TheRegister
Why the UK public sector still creaks along on COBOL
Feature The UK government has gone all-in on AI. More than 50 years after Harold Wilson gave his famous "White heat of technology" speech, this is the hot new thing. An AI Strategy has been released. Datacenters are planned. Steps to strengthen AI supply chains are being formulated. And of course, the public sector will lead by example in AI usage.…
LLM chatbots trivial to weaponise for data theft, say boffins
A team of boffins is warning that AI chatbots built on large language models (LLM) can be tuned into malicious agents to autonomously harvest users’ personal data, even by attackers with "minimal technical expertise”, thanks to "system prompt" customization tools from OpenAI and others.…
Sysadmin cured a medical mystery by shifting a single cable
On Call Few make it to Friday without some end-of-week blues, which The Register always treats with a fresh dose of On Call – the reader-contributed column that recounts your stories of tech support contusions.…
Should UK.gov save money by looking for open source alternatives to Microsoft? You decide
Register debate series It's a lot of money, £9 billion ($12 billion). Especially for a government which finds itself — for whatever reason — in a fiscal dead end.…
Forget Foxconn the iPhone factory. AI’s made it a server-slinger first and foremost
Manufacturer to the stars Foxconn is building so many AI servers that they’re now bringing in more cash than consumer electronics – even counting the colossal quantity of iPhones it creates for Apple.…
Tencent doesn’t care if it can buy American GPUs again – it already has all the chips it needs
Chinese web giant Tencent doesn’t mind if Washington doesn’t let it buy more American GPUs, because it already has all the chips it needs.…
Breathe easy: Apple Watch can read your oxygen levels again
Apple will deliver a software update for recent US Apple Watch models to reimplement the ability to measure blood oxygen levels, a process known as pulse oximetry.…
Ransomware crews don't care about your endpoint security – they've already killed it
At least a dozen ransomware gangs have incorporated kernel-level EDR killers into their malware arsenal, allowing them to bypass almost every major endpoint security tool on the market, escalate privileges, and ultimately steal and encrypt data before extorting victims into paying a ransom.…
Dodgy Huawei chips nearly sunk DeepSeek's next-gen R2 model
Unhelpful Huawei AI chips are reportedly why Chinese model dev DeepSeek's next-gen LLMs are taking so long.…
DARPA’s <s>Cylon raider</s> autonomous fighter jet advances to next phase
That autonomous fighter jet from DARPA is so 2023 that the agency is already well into a bid to give future combat jets autonomy for multi-ship missions over the horizon.…
Psst: wanna buy a legit FBI email account for $40?
Criminals are selling access to FBI and other law enforcement and government email accounts to other criminals via dark web marketplaces for as little as $40.…
Equinix signs deals for nukes and fuel cells to power its AI bit barns
Equinix is doing deals with alternative energy providers to support the needs of its datacenters globally, including nuclear options and fuel cell deployments, as the AI fad continues to push a bit barn build boom.…
'MadeYouReset' HTTP/2 flaw lets attackers DoS servers
Security researchers Gal Bar Nahum, Anat Bremler-Barr, and Yaniv Harel have published details of a "common design flaw" in implementations of the HyperText Transfer Protocol 2 (HTTP/2) allowing those with ill intent to create "massive Denial of Service attacks".…
Lock down your critical infrastructure, CISA begs admins
CISA is urging companies with operational technology environments to set a better cybersecurity posture, and not just by adopting some new best practices and purchasing some new software.…
Voice, vision, pen: Oh dear. Windows boss says Microsoft is again reshaping OS
COMMENT Microsoft Windows and Devices boss, Pavan Davuluri, has shed light on plans for the flagship OS. Voice, touch, and pen control will all be part of a multimodal future, alongside a raft of inevitable AI features.…
BtcTurk suspends operations amid alleged $49M hot wallet heist
Turkish cryptocurrency exchange BtcTurk is halting all deposits and withdrawals amid fears that blockchain bandits succeeded in significantly compromising its hot wallets.…
Microsoft patch Tuesday update fails to install
Microsoft has admitted that the August patch Tuesday update might fail to install through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), but it's ok, admins. Home users are "unlikely to experience this issue."…
Who made the demo list for Trump's fast-track nuclear reactor scheme?
America's Department of Energy (DoE) has named ten companies it will work with to test advanced atomic reactor projects outside of the agency's world-famous national laboratories, in line with President Trump's Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program.…
Vibe coding platform Anything arrives, our hands-on suggests caution
Hands On Create has declared its vibe coding platform, now called Anything, production-ready at version 1.0, with support for both web and mobile applications – although our quick hands-on generated a host of errors.…
Alexa hits snooze on basic functions as alarms and timers KO'd in UK outage
Amazon's Alexa is on the fritz, bungling alarms and timers and leaving some UK users trapped in an endless wake-up call.…