TheRegister
Amazon-backed X-energy sweet talks investors into another $700M for small modular reactor dream
Amazon-backed nuclear energy startup X-energy says it has booked orders for 144 small modular reactors (SMRs) which will eventually deliver over 11 gigawatts of power, assuming that they actually get built. And investors continue to support this vision.…
Old-school rotary phone dials into online meetings, hangs up when you slam it down
We've all been there: A meeting goes sideways and you really wish you could physically slam the phone down and walk away. Maker Stavros Korokithakis knows that feeling well, so he took an old rotary phone and turned it into a device that can dial into - and hang up on - video calls in a decidedly retro fashion. …
X's location tags remind users of the internet's oldest rule: Trust nothing
Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) has inadvertently taught a large number of web users an important lesson. Not everyone online is necessarily who you think they are, and you shouldn't believe everything you read.…
LisaGUI recreates Apple's innovative computer OS, without emulating it
LisaGUI is a faithful reconstruction of the desktop and user interface of Apple's Lisa, the workstation that fed ideas into the early Macintosh, and it shows that there are still things to learn from that system.…
How high-end supercomputer filesystem DAOS can break out of its niche
DAOS has been a great success in the traditional HPC/supercomputing world, but is nowhere in the new, AI-focused, GPU supercomputing arena. What will it take for DAOS to find customers outside its high-end, legacy supercomputing niche?…
Moss spores bolted to the ISS exterior laugh in the face of hard vacuum
Moss has been shown to survive one of the harshest environments imaginable: the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS).…
Years-old bugs in open source tool left every major cloud open to disruption
A series of "trivial-to-exploit" vulnerabilities in Fluent Bit, an open source log collection tool that runs in every major cloud and AI lab, was left open for years, giving attackers an exploit chain to completely disrupt cloud services and alter data.…
Intrusion at real estate finance biz sparks concern for big banks
Real estate finance business SitusAMC says thieves sneaked into its systems earlier this month and made off with confidential client data.…
Shai-Hulud worm returns, belches secrets to 25K GitHub repos
A self-propagating malware targeting node package managers (npm) is back for a second round, according to Wiz researchers who say that more than 25,000 developers had their secrets compromised within three days.…
Microsoft wedges tables into Notepad for some reason
Microsoft is shoveling yet more features into the venerable Windows Notepad. This time it's support for tables, with some AI enhancements lathered on top.…
NATO taps Google for air-gapped sovereign cloud
NATO has hired Google to provide "air-gapped" sovereign cloud services and AI in "completely disconnected, highly secure environments."…
FCC guts post-Salt Typhoon telco rules despite ongoing espionage risk
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has scrapped a set of telecom cybersecurity rules introduced after the Salt Typhoon espionage campaign, reversing course on measures designed to stop state-backed snoops from slipping back into America's networks.…
6G isn't even here yet but mobile industry wants triple the spectrum
The GSMA says 6G networks will need up to three times the spectrum currently allocated to mobile operators to meet anticipated demands for data.…
CISA orders feds to patch Oracle Identity Manager zero-day after signs of abuse
CISA has ordered US federal agencies to patch against an actively exploited Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) flaw within three weeks – a scramble made more urgent by evidence that attackers may have been abusing the bug months before a fix was released.…
DragonFire laser to be fitted to Royal Navy ships after acing drone-zapping trials
Britain's Royal Navy ships will be fitted with the DragonFire laser weapon by 2027 – five years earlier than planned – following recent successful trials involving fast-moving drones.…
This Thanksgiving, top your turkey with Cranberry sOSS to fund open source
The Open Source Pledge organization is working to combat the problems of FOSS maintainers not getting paid, and the closely related issue of developer burnout, with a Thanksgiving-themed campaign.…
Vibe coding: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing (Sorry, Linus)
Opinion It is a truth universally acknowledged that a singular project possessed of prospects is in want of a team. That team has to be built from good developers with experience, judgement, analytic and logic skills, and strong interpersonal communication. Where AI coding fits in remains strongly contentious. Opinion on vibe coding in corporate IT is more clearly stated: you're either selling the stuff or steering well clear.…
UK Covid-19 Inquiry finds early pandemic surveillance was weeks out of date
During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, it took up to three weeks for confirmed cases to be recorded on the health database used at the time.…
Dev's last-day-of-contract code helped to crash app used by 350,000 people
Who, Me? Welcome to Monday morning and therefore to a new instalment of Who, Me? It's The Register's weekly column that shares your tales of workplace errors and absolution.…
Cryptology boffins’ association to re-run election after losing encryption key needed to count votes
The International Association for Cryptologic Research will run a second election for new board members and other officers, after it was unable to complete its first poll due to a lost encryption key.…