValueLicensing and Microsoft over the resale of software licenses has taken another turn following Microsoft's attempt to make the case about copyright.…
UK calls up Armed Forces veterans for digital ID soft launch
The UK's Armed Forces veterans are being tasked with one last mission – proving the government can successfully roll out a digital ID card scheme.…
Company that made power systems for servers didn’t know why its own machines ran out of juice
Who, Me? Each new Monday ushers in a week during which you might shine or flatline. The Register celebrates the times you end up doing the latter with a new instalment of Who, Me? It's the column in which you admit to making mistakes and execute cunning escapes.…
Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover'
Ruby Central, the non-profit that recently seized some Ruby open source tools from maintainers, is transferring the repository ownership of RubyGems and Bundler to the Ruby core team. The move appears to be an attempt to mollify the Ruby community following a divisive power grab, but it does not restore the control of those tools to the maintainers who previously oversaw them.…
Meta convinces Blue Owl to cut $30B check for its Hyperion AI super cluster
Facebook parent Meta has managed to convince private equity firm Blue Owl Capital to finance its 2.2 gigawatt Hyperion datacenter project in Richland Parish, Louisiana.…
Amazon spills plan to nuke Washington...with X-Energy mini-reactors
Despite technological and regulatory hurdles, Amazon remains convinced that small modular reactors (SMRs) are the answer to the cloud titan's power woes.…
American Airlines subsidiary Envoy caught in Clop's Oracle EBS raid
Envoy Air, an American Airlines subsidiary, has confirmed that it was among the dozens of organizations compromised via Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) security flaws, following claims by Clop extortionists that its parent company was one of its victims.…
Thou shalt not let AI run amok: Vatican wants global rules
Recently, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff warned investors to avoid the "false prophets" of AI. Now, the Pope has brought real theological weight to the bot debate, hosting a Vatican seminar that called for global AI regulation and fair distribution of the technology's benefits.…
Hyperscalers try to beat the heat with larger racks, more air flow
Datacenters are set to standardize on the larger, 21-inch rack format by 2030, according to Omdia, as hyperscalers and server makers fully embrace it, leaving enterprises to the existing 19-inch standard.…
Chamber of Commerce sues over Trump's $100K H-1B paywall
The US Chamber of Commerce (CoC) has filed a suit accusing President Trump of exceeding his authority by seeking to slap a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications.…
Have I Been Pwned logs 17.6M victims in Prosper breach
Data breach tracker HaveIBeenPwned claims the victim count of peer-to-peer lender Prosper's September cyberattack stands at 17.6 million.…