TheRegister
Bitfinex crypto thief who was serving five years thanks Trump for early release
Ilya Lichtenstein, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges tied to the 2016 theft of about 120,000 bitcoins from the Bitfinex exchange and was sentenced to five years in prison, has been released after roughly 14 months in the slammer.…
Cybercrook claims to be selling infrastructure info about three major US utilities
A cybercrook claims to have breached Pickett and Associates, a Florida-based engineering firm whose clients include major US utilities, and is selling what they claim to be about 139 GB of engineering data about Tampa Electric Company, Duke Energy Florida, and American Electric Power. The price is 6.5 bitcoin, which amounts to about $585,000.…
Finnish cops grill crew of ship suspected of undersea cable sabotage
Finnish police have arrested and are interviewing two crew members from a class A cargo ship sailing from Russia after suspected cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea.…
Finally - a terminal solution to the browser wars
Old-time web users will fondly remember Lynx, a text-only browser that ran from the terminal. Now, there's a Sixel-compatible web browser that runs completely from the terminal, and has all the graphics and modern features you'd expect. …
Google snaps up datacenter power biz Intersect while xAI plans more capacity
The AI-fueled datacenter boom continues apace, with Google parent Alphabet moving to acquire energy and infrastructure biz Intersect, while Elon Musk's xAI is reportedly planning to expand beyond its already huge complex in Tennessee.…
Brit lands invite-only Aussie visa after uncovering vuln in government systems
A British security researcher has secured Australia's strictest, invite-only visa after discovering a critical vulnerability in a government system.…
Starlink to lower orbits of thousands of satellites over safety concerns
Starlink is to lower the orbits of about half its satellite constellation over the course of this year, citing safety concerns.…
LockBit takedown architect gets New Year award from King Charles
A senior British crimefighter has been awarded one of the country's highest tributes for public service for his role in the 2024 LockBit ransomware takedown.…
Safe CEO: AI is an assistant, not a replacement
Interview If AI can take on the role of a junior programmer, what happens when senior staff start retiring? Industry veteran and CEO of Safe Software, Don Murray, reckons the technology is becoming indispensable, but the human can never be removed from the loop.…
The Y2K bug delayed my honeymoon … by 17 years!
ON CALL Y2K Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register’s Friday column that shares your tech support stories. Over the holiday season we’re telling tales of the Y2K bug, and readers who spent December 31, 1999 on call in case the world’s computers caused calamities.…
Defusing space 'scope photobombs and more: Mitigating pollution from satellite RF transmissions
Interview Scientists and engineers have been taken aback by the amount of radio interference generated by satellite constellations, and many are calling on standards bodies to improve operator performance.…
Welcome to Wendy's! Before your order can be taken, you must first reset this kiosk
Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's example of bork-in-the-wild shows that Microsoft is not the only game in town when it comes to screens having an IT moment in public. No, there will be no orders on this Firefox-based drive-thru kiosk at Wendy's.…
How Microsoft gave customers what they wanted: An audience with Bill Gates
Microsoft had a special way of dealing with customers demanding to speak to its CEO. One that kept the customer happy without necessarily bothering His Billness.…
Nvidia DMs TSMC: please sir can I have some more? The Chinese are starved for H200s
With the sales ban lifted, Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance, are scrambling to secure orders for Nvidia's H200 graphics accelerators while they can. But will there be enough to satisfy demand?…
US Army seeks human AI officers to manage its battle bots
The US Army has been all-in on becoming an AI-powered outfit for some time, and now it's creating a career path for officers to specialize in making its automation dreams come true. …
European Space Agency hit again as cybercrims claim 200 GB data up for sale
The European Space Agency has suffered yet another security incident and, in keeping with past practice, says the impact is limited. Meanwhile, miscreants boast that they've made off with a trove of data, including what they claim are confidential documents, credentials, and source code.…
IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn’t taken over the world, but don't call it a failure
Feature In the early 1990s, internetworking wonks realized the world was not many years away from running out of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses, the numbers needed to identify any device connected to the public internet. Noting booming interest in the internet, the internet community went looking for ways to avoid an IP address shortage that many feared would harm technology adoption and therefore the global economy.…
Everybody has a theory about why Nvidia dropped $20B on Groq - they're mostly wrong
This summer, AI chip startup Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of $6.9 billion. Just three months later, Nvidia celebrated the holidays by dropping nearly three times that to license its technology and squirrel away its talent.…
The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere
Opinion COBOL turned 66 this year and is still in use today. Major retail and commercial banks continue to run core account processing, ATM networks, credit card clearing, and batch end-of-day settlement. On top of that, many payment networks, stock exchanges, and clearinghouses rely on COBOL for high‑volume, high‑reliability batch and online transaction processing on mainframes.…
Hong Kong’s newest anti-scam technology is over-the-counter banking
Hong Kong’s banks have a new weapon against scams: Accounts that require customers to visit a branch to access their funds.…