The Register

But critics say stopping some engineering tests is not the sort of corner you want to cut America's telecoms regulator has unveiled new measures to speed the transition to modern high-speed networks, but critics argue the move could leave behind those in rural areas or with special needs....

Orion's four astronauts edge toward liftoff for humanity's first lunar voyage in more than 50 years NASA is preparing to send astronauts around the Moon, with the Artemis II mission countdown set to begin tonight....

Regulator says payments totaling 635K reached entity owned and controlled by a designated person The UK government has fined an Apple subsidiary 390,000 for breaching sanctions on Russia after it sent more than 600,000 to a developer linked to a designated entity....

Merger positioned to boost appeal of ERP giant's Business Data Cloud SAP is to acquire master data management and data integration specialist Reltio with the promise of helping integrate data from outside the vendor's broad application portfolio into its AI platform....

Researchers say attackers are already looting vulnerable boxes In-the-wild exploitation of a critical Citrix NetScaler bug has begun less than a week after disclosure, with researchers warning that attackers are already poking and pillaging vulnerable boxes....

Funding round comes ahead of planned IPO GPU-makers like Nvidia and AMD may dominate the AI infrastructure market, but there are still more than a few AI chip startups knocking around....

Could help break silos, but users should take wait-and-see approach to system limited to Microsoft DBs and DBaaS Microsoft's new Fabric Database Hub is a "partial solution" for enterprises relying on systems outside the vendor's portfolio, but within these confines, it could make databases more connected and manageable, say analysts reacting to the news....

KB5079391 pulled after some devices hit errors, adding to recent quality woes Microsoft has halted the rollout of a Windows update after some users encountered installation errors....

Torso on a trolley tries its hands in warehouse role That's one small step for Humanoid, or rather a short factory floor traversal. The UK-based robotics biz says it has completed a proof-of-concept test showing its rolling robot can be deployed in a production environment to help with automotive manufacturing....

Brussels notifying 'Union entities' whose data may've been snatched in websites breach The European Commission has admitted that attackers broke into its public-facing web infrastructure and siphoned off data in a bare-bones disclosure that answers the what but ducks most of the how....

Canny planning or dangerous compromise? Matt Brittin takes the hotseat at a pivotal moment Opinion The BBC has a new head honcho in waiting, the Director-General designate Matt Brittin. His job: helming one of the world's most famous and oldest international media brands, one with a vast and sensitive domestic position. His last job: President of EMEA Business and Operations at Google. You can imagine a greater culture clash, but you'll have to work at it....

Career-limiting stupidity and rudeness exposed, with terminal consequences Who, Me? The week before Easter may be a short one for many in the Reg-reading world, but that won't stop us from opening it with a fresh installment of Who, Me? It's the reader-contributed column in which you share stories of things you did at work that had interesting consequences....

Public policy professor says it will make America less secure but hits Netgear's lobbying goals The United States' ban on foreign-made SOHO routers won't improve security, and only makes sense as industrial policy disguised as cybersecurity," according to Milton Mueller, Professor at the University of Georgia's School of Public Policy and founder of its Internet Governance Project....

PLUS: Iran war may slow APAC IT spend; Toshiba, Mitsubishi, talk chip biz combo; Fusion plasma control networks; And more! Asia In Brief Staff at services giant DXC's Australian outpost will go on strike this week after 14 months of negotiations over a new pay agreement failed....

This week on the Kettle, we predict that AI software development won't make you want to fire your devs anytime soon kettle Tell an AI to write you a poem and it'll do it, just in a way that requires a human touch to perfect; the same goes for writing code....

And developers should be confident it won't kill the craft Secret CEO In 1991, when I was 16, a Norwegian Exchange student gave an inspirational performance of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, in the original Norwegian, at my high school talent night. She delivered this performance with such gusto that every word of her performance stuck in my mind and, to this day, I can recite the Three Billy Goats Gruff in Norwegian....

Alcohol turns up in most floral nectar, meaning pollinators are drinking tiny cocktails without ever getting drunk Bees and hummingbirds are effectively day-drinking on the job because their lunch is quietly fermenting....

The maker of Claude faces headwinds as it rushes to go public Anthropic, riding a wave of goodwill after resisting demands from the US Defense Department to soften model safeguards, is reportedly planning to go public as soon as Q4 2026....

Famous blue screens remind conference of security pros that this OS sometimes has bad days Bork!Bork!Bork! When is a bork not a bork? Perhaps when it's on a Microsoft stand at a US security conference....

New campus to include on-site power generation Bitcoin farmer turned bit barn builder Crusoe revealed plans to add 900 megawatts of capacity to its Abilene Texas datacenter campus on Friday to support Microsoft's AI ambitions....

Sycophantic bots coach users into selfish, antisocial behavior, say researchers, and they love it AI can lead mentally unwell people to some pretty dark places, as a number of recent news stories have taught us. Now researchers think sycophantic AI is actually having a harmful effect on everyone....

Farewell, Mac Pro: Increasing integration means the end of expandable computers Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro - but it's just the first of the tower computers to go. The rest will follow soon....

Ratepayer Protection Pledge is unenforceable without hard numbers, Warren and Hawley argue US senators are pushing to require datacenters and other large energy customers to report consumption, arguing the data is essential to hold them accountable to local communities....

Cross-signed code gets the cold shoulder as Redmond tightens trust Microsoft is removing trust for kernel drivers that haven't been through the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) in a bid to further secure the Windows kernel....

Private station hopefuls say ISS rethink is shaking confidence NASA's new Moon plan isn't the only policy shift causing concern. Parts of the commercial space industry are also uneasy about the agency's latest change of direction....

Vulns in Dutch football club's systems didn't just expose data - they let outsiders play with accounts, and even lift stadium bans Dutch football giant AFC Ajax has admitted to a data breach after an attacker gained access to its internal systems, in an incident that looks less like a stray pass and more like the gates left wide open....

US and UK forces seeking tech tender with an April 3 deadline The UK and US are looking for technology to counter the threat posed by underwater drones to ships, harbors and other critical maritime infrastructure, and are asking industry for answers....

A botched update mixed up transaction data across accounts, with thousands now receiving goodwill payouts A botched overnight software update at Lloyds Banking Group left up to 447,000 customers briefly seeing other people's transactions in its mobile apps, with the bank now acknowledging the scale of the incident and compensating affected users....

PAC grilling reveals 239M bought a system that couldn't handle the work, the volumes, or placeholder text A UK government official has admitted Capita did not reach the expected level of performance following the disastrous launch of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) web portal late last year....

The 600 km drive to fix the mess was a special treat On Call Every week is special in its own way, and The Register celebrates that fact by using Friday mornings to deliver a fresh installment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your memories of managing IT messes someone else made....

Global bank's devs have some cleaning up to do after cloud creds found in website code Computer security boffins have conducted an analysis of 10 million websites and found almost 2,000 API credentials strewn across 10,000 webpages....

Satnav systems aren't well, IP is being sold too cheap, and thousands of roles remain open India's space program has thousands of vacant roles it's struggled to fill, isn't spending money fast enough to meet its mission timelines, and may be undervaluing intellectual property it sells to the private sector....

Urges scientists to avoid major conference, and looks unkindly on Meta's Manus acquisition China appears to be unhappy about its brightest AI talent going offshore, either to visit or to sell their wares....

AI biz makes some Claude conversations more costly to manage capacity Anthropic on Wednesday adjusted its opaque usage limits for Claude customers by reducing the power of the services it delivers during times of peak demand, in an effort to balance demand with its capacity to deliver service....

You actually think companies are going to pay Americans to take customer service calls in the AI age? Uncle Sam is trying to make American call centers great again. The question is whether they will be great because they're filled with local workers or whether this will provide yet another excuse for companies to turn customer service jobs over to AI....

Cloud giant waives an entire month of charges, then erases the billing data. There is literally nothing to see here. I received an email / billing notification from AWS this week that may be the most diplomatically crafted communication in the history of cloud computing. Here it is, stripped of the usual boilerplate around it:...

Turns out massive caches are good for more than games. House of Zen boasts 5-13% perf boost over prior-gen part AMD aims to extend its lead in desktop gaming with a new CPU, dubbed the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition. This top-of-the-line part has 16 cores fed by an absolutely massive 208 MB pool of cache, with memory spread across both CCDs....

I'm sorry, Dave. I can't give you your job back, but here's the form you fill out to collect benefits There's a joke in Boston that goes: the people in Southie will steal your wallet and help you look for it....

Use of AI coding assistants has surged, but so has the number of vulnerabilities in AI-generated code As more people use AI tools to write code, the tools themselves are introducing more vulnerabilities....

Maybe that's why Tim didn't get an invitation to the President's tech bro club? Apple's American Manufacturing Program (AMP) is expanding, with new suppliers signed on to produce iPhone components - though those parts will still be shipped overseas for final assembly. Tim Apple may continue avoiding tariffs but he probably won't win a lot of brownie points with President Trump....

Your AI rollout isn't failing - your employees just hate it If your company isn't seeing great returns from its investment in AI, you might want to look at the humans tasked with deploying it and how you can motivate them. Right now, many employees fear AI-driven job losses and aren't well trained to use the tech, according to Forrester....

Agent will capture issues and eventually debug code The Linear cloudy issue tracker and project manager has introduced an AI agent and plans to add AI coding assistance, with CEO and co-founder Karri Saarinen declaring that "issue tracking is dead."...

Greg Kroah-Hartman can't explain the inflection point, but it's not slowing down or going away Interview I was at a press luncheon at KubeCon Europe this week when, to my surprise, who should sit down next to me but long-term Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman. Greg, who lives in the Netherlands these days, was there to briefly comment on AI, Linux, and security. We spoke about how, over the last month, AI-driven activity around Linux security and code review has "really jumped" in a way no one in the open source world saw coming....

Prosecutors say trio used Thai front companies to reroute high-end AI servers The US has collared three more people for allegedly attempting to smuggle Nvidia GPUs to China, days after a Supermicro co-founder faced similar accusations....

Appearing before Parliament, Meta, Google and X struggle to explain how fake political video circulated for so long A member of the UK Parliament's lower house who was the victim of a deepfake AI campaign this week had a rare chance to confront the Big Tech executives who helped spread it. Their answers disappointed....

Central bank turns to homegrown providers to underpin virtual cash push Europe is taking a small step toward breaking its reliance on US Big Tech by hiring only cloud operators headquartered in the EU to work on the backbone of the digital euro project....

Microsoft's Clippy for 21st century deployed to evaluate returns? Industry Wales chair brands it just 'wrong' The Welsh government used Microsoft's Copilot to help write a review of an industry liaison body that it then scrapped, its chairman has told a Senedd committee....

300 families undergo 6-week trial to test impact on sleep, school, and home life The UK government will trial different levels of restrictions on social media for under-16s with the help of 300 families, alongside a public consultation that has already gathered nearly 30,000 responses....

CarStation/PlayMobile won't hit the road after pile-up of tax and competition issues in China and the USA Sony and Honda have broken up, meaning their joint vision to deliver a revolutionary electric vehicle won't happen....

Police found cameras pointing at infrastructure Indian authorities have reportedly ordered an audit of the nation's CCTV cameras, after police uncovered what they claim was a Pakistan-backed surveillance operation....