The Register

'If I wasn't already taking blood pressure meds, I'm sure I would not have survived' Who, Me? Nobody starts the working week by planning to fail, but mistakes do happen and The Register likes to write about them in Who, Me? It's the reader-contributed column in which you tell us how you escaped from nasty scrapes of your own making....

Wants regulators and carriers to adopt Open Fibre Data Standard to answer questions like Is that one fibre, or nine?' APRICOT 2025 The Internet Society wants to help improve maps that depict terrestrial optic fibre networks by having regulators and carriers alike promote and adopt the Open Fibre Data Standard it helped to create....

PLUS: SEC launches new crypto crime unit; Phishing toolkit upgraded; and more Infosec in brief Apple has responded to the UK government's demand for access to its customers' data stored in iCloud by deciding to turn off its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) end-to-end encryption service for UK users....

Digital services taxes, network build levies, touted as violations of US sovereignty United States president Donald Trump last Friday issued a memorandum that suggests imposition of tariffs on nations that dare to tax big tech companies....

PLUS: Samsung exec jailed for selling DRAM secrets; ASUS launches sweetly scented mouse; Toyota's smart city nears opening; and more Asia In Brief PLUS: Samsung exec jailed for selling DRAM secrets; ASUS launches sweetly scented mouse; Toyota's smart city nears opening; and more Chinese president Xi Jinping last week staged an event at which he urged private sector leaders, including China's Big Tech companies, to help the nation speed its technological development....

Aleph Alpha's Jonas Andrulis on the challenges of building sovereign AI Interview Despite the billions of dollars spent each year training large language models (LLMs), there remains a sizable gap between building a model and actually integrating it into an application in a way that's useful....

Earth is running a fever. That's not news. What's surprising is exactly how fast its temperature is rising Analysis As you've likely read in many a headline-shouting article, our precious Blue Marble Earth just experienced its warmest year since reliable record-keeping began....

Beast remains as mythical as the return on AI investment Some muy importante legislation is stuck in the cogs of Californian bureaucracy - an Assembly Bill to recognize Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, as the official state cryptid....

And really, nothing out of the ordinary for Silicon Valley After another round of mass layoffs and reports of slashed stock options for remaining employees, Meta has like clockwork opted to reward its top executives with a substantial bonus increase....

Image fetches to be capped on hourly basis for Personal, unauthenticated use, paid-for plans get unlimited access Docker has delayed its plan to limit image pulls - the downloading of container images - from Docker Hub, by one month and has altered previously published quotas....

After fifteen years of big hype, less than 25% of orgs measure value of data, analytics Fifteen years of big data hype, and guess what? Less than one in four of those in charge of analytics projects actually measure the value of the activity to the organization they work for....

Extremely Low Resource Optical Identifier no brighter than LED, but readable with telescopes Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have come up with a cheap and simple way for satellites to be identified from the ground using lights to blink out an ID code....

911 gets VIP treatment in 'one of the most congested and demanding environments for connectivity' T-Mobile US has signed a deal to provide telecoms for emergency services in New York City using network slicing to their ensure calls and data traffic are prioritized above other users....

Plus: ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen not happy with SpaceX chief for 'lie' about 'abandoned' Starliner crew SpaceX boss Elon Musk has called for the International Space Station (ISS) to be deorbited as soon as possible, perhaps by 2027....

It's Friday. Quit the doomscrolling. Distract yourself with IT infra news Developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, ST Micro detailed a new photonic integrated circuit (PIC) on Thursday that it says will support pluggable optics capable of shuttling bits around the datacenter at up to 1.6 Tbps....

Researchers say there's dissent in the ranks. Plus: An AI tool lets you have a go yourself at analysing the data Hundreds of thousands of internal messages from the Black Basta ransomware gang were leaked by a Telegram user, prompting security researchers to bust out their best Russian translations post haste....

It woz The Reg wot won it ... or maybe just common sense prevailed among management HP Inc today abruptly ditched the mandatory 15-minute wait time that it imposed on customers dialling up its telephone-based support team due to "initial feedback."...

If you don't need to think about easy questions, will you be able to answer complex questions? Opinion I don't want to sound like an aging boomer, yet when I see junior programmers relying on AI tools like Copilot, Claude, or GPT for simple coding tasks, I wonder if they're doing themselves more harm than good....

Who knew a script could make RAM re-appear? On Call Another Friday is upon us, and The Register understands some of you would rather not retain memories of the last week. That's why we offer another instalment of On Call, our reader-contributed column that revives your happier recollections of wreaking revenge on colleagues who caused you tech support trauma....

License To Kill -9 ... For Your iPhone Only ... AI Another Day ... The name's Bezos, Jeff Bezos As part of its quest for world domination, Amazon has bought the creative rights to fictional British spy James Bond....

PoC exploit code shows why this is a patch priority Security engineers have released a proof-of-concept exploit for four critical Ivanti Endpoint Manager bugs, giving those who haven't already installed patches released in January extra incentive to revisit their to-do lists....

Enterprise hardware biz produced record revenue, just $1M of profit, but execs think losses are behind it Lenovo believes its enterprise hardware business is finally on track to achieve consistent profits, if its customers can secure sufficient energy to buy more AI servers....

It comes amid a major crackdown on the abusive industry that started during COVID Thailand is preparing to receive thousands of people rescued from scam call centers in Myanmar as the country launches a major crackdown on the pervasive criminal activity across its border....

An inside tale: Probation extended, tenure revoked, a scramble to merge research portfolios, and more Feature With the National Science Foundation cutting staff to comply with President Trump's order for sweeping federal government layoffs, concerns are growing over the impact on America's role in scientific and technological research....

Nobody wants memory bugs. Penguinistas continue debate on how to squish 'em Updated Some Linux kernel maintainers remain unconvinced that adding Rust code to the open source project is a good idea, but its VIPs are coming out in support of the language's integration....

Said bugs 'can have significant implications' - glad to hear that from Redmond Microsoft is so concerned about security in its Copilot products for folks that it's lifted bug bounty payments for moderate-severity vulnerabilities from nothing to a maximum of $5,000, and expanded the range of vulnerabilities it will pay people to find and report....

Don't think this is SaaS and you can relax: Redmond wants a few of you to check your websites Microsoft has fixed a security flaw in its Power Pages website-building SaaS, after criminals got there first - and urged users to check their sites for signs of exploitation....

Bosses bragged about Duo Chat bot, buyers weren't buying it - claim For the third time in five months, GitLab or its execs have been sued over allegedly misleading investors about AI capabilities and demand....

Apple, Dell made some progress, but MacBooks are still the worst to crack open, says PIRG The right to repair movement has gained momentum, yet laptop makers have largely stalled on improving repairability....

Hot air or a 50% energy saving? Exoscale datacenter runs proof-of-concept to test veracity of Digger's claims A1 Digital is testing liquid cooling tech for power-intensive AI servers that is claimed to save 50 percent of the energy previously required for cooling, doing away entirely with the need for air conditioning....

A painful loss for young company that's yet to generate revenue A NASDAQ-listed US minerals company says cybercriminals broke into its systems on Valentine's Day and paid themselves around $500,000 - money earmarked for a vendor....

Locals see red as public cloud's service health dashboard shows green Norwegians fell victim to a prolonged Microsoft Azure outage today, which impacted businesses and took down multiple government websites delivering online services to citizens....

Lucky there isn't an asteroid headed for Earth for which a demoralized space agency might need to mount a redirect mission Comment The US space agency, NASA, is famous for looking to the future. However, the fiasco of the last few days has cast doubt on the present, let alone what the coming weeks, months, or years might hold....

Bugs fixed, updating to the latest version is advisable Security sleuths found two critical vulnerabilities in a third-party library that MongoDB relies on, which means bad guys can potentially steal data and run code....

Chipzilla's design and manufacturing limbs said to be on the table Venture capitalists are circling Intel amid talk that the beleaguered chip giant may be carved up between Broadcom and TSMC, with one taking the design biz and the other the manufacturing fabs....

IT giant doing whatever it takes to reach $300 a share IBM is looking to reduce expenses through what's described as a co-location program that, according to current and former employees who spoke with The Register, appears to be designed to drive out older, more expensive workers....

Longer wait time designed to push print or PC consumers to digital support channels, sorry, 'self-solve' HP Inc is trying to force consumer PC and print customers to use online and other digital support channels by setting a minimum 15-minute wait time for anyone that phones the call center to get answers to troublesome queries....

Cost of post-Brexit arrangements revealed as HMRC looks at options following Fujitsu contract The UK's tax collector is looking for a tech supplier to take on a 370 million, seven-year contract to support a digital platform and call center to handle trading arrangements over the Northern Ireland border....

The latest in a long line of fraud stings worth billions each year Two men are in police custody after being arrested in connection with a July cryptocurrency fraud involving a man in his seventies....

Most people crank up the brightness, making energy savings moot Using apps and websites in dark mode can actually use more energy than standard mode, according to researchers, as it causes people to crank up the brightness....

Systems integrator secured 'variation' just before mega SAP migration put on hold Systems integrator DXC accrued over 50 percent more than its original contract value for completing less than half the scheduled contract term during a disastrous project to move a UK government body off an ageing SAP ERP system and onto Oracle Fusion....

FBI and CISA issue reminder - deep sigh - about the importance of patching and backups The operators of Ghost ransomware continue to claim victims and score payments, but keeping the crooks at bay is possible by patching known vulnerabilities and some basic infosec actions, according to a joint advisory issued Wednesday by the FBI and US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency....

2.3 TB held to ransom as biz formerly known as Virgin Care tells us it's probing IT 'security incident' Exclusive HCRG Care Group, a private health and social services provider, has seemingly fallen victim to the Medusa ransomware gang, which is threatening to leak what's claimed to be stolen internal records unless a substantial ransom is paid....

Arista trumpeted its role in this project for a year. Good thing business is otherwise solid Big Tech's plans to spend hundreds of billions on infrastructure during 2025 are often considered to demonstrate near-endless demand for artificial intelligence, but networking vendor Arista has just revealed a large AI build has stalled" due to lack of funds and hardware....

Nice number, but also not much more than a nice advance France's Commissariat a L'energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives on Tuesday claimed it's topped China's recently-established for record maintaining fusion plasma in a tokamak, and therefore taken another step towards building a fusion reactor capable of producing cheap energy....

That's the way the cookie melts A US Army soldier suspected of hacking AT&T and Verizon has admitted leaking online people's private call records....

Reported layoffs suggest R&D functions may be hobbled, fab subsidies also at risk Comment US President Donald Trump has made it plain he's not a fan of the $53 billion CHIPS and Science Act that funds semiconductor manufacturing and research on American soil - and now it appears he's decided to make substantial staff cuts at the agencies that administer it....

Hey, at least Katie Arrington brings a solid resume Donald Trump's nominee for a critical DoD cybersecurity role sports a resume that outshines many of his past picks, despite previously suspended security clearance....

Not just a matter of time but a matter of Majorana fermions, too Microsoft says it has developed a quantum-computing chip made with novel materials that is expected to enable the development of quantum computers for meaningful, real-world applications within - you guessed it - years rather than decades....

You can find out if your GitHub codebase is leaking keys ... but so can miscreants A free automated tool that lets anyone scan public GitHub repositories for exposed AWS credentials has been released....