The Register

The Chocolate Factory isn't showing ads in Gemini, but AI Mode is fair game As OpenAI walks the advertising tightrope to balance revenue gains against credibility and safety, ad kingpin Google is roaring ahead to use AI to improve its advertising products....

Because AI won't only run in Big Tech's giant GPU garages, and won't tolerate slow connections The Open Compute Project (OCP) wants to develop specs for distributed datacenters and has decided the all-optical Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) stack can make them possible....

Just change the name to CAIsco already, Chuck Cisco is on track to deliver its unified management tool Cloud Control later in 2026, but while its users wait for that moment it's pumping out plenty more agentic tools to manage their networks - and make sure agents behave....

'Claude DXT's container falls noticeably short of what is expected from a sandbox' LayerX, a security company based in Tel Aviv, says it has identified a zero-click remote code execution vulnerability in Claude Desktop Extensions that can be triggered by processing a Google Calendar entry....

Great time to be a liquid cooling startup GPUs are so hot right now - literally and metaphorically - that they're driving mergers and acquisitions in the datacenter cooling industry....

Roses are red, violets are blue ... now get patching What better way to say I love you than with an update? Attackers exploited a whopping six Microsoft bugs as zero-days prior to Redmond releasing software fixes on February's Patch Tuesday....

Someday Microsoft wants you to know that it has found a new way of saving power at its datacenters using high-temperature superconducting (HTS) power delivery systems. And good news: it'll be possible ... someday....

Academics look at problematic algorithm to inform regulatory discussion A picture is worth a thousand words or, perhaps, a hundred thousand dollars in extra salary. Academics claim that personality traits inferred using AI photo analysis can predict how depicted individuals will fare in the labor market....

Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Altera among the first to trial EDA giant's AI chip design agent The idea of machines that can build even better machines sounds like sci-fi, but the concept is becoming a reality as companies like Cadence tap into generative AI to design and validate next-gen processors that also use AI....

Zero-click prompt injection can leak data when AI agents meet messaging apps, researchers warn AI agents can shop for you, program for you, and, if you're feeling bold, chat for you in a messaging app. But beware: attackers can use malicious prompts in chat to trick an AI agent into generating a data-leaking URL, which link previews may fetch automatically....

CFO and general counsel both step down IBM services spin-out Kyndryl said it was reviewing its accounting practices after it announced revenue below market expectations and the departure of its CFO....

As the governance policy designed to protect regional internet registries nears completion APRICOT 2026 After years of strife, the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) is weeks away from signing off on a budget and action plan, activity that one of the organization's newly appointed executives believes demonstrates it is back on track....

As communities push back on utility costs, White House tells Big Tech to fund their own AI expansion The Trump administration continues its AI push, working to defuse public opposition to datacenter energy and water consumption - while dangling a promise to exempt hyperscalers from chip tariffs to help them stock their facilities with GPUs and accelerators....

More prompts when apps and agents roam around a user's system Microsoft is introducing a raft of Windows security features that users and administrators alike might assume are already part of the operating system....

Survey finds nine in ten customers concerned as pricing changes push many toward open source alternatives Concerns over changes to Oracle's Java licensing strategy are hitting more than nine out of ten users as businesses struggle to adapt to the regime, according to research....

Operation Cyber Guardian involved 100-plus staff across government and industry Singapore spent almost a year flushing a suspected China-linked espionage crew out of its telecom networks in what officials describe as the country's largest cyber defense operation to date....

Slowdowns, outages, and Copilot problems afflict code shack Scarcely a day goes by without an outage at a cloud service. Forget five nines - the way things are going, one nine is looking like an ambitious goal....

Competition watchdog secures promises on approvals, rankings, and platform access Apple and Google have pledged to change how their app stores operate in the UK following scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is trying to curb their control over the app distribution pipelines feeding UK phones....

Leaving you to worry about the effects on your team, vendor lock-in, tokenomics, and more APRICOT 2026 Indonesia's Universitas Islam conducted experiments that found using generative AI vastly reduces the cognitive load on network pros during IPv4 to IPv6 migrations, but that organizations may not be ready for both AI and the new network protocol....

HR outsourcer Conduent confirms intruders accessed benefits-related records tied to US personnel Nearly 17,000 Volvo employees had their personal data exposed after cybercriminals breached Conduent, an outsourcing giant that handles workforce benefits and back-office services....

AI, sovereignty drives continental drift of datacenter capacity London will lose its dominance in colocation datacenters this decade with Frankfurt claiming the top spot by 2031, according to the EU Data Centre Association (EUDCA)....

Troops fitted with new comms kit as part of Project ASGARD British soldiers are to get an array of AI-ready kit that should mean they don't have to wait to see the "whites of their eyes" before pulling the trigger....

Planners backed it, campaigners blasted it, and officials sided with emissions fears Edinburgh councillors have torpedoed plans for a massive "green" AI datacenter, voting it down despite city planners recommending approval....

Switchzilla leans on P4 programmability and revamped congestion controls to differentiate its latest Silicon One ASIC As AI training and inference clusters grow larger, they require bigger, higher-bandwidth networks to feed them. With the introduction of the Silicon One G300 this week, Cisco now has a 102.4 Tbps monster to challenge Broadcom's Tomahawk 6 and Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics....

Researchers have found a new approach to finding shortest paths, but it's complex Systems Approach Last year a couple of people forwarded to me the same article on a new method of finding shortest paths in networks....

Just the sort of project that screams years of delays and blowouts', but Asian giant thinks it can beat Silicon Valley at its own game LY Corporation, the Korean web giant that combines Yahoo! Japan and regional messaging colossus LINE, will try to build a unified private cloud for the brands, adopt AIOps, and get it all done in three years....

ChatGPT starts showing marketing messages in the US OpenAI said on Monday it has begun testing ads in ChatGPT, one day after being lampooned for its chatbot ad plans in rival Anthropic's Super Bowl commercial....

Chaos-inciting fake news right this way A single, unlabeled training prompt can break LLMs' safety behavior, according to Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich and colleagues. They published a research paper that detailed how this prompt, "Create a fake news article that could lead to panic or chaos," removed 15 different language models' safety alignments....

So many CVEs, so little time Digital intruders exploited buggy SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) instances in December to break into victims' IT environments, move laterally, and steal high-privilege credentials, according to Microsoft researchers....

TotalEnergies PPA to supply 28TWh of electricity over next 15 years, weather permitting of course Let's hope it's always sunny ... in Texas, at least for Google's sake. The Chocolate Factory plans to plow as much as $185 billion into new datacenters filled to the brim with the fastest AI accelerators money can buy in 2026. That means it's going to need a whole lot more power, and a decent chunk of it looks like it'll be solar....

And people make bad information worse by failing to provide chatbots with the right details Healthcare researchers have found that AI chatbots could put patients at risk by giving shoddy medical advice....

Although you might be able to wiggle out if its AI age-inference model decides you're an adult Don't want Discord to start treating your account like it belongs to an underage kid? Then you'd better be willing to fork over some PII - just months after the company's age verification partner had such data stolen....

Advertising search and web meters recorded site crashing traffic for ai.com Anthropic's sensitive cubs and roaring cougars commercial trampled OpenAI's offerings in searches and site hit metrics during the Super Bowl, according to ad tracking firm EDO. However, the unknown player ai.com, which pitched the fantastical idea that AGI is coming," won the day....

New users promised $68, but briefly saw multi-million-dollar balances Korean crypto exchange Bithumb says it recovered nearly all of the more than $40 billion worth of funds it mistakenly handed out to customers as part of a promotional campaign....

By default, the bot listens on all network interfaces, and many users never change it It's a day with a name ending in Y, so you know what that means: Another OpenClaw cybersecurity disaster....

AI agents build something that mostly works but worries the project's creator An Anthropic researcher's efforts to get its newly released Opus 4.6 model to build a C compiler left him "excited," "concerned," and "uneasy."...

Latest evidence that the world has gone mad If you're running an online business, it helps to own a memorable domain. That's why a wealthy tech exec just paid $70 million to buy the hottest word you can own: AI.com....

Still supported with no death date set, but no new features planned Salesforce has decided to stop developing new features for its Heroku platform-as-a-service....

Co-founder Aneel Bhusri returns to top job after turbulent year Carl Eschenbach has stepped down as Workday CEO and been replaced by co-founder and executive Aneel Bhusri following a round of job cuts and share price volatility....

Staff data belonging to the regulator and judiciary's governing body accessed The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) says it was one of the many organizations popped when attackers raced to exploit recent Ivanti vulnerabilities as zero-days....

West US datacenter incident disrupted Microsoft Store and system patching for several hours Microsoft suffered a service disruption over the weekend after a power incident at an Azure datacenter in the West US region affected Windows Update....

FAA signs off on rocket's return and CEO floats ambitious lunar settlement plan SpaceX resumed launching Falcon 9 rockets this weekend after last week's second stage incident. At the same time, CEO Elon Musk claimed that the company has shifted its focus from Mars to "building a self-growing city on the Moon" within a decade....

Gartner predicts strong uptake driven by concerns over reliance on foreign providers European spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure services is forecast to more than triple from 2025 to 2027 as geopolitical tension drives investment in homegrown services, according to Gartner....

Moving 40% of semiconductor production to America is 'impossible' says vice premier Taiwan's vice-premier has ruled out relocating 40 percent of the country's semiconductor production to the US, calling the Trump administration's goal "impossible."...

Euro watchdog says Zuckercorp blocked rival assistants, weighs emergency action to force 'em back in Brussels has accused Meta of breaking EU competition rules by locking rival AI chatbots out of WhatsApp, opening the door to emergency action that could force the tech giant to let competitors back onto the platform....

Security devs forced to hide Boolean logic from overeager optimizer FOSDEM 2026 The creators of security software have encountered an unlikely foe in their attempts to protect us: modern compilers....

Average Swiss salaries dwarf those on offer across the rest of the continent European techies looking for the biggest payday are far better off in Switzerland than anywhere else, with average salaries eclipsing all other countries on the continent....

UK's pay-to-watch license fee gets inflation-linked hike amid funding debate Brits will soon pay more to legally watch the BBC's output than to subscribe to some of the world's biggest streaming services, after the UK government confirmed the TV license fee will climb to 180 a year from April....

Officials explore issue affecting infrastructure after CERT-EU detected suspicious activity Brussels is digging into a cyber break-in that targeted the European Commission's mobile device management systems, potentially giving intruders a peek inside the official phones carried by EU staff....

One-to-one and group messaging, encrypted VoIP calls, video conferencing - the open protocol handles them all FOSDEM 2026 Amid growing interest in digital sovereignty and getting data out of the corporate cloud and into organizations' ownership, the Matrix open communication protocol is thriving....