The Register

Australian government staff mixed medical info for folk who share names and birthdays Australia's privacy commissioner has found that government agencies down under didn't make enough of an effort to protect data describing digital doppelgangers" - people who share a name and date of birth and whose government records sometimes contain data describing other people....

Tech lobby isn't at the negotiating table, fears unintended consequences United States President Donald Trump has delivered on his campaign promise to introduce tariffs, by slapping a 25 percent duty on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a ten percent impost on goods from China. Industry groups quickly responded by saying this is not a great idea....

PLUS: MGM settles breach suits; AWS doesn't trust you with security defaults; A new .NET backdoor; and more Infosec in brief The United States Food and Drug Administration has told medical facilities and caregivers that monitor patients using Contec equipment to disconnect the devices from the internet ASAP....

PLUS: Chinese bus lanes put Tesla in a tangle; India drops electronics tariffs; Samsung worries about soft demand Asia In Brief Nvidia's quarterly results occasionally raise eyebrows because they report that Singapore is a disproportionately large market for its wares. In a Q3 2025 filing [PDF], for example, the accelerator colossus revealed that Singapore is its second-largest market and accounted for 22 percent of revenue....

Amid wildfire death and destruction, there are solutions, workable smart solutions, but who wants to talk about that? Special report We humans have gorged ourselves on fossil fuels for well over a century, and the bill for that delicious, civilization-enhancing meal has finally come due....

As if secure design is the only bullet point in a list of software engineering best practices Systems Approach As my Systems Approach co-author Bruce Davie and I think through what it means to apply the systems lens to security, I find that I keep asking myself what it is, exactly, that's unique about security as a system requirement?...

Nulled and Cracked had a Lorelai-cal rise - until Operation Talent stepped in Law enforcement officers across Europe assembled again to collectively disrupt major facilitators of cybercrime, with at least one of those cuffed apparently a fan of the dramedy series The Gilmore Girls....

Raymond Chen reflects on the never-ending cycle of updates and restarts Comment Remember when things didn't need constant updating and reboots to work? Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen notes that the affliction has even spread as far as the humble electric toothbrush....

But it still has a chance at the network edge and the PC Comment Any hope Intel may have had of challenging rivals Nvidia and AMD for a slice of the AI accelerator market dissolved on Thursday as yet another GPU architecture was scrapped....

If this keeps Silicon Valley on its toes and honest, who are we to complain? Kettle There's really only one topic for the Kettle this week. DeepSeek....

Microsoft's latest OS claws back market share from Windows 10, but the finish line is a long way off Microsoft appears to be starting the year with a rebound in Windows 11 adoption as the latest figures show the operating system reversing its recent months' long declines....

That email chain could have been a 30-second chit-chat, says IT giant Dell Technologies intends to end its hybrid work arrangement in March, requiring those previously allowed to toil from home part-time to spend their entire five-day work week within corporate walls....

'Magical free' upgrade coincidentally follows M365 price hike Microsoft has made Think Deeper, OpenAI's GPT-o1 reasoning model, "free and available for all users of Copilot."...

Forrester's take on President's economic agenda offers little optimism for the industry It's been less than two weeks since Donald Trump returned to the White House, and the effect the administration may have on the global tech industry is still far from clear....

Self-deprecation much less fun if you're not joking... or if nobody knows what the heck you mean Microsoft has explained what it means by "deprecation" - it doesn't mean "the end", it means "save the date."...

But Chinese startup shakeup doesn't herald 'drastic drop' in need for infrastructure buildout, say analysts Analysis The shockwave following the release of competitive AI models from Chinese startup DeepSeek has led many to question the assumption that throwing ever more money at costly large-scale GPU-based infrastructure delivers the best results....

Sunita Williams lays claim to lead for female EVAs NASA 'naut Sunita Williams has broken Peggy Whitson's record for total spacewalking time for a female astronaut with a trip outside the International Space Station (ISS) to collect samples from the outpost's exterior....

Reckons completion of Hashicorp buy is around the corner, plans to use some of $7B free cash for more M&A IBM is hopeful of completing the $6.4 billion purchase of Hashicorp relatively smoothly given what Big Blue perceives to be a "more rational" and "pro-competition" regulatory environment....

Court said her approach to child access dispute with partner's ex really stinks Wales has given the world many things - Tom Jones, laverbread, and the equals sign. But one woman from Caernarfon has added weaponized flatulence to the list. Her unorthodox approach to WhatsApp landed her with a community order and fines....

Only 35% of those premises actually hooked up though, plus company reports 'higher competitor losses' BT Group claims to have pulled off a record build rate of more than a million premises in the final three months of 2024 amid efforts to install fiber connectivity across the UK and fierce competition from altnets....

ESA and the Argonauts The European Space Agency (ESA) has inked a deal worth 862 million with Thales Alenia Space to develop a lunar lander....

And it doesn't take a crystal ball to predict the future If the nonstop flood of ransomware attacks doesn't already make every day feel like Groundhog Day, then a look back at 2024 - and predictions for 2025 - definitely will....

'Ancient mariner' who came to make the fix in historical costume was such a shock nobody made a pirate joke On Call Tech support people play many roles, and The Register celebrates them all in On Call, our reader-contributed Friday column in which we share your tales of adventure....

That's one way to focus the Platforms & Devices team Google's latest round of layoffs is looking a bit different than usual, with the Chocolate Factory offering a buyout to employees in the recently created Platforms & Devices division....

Is this NEO the one? Yup, as in, a 1% chance of hitting us ... sadly Video Astronomers reckon a 220-million-kilogram asteroid is going to swing by Earth in 2032 with a 1-in-100 chance of hitting us....

Imagine burning through $72B in one year. Did it make Sam Altman the CEO already? Intel capped off a tumultuous year with a reality check for its product roadmaps....

And you, China, Russia, North Korea ... Guardrails block malware generation Google says it's spotted Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean government agents using its Gemini AI for nefarious purposes, with Tehran by far the most frequent naughty user out of the four....

Makes you wonder, how bad could Windows-on-Arm really be? Businesses looking to pick up a Surface Pro tablet or laptop powered by Intel's latest generation of Core Ultra processors can expect to pay at least $400 more compared to Microsoft's existing Arm-based offerings....

Consider patching soon because cybercrooks love to hit vulnerable tools from Broadcom's virtualization giant Broadcom has fixed five flaws, collectively deemed "high severity," in VMware's IT operations and log management tools within Cloud Foundation, including two information disclosure bugs that could lead to credential leakage under certain conditions....

Tackling disease, tick. High-energy physics, tick. Nuke security, also tick OpenAI has announced another deal with Uncle Sam, this time to get its very latest models in the hands of US government scientists working on nuclear security and more....

Boy who's cried wolf on autonomous driving for years swears 'there's a damn wolf this time' Tesla had a pretty dismal fourth-quarter of 2024 and a rough year overall, financially. But you wouldn't know it from the after-hours boost to its share price as CEO Elon Musk predicted a record 2025 buoyed by yet more promises of fully autonomous robotaxis....

Merger would kill competition, jack up wireless LAN prices, officials argue The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has sued to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise's $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks....

No one was kicked off the NTSB in the middle of investigating a crash' interview Gutting the Cyber Safety Review Board as it was investigating how China's Salt Typhoon breached American government and telecommunications networks was "foolish" and "bad for national security," according to retired US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery....

Distilled version for Copilot+ PCs on the way, too - !! Microsoft has added the open source DeepSeek R1 LLM to Azure AI Foundry and GitHub, showing that even a lumbering tech giant can be nimble when it needs to be....

China's AI disruptor rattles industry watchers with unproven claims In a busy week for GenAI, the tech industry is weighing the impact of the latest interloper on the LLM scene. China's DeepSeek shocked stock markets on Monday, slashing $600 billion off the value of erstwhile AI golden child Nvidia....

Microsoft fixes DAC woes and makes good on its New Outlook threat for Windows 10 There is mixed news for Windows users. Microsoft has released a patch it claims fixes the DAC problem. The bad news - for some users - is that the new Outlook for Windows app has reached Windows 10....

Workforce rebalancing? Yes, but on the plus side, the next 12 months are all about AI, AI, and more AI IBM is again forecasting cost savings in the coming calendar year, which likely means one thing for its legions of workers - pedal fast and keep your heads down because headcount reductions may be on the way once more....

400 hospitals and med centers across 15 states rely on its products New York Blood Center Enterprises (NYBCe) is currently in its fifth day of handling a ransomware attack that has led to system disruption....

Windows vendor posts more bumper financials, but markets shrug Microsoft's latest earnings results exceeded expectations, yet comments from CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood signaled turbulence in AI and execution, alongside signs of waning cloud demand....

Space 5G should reach regular smartphones in rural area notspots Vodafone claims it has made the first mobile video call using a satellite connection and standard 4G/5G smartphones, and said it aims to offer a commercial direct-to-cell satellite service in Europe starting later this year....

Neither Labour, Conservatives, nor the Lib Dems offered a retort to rights org's report The Open Rights Group (ORG) has raised concerns about a number of security issues it found in all three of the canvassing apps developed on behalf of the UK's three major political parties....

Breakthrough could -eventually - impact smartphone and mobile computing A new approach to materials engineering promises to overcome the limitation of capacitors commonly used in smartphones, displays and electric vehicles, according to a study published in Nature....

Employers remain blissfully unaware/wilfully ignorant of the impact of surveillance on staff More than three-quarters of UK employers admit to using some form of surveillance tech to spy on their remote workers' productivity....

Sidestepping the grid led to 44% cheaper electricity and 70% fewer emissions, CEO says A UK datacenter startup realized it could have to wait until the late 2030s for power grid connection dates, and has instead turned to modular facilities located at the site of renewable energy sources....

Harvesting of location data and other personal info without user consent, lawsuit claims Amazon and its advertising subsidiary have been sued for allegedly collecting personal and location data from third-party mobile apps without obtaining users' informed consent....

It's a 65-million-year-old space rock stuffed with amino acids, DNA bases, and more, boffins report Scientists analyzing samples from asteroid Bennu have found something remarkable: Despite being a cold, lifeless rubble pile that formed around 65 million years ago, it holds a rich inventory of organic molecules - key ingredients for life....

Qwen 2.5 Max tops both DS V3 and GPT-4o, cloud giant claims Analysis The speed and efficiency at which DeepSeek claims to be training large language models (LLMs) competitive with America's best has been a reality check for Silicon Valley. However, the startup isn't the only Chinese model builder the US has to worry about....

Digital canvas slinger indicates dot-com was skimmed for over a month Graphics tablet maker Wacom has warned customers their credit card details may well have been stolen by miscreants while they were buying stuff from its website....

Oh someone's in DeepShi... China-based AI biz DeepSeek may have developed competitive, cost-efficient generative models, but its cybersecurity chops are another story....

Stealing crypto is so 2024. Supply-chain attacks leading to data exfil pays off better? North Korea's Lazarus Group compromised hundreds of victims across the globe in a massive secret-stealing supply chain attack that was ongoing as of earlier this month, according to security researchers....