The Register

IT hiring ticks up in January, but unemployment climbs to 5.7% The latest job numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics make IT hiring look like it's in freefall, but that's not the case at all, says consultancy firm Janco....

'Intense year' ahead, warned Zuck. Got to spend billions on AI and work to stay out of Trump's bad books Meta has confirmed to The Register that today marks the start of a mass redundancy process with thousands of workers getting the chop....

Free text messages for users of its own and rival networks during test period T-Mobile US has started a public beta of its Direct-to-Cell service using Starlink satellites, offering just text messages for now, with data and voice calls coming later. Access will be free until July - after which it will cost $15 per month....

Overdue, over budget and now... perhaps just over? Boeing has notified staff that hundreds of jobs could be eliminated if the Artemis program is canceled or heavily revised....

When your state machines are vulnerable, all bets are off Opinion All malicious attacks on digital systems have one common aim: taking control. Mostly, that means getting a CPU somewhere to turn traitor, running code that silently steals or scrambles your data. That code can ride into the system in a whole spectrum of ways, but usually it has to be in memory somewhere at some time, making it amenable to counter-attack....

Simian saboteur or a grid screaming for modernization? Sri Lanka's electricity grid was brought down nationwide on Sunday after monkey business struck a power station south of the capital of Colombo....

Publications across 25 states either producing smaller issues or very delayed ones US newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is one week into tackling a nondescript "cybersecurity event," saying the related investigation may take "weeks or longer" to complete....

OKD project also has its own immutable CentOS image, which could be fun FOSDEM 2025 CentOS Connect, the FOSDEM-adjacent meetup, delivered a few notable updates: Firefox is returning as a native package on CentOS, an immutable Stream variant is being explored, and AlmaLinux is doing things its own way....

Costs for fixing them and keeping them working up by 390%, NAO report reveals Costs associated with the remediation of the UK tax collector's legacy systems have risen by up to 390 percent, according to a new report from government auditors....

And up to 70% of stalled energy generation projects are unlikely to be approved, claims regulator Ofgem While the UK government wants to turbocharge datacenter construction, a newly published report says there are already 400 GW worth of outstanding requests for connection to the power grid around London, and regulator Ofgem estimates 60-70 percent of these will never happen....

High starting salaries promised after public sector infosec pay criticized The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is fast-tracking cybersecurity specialists in a bid to fortify its protection against increasing attacks....

That's not even the worst part of this story, which features a flood, broken promises, and plenty of panic Who, Me? The working week has rolled around again, bringing with it the promise of new achievements - and the chance to mess things up in ways that we cover here in "Who, Me?" The Register's reader-contributed column in which you admit to your failures....

Also claims it's found DeepSeek-eque optimizations that reduce AI infrastructure requirements Cloudflare has declared it's found optimizations that reduce the amount of hardware needed for inferencing workloads, and is in early talks to re-invent the World Wide Web for the age of AI...

Order requires destruction of departmental data accessed by Musky men Trump administration policies that allowed Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to access systems and data at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) have left the org more vulnerable to hacking" according to Paul A. Engelmayer, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York....

With over 2,000 banks in operation, a domain only they can use has potential to make life harder for fraudsters India's Reserve Bank last week announced a plan to use adopt dedicated second-level domains - bank.in and fin.in - in the hope it improves trust in the financial services sector....

PLUS: Spanish cops think they've bagged NATO hacker; HPE warns staff of data breach; Lazy Facebook phishing, and more! Infosec In Brief DeepSeek's iOS app is a security nightmare that you should delete ASAP, according to researchers at mobile app infosec platform vendor NowSecure....

PLUS: Japan shifts to pre-emptive cyber-defense; Thailand cuts cords connecting scam camps; China to launch 'moon hopper' in 2026; and more! Asia In Brief Huawei chair Liang Hua last week told a conference in China that the company expects to meet its revenue targets for 2024, meaning it earned around 860 billion ($118.25 billion) - 22 percent growth compared to its 2023 result....

Tesla's DIY ERP legend meets the messy reality of entrenched federal contracts Comment Tesla reportedly decided not to upgrade its SAP's enterprise software a decade ago, opting to build its own system instead. Now, with Elon Musk heading up the Trump-blessed US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his cost-cutting mindset could have major implications for federal IT spending - and the big tech vendors cashing in on government contracts....

Oh look, a mini Stargate, how quaint The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and France this week announced plans for a one-gigawatt AI datacenter campus dedicated to advancing development of artificial intelligence....

Vladimir Putin opens airlock after just three years Roscosmos boss Yury Borisov has been fired from the Russian space agency by executive order of the country's president, Vladimir Putin....

And US government adverts at that, say senators Updated US Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Friday sent letters to the CEOs of Amazon and Google asking why their ad businesses fund websites hosting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and allow government ads to appear on sites with illegal imagery....

Funding freeze while Feds review priorities If you were hoping the Biden administration's $5 billion investment in building a cross-country network of EV chargers would soon have you road-tripping in an electric car without range anxiety, think again: The Trump-led US Dept of Transport has put the plan under review and halted new funding....

Open source project chief hits out at 'social media brigading' Weighing in on yet another Linux kernel spat - this time over Rust device drivers - Linux supremo Linus Torvalds has shot the messenger....

Spacecraft weather solar storms, but ground processing laid low by water They can put a man on the Moon - but back on Earth, a busted water pipe managed to knock out NASA's solar mission data for months....

Blighty's latest stab at encryption? A secret order to pry open iCloud, sources claim The UK's Home Office refuses to either confirm or deny reports that it recently ordered Apple to create a backdoor allowing the government to access any user's cloud data....

Some of that cash is reportedly headed for $500B Stargate dream The AI investment landscape is shifting once again, with SoftBank reportedly finalizing a $40 billion stake in OpenAI - pushing its valuation to around $300 billion....

Shocking research warns electricity shortages could create construction bottleneck AI's thirst for electricity will see datacenter energy use more than double by the end of the decade - just five years from now - according to the latest forecast from investment banker Goldman Sachs....

It's not auto-enrollment. It's just your current plan with extra Copilot for more money. Completely different Users are now receiving notifications regarding their Microsoft 365 subscriptions and must take action if they wish to avoid Copilot and its extra charges....

But 'original sin' has already been committed, shrugs industry Governments are allowing AI developers to steal content - both creative and journalistic - for fear of upsetting the tech sector and damaging investment, a UK Parliamentary committee heard this week....

Freshly minted organization aims to take the guesswork out of incident severity for insurers and policy holders A world-first organization assembled to categorize the severity of cybersecurity incidents is up and running in the UK following a year-long incubation period....

248-year-old democracy is not a tech startup Opinion 120-hour work weeks, firing government staffers and dismantling agencies? Oh my. The US government under pseudo President Musk is in for a world of radical change....

Shabby admin invented 'transparent tape' - a terrible storage medium but a magic tool for unlocking IT budgets On Call Each week at work creates memories many are happy to forget, but some are willing to share with fellow Register readers in On Call, our Friday column that tells your tales of tech support....

Makers of content blockers, privacy add-ons say promises weren't kept Google's overhaul of Chrome's extension architecture continues to pose problems for developers of ad blockers, content filters, and privacy tools....

Reverses life extensions for some servers it now feels aren't useful in the inferencing age Amazon Web Services is struggling to get the high-quality servers it needs to build AI infrastructure and has retired other hardware early to make room to accelerated machines....

OCR plugin great for extracting crypto-wallet secrets from galleries Kaspersky eggheads say they've spotted the first app containing hidden optical character recognition spyware in Apple's App Store. Cunningly, the software nasty is designed to steal cryptocurrency....

35% drop in payments across the year as your backups got better and law enforcement made a difference Ransomware extortion payments fell in 2024, according to blockchain analyst biz Chainalysis this week....

We did Nazi see that coming Marko Elez, a former SpaceX, Starlink, and X engineer who was granted deep access to a critical US Treasury payment system by the Trump-blessed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has quit that team after he was linked to a racist Twitter account....

Looking forward to someone putting the new into nuclear Months after Amazon joined a half-billion-dollar funding round for next-gen modular nuclear startup X-energy, the biz has announced a supplemental Series C-1 raise - despite its fission reactor design remaining unproven....

Fourth time's the harm? Gravy Analytics has been sued yet again for allegedly failing to safeguard its vast stores of personal data, which are now feared stolen. And by personal data we mean information including the locations of tens of millions of smartphones, coordinates of which were ultimately harvested from installed apps....

Lawsuit: 'Scale of intrusion into individuals' privacy is massive and unprecedented' Updated Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has had its access to US Treasury payment systems restricted - at least temporarily - following a lawsuit from advocacy groups and unions....

Are cybersecurity roles included? Are Elon's enforcers vetted? Inquiring minds want to know Updated Elected officials are demanding answers as to whether the Trump administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are hamstringing US national security....

Proof of concept projects stuck in pilot phase as investors get itchy feet Many business leaders remain unconvinced that AI is worth the expense despite continued hype from an industry that has bet billions on developing the tech and desperately needs to recoup that spending....

For those for whom a runny white or a hard yolk is just not good un uf Researchers have put computational fluid dynamics software to good use in devising a solution to the age-old problem of the perfect soft-boiled egg....

20 years? More like five for real-world workloads says company's Quantum AI lead Despite ongoing breakthroughs, quantum computing has struggled to shake the perception that it's always another ten years away from being practical. However, researchers at Google now argue the tech is actually much closer to commercial viability than some would have you believe....

Concerns around unfixed problems remain after system resulted in harm to some 150 patients The US Department of Veterans Affairs has restarted a project to implement Oracle electronic health records in its hospitals after the project was suspended in 2023....

Preview arrives in Canary Channel, release planned for Windows 10 and 11 Microsoft has released its first in-box public preview of Windows MIDI Services with full support for the MIDI 2.0 standard....

Fleets built to handle peak demand will lose money, leaving humans driving to the rescue Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is warning that it's not yet possible to commercialize autonomous vehicles due to high costs, seasonal demand fluctuations, and the need to prove "superhuman" safety....

57% higher price point and app compatibility issues aren't helping There remains little love for notebooks containing AI-capable processors and even less for Microsoft's Copilot+ models, with premium pricing, software compatibility, and opaque benefits cited as the reasons....

Lennart Poettering gave packed-out keynote talk. Jack Dorsey ... didn't FOSDEM 2025 FOSDEM returned to Brussels for the first weekend in February - not without some controversial people....

'Fetch' just got a lot more interesting You can teach a robotic dog new tricks, it seems, with mechanic canines now being deployed in tests to detect and defuse bomb threats....