The Register

Another success for the 'Moonshot factory' and an extra rival for Starlink et al Google's attempt to provide remote area connectivity with balloons has been floated out as an independent company, a rare success for the company's attempt to develop breakthrough technologies....

One PUT request, one poisoned session file, and the server's yours A trivial flaw in Apache Tomcat that allows remote code execution and access to sensitive files is said to be under attack in the wild within a week of its disclosure....

More light shed on what went down with Marko Elez, thanks to NY AG and co's lawsuit A now-former DOGE aide violated US Treasury policy by emailing an unencrypted database containing people's private information to two Trump administration officials, according to a court document filed Friday....

Microsoft says disappearance of Clippy 2.0 is an error it will shortly fix A buggy Windows 11 update from Microsoft has a silver lining for those who aren't keen on the operating system's Copilot assistant. When installed, the software patch will remove the AI app on at least "some" PCs....

Web souk says Echo hardware doesn't have the oomph for next-gen AI anyway Come March 28, those who opted to have their voice commands for Amazon's AI assistant Alexa processed locally on their Echo devices will lose that option, with all spoken requests pushed to the cloud for analysis....

Cupertino's latest skips iPhone repair gains, iFixit says Anyone hoping Apple's latest MacBook Air might inherit the iPhone's recent repair-friendly tweaks is in for disappointment, iFixit's teardown crew has found....

First license plates, now a way to calculate pace in orbit. Speeding tickets next? Scientists at America's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico say they have developed a Spacecraft Speedometer that satellites can use in orbit to ideally avoid orbital collisions....

Nearly 100 orgs plead for homegrown lifeline amid geopolitical tensions A group of technology companies and lobbyists want the European Commission (EC) to take action to reduce the region's reliance on foreign-owned digital services and infrastructure....

Process mining specialist accuses the ERP giant of rigging game with fees, restrictions, and a closed ecosystem German software company Celonis is suing SAP, alleging anti-competitive conduct and claiming its systems lack openness....

Large organizations among those cleaning up the mess It's not such a happy Monday for defenders wiping the sleep from their eyes only to deal with the latest supply chain attack....

Another all-FOSS option - just don't confuse it with all the other Flangs The latest version of the LLVM compiler suite has promoted its Fortran front end. "Flang" is now official....

Technology Services 4 framework expands by 4B, with procurement to begin this week UK government is set to crack open the pork barrel for up to 16 billion in contracts for a range of IT services. The buying framework was delayed by six months and the total pot of spending is now potentially 25 percent bigger than the previous proposal....

Maddening techno bass loop, Zoolander reference, and 14 minutes of time wasted A vulnerability analyst and prominent member of the infosec industry has blasted Microsoft for refusing to look at a bug report unless he submitted a video alongside a written explanation....

Well, maybe not richer, but we're about to find out Opinion The universe ended unexpectedly on a March Monday in 2025. To the relief of many, it came back a few days later much as before, but with one very significant change. One that may herald significant changes for all of us, inside its sphere or not....

What comes after testing in the software development lifecycle? Aaah, never mind ... let's skip to maintenance Who, Me? With the weekend behind us, it's time to once again ask the question "Who, Me?" That's the name of The Register's Monday column in which we share reader-contributed confessions of making a mess with tech....

Yes, we are. And we promise your 'Droid and smart home kit will get a 'new experience' Google has decided to silence its voice Assistant and replace it with the Gemini AI service....

Second time's a charm SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endurance capsule successfully launched on Friday, March 14, and docked with the International Space Station (ISS) just over a day later....

PLUS: Foxconn wants 40 percent AI server market share; Atlassian CEO jets into controversy; Starlink reaches 800 million in India; And more! Asia In Brief Chinese authorities last week announced identification measures" for AI-generated content that will require it to be labelled with human and machine-readable notifications....

PLUS: Alleged Garantex admin arrested in India; Google deletes more North Korean malware Infosec In Brief United States Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr has unveiled plans to form a Council on National Security that will combat foreign threats to American tech and telecommunications infrastructure....

How to tame its hypersensitive hyperparameters and get it running on your PC Hands on How much can reinforcement learning - and a bit of extra verification - improve large language models, aka LLMs? Alibaba's Qwen team aims to find out with its latest release, QwQ....

AT&T engineer, and the Deep Throat of the network age, dies at 79 In 2006, a retired AT&T engineer knocked on the door of the EFF's office in a rundown part of San Francisco's Mission district and asked, "Do you folks care about privacy?" With him he carried schematics exposing the largest US government domestic spying operation since Watergate....

Chinese giant says it's 'committed' to obeying the law as arrests made Belgian authorities have raided multiple premises as part of a corruption probe involving Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has also led to the sealing of two EU parliamentary offices in Brussels....

Billions continue to pour into bit barns across the globe Fears that AI may be a bubble about to burst have yet to dent datacenter investment, with a handful of new developments revealed this week....

Trapped gas isn't just a party foul - it's a launch-stopper The hydraulic problem that kept the next International Space Station (ISS) crew on the ground this week was likely due to trapped air in the system....

What has more than a decade of support ahead of it cannot be dead SUSECON25 Veteran Linux wrangler SUSE confirmed its place aboard the AI train at its Orlando SUSECON25 shindig, where announcements were plentiful regarding the tech industry's latest obsession....

Aix-Marseille University rolls out welcome mat for American researchers facing funding cuts American boffins fearful that their work (or should that be "woke"?) activities will draw the disfavor of the Trump administration are being offered sanctuary in the Land of the Free, otherwise known as Europe....

What about the average Big Blue worker? $48,582 up from $43,069 CEO salary watch IBM emperor Arvind Krishna's total financial package went up by double digits in 2024 to more than $25 million....

National security defense being used to keep appeal behind closed doors US politicians and privacy campaigners are calling for the private hearing between Apple and the UK government regarding its alleged encryption-busting order to be aired in public....

Biz leaders still dream of obedient agents replacing workers. In the actual workplace, they're going AWOL Opinion I am so sick and tired of AI hype. I'm not the only one....

Tin rattling earns rebuke from GNOME extension's original developer as well as dozens of everyday users The maintainer of one of the most popular extensions to customize the GNOME desktop is stepping down and seeking someone to take over development after a fundraising effort backfired....

It's March already and you haven't patched? Researchers are tracking a newly discovered ransomware group with suspected links to LockBit after a series of intrusions were reported starting in January....

Mooney M20 propeller plane hit mountain in Slovenia amid bad weather One of the initial backers of infamous torrenting site The Pirate Bay, Carl Lundstrom, has died after crashing his aircraft in bad weather....

The same chap also caused a bomb scare in a missile factory On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's Friday column in which we share your astounding tales of being asked to tackle tech support jobs that seemingly defy common sense....

Ratification of 128 additional moons puts the smaller gas giant way ahead on satellite count The International Astronomical Union on Tuesday ratified the recent discovery of 128 previously unknown moons orbiting Saturn, taking the gas giant's count of known natural satellites to 274....

Rideshare companies said it isn't happening. Lawmakers aren't convinced India's government has ordered an investigation into whether Uber and local ride-share champion charge Ola customers more if they use iPhones....

Veteran of Oracle vs Google Java trial fumes over 'gimmicks' and 'sham' arguments A federal judge has ordered six US government agencies to immediately rehire employees fired this year by the Trump administration....

Pouring sensitive info into unapproved, unaccountable, unsafe models would be a 'severe' cybersecurity fail House Democrats have sent letters to 24 federal agencies asking for assurances that Elon Musk's DOGE team is not feeding sensitive government data into "unapproved and unaccountable" AI systems....

Indie browser maker asks judge for legal shield against copyright threats over AI summaries Brave has gone to court to head off potential legal action from News Corp over the browser maker's auto-generated AI summaries of articles published by Rupert Murdoch's media empire....

It'll take a few days, give or take your situation Google has told The Register it's beginning to roll out a fix for Chromecast devices that were crippled by an expired security certificate authority. We're assured this deployment will take place over the next few days....

The rest of the world doesn't think 'fair use' is fair but we should make 'em Updated OpenAI wants the US government to ensure it has access to any data it wants to train GenAI models, and to stop foreign countries from trying to enforce copyright rules against it and other American AI firms....

Hydraulic problems stop the countdown clock at T-44 minutes The launch of the next crew to the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed to no earlier than Friday, March 14, due to a hydraulic issue with a group support clamp arm for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during March 12's countdown....

Phishers check in, your credentials check out, Microsoft warns An ongoing phishing campaign disguised as a Booking.com email casts keystroke and credential-stealing malware into hospitality employees' inboxes for financial fraud and theft, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence....

So much for 'carbon negative by 2030' Microsoft says there is plenty of wind and solar to power datacenters in the US, but it is still eyeing natural gas generation as it juggles the growing energy needs of AI with its own net-zero commitments....

Agency tries to save face as it also pulls essential funding for election security initiatives Uncle Sam's cybersecurity agency is trying to save face by seeking to clear up what it's calling "inaccurate reporting" after a former senior pen-tester claimed the organization axed two red teams....

It might need polishing, but a useful find for any budding cybercrooks out there DeepSeek's flagship R1 model is capable of generating a working keylogger and basic ransomware code, just as long as a techie is on hand to tinker with it a little....

It's called 'SpaceHPC' and it heats the building it lives in The European Space Agency this week inaugurated its new supercomputing facility built with HPE....

If operators are willing to cough up a 'green premium' and tax credits are not repealed An independent research body claims that geothermal power generation could provide an answer to the growing energy requirements of datacenters....

Steering Committee decides against merge of over-complex and largely unloved ALGOL-68 'at this point' Version 15 of the GNU Compiler Collection is getting close to release, and as it does, some changes are not going to make it....

Opposition faults leadership as officers accused of misleading councillors Birmingham City Council voted down proposals to hold a full independent inquiry into its disastrous introduction of an Oracle ERP system, which "effectively crippled" its ability to manage and report on its finances....

New feature on Google Pixel phones hints at a ChromeOS-like VM The March "feature drop" for Android 15 on Google Pixel devices includes an optional Linux session....