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Think of the children...and the monetization options available where they're not allowed OpenAI says it has begun deploying an age prediction model to determine whether ChatGPT users are old enough to view "sensitive or potentially harmful content."...

ACME validation had a challenge-request hole Cloudflare has fixed a flaw in its web application firewall (WAF) that allowed attackers to bypass security rules and directly access origin servers, which could lead to data theft or full server takeover....

This is totally not because China is giving away its best models away for free, right? Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei isn't happy about the US allowing Nvidia to sell GPUs to Chinese companies, and likened the decision to giving nuclear weapons to an adversary....

Sure it's a bubble and the deals are circular - that doesn't mean Amazon's not going to try to extract value from it Could one of the most prominent tech company leaders be less-than-enthused about the AI economy? In an interview, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy didn't dismiss the idea that the AI bubble could pop, despite his company's massive investments in the technology....

Keeping models on the Assistant Axis improves AI safety Researchers from Anthropic and other orgs have observed situations in which LLMs act like a helpful personal assistant, and are trying to study the phenomenon further to make sure chatbots don't go off the rails and cause harm....

More packaging options for the leading all-FOSS browser If you can't wait to get the bleeding-edge version of Firefox, we have good news. Mozilla is offering native RPM packages of Firefox Nightly for Linux distros in the greater Red Hat and SUSE families....

AI + skilled malware developers = security threat VoidLink, the newly spotted Linux malware that targets victims' clouds with 37 evil plugins, was generated "almost entirely by artificial intelligence" and likely developed by just one person, according to the research team that discovered the do-it-all implant....

Still or sparkling? Either way, the problem of scale remains Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, and recycling them cleanly and safely at scale is still hard. Now, a Chinese research team claims to have discovered a way to recycle Li-ion batteries using carbon dioxide and water. Just don't expect it to revolutionize the market overnight....

Plus, one in three bit barns expected to exceed 1 GW by 2035 Everything's bigger in Texas, including the amount of available power. That's why the Lone Star State is set to become the leading bit barn market within a few years, and why hyperscalers and colocation providers now expect roughly a third of datacenter campuses to rely entirely on onsite power by 2030....

Mailbox costs leap overnight as longtime users vent their frustration Rackspace is giving a masterclass in how to annoy customers after an eye-watering price hike for email hosting....

And the world economy might depend on it finding an answer This week, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar took to the internet to make a bold pitch for the company's future, which she claims is bright, despite what the current numbers say....

PwC survey finds more than half of 4,500+ biz leaders see no revenue growth nor cost savings More than half of CEOs report seeing neither increased revenue nor decreased costs from AI, despite massive investments in the technology, according to a PwC survey of 4,454 business leaders....

Update Chainlit to the latest version ASAP Two "easy-to-exploit" vulnerabilities in the popular open-source AI framework Chainlit put major enterprises' cloud environments at risk of leaking data or even full takeover, according to cyber-threat exposure startup Zafran....

Corporate IT refreshed hardware to stay supported, not chase new features If 2025 proved anything about PCs, it's that corporate IT will upgrade hardware out of necessity long before it does so out of AI-fueled excitement....

Prompt injection for the win Anthropic has fixed three bugs in its official Git MCP server that researchers say can be chained with other MCP tools to remotely execute malicious code or overwrite files via prompt injection....

Group-IB says crims forking out for Dark LLMs, deepfakes, and more at subscription prices Cybercrime has entered its AI era, with criminals now using weaponized language models and deepfakes as cheap, off-the-shelf infrastructure rather than experimental tools, according to researchers at Group-IB....

Hold down Shift to make the magic happen (or not, as the case might be) Microsoft's Raymond Chen has explained why holding down Shift during a Windows 95 restart would get the system up and running again far faster than a full reboot....

Wave of American-imposed tariffs failed to derail global growth, according to the IMF The global economy has proved more resilient than many expected in the wake of US tariff shocks, with the International Monetary Fund now projecting worldwide growth of 3.3 percent in 2026 as a surge in AI investment helps offset trade disruption....

Definitely Maybe running Windows 7? Bork!Bork!Bork! Just because Microsoft has ended support doesn't mean an operating system will suddenly disappear. Take this crusty ATM running Windows 7 in the fair city of Manchester, England....

Committee says watchdogs lack urgency as accountability for automated decisions remains unresolved UK financial regulators must conduct stress testing to ensure businesses are ready for AI-driven market shocks, MPs have warned....

Fancy it? As national health tech boss, you'd be one of the highest paid in the team England's Department of Health and Social Care is recruiting a head of technology, digital and data at a maximum salary of up to 285,000 a year, well above that most recently advertised for the department's boss....

Promised plan keeps slipping as ministers talk up future efficiency The UK government has delayed publication of its long-promised digital roadmap, a plan it says could eventually help save up to 45 billion of taxpayers' money by modernizing creaking public sector IT....

Labels Zuck's ad library a window into criminality' and the Social Network as happy to turn a blind eye' The head of the UK's Gambling Commission has accused social media giant Meta of lying about its ability to proactively detect operators of illegal casinos advertising on its services....

OG CDN boss says fighting illegal streams is about stopping criminals cashing in, not free speech Interview After Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently threatened to disrupt the Winter Olympics to protect free speech after Italian authorities fined his company for not disrupting pirate video streams, rival CDN provider Akamai's CEO Dr. Tom Leighton fired back with what reads a lot like thinly veiled criticism....

Taiwan's Powerchip sells legacy fab it opened just 19 months ago after spending $9.5 billion Micron has found a way to add new DRAM manufacturing capacity in a hurry by acquiring a chipmaking campus from Taiwanese outfit Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC)....

7 out of 10 C-suite cats reckon software category's best days are behind it, but can't agree what's next Seven out of ten C-suite leaders see a life beyond ERP as businesses have come to know it, but are divided on what the future holds for this big-ticket item critical to organizational performance....

Feras Albashiti faces 10 years after $20,000 in sales to undercover agent exposed ransomware ties A Jordanian national faces sentencing in the US after pleading guilty to acting as an initial access broker (IAB) for various cyberattacks....

Strips the slop and snoopery from Chrome, Edge, and Firefox The promise of Just the Browser sounds good. Rather than fork one of the big-name browsers, just run a tiny script that turns off all the bits and functions you don't want....

If it all goes wrong, British kids of the '80s might remember an alternative NASA's monster Moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), has trundled out to the launch pad - though the upper stage and Orion spacecraft look uncannily like a prop from a 1980s British children's television show....

Mobile application management updates mean apps could soon be blocked Today's a critical day for administrators managing a fleet of mobile devices via Microsoft Intune. Without updates, apps - including Microsoft's own - may stop working....

They're not the most sophisticated, but even simple attacks can lead to costly consequences The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is once again warning that pro-Russia hacktivists are a threat to critical services operators....

Ships emergency update to fix a Patch Tuesday misfire that prevented systems from switching off Microsoft has rushed out an out-of-band Windows 11 update after January's Patch Tuesday broke something as fundamental as turning PCs off....

Craig Guildford banned Israeli fans based on Microsoft's match report, told MPs 'we don't use AI,' then discovers... they did The chief constable of West Midlands Police has retired after his force used fictional output from Microsoft Copilot in deciding to ban Israeli fans from attending a football match at Birmingham club Aston Villa....

Maine filing confirms July attack affected 42,521 employees and job applicants Ingram Micro disclosed that a July 2025 ransomware attack compromised the personal data of tens of thousands of employees....

Labour's latest U-turn? 61 backbenchers pile pressure for Starmer to back Tory peer's amendment The British government may impose a ban on under-16s using social media, despite Labour prime minister Keir Starmer having previously expressed skepticism over the measure....

Kids return to classrooms after safety infrastructure knocked out A Warwickshire secondary school says it will fully reopen this week after a cyberattack forced a prolonged closure - though staff will return to classrooms with "very limited access" to IT systems....

Traditional considerations back in vogue. On-device AI? Not so much The majority of PCs that commercial resellers shipped to enterprise customers in Q4 were AI-capable, however, it was the traditional levers of price, battery life and performance these biz buyers were mostly sold on....

Capable of carrying 1-ton payload and key to strategy protecting North Atlantic from Russian submarines The Royal Navy has conducted the first flight of a helicopter-sized autonomous drone that is planned to operate from its ships in support of missions, including hunting for hostile submarines....

Freedom can be very contagious if it grows on its own terms. Europe of all places should know that Opinion Europe is famous for having the most tightly regulated non-existent tech sector in the world. This is a mildly unfair characterization, as there are plenty of tech enterprises across the continent, quite a respectable smattering if it wasn't for the US doing everything at least ten times bigger....

Bank staff wore the blame for a silly security slip Who, Me? Welcome to another edition of Who Me?", The Register's Monday column that shares your mistakes and celebrates your escapes....

Revenue growth is sluggish, too India's big four outsourcers - HCL, Infosys, TCS and Wipro - have essentially stopped hiring, perhaps coinciding with their increased use of AI to power their practices....

PLUS: ASUS gets into healthcare gadgets; Vietnam's first fab; Australia's child social ban takes out 4.7 million accounts; And more! Asia In Brief Microsoft is hiring senior managers to ensure its datacenters in Asia can access the energy they need....

PLUS: Navy spy sent to brig for 200 months in brig; Black Axe busted again; Bill aims to crimp ICE apps; and more Infosec In Brief PLUS: Google's security outfit Mandiant last week released tools that can crack credentials in 12 hours, in the hope that doing so will accelerate the death of an ancient Microsoft security protocol....

AMD researchers argue that, while algorithms like the Ozaki scheme merit investigation, they're still not ready for prime time. Double precision floating point computation (aka FP64) is what keeps modern aircraft in the sky, rockets going up, vaccines effective, and, yes, nuclear weapons operational. But rather than building dedicated chips that process this essential data type in hardware, Nvidia is leaning on emulation to increase performance for HPC and scientific computing applications, an area where AMD has had the lead in recent generations....

'OpenSlopware' briefly flowers, fades, falls - but fortunately was forked, fast The splendidly-named "OpenSlopware" was, for a short time, a list of open source projects using LLM bots. Due to harassment, it's gone, but forks of it live on....

Sloppy implementation of Google spec leaves 'hundreds of millions' of devices vulnerable Hundreds of millions of wireless earbuds, headphones, and speakers are vulnerable to silent hijacking due to a flaw in Google's Fast Pair system that allows attackers to seize control without the owner ever touching the pairing button....

Rinse of the machines: A cautionary tale about relying on robots Bork!Bork!Bork! UK water company Severn Trent learned an unfortunate lesson about text-to-speech systems when a robocall to customers went hilariously wrong....

Gotta pay for those datacenter buildouts somehow OpenAI's budget ChatGPT Go subscription tier has migrated to the US, soon to be accompanied by advertising. The company's free tier will be similarly afflicted....

It just needs PJM Interconnection, one of the US's biggest grid operators, to green light the auction The Trump administration says it wants big tech companies to take more accountability for the power their datacenters consume in an effort to shield voters from higher power bills at home....

Does that kind of time saving actually pay for itself? Researchers at Dakota State University, in partnership with regional insurance carrier Safety Insurance, devised an experimental chatbot called "Axlerod" to assist independent insurance agents. Whether that assistance was substantial is up for some debate....