Feed the-register The Register

The Register

Link https://www.theregister.com/
Feed http://www.theregister.co.uk/headlines.atom
Copyright Copyright © 2025, Situation Publishing
Updated 2025-03-14 22:15
A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work
Canon confirms multifunction devices struggling with Windows 11 24H2 Windows 11 24H2 is still causing problems with multifunction devices despite Microsoft marking an issue with the eSCL scan protocol as resolved....
Schneider Electric warns of future where datacenters eat the grid
Report charts four scenarios from 'Sustainable AI' to 'Who Turned Out The Lights?' Policymakers need to carefully guide the future consumption of electricity by AI datacenters, according to a report that considers four potential scenarios and suggests a number of guiding principles to prevent it from spiraling out of control....
Next-gen Wi-Fi to trade ludicrous speed for the boring art of actually working
Eighth generation of the standard is all about ultra reliability Wi-Fi 8 is coming, but it looks set to focus on greater reliability rather than on pushing the bandwidth ever higher, as the most recent updates to the venerable wireless local network technology have done....
Can 4G feature phones rise again on the back of QVGA, thin clients, and remote browsers?
The developer of the Puffin Browser thinks so - and has a million users to show for it It's hard to get excited about feature phones with 320 x 240 resolution, but Shioupyn Shen thinks precisely such devices are about to bring millions of people to the web in a new way....
Boffins ponder paltry brain data rate of 10 bits per second
You may not need that high-bandwidth brain-computer interface Caltech researchers have estimated the speed of human thought to be a mere 10 bits per second, a data rate so leisurely that it underscores the need for further research into brain function and calls into question claims about brain-computer interfaces and artificial intelligence....
Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did
2024's Tech Fail Roll Of Dishonor Opinion Happy new year! Tradition says that this is when we boldly look forward to what may happen in the 12 months to come. Do you really want to know that? Didn't think so....
US Army soldier who allegedly stole Trump's AT&T call logs arrested
Brings the arrest count related to the Snowflake hacks to 3 A US Army soldier has been arrested in Texas after being indicted on two counts of unlawful transfer of confidential phone records information....
Starlink direct-to-cell is coming to Ukraine
Cell towers not required when messaging on Musk's finest Ukraine mobile operator Kyivstar will roll out direct-to-cell satellite connectivity via Starlink....
Second Jeju Air 737-800 experiences mechanical issues following deadly crash
Boeing ends abysmal year on an even lower note The disastrous crash of a Boeing 737-800 in South Korea over the weekend, which killed 179 of the 181 people onboard, was followed by a second incident involving Jeju Air. On Monday, the flight was forced to return to its origin due to a reportedly similar landing gear issue....
US Treasury Department outs the blast radius of BeyondTrust's key leak
Data pilfered as miscreants roamed affected workstations The US Department of the Treasury has admitted that miscreants were in its systems, accessing documents in what has been called a "major incident."...
Report claims FAA ignores most whistleblower complaints
Officials beg to differ, claiming the author misinterpreted Congressional reports analysis Concerned about the state of aviation safety? You might be onto something, as the Federal Aviation Administration allegedly dismisses or closes most whistleblower reports without finding violations....
China's cyber intrusions took a sinister turn in 2024
From targeted espionage to pre-positioning - not that they are mutually exclusive The Chinese government's intrusions into America's telecommunications and other critical infrastructure networks this year appears to signal a shift from cyberspying as usual to prepping for destructive attacks....
UK watchdog launches inquiry into IBM's HashiCorp acquisition
To the surprise of no one, a multi-billion dollar deal comes under CMA scrutiny The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a merger inquiry into IBM's acquisition of HashiCorp....
More telcos confirm Salt Typhoon breaches as White House weighs in
The intrusions allowed Beijing to 'geolocate millions of individuals' AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies confirmed that Chinese government-backed snoops accessed portions of their systems earlier this year, while the White House added another, yet-unnamed telecommunications company to the list of those breached by Salt Typhoon....
Jimmy Carter set the solar, space, and environmental pace
The former president, passed at 100 this week, was also an early email adopter obituary American flags throughout the United States are flying at half-mast to honor the life of Jimmy Carter, the 39th and longest-lived US president, who died Sunday, December 29, at the age of 100....
Blue Origin inches closer to the first New Glenn flight
Final big tests done and engines fired up for a few seconds. Next stop ... space? Blue Origin has successfully performed a hotfire of its New Glenn rocket, paving the way for the vehicle's first launch in the coming days....
It's only a matter of time before LLMs jump start supply-chain attacks
'The greatest concern is with spear phishing and social engineering' Interview Now that criminals have realized there's no need to train their own LLMs for any nefarious purposes - it's much cheaper and easier to steal credentials and then jailbreak existing ones - the threat of a large-scale supply chain attack using generative AI becomes more real....
How cops taking down LockBit, ALPHV led to RansomHub's meteoric rise
Cut off one head, two more grow back in its place RansomHub, the ransomware collective that emerged earlier this year, quickly gained momentum, outpacing its criminal colleagues and hitting its victims especially hard. The group named and shamed hundreds of organizations on its leak site, while demanding exorbitant payments across various industries....
Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers
Saturation point, and Nintendo and Sega, were just around the corner Feature Remember the excitement of leafing through a catalog for home computer bargains? Or perhaps gazing longingly at festive tech displays in Britain's WH Smith (or ComputerLand if you lived Stateside)? Take a step back to 1984 and the last great hurrah of the home computer....
OpenAI plans to ring in the New Year with a for-profit push
We have altered the deal, pray we don't alter it any further Amid growing competition and skyrocketing compute requirements necessary to support the next generation of AI models, OpenAI is shaking up its corporate structure - again....
Microsoft adds another problem to the Windows 11 24H2 naughty list
Santa Satya pops one more issue into his sack just in time for Christmas The trickle of known issues with Windows 11 24H2 has continued with a new one just in time for festive season: installed the operating system using removable media? There's a chance it might stop receiving security updates....
Parker Solar Probe sends a "Still Alive" tone back to Earth
This was a triumph There is good news for Sun botherers: the Parker Solar Probe appears to have survived its close encounter with our nearest star....
After a long lunch, user thought a cursor meant their computer was cactus
Reg-reading heroes snacked on their woes and solved problems with extreme speed On Call The biggest days of the festive season may be behind us, but demand for tech support never stops. That's why each Friday, even this one, The Register shares stories of fixers forced to help flummoxed fools in On Call - the reader-contributed column that celebrates your successes....
Naïve Reg hack thinks he can beat Christmas food comas once and for all
One man's plan to ruin his holiday for the better Comment It was only recently I started reveling in the Black Friday feeling. My first foray into the e-commerce extravaganza came last year when I bought a PS5 and in the same spirit, I finally pulled the trigger on an Apple Watch Ultra 2 the other week after pining for one since launch. Not because I needed the impetus to get off my butt and start working out, the reason behind so many purchases, as I understand it....
Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby: Hacking Christmas lights
Rob Joyce explains how it's done Video In 2018, Rob Joyce, then Donald Trump's White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, gave a surprise talk at the legendary hacking conference Shmoocon about his hobby....
The winner of last year's Windows Ugly Sweater is ...
Register readers have spoken The Register readership has spoken - a "winner" is set to be punished with the horrible Windows XP Christmas sweater. And Copilot? Headed to where the sun doesn't shine, judging by the vast majority of comments....
Technical issue briefly grounds American Airlines flights across US
Unspecified "vendor technology" to blame for hour-long stop order A technical snafu briefly grounded American Airlines flights across the US on Christmas Eve....
How Androxgh0st rose from Mozi's ashes to become 'most prevalent malware'
Botnet's operators 'driven by similar interests as that of the Chinese state' After the Mozi botnet mysteriously disappeared last year, a new and seemingly more powerful botnet, Androxgh0st, rose from its ashes and has quickly become a major threat to critical infrastructure....
Microsoft Edge takes a victory lap with some high-looking usage stats for 2024
Lots of big numbers, but market share wasn't one of them Microsoft has published a year in review for its Edge browser and talked up AI-powered chats while lightly skipping over the software's stagnating market share....
What do ransomware and Jesus have in common? A birth month and an unwillingness to die
35 years since AIDS first borked a PC and we're still no closer to a solution Feature Your Christmas holidays looked quite different in the '80s to how they do today. While some will remember what it was like to wake up on the 25th back then, some of you won't even have been born. The food hasn't changed much. Turkey, stuffing, Brussels sprouts... that's all been around for some time....
One third of adults can't delete device data
Easier to let those old phones gather dust in a drawer, survey finds The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has warned that many adults don't know how to wipe their old devices, and a worrying number of young people just don't care....
Are you better value for money than AI?
Tech vendors start saying the quiet part out loud - do enterprises really need all that headcount? Comment AI vendors are starting to say the quiet part out loud. As technology advances, it seems more about controlling costs and headcount....
'That's not a bug, it's a feature' takes on a darker tone when malware's involved
Mummy, where do zero days come from? Opinion One of the charms of coding is that malice can be indistinguishable from incompetence. Last week's Who, Me? story about financial transfer test software running amok is a case in point....
Jury spares Qualcomm's AI PC ambitions, but Arm eyes a retrial
The victory may be short lived as the chip designer gears up for second round Analysis Qualcomm's push into the PC arena is safe, at least for the moment, after a jury found its mobile processor designs had not violated Arm Holdings' licenses as the British chip designer had claimed....
SvarDOS: DR-DOS is reborn as an open source operating system
A #DOScember surprise: fits on a single floppy, but has a network-capable package manager With its recent switch to a different kernel, SvarDOS moves from being a distro of FreeDOS to greater independence....
AI's rising tide lifts all chips as AMD Instinct, cloudy silicon vie for a slice of Nvidia's pie
Analyst estimates show growing apetite for alternative infrastructure Nvidia dominated the AI arena in 2024, with shipments of its Hopper GPUs more than tripling to over two million among its 12 largest customers, according to estimates from Omdia....
Parker Solar Probe set for blisteringly hot date with the Sun on Christmas Eve
Ho-ho-holy heatshield! NASA's Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to make its closest approach yet to the Sun, approximately 3.8 million miles from the star's surface, on Christmas Eve....
Suspected LockBit dev, facing US extradition, 'did it for the money'
Dual Russian-Israeli national arrested in August An alleged LockBit ransomware developer is in custody in Israel and awaiting extradition to the United States....
OneOdio Focus A5: Big battery, budget sound, and a bargain bin price
Inexpensive over-ear gear, but active noise cancelling won't block out the carol singers Review OneOdio has released a set of over-ear noise-cancelling headphones for an apparent bargain price of 59 ($69). However, they are also a prime example of the axiom "you get what you pay for," or perhaps even a bit less....
UK ICO not happy with Google's plans to allow device fingerprinting
Also, Ascension notifies 5.6M victims, Krispy Kreme bandits come forward, LockBit 4.0 released, and more in brief Google has announced plans to allow its business customers to begin "fingerprinting" users next year, and the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) isn't happy about it....
Fining Big Tech isn't working. Make them give away illegally trained LLMs as public domain
It's all made from our data, anyway, so it should be ours to use as we want Opinion Last year, I wrote a piece here on El Reg about being murdered by ChatGPT as an illustration of the potential harms through the misuse of large language models and other forms of AI....
Biden’s antitrust crackdown on tech M&As may linger into Trump’s reign
Lina Khan's tenure may end, but the regulatory hurdles she help built aren't going anywhere Analysis When Donald Trump takes office for his second term on January 20, many expect sweeping changes across the board. But among tech players, when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, those hoping for looser regulations might be disappointed....
Apple called on to ditch AI headline summaries after BBC debacle
'Facts can't be decided by a roll of the dice' Press freedom advocates are urging Apple to ditch an "immature" generative AI system that incorrectly summarized a BBC news notification that incorrectly related that suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione had killed himself....
Microsoft investigating 365 Office activation gremlin
Says it's not sure what the issue is but points at admins tweaking licensing options It's not just you, there is indeed an activation problem in Microsoft 365 Office triggered by administrators making changes at the licensing level....
Adélie Linux 1.0 – small, fast, but not quite grown up
Remarkably compact, remarkably cross-platform, remarkably long beta period Beta 6 of Adelie Linux is arriving, just over six years after Beta 1 - but they do say that good things come to those who wait....
The Automattic vs WP Engine WordPress wars are getting really annoying
Forks at dawn.... but it's not great sign for open source Opinion I am so sick of this. I've been a happy WordPress user since it rolled out the door in 2003, and I kissed Vignette (since acquired by OpenText) goodbye. WordPress was just so much easier to use than the alternatives; it was open source; and it was free. It was such a win!...
Fedora Asahi Remix 41 for Apple Macs is out
New shiny if you run Linux on an M1 or M2 The Fedora 41 version of Asahi Linux is out - the go-to Linux distro for Apple Silicon Macs....
Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend
And there his troubles began ... On Call Digital technology remains frighteningly finickity, which is why good tech support people are always in demand - and also the reason The Register never tires of telling your support stories each Friday in On Call, the column your generosity makes possible....
Rocks from Chinese Moon mission suggest Luna's history needs revision
Meanwhile, NASA signs off on Artemis software upgrade Chinese scientists think it's time to rewrite the Moon's history after analyzing samples returned to Earth by the Chang'e 6 mission....
Infosec experts divided on AI's potential to assist red teams
Yes, LLMs can do the heavy lifting. But good luck getting one to give evidence CANALYS FORUMS APAC Generative AI is being enthusiastically adopted in almost every field, but infosec experts are divided on whether it is truly helpful for red team raiders who test enterprise systems....
...18192021222324252627...