The Register

Most scientists now use the tech in their work, but still question its usefulness AI hype is colliding with reality yet again. Wiley's global survey of researchers finds more of them using the tech than ever, and fewer convinced it's up to the job....

CRM giant 'will not engage, negotiate with, or pay' the scumbags Salesforce won't pay a ransom demand to criminals who claim to have stolen nearly 1 billion customer records and are threatening to leak the data if the CRM giant doesn't pony up some cash....

UK central bank warns of 'sudden correction' in tech stocks The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee has warned of the dangers of a sudden correction in the financial markets, owing to the value of tech and AI stocks, and has compared the risks to the dotcom bubble....

Giving the mainframe customers what they want IBM's Spyre Accelerator is set to be generally available later this month, delivering a boost to the AI capabilities of its enterprise-grade hardware including the z17 mainframe, LinuxONE 5, and Power11 systems....

Microsoft promises fewer 'mailbox full' errors in face of message deluge Microsoft's latest attempt to make the dreaded "mailbox full" response a thing of the past is rolling out in October and November. Threshold-based auto-archiving is coming to Exchange Online....

Vendors promote bridge to modern architecture for legacy systems, but Db2 not going anywhere just yet IBM has signed an OEM agreement with Cockroach Labs - maker of the distributed PostgreSQL-like cloud RDBMS CockroachDB - in a bid to help modernize mission-critical applications reliant on mainframe hardware....

Can be shifted for a tenth of the price AND the wings don't have to come off - allegedly Texas senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have hit back at a Smithsonian memo on relocating Space Shuttle Discovery, claiming the institute's cost estimates are "more than ten times higher" than quotes from private logistics firms....

Berlin's opposition likely kills off Brussels' bid to scan everyone's messages Germany has committed to oppose the EU's controversial "Chat Control" regulations following huge pressure from multiple activists and major organizations....

JIT compiler included but experimental and can slow performance The Python team has released version 3.14, with big new features including free threading support, the ability to use concurrent interpreters, improved debugger support, and an opt-in new interpreter which improves performance by 3 to 5 percent....

From homework helper to psychological hazard in 300 hours of sycophantic validation Feature When a close family member contacted Etienne Brisson to tell him that he'd created the world's first sentient AI, the Quebecois business coach was intrigued. But things quickly turned dark. The 50-year-old man, who had no prior mental health history, ended up spending time in a psychiatric ward....

Broadband biz teams up with Good Things Foundation to teach the digitally doddery how to dodge fraud UK network Virgin Media O2 is taking steps to combat fraud with a nationwide education scheme that aims to help vulnerable people and older folk avoid becoming victims....

No idea who's behind it, just happy it's over London-based wholesale telecoms biz ICUK is back on track after a multi-day DDoS attack on its network and systems....

Department also wedded to Big Red in shared service applications The UK's Home Office has signed a new deal with Oracle for around 54 million ($72 million) in cloud infrastructure and platform services as it gears up as the centerpiece of a government shared services strategy based on Big Red....

Recyclers reckon millions of obsolete PCs could yield a small fortune in precious metals There's gold in them thar piles of old Windows 10 PCs. Quite literally, according to recyclers....

Researchers argue that this dark pattern poses a legal risk AI companion apps such as Character.ai and Replika commonly try to boost user engagement with emotional manipulation, a practice that academics characterize as a dark pattern....

Both men, 17, taken into custody London cops on Tuesday arrested two teenagers on suspicion of computer misuse and blackmail following a ransomware attack on a chain of London preschools....

Jailbreaks, direct prompt injection not allowed Google on Monday rolled out a new AI Vulnerability Reward Program to encourage researchers to find and report flaws in its AI systems, with rewards of up to $30,000 for a single qualifying report....

House Committee on China wants more comprehensive ban on chipmaking equipment exports to Middle Kingdom US export controls have had mixed results in stemming the flow of chipmaking equipment into China, according to a congressional investigation, which found US and allied companies sold $38 billion worth of semiconductor tools in 2024 alone....

Microsoft Copilot, not so much Employees could be opening up to OpenAI in ways that put sensitive data at risk. According to a study by security biz LayerX, a large number of corporate users paste Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Payment Card Industry (PCI) numbers right into ChatGPT, even if they're using the bot without permission....

Agency aims to replace its default 'no' with default 'yes' while overhauling rules for operators The US Federal Communications Commission has launched "Space Month," with Chairman Brendan Carr saying that "we'll replace a default to no at the agency to a default to yes" for satellite licensing requests....

No fraud monitoring and no apology after miscreants make off with medical, financial data Florida-based Doctors Imaging Group has admitted that the sensitive medical and financial data of 171,862 patients was stolen during the course of a November 2024 cyberattack....

Florida comms outfit serving cops, firefighters, and the military says hackers pinched some employee data but insists its systems stayed online BK Technologies, the Florida-based maker of mission-critical radios for US police, fire, and defense customers, has confessed to a cyber intrusion that briefly rattled its IT systems last month....

It also banned some suspected Russian accounts trying to create influence campaigns and malware OpenAI has banned ChatGPT accounts believed to be linked to Chinese government entities attempting to use AI models to surveil individuals and social media accounts....

Studies at UC Berkeley in the 1980s paved the way for quantum computing and cryptography Three researchers in sub-atomic physics have been awarded a Nobel prize for work which helped lay the foundations for quantum computing....

Google and Zed have already adopted ACP - will Microsoft now follow? JetBrains has joined Google and Zed Industries in adopting the fledgling Agent Client Protocol (ACP), a standard for how AI agents interact with code editors and integrated development environments (IDEs)....

Strap in, admins. Exploits began in August and now the code is out there Security boffins say the Clop cybercriminal gang has been rummaging through Oracle's E-Business Suite (EBS) for months - and now the exploit code's out there for anyone to grab....

Cali chip giant insists single-board computer house will remain independent Qualcomm has acquired Arduino, maker of microcontrollers (and now single-board computers), in a move designed to boost its presence in edge computing, as evidenced by a new Arduino product based on one of its Dragonwing chips....

Mic-E-Mouse can roar by literally vibe hacking speech The mouse sitting next to you can be turned into a microphone thanks to some cunning use of its sensors to pick up vibrations from your voice in an attack dubbed Mic-E-Mouse....

Bad guys promise not to attack customers if they get paid Red Hat's breach nightmare just got worse, as the Crimson Collective crew that claims to have ransacked its GitLab repos has joined forces with the ShinyHunters-linked "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters" gang to turn the screw with a full-blown extortion campaign....

Met's year-long Operation Echosteep nets thousands of stolen devices and several arrests London's Metropolitan Police says it dismantled an iPhone-robbing gang responsible for what's thought to be nearly half of all phone thefts in England's capital....

Workaround sent to the big OOBE in the sky with latest Insider builds Microsoft is closing a popular loophole that allowed users to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account....

Space sensors and UAVs at sea top MoD's list in new wave of cutting-edge projects The UK is pressing ahead with cutting-edge defense projects, the latest including research to protect satellites from laser attack and a technology demonstrator for a jet-powered drone to operate from Royal Navy carriers....

Department eyes new app to tap national ANPR data for live alerts, searches, and integrations The UK's Home Office is inviting tech suppliers to take part in a 60 million "market engagement" for an application that uses data from automated number plate recognition (ANPR) systems....

CodeMender has been generating fixes for vulnerabilities in open source projects Google says its AI-powered security repair tool CodeMender has been helping secure open source projects through automated patch creation, subject to human approval....

Inference service launched a month before IPO filing turns out to have been a much bigger business than initially thought Just days after announcing a $1.1 billion Series G funding round, AI chip startup Cerebras Systems pulled its S-1 IPO filing without so much as an explanation....

You can't find anything bad if you don't look, right? Medusa ransomware affiliates are among those exploiting a maximum-severity bug in Fortra's GoAnywhere managed file transfer (MFT) product, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence....

Prime Video bowdlerized Bond just in time for 007's special day In more than 60 years of adventures, James Bond has faced off against villains ranging from Blofeld to Le Chiffre. But none of them has managed to do what Jeff Bezos and his henchmen did to the international superspy: take his weapons away....

Bernie Sanders calls for a robot tax and a 32-hour work week in response ai-pocalypse A US Senate committee led by Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has produced a report claiming that about 97 million US jobs could be lost to AI and automation over the next decade. There's just one problem: it got those figures from ChatGPT....

Kessler syndrome is bad; atmospheric incineration may be worse, says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell If you had to guess how many Starlink satellites burn up in Earth's atmosphere on an average day, how many would you pick? This isn't a trick question - SpaceX is deorbiting about one or two satellites daily, and that number is only going to grow....

Since revealing Stargate in January, Altman and friends have brought about 200 MW online - they'll need at least 16 GW to claim their red and green prize Comment AMD has issued OpenAI a warrant for roughly 10 percent of its stock. In exchange, the AI model giant will work with its partners (such as Oracle) to deploy up to 6 gigawatts' worth of AMD GPUs....

Integrate your apps via their Apps SDK and maybe they'll send you some business OpenAI on Monday pitched its coding tools to software developers in the hope of generating the usage and revenue necessary to recoup the vast sums it spends to create and run its AI services....

No evidence of exploitation ... yet A 13-year-old critical flaw in Redis servers, rated a perfect 10 out of 10 in severity, can let an authenticated user trigger remote code execution....

Altman promises copyright holders a cut of video revenue, if he ever figures out how to make some. analysis OpenAI's new Sora 2 video generator has become the most popular free app in Apple's App Store since launching last week. It has also drawn ire from Hollywood studios and anyone whose characters and storylines appear in the user-generated content without their explicit permission. Now CEO Sam Altman says rightsholders will be getting greater control over how their properties are used - and may even be paid....

Dropping descenders to achieve a perfect baseline Nostalgia fans rejoice - a new monospaced display font has made its debut, and this time every glyph shares the same baseline height with no descenders to interfere with the character flow....

Big Four consultancy billed Canberra top dollar, only for investigators to find bits written by a chatbot Deloitte has agreed to refund part of an Australian government contract after admitting it used generative AI to produce a report riddled with fake citations, phantom footnotes, and even a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgment....

Crime group claims to have already doled out $1K to those in it 'for money and for the love of the game' Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters has launched an unusual crowdsourced extortion scheme, offering $10 in Bitcoin to anyone willing to help pressure their alleged victims into paying ransoms....

6GW chip pact sends AMD stock soaring, Nvidia has a rival for Altman biz love AMD and OpenAI have forged a 6 gigawatt agreement to power OpenAI's AI infrastructure across multiple generations of AMD Instinct GPUs....

Musk space biz: 'Anyone else that wants to use the spectrum must coordinate with us first' EchoStar says it has met the regulatory conditions to maintain the spectrum it is selling to Musk's rocketeers....

Ransomware crooks utterly fail to find moral compass First they targeted a preschool network, now new kids on the ransomware block Radiant Group say they've hit a hospital in the US, continuing their deplorable early cybercrime careers....

gem.coop server promises continuity after Ruby Central's takeover of key repos A team including maintainers removed without notice from the RubyGems.org project has formed the Gem Cooperative and created a new gem server called gem.coop, compatible with RubyGems....