TheRegister
Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation
opinion Just as the community adopted the term "hallucination" to describe additive errors, we must now codify its far more insidious counterpart: semantic ablation.…
FTC to probe whether Microsoft's cloud clout crosses the line
The US Federal Trade Commission has sent out a raft of civil investigative demands to Microsoft's competitors as it warms up a probe into whether the cloud and software giant has an illegal monopoly across chunks of the enterprise tech market.…
NASA's fill-'er-up Moon rocket 'confidence' test sees mixed results
NASA engineers spent the weekend studying the data after another attempt to fill the agency's monster Space Launch System (SLS) produced mixed results.…
Google patches Chrome zero-day as in-the-wild exploits surface
Google has quietly pushed out an emergency Chrome fix after attackers were caught exploiting the browser's first reported zero-day of 2026.…
Why does the Windows 11 taskbar hurt me like that?
A former Windows boss has explained why the taskbar in Windows 11 is the way it is and how he "fought hard" to stop Microsoft from removing customization options present in Windows 10.…
Price of popularity: Linux Mint's success also means maintainer stress
Although we're in mid-February, the Linux Mint project just published its January 2026 blog. This could be seen as one sign of the pressure on the creator of this very successful distro: although the post talks about forthcoming improved input localization support and user management, it also discusses the pressures of the project's semi-annual release schedule.…
Keir Starmer declares 'months' timeline for social media age clampdown in UK
UK prime minister Keir Starmer has set a "months" timeline for the long-brewing plan for a social media age limit, signaling the government is ready to pick a fight with Big Tech if that's what it takes.…
DVSA seeks £95K digital chief to steer test booking system out of the ditch
The UK's Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is recruiting a chief digital and information officer, partly to help sort out its bot-ridden practical driving test booking system.…
Anthropic tries to hide Claude's AI actions. Devs hate it
Anthropic has updated Claude Code, its AI coding tool, changing the progress output to hide the names of files the tool was reading, writing, or editing. However, developers have pushed back, stating that they need to see which files are accessed.…
Digital sovereignty must define itself before it can succeed
Opinion If you've ever flipped over a power brick, you'll be familiar with the hieroglyphics of type approval. It's become less crazy over the years as things have got smaller and signage requirements softened, but at its peak tens of logos and acronyms of testing labs and national approvals covered the backside of PSUs in surrealist graffiti.…
Final step to put new website into production deleted it instead
Who, Me? Welcome to Monday! The Register hopes you arrive at your desk well-rested after a pleasant weekend, and not stressed out by working late as is the case in this week's instalment of "Who, Me?" – the reader contributed column that chronicles your mistakes and escapes.…
Cisco set to release home-brew hypervisor as a VMware alternative
Cisco is getting close to releasing its own hypervisor, as an alternative to VMware for users of its calling applications – software like the Unified Communications Manager it suggests as an alternative to PBXs and other telephony hardware.…
US appears open to reversing some China tech bans
Asia In Brief The United States may be about to change its policies regarding Chinese technology companies.…
OpenAI grabs OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger to build personal agents
Peter Steinberger, the creator of the tantalizing-but-risky personal AI agent OpenClaw, is joining OpenAI.…
Infosec exec sold eight zero-day exploit kits to Russia, says DoJ
Infosec in Brief The former General Manager of defense contractor L3Harris’s cyber subsidiary Trenchant sold eight zero-day exploit kits to Russia, according to a court filing last week.…
GPT-5 bests human judges in legal smack down
ai-pocalypse Legal scholars have found that OpenAI's GPT-5 follows the law better than human judges, but they leave open the question of whether AI is right for the job.…
Penguin-powered platform board keels over at Alpine station
Bork!Bork!Bork! Just picture it. You're at a Swiss train station, looking for information on your connecting line. You peer up at the platform sign hoping to find out how long you'll be waiting and whether you're standing in the right place. But instead of helpful info, you see "* Installation log files are stored in /tmp." Gee, thanks a lot!…
If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?
In the Venn diagram of car owners whose vehicles have a certain amount of "character" and individuals who use Microsoft's applications, there is an intersection of people who accept a quirk or two but not an unexpected explosion.…
Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows
Hands-on Run real Windows in an automatically managed virtual machine, and mix Windows apps in their own windows on your Linux desktop.…
How AI could eat itself: Competitors can probe models to steal their secrets and clone them
Two of the world's biggest AI companies, Google and OpenAI, both warned this week that competitors including China's DeepSeek are probing their models to steal the underlying reasoning, and then copy these capabilities in their own AI systems.…