The Register

National security defense being used to keep appeal behind closed doors US politicians and privacy campaigners are calling for the private hearing between Apple and the UK government regarding its alleged encryption-busting order to be aired in public....

Biz leaders still dream of obedient agents replacing workers. In the actual workplace, they're going AWOL Opinion I am so sick and tired of AI hype. I'm not the only one....

Tin rattling earns rebuke from GNOME extension's original developer as well as dozens of everyday users The maintainer of one of the most popular extensions to customize the GNOME desktop is stepping down and seeking someone to take over development after a fundraising effort backfired....

It's March already and you haven't patched? Researchers are tracking a newly discovered ransomware group with suspected links to LockBit after a series of intrusions were reported starting in January....

Mooney M20 propeller plane hit mountain in Slovenia amid bad weather One of the initial backers of infamous torrenting site The Pirate Bay, Carl Lundstrom, has died after crashing his aircraft in bad weather....

The same chap also caused a bomb scare in a missile factory On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's Friday column in which we share your astounding tales of being asked to tackle tech support jobs that seemingly defy common sense....

Ratification of 128 additional moons puts the smaller gas giant way ahead on satellite count The International Astronomical Union on Tuesday ratified the recent discovery of 128 previously unknown moons orbiting Saturn, taking the gas giant's count of known natural satellites to 274....

Rideshare companies said it isn't happening. Lawmakers aren't convinced India's government has ordered an investigation into whether Uber and local ride-share champion charge Ola customers more if they use iPhones....

Veteran of Oracle vs Google Java trial fumes over 'gimmicks' and 'sham' arguments A federal judge has ordered six US government agencies to immediately rehire employees fired this year by the Trump administration....

Pouring sensitive info into unapproved, unaccountable, unsafe models would be a 'severe' cybersecurity fail House Democrats have sent letters to 24 federal agencies asking for assurances that Elon Musk's DOGE team is not feeding sensitive government data into "unapproved and unaccountable" AI systems....

Indie browser maker asks judge for legal shield against copyright threats over AI summaries Brave has gone to court to head off potential legal action from News Corp over the browser maker's auto-generated AI summaries of articles published by Rupert Murdoch's media empire....

It'll take a few days, give or take your situation Google has told The Register it's beginning to roll out a fix for Chromecast devices that were crippled by an expired security certificate authority. We're assured this deployment will take place over the next few days....

The rest of the world doesn't think 'fair use' is fair but we should make 'em Updated OpenAI wants the US government to ensure it has access to any data it wants to train GenAI models, and to stop foreign countries from trying to enforce copyright rules against it and other American AI firms....

Hydraulic problems stop the countdown clock at T-44 minutes The launch of the next crew to the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed to no earlier than Friday, March 14, due to a hydraulic issue with a group support clamp arm for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during March 12's countdown....

Phishers check in, your credentials check out, Microsoft warns An ongoing phishing campaign disguised as a Booking.com email casts keystroke and credential-stealing malware into hospitality employees' inboxes for financial fraud and theft, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence....

So much for 'carbon negative by 2030' Microsoft says there is plenty of wind and solar to power datacenters in the US, but it is still eyeing natural gas generation as it juggles the growing energy needs of AI with its own net-zero commitments....

Agency tries to save face as it also pulls essential funding for election security initiatives Uncle Sam's cybersecurity agency is trying to save face by seeking to clear up what it's calling "inaccurate reporting" after a former senior pen-tester claimed the organization axed two red teams....

It might need polishing, but a useful find for any budding cybercrooks out there DeepSeek's flagship R1 model is capable of generating a working keylogger and basic ransomware code, just as long as a techie is on hand to tinker with it a little....

It's called 'SpaceHPC' and it heats the building it lives in The European Space Agency this week inaugurated its new supercomputing facility built with HPE....

If operators are willing to cough up a 'green premium' and tax credits are not repealed An independent research body claims that geothermal power generation could provide an answer to the growing energy requirements of datacenters....

Steering Committee decides against merge of over-complex and largely unloved ALGOL-68 'at this point' Version 15 of the GNU Compiler Collection is getting close to release, and as it does, some changes are not going to make it....

Opposition faults leadership as officers accused of misleading councillors Birmingham City Council voted down proposals to hold a full independent inquiry into its disastrous introduction of an Oracle ERP system, which "effectively crippled" its ability to manage and report on its finances....

New feature on Google Pixel phones hints at a ChromeOS-like VM The March "feature drop" for Android 15 on Google Pixel devices includes an optional Linux session....

Community calls for off-by-default data sharing setting Open source software biz Nextcloud issued fixes to its software this week after bug hunters raised concerns about data collection....

Feds warn gang still rampant and now cracked 300+ victims around the world A crook who distributes the Medusa ransomware tried to make a victim cough up three payments instead of the usual two, according to a government advisory on how to defend against the malware and the gangs who wield it....

Eggheads call for comprehensive rules to govern machine learning in medical settings The tendency of AI models to hallucinate - aka confidently making stuff up - isn't sufficient to disqualify them from use in healthcare settings. So, researchers have set out to enumerate the risks and formulate a plan to do no harm while still allowing medical professionals to consult with unreliable software assistants....

Google apologizes but won't say what went wrong nor when it will make things right Older models of Google's Chromecast media-streaming sticks remain broken, and independent research suggests a fix could take potentially weeks to materialize....

Yeah, yeah ... if we were all exclusively on IPv6, this wouldn't be a thing. But here we are IP address marketplace IPv4.Global has started offering loans on terms that consider public IPv4 network addresses as valid collateral....

Root cert expiry may bring breakage or worse for add-ons, media playback, and more If you're running an outdated version of Firefox, update by Friday or risk broken add-ons, failing DRM-protected media playback, and other errors, due to an expiring root certificate....

Firefox maker: Looming antitrust inferno could burn us, too Mozilla, which in 2023 received about 75 percent of its revenue from royalties paid by Google and other search providers for search engine usage in Firefox, worries that the US Justice Department's proposed ban on the very same Google Search payments would be rather harmful....

Not so much thrown under a bus as under an unwanted electric car Elon Musk is trying yet again to get his $56 billion Tesla pay package reinstated with a fresh appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court....

Restoring x86 giant to its former glory, a job no one will envy Intel has tapped former Cadence CEO and Intel board member Lip-Bu Tan to lead the embattled x86 chipmaker as it struggles to overcome mounting losses stemming from its foundry business....

We're doomba, say Roomba goombas, unless... Troubled robot vacuum-cleaner maker iRobot, abandoned by Amazon after regulators effectively doomed the web giant's takeover offer, has warned investors it may not survive the next 12 months....

When it's all abstracted by an API endpoint, do you even care what's behind the curtain? Comment With the exception of custom cloud silicon, like Google's TPUs or Amazon's Trainium ASICs, the vast majority of AI training clusters being built today are powered by Nvidia GPUs. But while Nvidia may have won the AI training battle, the inference fight is far from decided....

Who still uses a printer anyway? Oh ... quite a lot of you, it seems Has your printer suddenly started spouting gibberish? A faulty Windows 11 23H2 update from Microsoft - rather than a ghost in the machine - could be the cause....

AI doesn't run on fairy dust after all A group of large-scale energy users including Amazon, Meta, and Google has thrown its weight behind efforts to ramp up global nuclear capacity - aiming to triple it by 2050 - to meet increasing energy demands....

Project dubbed 'wasteful' - Musk's lot says under-pressure VA must do it 'in-house' Elon Musk's newly minted US Department of Government Efficiency claims to have helped the Department of Veterans Affairs end a technology contract run by service-disabled veterans....

Artist formerly known as OpenStack to huddle under same umbrella as the Cloud Native Computing Foundation The votes are in, confirming that the Open Infrastructure Foundation intends to join the Linux Foundation....

Fewer than 10 known victims, but Mandiant suspects others compromised, too Chinese spies have for months exploited old Juniper Networks routers, infecting the buggy gear with custom backdoors and gaining root access to the compromised devices....

Yokohama release also adds meta-observabiilty and takes a tilt at CRM ServiceNow has for years used the example of employee onboarding to explain the power of its wares, pointing out that a lot of people around an organization are needed to get new hires on the payroll, registered with HR, equipped with a computer, and assigned appropriate permissions to access applications....

Power utility GM talks to El Reg about getting that call and what happened next Nick Lawler, general manager of the Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments (LELWD), was at home one Friday when he got a call from the FBI alerting him that the public power utility's network had been compromised. The digital intruders turned out to be Volt Typhoon....

Agency willing to take huge risks with human exploration, but not willing to do it for some dirt? Rocket Lab has been on a roll lately, with multiple Electron launches, plans for an ocean platform for its Neutron rocket, and a second mission for in-space manufacturing business Varda under its belt. However, NASA has apparently rejected the company's Mars Sample Return mission proposal. Why?...

Don't, don't, DON'T believe the hype The developer of Free95 says it will be a free Windows 95-compatible OS, but we suspect an elaborate prank. At best, maybe an unknowing one....

Leaders call for fewer contractors and more top talent installed across government Senior officials in the UK's civil service understand that future cyber hires in Whitehall will need to be paid a salary higher than that of the Prime Minister if the government wants to get serious about fending off attacks....

Five years after it launched its first database service, the MySQL fork is trying again MariaDB says it is building a database-as-a-service based on open source principles after offloading its old DBaaS before going into private ownership....

Vendors just don't want machines to live double lives Column My decade-old and very well-travelled 13" MacBook Pro finally died, and I hoped my new-ish M2 iPad Pro could replace it....

Redmond insists it's got this right and has even more impressive results to share soon Microsoft's claim of having made quantum computing breakthroughs has attracted strong criticism from scientists, but the software giant says it's work is sound - and it will soon reveal data that proves it....

Skip the schnitzel with gravy and chips for lunch - this is an experimental device for transplant candidates Australian company BiVACOR has revealed a patient implanted with its artificial heart survived for 100 days - and is still with us after receiving a donated organ....

Election infosec advisory agency also shuttered A penetration tester who worked at the US govt's CISA claims his 100-strong team was dismissed after Elon Musk's Trump-blessed DOGE unit cancelled a contract - and that more staff at the cybersecurity agency have also been let go....

Microsoft tackles 50-plus security blunders, Adobe splats 3D bugs, and Apple deals with a doozy Patch Tuesday Microsoft's Patch Tuesday bundle has appeared, with a dirty dozen flaws competing for your urgent attention - six of them rated critical and another six already being exploited by criminals....