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Open source database adds multi-tenant clustering, safer shutdowns, and eyes life beyond caching

Open source key-value database Valkey is set for its ninth iteration next month, promising improved resource optimization and availability.…

BrianFagioli writes: Electronic Arts has agreed to a $55 billion buyout by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, marking the largest all-cash sponsor take-private deal ever. Shareholders will receive $210 per share, a 25 percent premium over EA's unaffected price, and once the transaction closes the company will be delisted from public markets. EA CEO Andrew Wilson will remain in charge, with the group arguing that private ownership will allow the publisher to innovate faster and expand its global footprint. The deal, however, is already sparking controversy. PIF, a sovereign wealth fund controlled by the Saudi government, will effectively gain control of one of the most influential names in gaming. While investors stand to profit, many gamers and industry watchers are concerned about how Saudi ownership could shape EA's creative direction, monetization strategies, and role in esports. With regulatory approvals still pending, the takeover raises difficult questions about the intersection of gaming, politics, and global soft power.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Delhi High Court denies urgent relief after vendor halts services citing EU rules

An Indian court has refused urgent relief to an SAP customer after the vendor withheld support due to EU sanctions introduced in the summer.…

Open source Android app store cannot exist if Google's plans go ahead, says F-Droid board member

The F-Droid project, which distributes open source apps for Android, will end if Google goes ahead with its plans to enforce developer registration for app installation, according to the project's board member Marc Prud'hommeaux.…

Semicon Coalition presses European Commission for stronger funding, strategy, and skills drive

Momentum is gathering behind calls for a Chips Act 2.0 to strengthen Europe's competitiveness in the semiconductor sector amid growing geopolitical uncertainty over global markets and supply chains.…

30 years on, Microsoft engineer explains why the old OS had to babysit its flashy successor

Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen has answered the question of why Microsoft insisted on running up a miniature Windows 3.1 rather than a diminutive Windows 95 to install the full-fat version of the latter.…

If at first you don't succeed, you might be SpaceX

NASA and SpaceX have successfully raised the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) with a 15-minute burn of the Draco thrusters located in the trunk of the Dragon freighter.…

"Computer science went from a future-proof career to an industry in upheaval in a shockingly small amount of time," writes Business Insider, citing remarks from UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid said during a recent episode of Nova's "Particles of Thought" podcast. "Our students typically had five internship offers throughout their first four years of college," Farid said. "They would graduate with exceedingly high salaries, multiple offers. They had the run of the place. That is not happening today. They're happy to get one job offer...." It's too easy to just blame AI, though, Farid said. "Something is happening in the industry," he said. "I think it's a confluence of many things. I think AI is part of it. I think there's a thinning of the ranks that's happening, that's part of it, but something is brewing..." Farid, one of the world's experts on deepfake videos, said he is often asked for advice. He said what he tells students has changed... "Now, I think I'm telling people to be good at a lot of different things because we don't know what the future holds." Like many in the AI space, Farid said that those who use breakthrough technologies will outlast those who don't. "I don't think AI is going to put lawyers out of business, but I think lawyers who use AI will put those who don't use AI out of business," he said. "And I think you can say that about every profession."

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Need – or prefer – an EOL version of Windows? Don't panic!

Legacy Update is a third-party Windows Update client which can update old, unsupported versions of Windows, from Windows 10 and 11 all the way back to Windows 2000.…

Ed Miliband takes aim at social media overlord for promoting violence and disinformation

The UK government should consider the possibility of leaving social media platform X, a high-profile minister has suggested.…

Attackers make contact but negotiations fall on deaf ears

Luxury London-based retailer Harrods is facing its second cybersecurity scandal in 2025, confirming criminals not only stole 430,000 customers' data in a fresh attack but have even made contact.…

Duo could dominate in the same way Microsoft and Intel ruled PCs for decades

Opinion The OpenAI and Nvidia $100 billion partnership sure sounds impressive. $100 billion isn't chicken feed, even as more and more tech companies cross the trillion-dollar mark. But what does it really mean?…

Hundreds of thousands of workers in financial despair supported with landmark loan

The UK government is stepping in with financial support for Jaguar Land Rover, providing it with a hefty loan as it continues to battle the fallout from a cyberattack.…

Socio political backdrop is not what it once was....

Opinion UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer directly addressed his new policy of mandatory digital ID in the country for 23 seconds in its effective launch speech.…

A millennial does battle with Redmond's enterprise tools and comes away reeling 

Comment Probably the single most common argument against switching to Linux is the absolute non-negotiable requirement of many organizations to have Microsoft Exchange. Here's a fascinating glimpse of the view from the other side.…

Guess how much of our direct transatlantic data capacity runs through two cables in Bude?

Feature The first transatlantic cable, laid in 1858, delivered a little over 700 messages before promptly dying a few weeks later. 167 years on, the undersea cables connecting the UK to the outside world process £220 billion in daily financial transactions. Now, the UK Parliament's Joint Committee on National Security Strategy (JCNSS) has told the government that it has to do a better job of protecting them.…

An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog Linuxiac: In a somewhat unexpected move, Cloudflare has announced its sponsorship of the Ladybird browser, an independent (still-in-development) open-source initiative aimed at developing a modern, standalone web browser engine. It's a project launched by GitHub's co-founder and former CEO, Chris Wanstrath, and tech visionary Andreas Kling. It's written in C++, and designed to be fast, standards-compliant, and free of external dependencies. Its main selling point? Unlike most alternative browsers today, Ladybird doesn't sit on top of Chromium or WebKit. Instead, it's building a completely new rendering engine from scratch, which is a rare thing in today's web landscape. For reference, the vast majority of web traffic currently runs through engines developed by either Google (Blink/Chromium), Apple (WebKit), or Mozilla (Gecko). The sponsorship means the Ladybird team will have more resources to accelerate development. This includes paying developers to work on crucial features, such as JavaScript support, rendering improvements, and compatibility with modern web applications. Cloudflare stated that its support is part of a broader initiative to keep the web open, where competition and multiple implementations can drive enhanced security, performance, and innovation. The article adds that Cloudflare also chose to sponsor Omarchy, a tool that runs on Arch and sets up and configures a Hyprland tiling window manager, along with a curated set of defaults and developer tools including Neovim, Docker, and Git.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We’re blind to malicious AI until it hits. We can still open our eyes to stopping it

Opinion Last year, The Register reported on AI sleeper agents. A major academic study explored how to train an LLM to hide destructive behavior from its users, and how to find it before it triggered. The answers were unambiguously asymmetric — the first is easy, the second very difficult. Not what anyone wanted to hear.…

An early career lesson in the power of documentation, and the importance of exploration

Who, Me? The Register has very few rules, but one we always observe on a Monday morning is to present a new installment of Who, Me? – the reader-contributed column in which you share stories of breaking the rules, without breaking your career in the process.…

The Register is at the world’s biggest space gabfest and just heard the world's top 6 space agency leaders speak

IAC 2025 If the USA’s space strategy succeeds, it will run a “village” on the moon in a decade, NASA administrator Sean Duffy told the International Aeronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney today.…