TheRegister
Google admits depreciation costs are soaring amid furious bit barn build
Google says the mega capital splurge on datacenters in recent years is putting more strain on its balance sheet due to rising depreciation costs, yet it still plans to splash $75 billion on bit barns in 2025.…
Virgin Atlantic is piloting an OpenAI agent in to help with the 'customer journey'
Interview For all the talk of the "agentic era" from AI vendors like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and just about everyone else in the space, corporate use of the technology is still tentative. Virgin Atlantic has been conducting flight tests of its website with an AI agent called Operator, and early results are promising, pointing the way toward how agents might actually be used to help customers book flights.…
Europe fires up beefier booster for Ariane 6 and Vega-C
A qualification version of the P160C solid-fuel motor was successfully tested at the European Spaceport in French Guiana on April 24, paving the way for heftier payloads on the Ariane 6 and Vega rockets.…
£136M government grant saves troubled Post Office from suboptimal IT
The UK's Post Office would have to cope with suboptimal IT, increased risks and costs, and reduced reporting accuracy if it didn't receive £136 million ($180 million) in government aid to keep its disastrous Horizon system running and replace it with a more modern platform.…
Claims assistance firm fined for cold-calling people who put themselves on opt-out list
Britain's data privacy watchdog has slapped a fine of £90k ($120k) on a business that targeted people with intrusive marketing phone calls, despite them being registered with the official "Do Not Call" opt-out service.…
Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee
On Call By the time Friday morning rolls around, starting the day with a stimulating beverage feels like a fine idea. And so does delivering a freshly brewed installment of On Call, The Register's reader-contributed column in which you share tales of tech support triumph and torture.…
Darcula adds AI to its DIY phishing kits to help would-be vampires bleed victims dry
Darcula, a cybercrime outfit that offers a phishing-as-a-service kit to other criminals, this week added AI capabilities to its kit that help would-be vampires spin up phishing sites in multiple languages more efficiently.…
New Intel boss is all about ‘de-laborating’ the x86 giant – aka, job cuts
Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan is swinging the ax again, with another round of layoffs incoming as Chipzilla tries to reboot its core.…
Devs sound alarm after Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
Microsoft's C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code) no longer works with derivative products such as VS Codium and Cursor – and some developers are crying foul.…
SSNs and more on 5.5M+ patients feared stolen from Yale Health
Yale New Haven Health has notified more than 5.5 million people that their private details were likely stolen by miscreants who broke into the healthcare system's network last month.…
Fedora 42 has the Answer, but Ubuntu's Plucky Puffin isn't far behind
While The Reg FOSS desk was on spring break, both the latest interim Ubuntu and latest Fedora debuted.…
Microsoft mystery folder fix might need a fix of its own
Turns out Microsoft's latest patch job might need a patch of its own, again. This time, the culprit is a mysterious inetpub folder quietly deployed by Redmond, now hijacked by a security researcher to break Windows updates.…
AI training license will allow LLM builders to pay for content they consume
A UK non-profit is planning to introduce a new licensing model which will allow developers of large language models to use copyrighted training data while paying the publishers it represents.…
Assassin's Creed maker faces GDPR complaint for forcing single-player gamers online
For anyone who's ever been frustrated by the need to go online to play a single-player video game, the European privacy specialists at noyb have heard you, and they've filed a complaint against Ubisoft in Austria dealing specifically with the issue. …
US biz stockpilers boost SK Hynix top line as memory market undergoes structural change
South Korean memory maker SK Hynix is reporting a sales bounce due to the demand for AI systems, helped by US businesses stockpiling HBM supplies amid tariff uncertainty.…
Decades-old bug in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas finally shows itself
Microsoft's Windows 11 24H2 update is frustrating some users, but it isn't the operating system at fault this time. Instead, it's down to a 20-year-old error in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.…
Qualcomm says license fight was because Arm wants to make its own server chips
Qualcomm has amended its complaint against Arm in a 2024 lawsuit, adding more allegations about Arm's purported breach of license agreements and accusing it of "misrepresenting" their relationship by intending to make its own rival chips.…
Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind
When you install a fresh, clean copy of Windows – say, if you're switching to the LTSC edition – Ninite is here to kickstart provisioning the new OS.…
Sustainability still not a high priority for datacenter industry
When it comes to building datacenters, reducing the environmental impact of the project is still not seen as a major concern – it is lower on the list than cost of equipment and materials, skills shortages, a possible downturn in projects, and even bad weather.…
M&S takes systems offline as 'cyber incident' lingers
UK high street retailer Marks & Spencer says contactless payments are still down following its "cyber incident" and order delays are likely to continue.…