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Not one to keep in the dark, and light on features as a result HANDS ON Logitech is harnessing solar power in the K980 Signature Slim keyboard to solve a problem that might not have occurred to some users: battery anxiety....

Redmond suggests Microfluidics' - hair-thin channels etched on silicon to let coolants flow Electronics don't play nicely with most liquids, which is why liquid cooling in the datacenter is often considered a little dangerous. Microsoft, however, has found a way to dispel such worries with a scheme that sees liquids flow across the surface of chips....

Symbolic gesture aims to help citizens sleep. Next: Doing something about people who walk while using their phones The city council in the Japanese city of Toyoake has passed an ordinance that symbolically limits recreational use of smartphones to just two hours each day....

High demand and DRAM shortages send margins soaring Memory-maker Micron says it is close to securing customers for all the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) it will make next year. Unsurprisingly, the company also predicts it will enjoy improved profit margins....

Watch out, Microsoft and Google India's minister for information technology yesterday said he's dumping his current word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics packages, will adopt the locally made alternatives from Zoho instead, and urged India's 1.4 billion residents to do likewise....

In Texas, New Mexico, and the Midwest The Stargate project, the OpenAI-led plan to cover the world with datacenters, has announced plans to construct five new bit barns in the US....

21st century tech confused by $100 of shiny stuff Mirrors can fool the Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors used to guide autonomous vehicles by making them detect objects that don't exist, or failing to detect actual obstacles....

The higher the wage level, the more entries they'll get in the draw The H-1B lottery in the US is being tipped heavily in favor of high-wage earners under a long-awaited rule proposal unveiled on Tuesday....

AI attacks on the rise A survey of cybersecurity bosses has shown that 62 percent reported attacks on their staff using AI over the last year, either by the use of prompt injection attacks or faking out their systems using phony audio or video generated by AI....

Security vendor's no good, very bad week year SonicWall on Monday released a firmware update that the security vendor says will remove rootkit malware deployed in recent attacks targeting Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 appliances....

Tried by two-thirds of firms, ignored by most devs, and productivity barely moved Software development was one of the first areas to adopt generative AI, but the promised revolution has so far delivered only modest productivity gains, and Bain says only a full rethink of the software lifecycle will shift the dial....

Or maybe 3 strikes, you're out? SolarWinds on Tuesday released a hotfix - again - for a critical, 9.8-severity flaw in its Web Help Desk IT ticketing software that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to run commands on a host machine....

Rapid7 warns flaw could let any app peek at your SMS, but smartphone vendor won't pick up Security researchers report that OnePlus smartphone users remain vulnerable to a critical bug that allows any application to read SMS and MMS data - a flaw that has persisted since late 2021....

Fancy a taste? The version based on Debian 'Trixie' is nearly ready, but not all the changes may be entirely welcome The new Debian-13 version of MX Linux, version 25, is looking very close to ready for release. A big change may divide its audience, though....

Secret Service seizes 300-server network allegedly tied to nation-state hackers The US Secret Service has dismantled a network of SIM farms in and around New York City it claims was behind multiple incidents targeting senior government officials and had enough power to disrupt entire cellular networks....

Old hotel scam gets an AI facelift, leaving travellers' card details even more at risk Kaspersky has raised the alarm over the resurgence of hotel-hacking outfit "RevengeHotels," which it claims is now using artificial intelligence to supercharge its scams....

Foundations say billions of downloads rely on registries running on fumes - and someone's gotta pay the bills The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) has had enough of being the unpaid janitor of the world's software supply chain....

Hundreds of compromised packages pulled as registry shifts to 2FA and trusted publishing GitHub, which owns the npm registry for JavaScript packages, says it is tightening security in response to recent attacks....

President to announce details on Big Red's storage and security deal for Chinese social media phenomenon later this week The White House has promised that all US user data on TikTok will be stored on Oracle servers in the United States, according to a deal to be announced later this week....

With no idea when engines restart, families gear down on spending ahead of Christmas Jaguar Land Rover is extending the shutdown of its production plants another week in a move that experts say could cost the business in the multiple billions....

Not as bad as other interference, but maybe it's time for a wired connection Houseplants could be slowing down your Wi-Fi, according to Broadband Genie, which reckons surfers can increase broadband speeds by almost 40 percent just by moving their router away from any greenery....

Instead of job offers, victims get MiniJunk backdoor and MiniBrowse stealer Suspected Iranian government-backed online attackers have expanded their European cyber ops with fake job portals and new malware targeting organizations in the defense, manufacturing, telecommunications, and aviation sectors....

Init system update arrives behind schedule while desktop overhaul adds app and HDR polish There are fresh new releases of two of the more controversial and divisive projects in the Linux world for everyone to argue about... and then adopt anyway....

Meanwhile Lotus Notes still lurks in some Office of National Statistics systems, for now A flagship Office for National Statistics project to share data across the UK government appears to be ending several years before its time after failing to make enough progress, getting a "Red" risk rating two years in a row, and never appointing a program director....

Reeves points finger at Moscow in interview when authorities reckon it's local lads UK chancellor Rachel Reeves is blaming Moscow for Britain's latest cyber woes, an attribution that seems about as solid as wet cardboard given the trail of evidence pointing to attackers much closer to home....

The corpse of Lotus Notes keeps twitching Some software is more difficult to kill than a horror movie villain, it seems, as Domino and Notes versions 9.0.x and 10.0.x are now set to limp on until the end of this decade....

Messy ruling details a perfect storm of NAO, MoD, and Aquila contract failures Managed service provider Node4 has won a 2.4 million (c $3.2 million) damages award against the founder of Microsoft Dynamics consultancy Tisski, after the High Court ruled the company was sold with problematic contracts that were collapsing as the deal was being finalized....

Stargates or black holes? Risks and rewards from the B(r)itbarn boom Comment The UK has bitterly expensive power, an energy minister who sees electricity as bad, a lethargic planning system, and a grid with a backlog for connections running to 2039....

Names, emails unplugged in DCS support snafu - but 'billing is safe' An electric vehicle charging point provider is telling users that their data may be compromised, following a recent security "incident" at a service provider....

Cracks down on malicious pessimism and expressions of ennui China's Cyberspace Administration yesterday announced a two-month campaign to quash netizens who maliciously incite negative emotions"....

China-funded research suggests video app's new American operators might byte off 40 percent more traffic than they can chew Before Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch put pen to paper to take over TikTok's US operations from ByteDance, they might want to consider that one of the Chinese company's network boffins thinks the app and others like it create massive data wastage"....

Signatories include 10 Nobel Prize winners ai-pocalypse Ten Nobel Prize winners are among the more than 200 people who've signed a letter calling on the United Nations to define and enforce red lines" that prohibit some uses of AI....

Misalignment risk? That's an area for future study Google DeepMind added a new AI threat scenario - one where a model might try to prevent its operators from modifying it or shutting it down - to its AI safety document. It also included a new misuse risk, which it calls "harmful manipulation."...

Promises, promises analysis OpenAI and Nvidia have signed a letter of intent wherein OpenAI agrees to buy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems for its datacenters, while the AI arms dealer returns the favor with an investment of up to $100 billion in the house that Altman built....

However, the changes could lead to more offshoring In a surprise announcement on Friday, President Trump issued a proclamation on the H-1B visas many tech companies use to import qualified foreign workers. The headlines mentioning a $100,000 fee caused panic among many visa holders, leading the White House to issue a clarification: Only new applicants will cost their companies this exorbitant price....

Not old enough to drink, old enough to be accused of causing millions in damage A teen surrendered to Las Vegas police and was booked on suspicion of breaking into multiple Las Vegas casino networks in 2023, as part of a series of hacks attributed to Scattered Spider....

Spooky season is nearly here. Want to be scared? There are fresh betas to try Two of the biggest names in fixed-release distros are nearly finished and ready to drop. You can taste them now, but they're not fully baked yet....

Cloud and apps chiefs step up as Safra Catz moves upstairs. Larry remains Larry Oracle on Monday named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as its new co-chief executives, replacing Safra Catz, who will shift into the role of executive vice chair of the board after more than a decade as top dog....

Safety watchdog doubts SpaceX can ready HLS in time for 2027 Artemis mission NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has cast doubt on SpaceX's Starship making the 2027 Artemis III lunar landing deadline....

Long-time contributor Ellen Dash steps down after GitHub access shake-up and governance dispute A decade-long RubyGems maintainer, Ellen Dash (also known as duckinator), has resigned from Ruby Central following what she described as a "hostile takeover" of the open source project....

Ratings agency points out there's a risk of relying on a small number of buyers Ratings agency Moody's has pointed to the dangers inherent in Oracle's $300 billion agreement with OpenAI - one of the deals contributing to a staggering $455 billion pipeline of obligations for Big Red's cloud infrastructure....

Thinnest yet still fixable, though not without effort iFixit has given Apple's slimline new smartphone, the iPhone Air, a thumbs-up for repairability, praising its easy access to key components, despite being the thinnest handset Cupertino has built so far....

Airport staff revert to manual ops as travellers urged to use self-service check-in where possible The EU's cybersecurity agency today confirmed that ransonmware is the cause of continued disruption blighting major airports across Europe....

Protected content in some Blu-ray and DVD applications broken Microsoft has added another entry to its growing list of problematic updates in the Windows Hall of Shame, this time causing Digital TV and Blu-ray applications to stutter and freeze when playing protected content....

Automaker insists only names and emails exposed, no financials Car giant Stellantis is admitting that attackers targeted one of its third-party partners, spilling its own customers' details in the process....

It's one small sip for man... British boffins say they've discovered a way of taking one of the country's favorite pastimes - having a nice cup of tea - into outer space....

Darwin would understand microkernels. We need microkernels that understand Darwin. Opinion The IT industry is not only full of sharks, it has shark nature itself. It must keep moving forward to survive. Not all sharks are obligate ram ventilators, and not all IT changes all the time, but without innovation the sector would curdle and die....

Project rated at 'Red' risk as it struggles to move off obsolete Oracle tech and cloud transition stalls The risk rating of the UK's crime intelligence database is being elevated to "Red" by the governments projects' watchdog as the DB struggles to migrate from a legacy Oracle platform....

Lloyds Data and AI lead doesn't want devs downloading models from the likes of Hugging Face - too risky Lloyds Banking Group is leaning into 21st century tech - yet trying to do so in a way that the data of its 28 million customers is kept away from untested AI models developers might be tempted to deploy....

Revenge on managers who slow things down is a drink best served with floating fungus Who, Me? The world of work can sometimes drive IT pros to drink, leaving them more likely to make the sort of mistakes that The Register celebrates each week in Who, Me? It's our reader-contributed column in which you share stories of making a mess at work, and cleaning up afterwards to the best of your ability....