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Hossein Nowbar waged antitrust battles and created new legal policies around AI for Redmond ServiceNow has hired Hossein Nowbar as its chief legal officer and president, the company announced on Monday....

One man's failing healthcare system is another man's opportunity About sixty percent of American adults have turned to AI like ChatGPT for health or healthcare in the past three months. Instead of seeing that as an indictment of the state of US healthcare, OpenAI sees an opportunity to shape policy....

An anomaly or the beginning of a new trend? My bet's on the latter I've been tracking AWS for a long time, with a specific emphasis on pricing. "What happens if AWS hikes prices" has always been something of a boogeyman, trotted out as a hypothetical to urge folks to avoid taking dependencies on a given provider....

A subpoena has been issued, apparently Resecurity offered its "congratulations" to the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters cybercrime crew for falling into its threat intel team's honeypot - resulting in a subpoena being issued for one of the data thieves. Meanwhile, the notorious extortionists have since removed their claims of gaining "full access" to the security shop's systems....

CEO Nikesh Arora's trip to Tel Aviv last month sparked rumors. Palo Alto Networks is on shopping spree. The company is reportedly considering a $400 million purchase of Israeli cybersecurity start up Koi, which raised $48 million in funding last year....

With no hardware for sale and no local service agreement, SpaceX's move looks more like politics than philanthropy The US just invaded your country, kidnapped your president, and wants to take your oil. But good news, Venezuelans, Starlink claims you can get a month of free Internet, even though it doesn't say how that could work in a place where it doesn't offer service....

Enterprises have been slow to adopt Arm laptops so far Qualcomm is trying to become a major player in the laptop processor space. Its Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips, along with a concerted effort to improve the Windows on Arm software ecosystem, have made it a credible alternative to Intel and AMD, although it's still stuck at below 1% market share. On Monday at CES in Las Vegas, the company showed the next step in this strategy: the next-gen Snapdragon X2 Plus chips, which are targeted at budget and mainstream systems....

US trade body threatens software and services market access unless European approach changes The EU has pledged to stand firm against US threats following fines levied against Amercian tech companies for breaching recently introduced digital laws....

Remember when HP made its own CPUs and Unix? We wonder if it does The final version of HPE's own flavor of Unix, HP-UX 11i v3, is now out of support. It is the end of a line that started in 1982....

It's January 2026, and Google is finding innovative new ways to make one of its services worse Important news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3....

Direct-to-device services from low Earth orbit floated to plug coverage gaps Satellite phone services could play a part in Britain's troubled Emergency Services Network (ESN) project, including SpaceX's Starlink platform, to plug gaps in the coverage provided by terrestrial network tech....

Outsourcer promises customers a service with 'AI at its core.' They just want a website that works Exclusive Capita has told users of its ailing UK civil service pension portal to wait until new chatbots go live before contacting it again about problems....

Government 'incredibly' concerned about breach potentially affecting more than 100,000 patients New Zealand health minister Simeon Brown has ordered a review into the cyberattack at ManageMyHealth, which threatens the data of hundreds of thousands of Kiwis....

From buried settings to geopolitical risk, the business model is surveillance Opinion At the end of last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five of the largest TV companies, accusing them of excessive and deceptive surveillance of their customers....

Meet the Mean Avenger', the office anti-hero who steps in when managers don't defend their team Who, Me? How on earth is it 2026 already? The Register will ponder that existential matter after first presenting a new instalment of Who, Me?" - the reader-contributed column in which we share your stories of things you shouldn't do at work, and how you escape them unscathed....

Also, Korean Air hacked, EmEditor installer hijacked, a perfect 10 router RCE vuln, and more infosec in brief The Trump administration has cleared a trio of individuals sanctioned by the Biden administration for involvement with the Intellexa spyware consortium behind the Predator surveillance tool, removing restrictions that had barred them from doing business with the US....

Lock 'em down interview AI agents represent the new insider threat to companies in 2026, according to Palo Alto Networks Chief Security Intel Officer Wendi Whitmore, and this poses several challenges to executives tasked with securing the expected surge in autonomous agents....

Rust veteran Steve Klabnik is using an LLM to explore memory safety without garbage collection Naming a new programming language "Rue" sounds like an acknowledgment of doubt about the project's prospects, if you take "Rue" to mean "regret."...

Repeat after me: Chatbots are not sentient and have no agency Grok, the AI chatbot owned and operated by Elon Musk's xAI, is facing a firestorm of outrage after users prompted it to create images of naked and scantily clad people from real photographs, some of whom are underage....

But how about some smart glasses instead? Apple's pricey Vision Pro VR headset had a tough 2025....

Exec argues we need a new metaphor focused on AI as a lever rather than a job killer Microsoft CEO and head AI peddler Satya Nadella wants you to know that it's time for the next phase of AI acceptance, where we focus on how humans are empowered by tools and agents and how we deploy resources to support this growth....

Netflix documentary part 2 in the works? Ilya Lichtenstein, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges tied to the 2016 theft of about 120,000 bitcoins from the Bitfinex exchange and was sentenced to five years in prison, has been released after roughly 14 months in the slammer....

For the bargain price of 6.5 bitcoin A cybercrook claims to have breached Pickett and Associates, a Florida-based engineering firm whose clients include major US utilities, and is selling what they claim to be about 139 GB of engineering data about Tampa Electric Company, Duke Energy Florida, and American Electric Power.The price is 6.5 bitcoin, which amounts to about $585,000....

EU 'closely monitoring' along with NATO as state action suspected but not confirmed Finnish police have arrested and are interviewing two crew members from a class A cargo ship sailing from Russia after suspected cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea....

A full-featured, Sixel-capable terminal browser for those who'd rather skip AI assistants Old-time web users will fondly remember Lynx, a text-only browser that ran from the terminal. Now, there's a Sixel-compatible web browser that runs completely from the terminal, and has all the graphics and modern features you'd expect....

The AI era needs more juice The AI-fueled datacenter boom continues apace, with Google parent Alphabet moving to acquire energy and infrastructure biz Intersect, while Elon Musk's xAI is reportedly planning to expand beyond its already huge complex in Tennessee....

Jacob Riggs is set to swap London for Sydney some time in the next year A British security researcher has secured Australia's strictest, invite-only visa after discovering a critical vulnerability in a government system....

Move will see spacecraft shift from 550 km to 480 km as collision risks rise Starlink is to lower the orbits of about half its satellite constellation over the course of this year, citing safety concerns....

Gavin Webb orchestrated Operation Cronos as it pulled off the legendary disruption sting A senior British crimefighter has been awarded one of the country's highest tributes for public service for his role in the 2024 LockBit ransomware takedown....

There is no automated substitute for experienced staff, and 'if there's one thing AI has a never-ending thirst for ... it's data' Interview If AI can take on the role of a junior programmer, what happens when senior staff start retiring? Industry veteran and CEO of Safe Software, Don Murray, reckons the technology is becoming indispensable, but the human can never be removed from the loop....

More tales of apocalypse avoided - including in an animal testing lab - and the hard work that made that possible ON CALL Y2K Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register's Friday column that shares your tech support stories. Over the holiday season we're telling tales of the Y2K bug, and readers who spent December 31, 1999 on call in case the world's computers caused calamities....

'What do we need to do better?' El Reg talks to comms boss about the problem Interview Scientists and engineers have been taken aback by the amount of radio interference generated by satellite constellations, and many are calling on standards bodies to improve operator performance....

Do you want bork with that? Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's example of bork-in-the-wild shows that Microsoft is not the only game in town when it comes to screens having an IT moment in public. No, there will be no orders on this Firefox-based drive-thru kiosk at Wendy's....

Well kinda... Your call will be transferred to the next available assistant Microsoft had a special way of dealing with customers demanding to speak to its CEO. One that kept the customer happy without necessarily bothering His Billness....

GPUzilla has reportedly received orders for more than two million units With the sales ban lifted, Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance, are scrambling to secure orders for Nvidia's H200 graphics accelerators while they can. But will there be enough to satisfy demand?...

What, weekend warriors from Silicon Valley not good enough? The US Army has been all-in on becoming an AI-powered outfit for some time, and now it's creating a career path for officers to specialize in making its automation dreams come true....

As in past incidents, ESA says the impact was limited to external systems The European Space Agency has suffered yet another security incident and, in keeping with past practice, says the impact is limited. Meanwhile, miscreants boast that they've made off with a trove of data, including what they claim are confidential documents, credentials, and source code....

The world has passed it by in many ways, yet it remains relevant Feature In the early 1990s, internetworking wonks realized the world was not many years away from running out of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses, the numbers needed to identify any device connected to the public internet. Noting booming interest in the internet, the internet community went looking for ways to avoid an IP address shortage that many feared would harm technology adoption and therefore the global economy....

El Reg speculates about what GPUzilla really gets out of the deal This summer, AI chip startup Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of $6.9 billion. Just three months later, Nvidia celebrated the holidays by dropping nearly three times that to license its technology and squirrel away its talent....

From COBOL and C to Linux and SQL, the unglamorous software that keeps the world running refuses to disappear Opinion COBOL turned 66 this year and is still in use today. Major retail and commercial banks continue to run core account processing, ATM networks, credit card clearing, and batch end-of-day settlement. On top of that, many payment networks, stock exchanges, and clearinghouses rely on COBOL for highvolume, highreliability batch and online transaction processing on mainframes....

Funds in Money Safe' accounts are only available when customers appear for face-to-face verification Hong Kong's banks have a new weapon against scams: Accounts that require customers to visit a branch to access their funds....

Pair became ALPHV affiliates to prey on US-based clients A ransomware negotiator and a security incident response manager have admitted to running ransomware attacks....

Zohran Mamdani appears not to understand that smartphones can be used for evil New York's mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has invited the city's residents to join him at a block party to celebrate his inauguration but told attendees not to bring a Raspberry Pi single-board computer to the event....

The ITSM outfit would join Oracle, Comcast, and Netflix in installing bunk beds in the corner office ServiceNow's amended employment contract with CEO Bill McDermott extends his time with the company into the next decade, but also provides possible next steps for the journeyman corporate leader, including the co-CEO role, a position he held at SAP in the years prior to joining the ITSM juggernaut....

The solution? Lock up the screens and read to your kids If you're thinking of plopping your infant in front of a screen to get some peace and quiet, you might want to reconsider - higher screen exposure in infancy was linked to longer decision times later on and higher anxiety symptoms in the teenage years....

You didn't think you'd get to enjoy your time off without a major cybersecurity incident, did you? A high-severity MongoDB Server vulnerability, for which proofs of concept emerged over Christmas week, is now under active exploitation, according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency....

Digital screen snafu or satirical comment on Microsoft's licensing policies? Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's Bork comes courtesy of an exhibition dedicated to the UK street artist Banksy and demonstrates that "Limitless" does not always apply to Windows Activation....

Want to survive the crash? Find another way to make money with GPUs Today, Nvidia's revenues are dominated by hardware sales. But when the AI bubble inevitably pops, the GPU giant will become the single most important software company in the world....

2026 is the year where AI must meet ROI in the enterprise, and the key to delivering it is data governance. Leaders from Dell, Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Snowflake have released their 2026 predictions for AI in the workplace, and they agree that safeguards for AI agents and ROI are the top priorities for their customers....

Now replace the autopilot with Copilot Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork can happen to the best of us, but flashing one's undercarriage at the boss of a compliance company is less than ideal, particularly at 35,000 feet in the air....