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Updated 2025-12-05 10:46
Pension portal launch fail sends Capita running to Microsoft for help
Union fields member complaints as it presses outsourcer over botched rollout Capita has sought Microsoft's help after the launch of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) left users facing a malfunctioning website designed to process important financial information....
Cloudflare suffers second outage in as many months during routine maintenance
The Reg is still standing (this time) despite our best efforts Routine Cloudflare maintenance went awry this morning, knocking over the company's dashboard and API and sending sites around the world into error screens....
Bots, bias, and bunk: How can you tell what's real on the net?
You can improve the odds by combining skepticism, verification habits, and a few technical checks Opinion Liars, cranks, and con artists have always been with us. It's just that nowadays their reach has gone from the local pub to the globe....
Vendor's secret 'fix' made critical app unusable during business hours
Medical software maker also had a vastly unhealthy approach to security On Call Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's Friday column that tries to improve the health of the tech support ecosystem by sharing readers' sickening stories of bringing broken tech back from the brink....
Proxmox delivers its software-defined datacenter contender and VMware escape hatch
New Datacenter Manager' manages VMs across multiple sites or clusters Open source virtualization project Proxmox has delivered the first full and stable release of its Datacenter Manager product, making it a more viable alternative as a private cloud platform....
HPE's server and hybrid cloud revenue go into reverse amid historical hardware splurge
Never mind, says jolly green giant, we're a networking-centric company now HPE has revealed its revenue from servers and hybrid cloud products has gone backwards but insisted that's nothing to worry because it's now poised to profit from its acquisition of Juniper Networks....
An AI for an AI: Anthropic says AI agents require AI defense
Automated software keeps getting better at pilfering cryptocurrency Anthropic could have scored an easy $4.6 million by using its Claude AI models to find and exploit vulnerabilities in blockchain smart contracts....
Amazon keeps the pressure on Intel, AMD with 192-core Graviton5 CPU
The homegrown chips now account for half of all new CPUs added to AWS over the past three years re:invent Amazon on Thursday unveiled Graviton5, its densest, highest performance CPU yet, cramming 192 processor cores into a single socket and promising new levels of AWS performance....
PRC spies Brickstromed their way into critical US networks and remained hidden for years
'Dozens' of US orgs infected Chinese cyberspies maintained long-term access to critical networks - sometimes for years - and used this access to infect computers with malware and steal data, according to Thursday warnings from government agencies and private security firms....
OpenAI turns the screws on chatbots to get them to confess mischief
'You're absolutely right! I was totally lying to you!' Some say confession is good for the soul, but what if you have no soul? OpenAI recently tested what happens if you ask its bots to "confess" to bypassing their guardrails....
Hegseth needs to go to secure messaging school, report says
He's not alone: DoD inspector general says the whole Defense Department has a messaging security problem US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth definitely broke the rules when he sent sensitive information to a Signal chat group, say Pentagon auditors, but he's not the only one using insecure messaging, and everyone needs better training....
Twins who hacked State Dept hired to work for gov again, now charged with deleting databases
And then they asked an AI to help cover their tracks Vetting staff who handle sensitive government systems is wise, and so is cutting off their access the moment they're fired. Prosecutors say a federal contractor learned this the hard way when twin brothers previously convicted of hacking-related offenses allegedly used lingering access to delete nearly 100 government databases, including systems tied to Homeland Security and other agencies, within minutes of being terminated....
We'll beat China to the Moon, NASA nominee declares
Isaacman: 'We can never accept a gap in our capabilities again' The US must return astronauts to the Moon before China mounts its first crewed landing there, NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman predicted on Wednesday. He also vowed that the country will not endure another gap in its human-spaceflight capabilities as the International Space Station approaches retirement....
Server prices set to jump 15% as memory costs spike
Major OEMs are plotting double-digit hikes as DRAM and NAND shortages bite Exclusive Server and PC prices are climbing sharply as hardware manufacturers grapple with soaring memory component costs, multiple supply chain sources have told The Register....
Snowflake jumps on agentic AI train with Anthropic tie-up
$200M deal brings Claude into data cloud, yet its touted 90%+' accuracy needs human oversight Anthropic and Snowflake announced a deal that will allow the deployment of AI agents capable of complex, multi-step analysis inside Snowflake's governed data environments....
Sorry, but your glitchy connection might have cost you that job
Technical problems on video calls can cause uncanniness, which influences real-world decisions If you didn't get your dream job, you might be able to blame your internet provider. Technical glitches on video calls in healthcare, job interviews, and parole hearings can affect real-world decisions, a study has found. The researchers suggest new technologies may even be making the problem worse....
EU probes Meta after WhatsApp kicked rival AIs off platform
OpenAI and Microsoft yank their chatbots, telling millions of users to head elsewhere The European Commission has opened an antitrust probe into Meta after WhatsApp rewrote its rules to block rival AI chatbots including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot....
Palantir wants to set the juice loose with new AI power initiative
Nvidia is along for the ride with chips to offer, naturally Palantir has always been a company marked by ambition, and it's embarking on what might be its most ambitious project yet with Chain Reaction, a new multi-industry, AI-powered software suite designed to eliminate energy bottlenecks for datacenters....
Microsoft quietly shuts down Windows shortcut flaw after years of espionage abuse
Silent Patch Tuesday mitigation ends ability to hide malicious commands in .lnk files Microsoft has quietly closed off a critical Windows shortcut file bug long abused by espionage and cybercrime networks....
Latest Windows 11 updates may break the OS's most basic bits
Microsoft warns Start menu, Explorer, and other XAML apps can crash or vanish on managed devices Microsoft has admitted that it might have broken Windows components including the Start menu and Explorer in the latest round of updates....
Logitech chief says ill-conceived gadgets put the AI in FAIL
Just ignore all the ways the peripherals biz uses AI itself Logitech's CEO says that AI-powered devices are a solution looking for a problem, despite being a strong proponent of AI and her firm pushing out exactly the kind of thing she's talking about....
Aisuru botnet turns Q3 into a terabit-scale stress test for the entire internet
Cloudflare data shows 29.7 Tbps record-breaker landed amid 87% surge in network-layer attacks The internet has spent the past three months ducking for cover as the Aisuru botnet hurled record-shattering DDoS barrages from an army of up to 4 million infected machines....
Datacenters planned for Scotland could end up draining a loch of power
3 GW is roughly three quarters of the country's peak demand, says Foxglove New datacenters planned in Scotland would collectively require 75 percent as much energy as the entire country currently consumes, according to tech campaign group Foxglove....
UK SAP users say they're baffled by Business Suite reboot licensing maze
Pricing complexity makes justifying migrations an uphill battle UK SAP users say licensing and pricing complexity is muddying the picture for Business Suite, the vendor's new model for cloud applications....
Xero to start charging developers API usage fees, replacing revenue share deals
One dev thinks this will become their second-highest cost, fears they'll have to pass it on Exclusive SaaS-y accounting outfit Xero has advised developers who integrate their products with its services that they'll soon have to pay for the privilege in a new way....
Datacenters that don't have their own power supplies will fail
It's time to ask your bit barn provider how they'll keep the lights on, and what their plans mean for prices Availability of energy will determine the prices charged by datacenter operators, who won't be viable unless they generate some of their own juice....
TLS 1.3 includes welcome improvements, but still allows long-lived secrets
Tricky tradeoffs are hard to avoid when designing systems, but the choice not to use LLMs for some tasks is clear Systems Approach As we neared the finish line for our network security book, I received a piece of feedback from Brad Karp that my explanation of forward secrecy in the chapter on TLS (Transport Layer Security) was not quite right....
Rust core library partly polished for industrial safety spec
Ferrous Systems achieves IEC 61508 (SIL 2) certification for systems that demand reliability Memory-safe Rust code can now be more broadly applied in devices that require electronic system safety, at least as measured by International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards....
India's government targets Uber, Ola with plan to launch zero-commission rideshare platform
Minister wants to free drivers from dependency on private companies' India's government is set to launch a rideshare platform and app that charges no commission and is intended to make life harder for Uber and its ilk....
Micron ditches consumer memory brand Crucial to chase AI riches
First AI came for our jobs. Now, our memory? The lure of AI spending was too much for Micron to ignore. On Wednesday, the US chipmaker announced it's abandoning its Crucial memory and storage lineup to bolster its supply of enterprise-focused chips, including those used in AI systems....
John Henry still leading the race vs. AI in customer service
Gartner found only 20% of customer service leaders have cut human agents because of AI The world's smallest digital violin is playing for AI chatbots, which are having a hard time elbowing out their human counterparts for jobs in customer service, according to a Gartner study....
Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator
Rights holders had better buckle up for years of legal wrangling, IP lawyer tells The Reg You don't have to be smarter than a fifth grader (or even a first grader) to commit potential copyright infringement using AI tools. One IP attorney watched over the weekend as his young son built a bedtime story generator that used copyrighted characters without permission....
'Exploitation is imminent' as 39 percent of cloud environs have max-severity React hole
Finish reading this, then patch A maximum-severity flaw in the widely used JavaScript library React, and several React-based frameworks including Next.js allows unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable instances. The flaw is easy to abuse, and mass exploitation is "imminent," according to security researchers....
MAGA cognoscenti warn feds away from shielding AI infringers
Letting AI firms train on copyrighted data will end up helping China, conservative groups argue A group of conservatives allied with President Donald Trump's MAGA movement, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, has asked the Justice Department and the White House to stop protecting Big Tech against copyright claims....
China's reusable rocket makes it to orbit but fails to stick the landing
An anomaly' meant a fireball arrived at the recovery zone instead of a spent first stage There's good news and bad news for the Chinese commercial launch industry. The good news is that LandSpace's ZhuQue-3 launched successfully on its maiden flight. The bad news is that a hoped-for recovery of the first stage ended in a fireball....
Poop-peeping toilet attachment has a different definition of 'end-to-end' encryption
Talk about enshittification No, this isn't a joke: Kohler's poop-scanning toilet attachment, which the company claims is ... uh ... end-to-end encrypted, appears to be anything butt....
Space telescopes are being photobombed by satellites, and the problem is slated to get much worse
LEO communications satellites are proliferating like rabbits Nearly all images from some space telescopes in low Earth orbit could be affected by light from man-made satellites as the number of communication spacecraft surges, new research led by NASA has found....
Microsoft sharpens the blocking axe for Exchange Web Services
Starting in March, Frontline Worker and Kiosk-only mailboxes lose EWS access Microsoft is getting serious about the end of Exchange Web Services (EWS) and has announced that, starting in March 2026, it will begin blocking EWS access to mailboxes without license rights....
HPE positions Morpheus stack as enterprise alternative to VMware
IT giant touts unified management, stretched clusters, and AI-ready networking at Discover Barcelona HPE is laying out its enterprise stall with enhancements to its GreenLake hybrid cloud portfolio, while converging its Aruba and Juniper networking to offer customers AIOps across both, plus high-speed connectivity for AI processing....
ISS hits rare full house as all eight docking ports ocupado
Russian vehicles will depart soon, but Baikonur launchpad damage clouds future arrivals NASA confirmed this week that for the first time, all eight of the International Space Station's docking ports are currently occupied - four by Russian vehicles....
Windows 11 still barely pulling ahead of 10 despite end-of-support push
Statcounter shows the gap narrowing as users cling to older hardware and familiar workflows Windows 11 has not significantly widened its market share lead over Windows 10, despite support for many versions of the latter ending almost two months ago....
Newly launched civil service pension portal from Capita is crapita, users report
Awarded a 239M contract, outsourcer apologizes for any inconvenience to 1.5M members Updated Pension scheme members are facing a string of errors and malfunctions as they try to log into and retrieve account details from the UK's civil service portal the government is paying Capita 239 million ($318 million) to build and run....
Pat Gelsinger's EUV lithography gig gets $150M wink from Uncle Sam
Commerce Department wants equity in xLight as it backs a free-electron laser to challenge ASML The US Department of Commerce has signed a preliminary letter of intent to provide up to $150 million to xLight, a Palo Alto-based startup led by former Intel chief Pat Gelsinger, that is working on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography....
Linux 6.18 arrives as the year's final drop and likely next LTS
Bye-bye bcachefs, but hello there bhyve The last new kernel release of 2025 is here, and it's looking likely this will be the new LTS kernel release....
Here’s your worst nightmare: E-tailer can only resume partial sales 45 days after ransomware attack
Japan's Askul still can't run all its sites, but at least the fax line held up OK Japanese e-tailer Askul has resumed online sales, 45 days after a ransomware attack....
China using AI as ‘precision instrument’ of censorship and repression, at home and abroad
Think tank ASPI says Beijing is even using it to steal fish from the ocean China has embraced AI to help it censor and surveil its citizens and is exporting its techniques to the world, according to a new report by think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)....
Indian government reveals GPS spoofing at eight major airports
Extra infosec investments are taxiing towards the runway India's Civil Aviation Minister has revealed that local authorities have detected GPS spoofing and jamming at eight major airports....
Amazon is forging a walled garden for enterprise AI
AWS Chief Matt Garman lays out his vision bringing artificial intelligence to the enterprise Re:Invent Amazon wants to make AI meaningful to enterprises, and it's building yet another walled garden disguised as an easy button to do it....
AWS offers AI-in-a-box for enterprise datacenters
If sovereignty or on-prem AI matters, the new AI Factories could be for you re:invent Many businesses and government agencies require that all sensitive data stay on-premises for legal or security reasons. If those orgs want to work with AI, they can't rely on regular public clouds, but now they can let AWS build and manage AI hardware and software in their datacenters....
AWS admits AI coding tools cause problems, reckons its three new agents fix 'em
Autonomous AI triages DevOps issues and pushes code to repositories, while checking security Re:Invent Amazon is all-in on agentic AI when it comes to software development, and it sincerely hopes you are too, based on Tuesday's AWS re:Invent keynote....
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