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There's more to the Wikimedia organization than the famous encyclopedia Comment Multiple other projects also use the vast linked data store that underpins ubiquitous internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and some of them are helping the fight for democracy....

Righteous mockery entranced execs in ways slideware could not On Call Friday dawns with the promise of precious freedom, yet the world of tech support is seldom free from trouble. The Register always finds a way to celebrate anyway, by bringing you a fresh instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that tells your tales of breaking away from bad bosses and ungrateful users....

Mistral fears continental companies may not get time to escape 'distant, behemoth corporations' French AI business Mistral on Thursday announced an initiative called AI for Citizens," which it says offers a way to work with governments and public institutions to transform public services using AI....

Zuck backs a digital majority age' and Google open sources tech that might enforce it Google and Meta have independently taken actions to support a safer internet for kids - and given blockchain boosters a moment to celebrate....

If you come out of a coma in 2026, this is the machine you might see staring down at you Taiwanese tech manufacturer Foxconn and Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries have revealed a jointly developed robotic nursing assistant they hope to start selling in 2026....

Job cuts aren't big, symbolism of quitting the world's fifth-most-populous nation might be Exclusive Microsoft has decided to close its presence in Pakistan....

A thermoelectric material called CHESS is pretty cool Scientists at Johns Hopkins and Samsung have developed a nano-engineered thermoelectric material that is twice as efficient at material-level cooling as existing alternatives, paving the way for broader adoption of solid-state refrigeration technology....

And with some increases to rural broadband funds, fresh spectrum auctions, and wholesale dismantling of clean energy subsidies Lawmakers have passed President Trump's budget reconciliation but removed one of its most tech-contentious measures - the ban of state-level AI regulation - meaning the law will have little effect on the tech industry....

Researchers find models' success at tests hides illusion of understanding Researchers from MIT, Harvard, and the University of Chicago have proposed the term "potemkin understanding" to describe a newly identified failure mode in large language models that ace conceptual benchmarks but lack the true grasp needed to apply those concepts in practice....

Red-tailed tropicbirds stymie Johnston Atoll maneuvers The US Air Force is putting plans to use rocket landings for resupply missions on hold over environmental concerns about the effect they would have on local seabirds....

Robotaxis, humanoid robots, and fights with Trump can't hide declining EV sales Comment Tesla reported its vehicle delivery and production numbers for Q2 2025 this week, and while the figures weren't quite as low in absolute terms as Q1, they still mark a worrying downward trend as CEO Elon Musk continues to spread his attention across a huge variety of topics unrelated to making and selling electric cars....

Just ignore the warnings. Nothing to see here. Move along A mysterious piece of "under development" code is playing havoc with the Windows Firewall after the latest preview update for Windows 11 24H2....

The insurance SaaS slinger may trade under a different name, but past continues to haunt it Young Consulting's cybersecurity woes continue after the number of affected individuals from last year's suspected ransomware raid passed the 1 million mark....

Biz needs AI infra for training ever larger models, but something's gotta give World War Fee Datacenter operators in Northern Europe say US tariffs and growing global geopolitical instability are inflating costs and causing delays to construction projects....

Vendors have reason to celebrate as geopolitics recalibrate World War Fee The US has lifted the requirement to secure a license before exporting Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools to China, say EDA vendors....

'Deserves fair compensation for the valuable and innovative services'? Which ones are those then? Meta has come out swinging following the European Commission's decision that its pay-or-consent model falls foul of the Digital Markets Act (DMA)....

Don't let their kind words sway you - leaders are still up to no good Ransomware gang Hunters International has shut up shop and offered decryption keys to all victims as a parting favor....

Juices the tooling and support for developers and enterprise customers Canonical has some extra toppings, flavorings, and offers coming for its bigger Java fans - because the suits swallow a lot of the stuff....

Customers booted from system and technical integration missing from upgrade A UK bank serving charities has come under fire from customers unable to log in or make transactions on its new online platform....

Minimalist glue code offers surprising lifeline for stubborn display setups A new project addresses one of the biggest differences between how X11 and Wayland work, and that could be a winning combination....

You probably don't need one, but it's nice to have the option Let's Encrypt, a certificate authority (CA) known for its free TLS/SSL certificates, has begun issuing digital certificates for IP addresses....

Crims have cottoned on to a new way to lead you astray AI-powered chatbots often deliver incorrect information when asked to name the address for major companies' websites, and threat intelligence business Netcraft thinks that creates an opportunity for criminals....

India, Japan, USA and Australia see risks and opportunities in rare earths India, Japan, USA and Australia have launched a Critical Minerals Initiative" they hope will harden supply chains....

Eigen+' finds instances likely to cause out of memory errors and makes sure they can't do damage Alibaba Cloud has revealed a cluster manager it says allows it to run databases more efficiently than its hyperscale rivals....

The second max score this week for Netzilla - not a good look If you're running the Engineering-Special (ES) builds of Cisco Unified Communications Manager or its Session Management Edition, you need to apply Cisco's urgent patch after someone at Switchzilla made a big mistake....

Two flaws in TeleMessage are 'frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors' The US security watchdog CISA has warned that malicious actors are actively exploiting two flaws in the Signal clone TeleMessage TM SGNL, and has directed federal agencies to patch the flaws or discontinue use of the app by July 22....

Lots of manual corrections and data entry still required ai-pocalypse Recent research details how customer service reps at a Chinese utility's call center often struggled when trying to use an AI assistant, and were forced to make manual fixes....

A big shrug to early integration questions HPE has completed its takeover of Juniper Networks, but the conjoined pair isn't yet ready to discuss details about how the networking business will fit into HPE's existing lineup alongside Aruba....

Methane monitoring satellite managed just over a year in orbit before its sudden demise The Bezos-backed MethaneSAT satellite has been declared "likely not recoverable" after losing contact with controllers just over a week ago....

Nonprofit TTAM assures everything is BAU. Whether that makes customers feel better is another matter The medical research nonprofit vying to buy 23andMe is informing existing customers that it plans to complete the deal on July 8....

Dismissal bid denied as 16-count indictment moves toward court in May 2026 Huawei will still have to face trial in the US next year over alleged breaches of sanctions against Iran after a judge declined its request to dismiss various charges....

Reports of 9,000 staff cut Microsoft's recent trend of wide-scale workforce reduction continues, with reports that Redmond is preparing to slash an additional 4 percent of its employees - or around 9,000 people....

Datacenters kept humming along, but there's plenty of blame to be passed around elsewhere The cause of a power outage that cut the juice to London Heathrow airport in March has been identified - along with a chain of failures that allowed it to happen....

NASA science might be cut, but cash can be found to move a 'space vehicle' from museum to museum Lurking in the text contained within the One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed by the US Senate yesterday, is an $85 million allocation for shifting a "space vehicle" to a new location, widely interpreted as a move of the retired Space Shuttle Discovery orbiter from Virginia to Houston....

Cutting out middle man dents coffers of larger service providers, helps Redmond offset AI investments The sweeping changes Microsoft is making to its licensing incentives for large service providers is taking hold....

Aeza Group accused of assisting data bandits and BianLian ransomware crooks The US Treasury has sanctioned Aeza Group, a Russian bulletproof hosting (BPH) provider, and four of its cronies for enabling ransomware and other cybercriminal activity....

Are you sure you wouldn't rather run in our cloud? Microsoft has made Subscription Editions (SE) of Exchange Server and Skype for Business Server generally available, marking an end to year-numbered versions....

Open source initiative aims to offer enterprise security feature without vendor lock-in Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is a popular approach to encrypting data at the storage layer, beefing up database security. While PostgreSQL has steadily climbed in popularity - especially among professional developers - it has so far lacked this enterprise feature, at least in open source....

Experts say they don't expect the MOVEit menace to do much about it Security experts have uncovered a hole in Cl0p's data exfiltration tool that could potentially leave the cybercrime group vulnerable to attack....

It might be time to update the Submarine Telegraph Act of 1885 Cyberattacks and undersea cable sabotage are blurring the line between war and peace and exposing holes in UK law, a government minister has warned lawmakers....

Mysterious Alloy 30' gets smaller when heated, which could help stabilize super-sensitive space telescopes NASA is exploring the properties of a metal alloy that shrinks as it is heated, as boffins in its Astrophysics Division think it may be needed if the planned Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is to succeed....

And no, that's not a typo Amazon Web Services has cooked up a new Graviton 4-powered instance tuned for network-intensive applications like cloud firewalls and load balancers....

It's 2025 so even this networking deal is about AI, which is apparently about to change wide area networks Broadcom has sold VeloCloud, the software-defined WAN business VMware acquired in 2017, to Arista....

Frequent flyers' info takes flight Australian airline Qantas on Wednesday revealed it fell victim to a cyberattack that saw information describing six million customers stolen....

Warns investors its codebase is harder to maintain as it bakes in brainboxes Web design tools developer Figma on Tuesday filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to propose an initial public offering of company shares....

Google's TPUs might not be on Altman's menu just yet, but he's never been all that picky about hardware Analysis No longer bound to Microsoft's infrastructure, OpenAI is looking to expand its network of compute providers to the likes of Oracle, CoreWeave, and apparently even rival model builder Google....

Up to $150K tier shelved, perks folded into two-track system Microsoft has retired its program that granted incorporated AI startups with a validated business plan up to $150,000 in Azure credits and replaced it with a two-track system....

The bargain between content makers and crawlers has broken down ai-pocalypse Cloudflare has started blocking AI web crawlers by default in a bid to become the internet's gatekeeper....

Customizations not saved with security baseline policy update Microsoft Intune administrators may face a few days of stress after Redmond acknowledged a problem with security baseline customizations....

Trump's budget bill moves back to the House with some mods It took a tie-breaking vote from the Vice President JD Vance to pass Trump's budget reconciliation bill through the Senate on Tuesday, but a controversial section that would have barred states from regulating AI was struck down in a much clearer fashion....