dispelledTerminal
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South Korean chip startup FuriosaAI invades European datacenters
Power-efficient South Korean AI chip startup FuriosaAI has landed on European shores. On Tuesday, the chip biz revealed that it had begun fielding its RNGD — pronounced “renegade” — line of AI accelerators at colocation giant Equinix’s LS2 datacenter in Lisbon, Portugal. Founded by June Paik and Hanjoon Kim back in 2017, before LLMs were cool, Furiosa has largely focused its attention on the Sout…
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CAI cloud worm gives competitors' malware the boot, then steals secrets and mines for coin
EXCLUSIVE There's no honor among thieves as a new worm steals from other infectious software. It pilfers “multiple” victims’ credentials and mines for cryptocurrency while killing competitors’ processes, including similar secret-harvesting malware. It’s called Cloud AI Infrastructure Attack Framework (CAI), and it’s a centralized botnet that targets cloud-native developer tools like Docker, Kuber…
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NASA calls time on CAPSTONE after four years of lunar orbit lessons
After four years of operations around the Moon, NASA's CAPSTONE mission has bitten the lunar dust, in a manner of speaking. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) was launched in 2022, with a primary mission to validate the near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) intended for NASA's "paused" Gateway space station. Launched in June 2022 on…
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New tool gives CLIs a warm and GUI feeling instead
Using command-line tools is often the best way to get something done, but remembering all those flags is a chore. Now, you can let a simple open-source CLI module turn any command into a GUI for you instead. That’s the solution Jordanian full-stack software engineer Omar Soutari built for his first entry into the FOSS community and released this week. Instagui, as he calls it, parses CLI tools’ h…
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Predatorgate snoopfest victims launch €8M sueball at spyware maker
Eight victims of Greece’s spyware scandal, later dubbed “Predatorgate,” have sued the Athens-based company behind the program used to surveil them. According to the Predator victims’ lawyer, Zacharias Kesses, each of the plaintiffs is asking for €1 million in moral damages after having their devices hacked between 2020 and 2021. Among those seeking damages is journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who was…
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Court tosses Microsoft's appeal in pre-owned software licenses battle
The UK's Court of Appeal has dismissed Microsoft's appeal against a ruling that ValueLicensing (VL) can resell pre-owned software licences. The judgment, handed down July 7, follows a ruling by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in November that customers could resell their licenses, even if Office contained clipart. In 2021, VL filed a claim accusing Microsoft of stifling the market for pre-o…
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Put all your data and AI to work and get it out of silos and lakehouses
Imagine your refrigerator sits in another building, 100 metres from your kitchen. Every time you cook, you walk over for each ingredient, then walk back to check that you closed the fridge door. That could be another long walk back if you forgot the milk for your morning coffee. Until the agentic era, this was the norm. Data could live in that fridge and get pulled when needed. Applications and h…
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Microsoft flips Windows Backup to on by default unless you're in the EU
Microsoft is enabling Windows Backup for Organizations by default in Windows 11 26H2 everywhere except the EU, meaning businesses elsewhere with sovereignty and privacy concerns will be forced opt out instead. Now dubbed "Windows settings backup and restore," the service backs up a device's settings and a list of installed Microsoft Store apps, which can then be restored to a new device. Microsof…
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Enterprise AI still smarting from leaping before looking
The majority of companies that deploy AI systems end up shooting themselves in the foot with security, according to DigiCert. Seventy-eight percent of enterprises report "experiencing AI-related security incidents or identifying AI-related vulnerabilities," the digital identity biz said in a commissioned survey. Among respondents, 27.7 percent experienced one incident, 21.9 percent experienced mu…
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DRAM prices are killing the cheap smartphone
Rising memory prices are making budget smartphones commercially unviable to produce, forcing users to delay upgrades, pay more for higher-tier devices, or turn to the second-hand market instead. This is according to analyst Omdia, which estimates memory costs accounted for almost 60 percent of the total bill of materials in sub-$400 smartphones during calendar Q1 of 2026 – and things haven't impr…
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Fake IT bods on Microsoft Teams coax workers into installing malware
Cybercriminals are using fake IT support calls on Microsoft Teams to persuade employees to surrender control of their PCs before installing the EtherRAT remote access trojan, according to researchers at Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42. Victims receive a phishing email disguised as an employee survey before a follow-up Microsoft Teams call from someone claiming to be IT support. During the call, the a…
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Spain collars alleged pro-Russia hacktivist after FBI tip-off
Spanish police have arrested a man they believe is affiliated with at least two pro-Russia hacktivist groups linked to attacks on critical national infrastructure (CNI). Arrested in March at his home in Palencia, central Spain, the man is suspected of having close ties to CyberArmy of Russia Reborn (CARR) and Z-Pentest, and may have carried out attacks on behalf of NoName057(16). All three hackti…
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Government's cyber pledge lands 60 signatories, including M&S and, somehow, Capita
After serving as last year’s poster child for retail cyber misery, Marks & Spencer has become one of the first companies to sign up to the UK government's new Cyber Resilience Pledge. The retailer is among 60 organizations that have signed up to the voluntary scheme, launched by technology secretary Liz Kendall on Tuesday. Signatories commit to treating cybersecurity as a board-level responsibili…
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MPs tell Brit government: Sort out your tech sovereignty or get left out in the cold
MPs are warning the UK has no "coherent strategy" for creating sovereign capabilities across a range of technologies, including AI, space, and quantum computing. A report published Tuesday by the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee says the UK is in a global race for sovereign tech capabilities, with AI emerging as a "central arena" for competition and collaboration. A recent move by the…
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Northern Ireland tries (again) to expel Capita from schools IT contract
Four years after its first attempt, Northern Ireland's Education Authority (EANI) is trying once again to replace Capita, with a procurement for an IT services deal worth up to £851 million. An earlier effort to replace the UK tech services company foundered when EANI ended its £485 million contract with Fujitsu by "mutual agreement" after "extensive negotiations" in November 2024. The deal's col…
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UK guts planning red tape so datacenters can bypass the neighbors faster
Reform of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 aims to cut a year off the approval process for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) in England and Wales – a category that now includes datacenters. The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) confirmed that changes under the Act, taking effect later this month, will scrap the statutory requirement for pre-a…
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Brussels shows how to remove friction from collaboration
When the Flemish Government set out to renovate its Brussels headquarters, it had two strategic aims. The first was to create a workplace that encouraged hybrid workers to come to the office more regularly, by fashioning a space that fostered connection, teamwork, collaboration, and a deeper sense of wellbeing and belonging. The second goal was sustainability. Another objective was that the gover…
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Broadcom and Apple extend custom silicon pact to 2031
Broadcom has signed a deal to provide Apple with custom chips until 2031. The chips and code shop has supplied Apple with silicon since the late 2000s when its wireless products found a home in early iPhone models. Broadcom’s silicon has found its way into iThings ever since. Broadcom’s announcement of its extended relationship with Cupertino is brief, stating only that the two companies “have ag…
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Samsung’s profits jump 19x in a year and you don’t need AI to figure out why
Samsung has delivered guidance for its second quarter results and forecast profits 19 times higher than it managed in the same period of 2025. In Q2 last year, the Korean giant’s sales totalled ₩75.7 trillion ($49.7 billion) and operating profit landed at ₩4.68 trillion ($3.1 billion). Fast forward a year, and Samsung told investors that once its accountants finish their work, they’ll report sale…
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IBM teases new rackable mainframes that ‘complete’ the z17 family
IBM has posted an announcement that teases the introduction of rack-mounted and single-frame versions of its z17 mainframes. Big Blue’s documentation for the z17 mentions only a model called the ME1 that scales from single-rack to four-rack systems. The Tuesday announcement mentions bundles called the z17 ME2 and IBM z17 MER, respectively a single-frame and rack-mounted affair. The announcement d…
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AI startup that’s never turned a profit say's it'll totally be around in 2047 to close its $19B lease
In its short life, Anthropic has captured hearts, minds, and wallets – and spooked the US government – but it hasn’t actually turned a profit. That’s not stopping CEO Dario Amodei from signing a two-decade lease with crypto-mining outfit turned AI datacenter operator TeraWulf. Anthropic believes it’s not only going to survive any AI bubble burst but keep operating until 2047, or at least that’s w…
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Boffins bet on quantum computers, AI supers to solve fusion fuel dilemma
Fusion energy has presented a tantalizing alternative to fossil fuels for the better part of a century, but creating the equivalent of a human-made sun is easier said than done. However, new research from the boffins at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Cleveland Clinic, and IBM in support of the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Genesis Mission suggests quantum computers and perhaps a sprinkl…
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Software engineers can still rake in big bucks by working for fast-growing companies
If you listen to the AI industry, coders' days are numbered. Despite these concerns, software developers, at least those with experience, appear to be doing just fine at growing companies. Hiring biz Levels.fyi recently looked at how US compensation for software engineers (SWEs) is related to changes in headcount and found that salary level tends to be correlated with growth. "Generally, the comp…
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Madlad builds homebrew GPU using 8,192 RISC-V chips
If you can't afford a graphics card these days, here's an alternative solution. Just order thousands of microcontrollers, design your own boards, and build your own cluster over the course of six months after dealing with a healthy dose of setbacks. At the end of it, you might even have something able to light up the equivalent of a QVGA display with a whopping resolution of 320x200 for your effo…
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GitHub cuts short offer to burn repos on CD after mockery ensues
Monday was the last day to score your own free CD of your GitHub repository, which the Microsoft-owned subsidiary offered to mail to the first 1,000 people who asked. But as of noon eastern time, that offer has been withdrawn (if it was ever genuine) after sparking confusion and ridicule. Last Thursday, GitHub issued a short notice on X extending an offer: In light of recent developments in physi…
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EU urged to act after Pegasus infects phone of spyware inquiry MEP
Civil liberties groups have accused the EU of dragging its feet in implementing key measures to prevent spyware infections after Citizen Lab revealed a former member of European Parliament was placed under surveillance during his time in office. Stelios Kouloglou, a former investigative journalist, served as a Greek MEP between 2014 and 2023 and was a substitute member of the inquiry into the use…
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Samsung floats 2028 launch for seaborne datacenter
Samsung expects to have its first floating datacenter (FDC) operational by the second calendar quarter of 2028. The Korean conglomerate is one of several companies pursuing waterborne bit barns, as recently covered by The Register. It has now put a specific date on those plans, according to the Seoul Economic Daily, which reports Samsung is weighing multiple candidate projects to commercialize an…
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Microsoft says the world is changing faster than it can keep up as it guts commercial, Xbox teams
Hard times have come to Microsoft employees. Thousands of Microsoft team members reported to work following the US holiday weekend to learn their jobs no longer exist, with Redmond gutting its Commercial business and Xbox team, and spinning off several game studios to cut costs. Microsoft human resources boss Amy Coleman announced that the company is eliminating some 4,800 roles Monday morning in…
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AMD’s Ryzen AI Halo makes local AI look easy, but at $4K, easy doesn't come cheap
A year ago the Ryzen AI Halo, AMD's tiny new AI workstation, would have offered devs and machine learning enthusiasts an Nvidia DGX Spark-like experience at a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately for AMD, time and the ongoing memory shortage, which both AMD itself and Nvidia are partially responsible for, haven't been kind to the consumer electronics industry. Launching at a hair under $4,000, the…
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Europe's new import rules are coming for your bargains
Updated: Last week, a small customs fee landed in the EU that may have outsized consequences. Imports of single items from outside the EU are now hit with a new €3 duty, a rule that affects a range of people including electronics hobbyists and techies who prefer their printer toner off-brand. The seller or importer is generally responsible for declaring and paying the duty, but folks who build el…
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Even banks and hyperscalers are now sounding the alarm about the AI bubble
KETTLE From international banking worries to the market state of canary-in-the-coal-mine Oracle, the AI bubble is sure looking taut. The Bank for International Settlements, often referred to as "the central bank for central banks", said in a report at the end of June that it was worried the AI bubble was nigh on to popping and taking the global economy with it. Oracle, the hyperscaler with arguab…
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Brit supermarket giant triples down on facial recog to nab shoplifters
The UK's second largest supermarket is tripling the number of stores that use facial recognition to try to clamp down on shoplifters – a move privacy campaigners are branding as "shameful." Sainsbury's first trialed the tech at premises in Sydenham and Bath Oldfield Park from September last year, before deploying it to shops across London earlier in 2026. More than 55 Sainsbury's supermarkets use…
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Moody Bible Institute breach leaves 2.3M accounts needing salvation, says cyber expert
Data on more than 2.3 million people associated with Moody Bible Institute (MBI) has been exposed online after the Christian college was targeted by ShinyHunters. The attack was first disclosed by MBI in June, and the extortion crew later leaked the stolen data. Have I Been Pwned has since added the cache to its breach notification database, putting a figure on the number of exposed accounts. MBI…
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Secure Unix ancestor KSOS did type safety before Rust made it cool
For the first time, the source code of KSOS, backed by the US Department of Defense in the late 1970s and 1980s, is available to the public in the archives of The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS). TUHS volunteers preserve the historical source code and documentation of the original UNIX – or as much of it as is left. A few days ago, in an email to its mailing list, TUHS founder Warren Toomey announce…
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Insert token to continue, says AI. Yeah, about that...
OPINION It is too early to call peak 2026, but if we allow midterms, it's hard to beat Caveman. Caveman is a Claude Code skill that strips away non-essential linguistic components of the AI's output, making it communicate in a parody of a coding Neanderthal. Yes, this is a good way to use the products of an industry expected to spend a trillion dollars on capex this year. Ug fix API. Hyperscalers…
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Apprentice developer defied orders – then got a job supporting her weird code
WHO, ME? Welcome to another installment of "Who, Me?" – The Register's Monday column that celebrates mistakes readers make at work and reveals their escape routes. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Kara" who told us that in 1999 she scored an apprenticeship with a now-bankrupt telecoms equipment manufacturer. The gig saw Kara study software engineering one day a week and spend the rest…
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Japan’s asteroid sample retriever rapidly buzzes remote space rock
UPDATED Japan’s Hayabusa2 craft has just buzzed an asteroid, successfully completing the first objective of its extended mission. Hayabusa2 launched in 2014, and four years later arrived at Asteroid Ryugu. In 2019 the craft sent a pair of landers onto Ryugu’s surface and collected samples that it dropped off in the Australian outback in late 2020. Analysis of those samples suggests Ryugu is home…
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Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again
The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again. As The Register has explained many, many, times since this matter first went to court in 2003, the roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created “Project…
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EY sacks staff for allegedly accessing Australian Prime Minister’s bank account
ASIA IN BRIEF The Down Under outpost of consultancy EY has fired two staff after they allegedly accessed details about bank accounts held by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Local media report that the pair were employees of the artist formerly known as Ernst and Young, which used them to work on a contract for Australia’s Commonwealth Bank where they allegedly accessed details of the…
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MFA-optional banks leave safe doors (and accounts) wide open for thieves to pillage
OPINION I write a weekly column called PWNED, about how poor security practices can lead to serious damage. Usually, there’s something funny in the malfeasance, like a CEO who kept every employee’s password in an Excel file on his desktop. However, I wasn’t laughing back in May when professional thieves invaded my 84-year-old mother’s entire financial life and managed to make off with $30,000 fro…
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C programmers commit fresh crimes against readability
The Twenty-Ninth International Obfuscated C Code Contest – or IOCCC for short – is back again with the results of the 2025 competition. This year, one of the entrants has a unique new trick up their sleeve: a valid use case. When we reported on last year's event, it had just been revived from a four-year hiatus, so we're happy to see it back so soon. As we write, the judging concluded some three…
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Confidential computing's core trust mechanism is broken. The fix may not exist
Vendors are trying to position "confidential computing" as the technical backbone of Europe's sovereign cloud ambitions. But new research shows that a security protocol used to prove cryptographic trust in the system may have a fundamental architectural flaw. Confidential computing rests on a mechanism called remote attestation, in which a server cryptographically proves to a client that it is ru…
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NASA says it will isolate volunteers from the outside world for a year
For those growing sick of Earth's geopolitics, NASA is looking for volunteers to spend a year living and working in isolated conditions in preparation for a journey to some other celestial orb. The US space agency is set to carry out a simulated deep space mission from no earlier than August 2027 to understand what might happen to its human lab rats during planned crewed missions to the Moon or M…
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David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82
OBITUARY South African-born pioneer of the British tech industry David Potter, the man behind the iconic Psion pocket computers, passed away on 28th June, six days before his 83rd birthday. Potter was the founder of the company of the same name, a pivotal firm in the British technology industry from the 1980s to the 2000s. Psion supplied software for the early computers from Sinclair Research, th…
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Amazon Leo constellation nears 400 satellites as broadband launch looms
Amazon says it is preparing to roll out satellite broadband this year after the latest rocket launch brought its Leo constellation up to 396 units. The digital bazaar and cloud computing giant reports that an Atlas V rocket launch on July 2 successfully propelled 29 satellites into low Earth orbit for the Amazon Leo network, formerly known as Project Kuiper until November last. Amazon hasn't fini…
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AdaptHealth says attackers sweet-talked their way into cloud systems and stole patient data
AdaptHealth says attackers used social engineering to breach its systems and steal sensitive patient data, including passwords associated with insurance billing. The medical equipment company disclosed the attack to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, noting that attackers accessed internal patient management systems, document storage platforms, and external electronic healt…
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Startup targets datacenters with 3D-printed nuclear reactor module
US startup Ampera has produced what it claims is the first 3D-printed nuclear reactor module. The firm says it is working towards delivering scalable, emission-free power for datacenters, defense applications, and off-grid sites. Ampera unveiled its first nuclear reactor module during an event at the firm's innovation center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. More than 100 people attended, including…
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NetNut cracked as Google and FBI target 2 million-device botnet
Tech companies working with US law enforcement "significantly degraded" the NetNut residential proxy network as part of an ongoing effort to disrupt the tools cybercriminals use to conceal their activity, say researchers. The work was carried out by Google, Lumen, Shadowserver, the FBI, and others, and marks a continuation of the IPIDEA proxy network disruption from January. According to Google C…
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AI bills are baffling the C-suite after shift to usage-based pricing
Nearly a third of corporate leaders report difficulty understanding and controlling operating costs when implementing business AI at scale, according to a survey from KPMG. In recent months, Anthropic, OpenAI, and GitHub have shifted some services away from flat-rate subscriptions toward usage-based billing. "As usage-based pricing models become more common, many organizations are still building…
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EU appears to find datacenter emissions easier to offset than lobbyists
The European Union's proposed environmental rating system for datacenters may be amended in response to lobbying from IT industry heavyweights, making it easier to offset greenhouse gas emissions using clean energy certificates. According to the Financial Times, the European Commission is weakening its original proposals after pressure from datacenter operators and tech giants. The newspaper clai…