TheRegister
Cyber congressman demands answers before CISA gets cut down to size
As drastic cuts to the US govt's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency loom, Rep Eric Swalwell (D-CA), the ranking member of the House's cybersecurity subcommittee, has demanded that CISA brief the subcommittee "prior to any significant changes to CISA's workforce or organizational structure."…
Resellers may be sitting on costly pile of regret after US smartphone shopping spree
Profiteering resellers stateside filled up on smartphone inventory in calendar Q1 before the scheduled imposition of US tariffs, which have rocked global stock prices and US Treasury bonds since April 2.…
Avnet accuses Arm chip slinger Ampere of screwing it over on server deal
Arizona electronics supplier Avnet has accused California semiconductor design firm Ampere Computing of going against its word and backing out of a server purchasing deal.…
Ireland opens probe into Musk’s X over Grok’s AI data slurp
Elon Musk's social media outfit X is again under the regulatory microscope in Europe – this time for allegedly using EU users' public posts to train its Grok AI chatbot, possibly without the transparency or legal basis required under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).…
White House budget proposal could beam NASA science back decades
The US administration appears set to slash NASA's science budget with cuts to spending in the order of almost 50 percent, according to a draft of the White House's proposal.…
Windows 11 stops freaking out over wallpaper customization
The day before the release of Windows 11 24H2, Microsoft slapped a compatibility hold on devices using wallpaper customization applications. More than six months later, it is gradually removing the safeguard hold.…
Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze
World War Fee Trump administration tariffs are leaving the IT industry in "limbo", with CIOs hitting the pause button on new projects as they're unsure whether budgets set today will be disrupted by taxes tomorrow.…
It's fun making Studio Ghibli-style images with ChatGPT – but intellectual property is no laughing matter
Opinion Many people are having fun making Studio Ghibli-style images with OpenAI's ChatGPT. I see it as copy-and-paste intellectual property stealing on an industrial level.…
The LittleGP-30: A tiny recreation of a very big deal from the 1950s
In these days of multi-gig OSes, we cast our eyes back to something both much bigger and much smaller.…
Dot com era crash on the cards for AI datacenter spending? It's a 'risk'
Interview Those who ignore history are destined to repeat mistakes of the past and, with signs of an inflating bit barn spending bubble, comparisons are being made with the infamous dotcom bust a quarter of a century ago.…
Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying
Opinion The UK government's attempts to worm into Apple's core end-to-end encryption were set back last week when the country's Home Office failed in its bid to keep them secret on national security grounds.…
CIO and digi VP to depart UK retail giant Asda as Walmart divorce woes settle
Two of the top team behind Asda's £1 billion ($1.31 billion) tech divorce from US retail giant Walmart — which has seen a number of setbacks — are departing the company.…
Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke’s over when a rack goes dark
Who, Me? Returning to work on Monday often imparts a rude shock, which is why The Register opens the week with a new instalment of Who, Me? It’s the reader-contributed column in which you admit to your worst moments at work and explain how you survived them.…
VMware revives its free ESXi hypervisor in an utterly obscure way
VMware has resumed offering a free hypervisor.…
Old Fortinet flaws under attack with new method its patch didn't prevent
Infosec In Brief Fortinet last week admitted that attackers have found new ways to exploit three flaws it thought it had fixed last year.…
China reportedly admitted directing cyberattacks on US infrastructure
Asia In Brief Chinese officials admitted to directing cyberattacks on US infrastructure at a meeting with their American counterparts, according to The Wall Street Journal.…
Tech tariff turmoil continues as Trump admin exempts some electronics, then promises to bring taxes back
World War Fee The Trump administration’s strategy for the use of tariffs to bring tech manufacturing to American shores took a new turn over the weekend after it announced tariff exemptions for some goods, denied the exemptions, then said it plans further tariffs on high-tech goods.…
Hacktivism is back – but don't be fooled, it's often state-backed goons in masks
Feature From triggering a water tank overflow in Texas to shutting down Russian state news services on Vladimir Putin's birthday, self-styled hacktivists have been making headlines.…
Pidgin is back, so let's talk about why a local chat client matters
In the 2020s you might be forgiven for having forgotten that such a thing as a native chat client exists, but a handful still do and they're still useful. One of these is Pidgin, the artist formerly known as GAIM.…
AI is making hyperscalers' sustainability pledges look more and more like a Hail Mary
Comment AI's appetite for power is exploding. Hyperscalers have only just begun to adopt Nvidia's 120 kW-per-rack systems, and the GPU giant is already charting a course toward 600 kW designs.…