The Register

Collecting data from solo players is a Far Cry from being necessary, says noyb For anyone who's ever been frustrated by the need to go online to play a single-player video game, the European privacy specialists at noyb have heard you, and they've filed a complaint against Ubisoft in Austria dealing specifically with the issue....

'Inventory accumulation' as vendors hoard HBM amid tariff and other pressures South Korean memory maker SK Hynix is reporting a sales bounce due to the demand for AI systems, helped by US businesses stockpiling HBM supplies amid tariff uncertainty....

Something broke on Windows 11 24H2, but dev who discovered it tells El Reg this time Microsoft's not to blame Microsoft's Windows 11 24H2 update is frustrating some users, but it isn't the operating system at fault this time. Instead, it's down to a 20-year-old error in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas....

Alleges semi designer tried to obstruct Qualy's build of Arm-compatible custom cores Qualcomm has amended its complaint against Arm in a 2024 lawsuit, adding more allegations about Arm's purported breach of license agreements and accusing it of "misrepresenting" their relationship by intending to make its own rival chips....

Get a new, clean (maybe suspiciously empty) install up to speed - and keep it there When you install a fresh, clean copy of Windows - say, if you're switching to the LTSC edition - Ninite is here to kickstart provisioning the new OS....

Extreme weather is such a problem when building bit barns... hmmm, wonder what could be causing that? When it comes to building datacenters, reducing the environmental impact of the project is still not seen as a major concern - it is lower on the list than cost of equipment and materials, skills shortages, a possible downturn in projects, and even bad weather....

Customers told to expect further delays as contactless payments still down UK high street retailer Marks & Spencer says contactless payments are still down following its "cyber incident" and order delays are likely to continue....

Cybercriminals are targeting software shops, accountants, lawyers The percentage of confirmed data breaches involving third-party relationships doubled last year as cybercriminals increasingly exploited weak links in supply chains and partner ecosystems....

Software slingers from Redis to Teradata are bolting on smarts to stay relevant in GenAI era About two years ago, popular cache database Redis was among a wave of vendors that added vector search capabilities to their platforms, driven by the surge of interest in generative AI....

Back of the nyet! Russian soldiers are being targeted with an Android app specially altered to pinpoint their location and scan their phones for files, with the ability to exfiltrate sensitive documents if instructed....

Lenovo brings its Neptune cold plates to servers packing sixth-gen Xeons to run VMware, Nutanix, and AzureStack Hyperconverged infrastructure most often involves a collection of modest 2U servers powered by mid-range processors that aren't particularly challenging to operate. But Lenovo's new models packing Xeon 6 processors may need liquid cooling....

Wipro was forced to pause an active SAP project due to client's jitters India's big four IT services players are all concerned that the USA's new tariffs regime may see some of their customers spend less on tech - but later spend more to cope with whatever changes are needed to compete in a changed global trade system....

Biggest threat to America's critical infrastructure? Ransomware Digital scammers and extortionists bilked businesses and individuals in the US out of a "staggering" $16.6 billion last year, according to the FBI - the highest losses recorded since bureau's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) started tracking them 25 years ago....

Big Blue downplays impact of Elon-gated cost-cutting IBM beat Wall Street's expectations for both revenue and income in the first quarter of 2025, but its stock price still dropped more than six percent in after-hours trading....

You. Will. Love. The. LLM. The latest update to Microsoft 365 Copilot brings AI-powered search, so-called reasoning agents, and a new Agent Store. Some users already have access to certain features, while others may have to wait through May....

Tech giants don't need smartphone mics to target adverts - your insurer just gives your data away, anyway US health insurance giant Blue Shield of California handed sensitive health information belonging to as many as 4.7 million members to Google's advertising empire, likely without these individuals' knowledge or consent....

Elon's not the only one sounding the alarm over the AI giant's cash grab A group of AI heavyweights and ex-OpenAI staffers are urging the attorneys general of California and Delaware to block the ChatGPT shop's latest restructuring into a for-profit corporation....

ChatGPT maker to join line of suitors if Chocolate Factory forced to offload browser OpenAI's head of product for ChatGPT has flung the company's hat into the ring as a potential suitor for Google's Chrome browser should the search giant be forced to divest itself of the application....

Now that AI is invading classrooms and homework assignment, students need to learn reasoning more than ever Students are increasingly turning to AI to help them with coursework, leaving academics scrambling to adjust their teaching practices or debating how to ban it altogether....

A mystery thief and a critical CVE involved in crypto cash grab Many versions of the Ripple ledger (XRPL) official NPM package are compromised with malware injected to steal cryptocurrency....

All aboard the hype train The security industry loves its buzzwords, and this is always on full display at the annual RSA Conference event in San Francisco. Don't believe us? Take a lap on the expo floor, and you'll be bombarded with enough acronyms and over-the-top claims to send you straight to the nearest bar, which will likely serve specialty cocktails with names like The Great CASB and Firewall Fizz....

Officials seek assurances that bot won't be used for military applications Elon Musk says supply chain disruption in China held up delivery of a key component for Tesla's "Optimus" robot, with authorities reportedly demanding an export license and guarantees about military applications....

CFO says 'a cushion of several thousand employees we can play with' is a good thing in uncertain times SAP says 3,000 people have left the company in its restructuring plan but that it will wait to see if more employees might be affected after US tariff policies introduced global economic uncertainty....

Bad timing, claim industry watchers, who say rulings could seriously upset an already delicate US-EU relationship Meta and Apple have earned the dubious honor of being the first companies fined for non-compliance with the EU's Digital Markets Act, which experts say could inflame tensions between US President Donald Trump and the European bloc....

Smarter agents, continuous updates, and the eternal struggle to prove ROI As Nvidia releases its NeMo microservices to embed AI agents into enterprise workflows, research has found that almost half of businesses are seeing only minor gains from their investments in AI....

Stolen credentials edge out email tricks for cloud break-ins because they're so easy to get Criminals used stolen credentials more frequently than email phishing to gain access into their victims' IT systems last year, marking the first time that compromised login details claimed the number two spot in Mandiant's list of most common initial infection vectors....

Former Microsoft engineer calls the Windows of today 'a tool that's a bit of an adversary' Comment Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has weighed in on why Microsoft moved from paid upgrades to Windows as a Service. As ever, the old adage applies - when the product is free, the product is probably you......

'Europe Stand Tall' campaign kicks off amid fear, uncertainty and doubt about Trump administration Danish consultancy Netcompany is the latest European business to warn of dependency on US technology as unpredictability in the White House continues to eat away at trust in the country overseas....

Bake in security now or pay later, says Mike Rogers AI engineers should take a lesson from the early days of cybersecurity and bake safety and security into their models during development, rather than trying to bolt it on after the fact, according to former NSA boss Mike Rogers....

Despite Horizon fallout, Japanese supplier continues to win public sector work Fujitsu has won a 125 million ($167 million) contract to build Northern Ireland's new land registry system, despite promising not to bid for UK public sector work in the wake of the Post Office Horizon scandal....

The CVE system nearly dying shows that someone has lost the plot Opinion We almost lost the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database system, but that's only the tip of the iceberg of what President Trump and company are doing to US cybersecurity efforts....

Because nobody wants a bazillion volts zorching critical infrastructure Japanese tech conglomerate NTT has created a drone that triggers lightning, is then struck by a heavenly bolt it instigated, and survives the experience - all in the name of preventing damage from natural lightning....

Ten billion bucks coming in for a soft landing, customers may be about to experience a bumpy ride Beleaguered aerospace giant Boeing has sold some of its Digital Aviation Solutions" portfolio to private equity outfit Thoma Bravo....

India and China deliver a nice milestone, with help from ancient internet history Asia has become the second region in the world to reach 50 percent IPv6 capability, according to data from labs run by the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC)....

Meanwhile, OpenAI expresses an interest in unbundling Chrome from Google Google has agreed to unbundle its Play Store and Android operating system in India, but only on smart TVs, and will also cough up a $2.4 million fine after being found to have breached competition law....

Detail? Rationale? Timeline? Nope! Maybe a struggling stock market and Beijing hinting about 'countermeasures' helped? World War Fee President Donald Trump on Tuesday said his administration plans to lower the 145 percent tariffs it levies on goods imported into America from China, continuing his pattern of unpredictable shifts in policy....

Not-so-beloved Tesla tycoon promises to 'significantly' reduce his scouring of Uncle Sam for contracts and staff to ax, data to peruse Government fixer Elon Musk says his days steering the Trump-blessed cost-trimming, data-scouring DOGE unit are all but done....

IT guy says their claims are toothless - and they owe him $400K A group of pediatric dental practices in North Carolina have accused a longtime contractor of refusing to return control of several web domains after his contract was terminated....

Uncle Sam says Chinese factories use proxies to dodge import taxes world war fee Solar panels made in a number of Southeast Asian countries face massive new import duties into America, some as steep as 3,521 percent, after a US Department of Commerce probe apparently found the countries were being used as tariff-dodging proxies for Chinese state-subsidized manufacturers....

Chrome will keep third-party cookies, a win for web giant's ad rivals After six years of work, Google's Privacy Sandbox, technology for delivering ads while protecting privacy, looks like dust in the wind....

As cyber-agency faces cuts, makes noises about switching up program Two top officials have resigned from Uncle Sam's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, aka CISA, furthering fears of a brain drain amid White House cuts to the federal workforce....

In effect: 'Ha ha - the government is borked and so are you' Ransomware scumbags - potentially those behind the Fog gang - are channeling their inner Elon Musk with their latest ransom note, spotted by researchers at Trend Micro....

Security bods can earn up to $10K per report Ransomware threat hunters can now collect rewards of $10,000 for each piece of intel they file under a new bug bounty that aims to squash extortionists....

Retailer tight-lipped on details as digital hiccup disrupts customer orders UK high street mainstay Marks & Spencer told the London Stock Exchange this afternoon it has been managing a "cyber incident" for "the past few days."...

What used to be a serious issue mainly in Southeast Asia is now the world's problem Scam call centers are metastasizing worldwide "like a cancer," according to the United Nations, which warns the epidemic has reached a global inflection point as syndicates scale up and spread out....

Hyperscaler says there's no decrease in demand, it's just looking for good deals Amazon has joined Microsoft in pausing some datacenter leasing deals, sparking fresh concerns about whether the AI hype train may be running out of steam....

Plenty of tortillas onboard but not quite so much science this time SpaceX's latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) - CRS-32 - just docked to the orbiting outpost, bringing extra crew supplies, which resulted in the deferral of several science payloads....

Running GenAI models is easy. Scaling them to thousands of users, not so much Hands On You can spin up a chatbot with Llama.cpp or Ollama in minutes, but scaling large language models to handle real workloads - think multiple users, uptime guarantees, and not blowing your GPU budget - is a very different beast....

On a road trip with an AI by your side UK-based autonomous vehicle biz Wayve is continuing its global expansion by opening a testing and development center in Yokohama, Japan....

Can't run Windows 11? Don't want to? There are surprisingly legal options You will have to reinstall everything, but there is another way to escape the end of Windows 10 support in October - and it's cheaper than a new PC....