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Updated 2026-01-08 13:45
AOSP on a diet plan as Google halves Android code drops
Two a year is for your own good, Mountain View insists Google has confirmed there will be two code dumps to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) per year, down from the four developers have become accustomed to....
UK regulators swarm X after Grok generated nudes from photos
Lawyers say Musk's platform may face punishment under Online Safety Act priority offenses Elon Musk's X platform is under fire as UK regulators close in on mounting reports that the platform's AI chatbot, Grok, is generating sexual imagery without users' consent....
Maximum-severity n8n flaw lets randos run your automation server
Unauthenticated RCE means anyone on the network can seize full control A maximum-severity bug in the popular automation platform n8n has left an estimated 100,000 servers wide open to complete takeover, courtesy of a flaw so bad it doesn't even require logging in....
OpenAI putting bandaids on bandaids as prompt injection problems keep festering
Happy Groundhog Day! Security researchers at Radware say they've identified several vulnerabilities in OpenAI's ChatGPT service that allow the exfiltration of personal information....
Are criminals vibe coding malware? All signs point to yes
They also hallucinate when writing ransomware code Interview With everyone from would-be developers to six-year-old kids jumping on the vibe coding bandwagon, it shouldn't be surprising that criminals like automated coding tools too....
Ultimate camouflage tech mimics octopus in scientific first
Synthetic cephalopod skin could be used in architecture and computer displays as well as background-matching subterfuge Scientists have developed a synthetic skin capable of mimicking some of the best camouflage skills in nature that could also have applications in soft robotics and advanced displays....
Logitech macOS mouse mayhem traced to expired dev certificate
Company says it dropped the ball, apologizes for wasting people's time Logitech says an expired developer certificate is to blame after swaths of customers were left infuriated when their mice malfunctioned....
Cloudflare pours cold water on ‘BGP weirdness preceded US attack on Venezuela’ theory
Suggests rotten routing, not evidence of a cyber-strike before kinetic action Cloudflare has poured cold water on a theory that the USA's incursion into Venezuela coincided with a cyberattack on telecoms infrastructure....
AMD threatens to go medieval on Nvidia with Epyc and Instinct: What we know so far
AMD boasts 1000x higher AI perf by 2027 and pulls the lid off Helios compute tray ahead of 2H 2026 launch AMD teased its next-generation of AI accelerators at CES 2026, with CEO Lisa Su boasting the the MI500-series will deliver a 1,000x uplift in performance over its two-year-old MI300X GPUs....
IBM's AI agent Bob easily duped to run malware, researchers show
Prompt injection lets risky commands slip past guardrails IBM describes its coding agent thus: "Bob is your AI software development partner that understands your intent, repo, and security standards." Unfortunately, Bob doesn't always follow those security standards....
New carbon capture tech could save us from datacenter doom
Maybe our AI overlords, hell-bent on securing power any way they can, should invest in getting this to market Researchers in Finland have found a new way to capture carbon dioxide from ambient air that they say is more efficient than existing methods, cheap to produce, reusable, and allows for easy recycling of captured CO....
British Palantir rival, whose founder touted UK tech sovereignty, sells to Accenture
Let the co-opetition commence Accenture plans to buy UK-based AI firm Faculty, a Palantir competitor, and onboard the company's CEO as Accenture's new chief technology officer. The move suggests the two companies, while partners today, could start taking each others' business....
SanDisk heals WD Black and Blues, rebrands beloved client SSDs
NVMe drives to live on under the Optimus banner WD Black and Blue SSDs are some of the most widely recognized client drives on the market, but their branding is about to disappear. Following Western Digital's flash-business spinoff, SanDisk announced it was retiring the beloved names and rebranding its NVMe lineup under the SANDISK Optimus banner....
ESA calls cops as crims lift off 500 GB of files, say security black hole still open
Two weeks, two major data leaks ... not a good look for the European Space Agency exclusive The European Space Agency on Wednesday confirmed yet another massive security breach, and told The Register that the data thieves responsible will be subject to a criminal investigation. And this could be a biggie....
Stalkerware slinger pleads guilty for selling snooper software to suspicious spouses
pcTattletale boss Bryan Fleming faces up to 15 years in prison when sentenced later this year The US government has secured a guilty plea from a stalkerware maker in federal court, marking just the second time in more than a decade that the US has managed to prosecute a consumer spyware vendor successfully....
FAA signs radar deals to drag US air traffic control out of the 1980s
RTX and Indra land contracts as long-delayed overhaul moves ahead The US government has announced contracts for new radar infrastructure as part of its long-running effort to replace the country's aging air traffic control system....
Historic NASA test towers face their final countdown
Apollo-era Saturn V and Shuttle stands set for controlled demolition as Artemis ramps up With less than a month to go until NASA attempts to send astronauts around the Moon, the agency is demolishing facilities that got it there the first time around....
Luggable datacenter: startup straps handles to server with 4 H200 GPUs
Who can lift a 77-pound box into the overhead? Fancy having an AI system packed with Nvidia H200 GPUs that you can take with you from place to place? According to hardware maker Odinn, now you can, so long as you don't mind carrying a 77-pound (35 kg) box around....
Microsoft scraps Exchange Online spam clamp after customers cry foul
Negative feedback sinks Redmond's plan to cap outbound email recipients Microsoft has backed away from planned changes to Exchange Online after customers objected to limits designed to curb outbound email abuse....
Virginia's datacenter tax breaks cost state $1.6B in 2025
Trillion-dollar internet giants don't need freebies, watchdog warns, as giveaways double in a year The US state of Virginia forfeited $1.6 billion in tax revenue through datacenter exemptions in fiscal 2025 - up 118 percent on the prior year - as the AI-driven construction boom accelerates....
GNOME dev gives fans of Linux's middle-click paste the middle finger
Proposal targets long-standing behavior as 'an X11ism' Opinion Ever since Linux got a graphical desktop, you could middle-click to paste - but if GNOME gets its way, that's going away soon, and from Firefox too....
Earlier Horizon rollout could widen net for quashed Post Office convictions
Committee told shifting timelines could alter automatic reversals in UK's historic Fujitsu computing scandal The Post Office's Horizon computer system may have been deployed earlier than thought, potentially affecting which convictions get automatically quashed under legislation introduced to speed up justice in one of the biggest scandals in recent British history, MPs heard yesterday....
Ministry of Justice splurged £50M on security – still missed Legal Aid Agency cyberattack
High-risk system compromised long before intrusion was finally spotted Updated The UK's Ministry of Justice spent 50 million ($67 million) on cybersecurity improvements at the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) before the high-profile cyberattack it disclosed last year....
Jaguar Land Rover wholesale volumes plummet 43% in cyberattack aftermath
Production halts and supply-chain disruption left luxury automaker reeling in fiscal Q3 Brit luxury automaker Jaguar Land Rover has reported devastating preliminary Q3 results that lay bare the cascading consequences of a crippling cyberattack, revealing wholesale volumes collapsed more than two-fifths year-on-year....
Recline of the machines: Terminator felled by dodgy battery
The rise will be postponed until you hit F1 to continue Bork!Bork!Bork! The baddest of AI bad guys, the Terminator, has confirmed what the vast majority of IT professionals already know. The machines are not about to rise, not until they can deal with that pesky battery voltage....
HSBC app takes a dim view of sideloaded Bitwarden installations
Customers report being locked out after grabbing the password manager via F-Droid Some HSBC mobile banking customers in the UK report being locked out of the bank's app after installing the Bitwarden password manager via an open source app catalog....
UK to spend £23M on AI to tell benefit claimants where to go
Department for Work and Pensions lines up bot bouncers for one of Europe's largest call-handling systems The UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to introduce a conversational AI platform it hopes will steer calls from citizens with queries about their benefits. The contract is worth up to 23 million....
Lenovo shows off new laptops that twist and roll
The company has also redesigned the X1 Carbon's internals for easier repairs If there was a kingdom of laptop screen flexibility, Lenovo would take the crown. Last year, the company released the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6, with a mechanical screen that could roll out to increase its size from 14 to 16.7 inches. Now, it's back with the ThinkPad Rollable XD concept laptop that expands from 13.3 to 16 inches at the touch of a button or a swipe, along with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 7 Auto Twist, which uses a motor to rotate its screen and follow you around the room....
Ring embraces the end of the world, starts using home cameras to track wildfires
Amazon's community surveillance biz bets on AI to recognize danger A year after a series of fires obliterated communities in Los Angeles, Amazon's Ring security service has announced a feature called Fire Watch intended to mitigate future wildfire risk....
HackerOne 'ghosted' me for months over $8,500 bug bounty, says researcher
Long after CVEs issued and open source flaws fixed Last fall, Jakub Ciolek reported two denial-of-service bugs in Argo CD, a popular Kubernetes controller, via HackerOne's Internet Bug Bounty (IBB) program. Both were assigned CVEs and have since been fixed. But instead of receiving an $8,500 reward for the two flaws, Ciolek says, HackerOne ghosted him for months....
Snowflake gets frosty with Google Gemini
Munge that corporate data using the LLM of your choice The data platform Snowflake is putting Google's Gemini to work inside its Cortex AI, aiming to give customers access to a foundational model within the boundaries of their data environment across supported clouds, the company told The Register....
Brave refurbishes Rust adblocking engine for reduced memory footprint
Have your privacy cake and consume the web too Brave Software has reworked its browser's Rust-based adblock engine to make it significantly more memory efficient and perhaps more secure. So you get fewer ads now with fewer MB of RAM....
Optimus Schmoptimus - Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot is already in mass production
Atlas will be deployed to Hyundai and Google facilities this year CES 2026 Remember when Elon Musk predicted that there would be thousands of Optimus robots at Tesla factories by the end of 2025? Well, that didn't happen, but competitor Boston Dynamics has just announced that its humanoid robot, Atlas, is going to the big time....
Brightspeed investigates breach as crims post stolen data for sale
Crimson Collective claims 'sophisticated attack' Internet service provider Brightspeed confirmed that it's investigating criminals' claims that they stole more than a million customers' records and have listed them for sale for three bitcoin, or about $276,370....
Lego crams an ASIC in a brick to keep kids interested
Neat idea, but with no mention of a dev kit it's another sign of Lego's descent into designing nothing but fun on rails Not even Legos are safe from the inexorable march of smart technology, as the Danish construction toy stalwart introduced a new tech-in-a-brick Smart Play system at CES this week....
What if Linux ran Windows… and meant it? Meet Loss32
It's crazy, a million-to-one shot, but it might just work What if, rather than make a Linux distro that can run Windows apps, you built the whole distro around Windows binaries instead?...
StockHistory function becomes StockMystery as Microsoft Excel bugs out
New Year glitch leaves users staring at connection errors instead of market data For many, the start of a new year is a time to take stock. For Microsoft, it was a time to stop giving it as the company kicked off 2026 with a bug that broke Excel's StockHistory function....
No membrane in sight as Osmos diffuses into Microsoft Fabric
AI data engineering startup acquisition brings ETL and Spark automation in-house Microsoft has bought Osmos, an AI-assisted data engineering platform, in a bid to enrich its Fabric data platform, encroaching on so-called partners' markets....
Mem-ageddon: AI chip frenzy to wallop DRAM prices with 70% hike
Samsung and SK hynix readying another gouge as server silicon squeeze leaves PCs and phones out in the cold Memory prices are set to spike again as chipmakers prioritize AI server production over consumer devices, with analysts warning of a high double-digit jump in Q1 2026 alone as demand outpaces supply....
Fake Windows BSODs check in at Europe's hotels to con staff into running malware
Phishers posing as Booking.com use panic-inducing blue screens to bypass security controls Russia-linked hackers are sneaking malware into European hotels and other hospitality outfits by tricking staff into installing it themselves through fake Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crashes....
Humongous 52-inch Dell monitor will make you feel like king of the internet with four screens in one
Also: The XPS brand is back If you like to separate your workflow onto multiple monitors but hate the gap and bezel between screens, Dell's new display was made for you. Announced on Tuesday at CES, the Dell UltraSharp 52 (U5226KW) offers 52 inches of 6K resolution screen real estate that you can divide into up to four virtual monitors, supporting input either from up to four different devices, or one computer that creates that many desktops....
Congress ctrl-Zs bulk of proposed cuts to NASA science
Fate of Shuttle Discovery remains conspicuously unaddressed in FY2026 agreement text NASA's budget battle took another turn this week as the US House and Senate Appropriations Committees released text rejecting proposed cuts to the space agency....
Crypto wallet shop Ledger confirms customer data lifted in Global-e snafu
Order and contact details accessed via ecommerce partner, and phishing has begun Blockchain security biz Ledger says customer information was accessed in a breach at its ecommerce payment partner Global-e, and is warning that other brands using the platform may also be affected....
UK urged to unplug from US tech giants as digital sovereignty fears grow
Campaigners say Britain's dependence on Big Tech leaves critical systems exposed to political pressure The Open Rights Group is warning politicians that the UK is leaning far too heavily on US tech companies to run critical systems, and wants the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill to force a rethink....
Researchers poison stolen data to make AI systems return wrong results
Wanted: Chief Disinformation Officer to pollute company knowledge graphs Researchers affiliated with universities in China and Singapore have devised a technique to make stolen knowledge graph data useless if incorporated into a GraphRAG AI system without consent....
Students bag extended Christmas break after cyber hit on school IT
Phones, email, and core systems knocked out at Higham Lane in Nuneaton Students at a school in Warwickshire, England, have scored an extended Christmas break after a cyberattack crippled its IT systems, forcing classrooms to close and staff to summon government incident responders....
UK injects just £210M into cyber plan to stop Whitehall getting pwnd
Central government will supposedly be as secure as energy facilities and datacenters under new proposals The UK today launches its Government Cyber Action Plan, committing 210 million ($282 million) to strengthen defenses across digital public services and hold itself to the same cybersecurity standards it's imposing on critical infrastructure operators....
AI's grand promise: Less drudgery, more complexity, same (or lower) pay
Workers face new mental health pressures as they shift from doing tasks to babysitting agentic AI A report on occupational health warns that AI adoption may paradoxically increase workplace burdens rather than reduce them. As AI automates routine tasks, workers will shoulder new responsibilities: overseeing AI systems, catching their errors, and managing the resulting complexity - potentially triggering mental health pressures....
One criminal, 50 hacked organizations, and all because MFA wasn't turned on
Crim used infostealer to get cloud credentials If you don't say "yes way" to MFA, the consequences can be disastrous. Sensitive data belonging to about 50 global enterprises is listed for sale - and, in some cases, has already been sold - on the dark web following a major infostealer campaign, with apparent victims including American utility engineering firm Pickett and Associates; Japan's homebuilding giant Sekisui House; and Spain's largest airline Iberia....
Baby's got clack: HP pushes PC-in-a-keyboard for businesses with hot desks
Notebook updates and enterprise tools also inbound from IT giant At most businesses today, the IT department gives laptops out to employees so they can easily take their work with them. But HP has a different idea: build a Windows computer into a full-size keyboard and let you carry that around, plugging into monitors and mice along the way....
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