The Register

UK gov pays public £550 to discuss Digital ID – then bans journalists from the room

2026-04-24T08:30:07.00Z

Nothing says 'We want honest opinions' like a 36,000-letter mailshot with no awkward questions allowed

Members of the UK government’s People’s Panel on Digital ID will spend two weekends in Birmingham and three evenings on Zoom discussing how Britain should build a national digital identity system, earning £550 plus expenses for their trouble.…

Betting shop bug ends in kidnap plot as staff turn ransom artists

2026-04-24T07:45:15.00Z

Computer glitch spawns duplicate jackpots, disgruntled punters, and one very bad career choice

A computer glitch in a Spanish betting shop triggered a chain of events that ended with the store manager being kidnapped and held for €50,000 ($58,000) in ransom, allegedly by one of the shop's own employees.…

To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane

2026-04-24T07:00:15.00Z

Won't somebody think of the children not being hit by a load of building materials?

On Call Delivering excellent tech support can sometimes require heavy lifting, a feat The Register celebrates each Friday with a new instalment of On Call – the reader-contributed column that shares your stories of hoisting glitchy tech back to full function.…

Researchers find cyber-sabotage malware that may predate Stuxnet by five years

2026-04-24T06:56:22.00Z

FAST16 could be the first cyberweapon, and its effects could be with us today

Black Hat Asia Infosec outfit SentinelOne found malware that tries to induce errors in engineering and physics simulation software and therefore represents an attempt at sabotage, and suggests it was created years before the Stuxnet worm that aimed to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges.…

Weak security means attackers could disable all of a city's public EV chargers

2026-04-24T04:10:33.00Z

Demonstrated in China, probably applicable elsewhere

Black Hat Asia Developers of rented internet of things infrastructure – stuff like public EV chargers and shared e-bikes – are prioritizing user convenience over security, and leaving themselves exposed to wide-scale denial of service attacks on their services.…

Anthropic admits it dumbed down Claude when trying to make it smarter

2026-04-23T23:26:57.00Z

System changes and bugs overlapped to create the impression of general decline

Claude users who complained about the AI service producing lower-quality responses over the past month weren’t imagining it.…

Dev targeted by sophisticated job scam: 'I let my guard down, and ran the freaking code'

2026-04-23T21:38:27.00Z

Legit-looking website, camera-on interviews, jokes about backdoors ... it worked

EXCLUSIVE It all started with a LinkedIn message, as so many employment scams do these days.…

Solid-state batteries hold more juice, but keep cracking up. Now researchers know why

2026-04-23T21:15:12.00Z

Two teams, similar diagnosis: Ceramic electrolytes still refusing to cooperate

With more capacity and faster charging, solid-state batteries could be the next big thing in energy. And good news: researchers may have pinned down one major reason these batteries still fail before they can reach widespread commercial use.…

Claude Opus 4.7 has turned into an overzealous query cop, devs complain

2026-04-23T20:47:49.00Z

Rising refusal rate from Acceptable Use Classifier leaves customers paying for nothing

Anthropic's release last week of Opus 4.7 came with stronger safeguards to prevent misuse. Unfortunately, these safeguards have also managed to thwart legitimate use.…

Chinese attackers are pwning your infrastructure to use in attacks, 10 countries warn

2026-04-23T19:25:11.00Z

All the Typhoons, everywhere, all at once

A majority of China-linked threat actors are using compromised routers and IoT devices worldwide, turning this gear into proxy networks to carry out further intrusions, steal sensitive data, and disrupt victim organizations’ operations, according to a joint 10-country advisory.…

US Air Force department names firms to power its bases with mini nukes

2026-04-23T18:15:06.00Z

Three vendors matched to three sites

The US Department of the Air Force (DAF) has selected three companies for possible nuclear microreactor projects at three of its installations under a program aimed at improving energy resilience if the electricity grid goes down.…

YouTuber has DIMM idea, builds working DRAM in backyard

2026-04-23T17:43:14.00Z

What are you doing to solve the memory crisis?

If you follow PC hardware prices, you’ll know AI demand has pushed memory prices higher as manufacturers prioritize memory for datacenters. To deal with that, you can pay through the nose, buy less memory, or ... try to build your own DRAM.…

Google explains why its all-in-one AI stack embraces competitors

2026-04-23T17:13:36.00Z

'Differentiated, but open'

Google Cloud Next Google Cloud’s Andi Gutmans said that the company holds a structural advantage over its largest rivals in the race to win value from AI agents in the enterprise, arguing that no competitor currently combines cloud computing infrastructure, frontier AI models, and a data platform under one roof.…

Age checks could turn internet into an ID checkpoint, complains Proton CEO

2026-04-23T16:20:07.00Z

Push to protect minors risks hitting everyone online

Proton's boss has waded into the age verification fight with a warning that sounds less like child safety and more like an identity checkpoint for the entire internet.…

Microsoft gives your Word documents an AI co-author you didn’t ask for

2026-04-23T15:55:14.00Z

Also rolls out agentic Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint, letting 21st century Clippy lend a... hand

Microsoft is giving Copilot the power to stop suggesting edits and start making them.…

Datadog digs down into GPU efficiency as AI costs soar

2026-04-23T15:33:40.00Z

Down to you to work out the value

Datadog has added GPU monitoring to its observability stack, giving AI-hungry organizations more insight into exactly what's happening on their most expensive silicon.…

Everpure 'takes the hit' as AI-fueled supply crunch drives prices up 70%

2026-04-23T14:57:19.00Z

Storage vendor predicts current crunch will outlast COVID disruptions

The supply crunch gripping the storage market has pushed Everpure – the artist formerly known as Pure Storage – to reassure customers it won't make things worse.…

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope trumps Trump cuts, is launch-ready ahead of schedule

2026-04-23T13:57:15.00Z

Revolutionary telescope aiming for space after multiple near death experiences

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is ready for launch ahead of schedule despite repeated attempts by both Donald Trump's first and second administrations to cut funding.…

American farms have a new steward for their safety net, disaster programs... Palantir

2026-04-23T13:26:10.00Z

Wins $300M deal over Salesforce, IBM because of 'integration with existing USDA systems,' among other things

Palantir has won a $300 million contract from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to support the National Farm Security Action Plan (NFSAP) and modernize how USDA delivers services to America's farmers.…

AI now gobbling up power and management chips for servers

2026-04-23T12:59:13.00Z

Bad news for multiple general server components as vendors switch to more lucrative gear

The chip shortage is spreading to power and management controller silicon, threatening server shipments as vendors prioritize capacity for higher-margin AI server products.…

Medical data of 500k Biobank volunteers listed for sale on Alibaba, UK minister reveals

2026-04-23T12:34:49.00Z

World's largest biomedical dataset lifted and shifted on Chinese mega marketplace

Updated Details of volunteers of UK-based Biobank, which describes itself as the custodian of the world's most comprehensive biomedical dataset, are for sale on Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba.…

Hybrid clouds have two attack surfaces and you’re not paying enough attention to either

2026-04-23T12:15:12.00Z

Windows Admin Center flaws mean on-prem can attack cloud, and vice-versa

Black Hat Asia Israeli researchers found a series of flaws in Microsoft's Windows Admin Center (WAC) and suggest this shows hybrid cloud management tools are a two-way attack surface that users don't spend enough time worrying about.…

Musk bets Tesla's AI future on Intel node that isn't finished yet

2026-04-23T11:43:12.00Z

EV maker leaning on still-in-development 14A process for Terafab, says it needs to build own silicon

Elon Musk used Tesla's latest earnings call to reveal plans to build AI chips on Intel's not-yet-finished 14A process – a bet on silicon that doesn't exist.…

AI bats away ping-pong challenge as rise of the machines continues

2026-04-23T11:15:11.00Z

Sony project claims a significant breakthrough with applications in task requiring speed and accuracy

Rise of the Machines The ancient games of chess and Go are now mere staging posts in the journey toward robots demonstrating their superior performance to humans - the machines can now beat us fleshbags at ping-pong.…

If malware via monitor cables is a matter of national security, this might be the gadget for you

2026-04-23T10:45:11.00Z

Orgs can now buy UK cyber agency engineered commercial gadget, but details are slim

GCHQ's cyber arm has entered the hardware game with its first device designed to prevent cyberattacks on display devices.…

Google Meet or Google Mute? Even CEOs get borked sometimes

2026-04-23T10:15:07.00Z

Video conferencing has tripped us all up. Now cloud chief Thomas Kurian gets his turn

Bork!Bork!Bork! The curse of Bork is no respecter of status or class. It does not differentiate between a high-flying executive and a lowly worker. And so it was that Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian came unstuck due to some all-too-familiar video-conferencing struggles.…

Using the password 'admin123' wasn't as bad as sharing it on Slack

2026-04-23T09:28:12.00Z

Keeping it simple for the developers can lead to very complex headaches later

PWNED Welcome back to PWNED, the column where we celebrate the people who’ve taught us how not to secure a server. If you’ve ever tied your own shoelaces together, then tripped over them, or attempted to dive into a swimming pool but hit your head on the diving board, we’ll be talking about your cyber equivalent.…

Stale gov.uk pages are feeding AI overviews old data and Brits are believing it

2026-04-23T08:45:06.00Z

Whitehall content teams play whack-a-mole with zombie pages as Google hoovers up the lot

AI overviews from the likes of Google are serving up false summaries of UK government information by drawing on stale GOV.UK pages, according to content designers at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT).…

Pass the key, passwords have passed their sell-by date

2026-04-23T08:00:08.00Z

NCSC passes judgment: passkeys pass muster, passwords fail

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has officially endorsed passkeys as the default authentication standard, marking the first time the agency has told consumers to move away from passwords entirely.…

Kubernetes explains the release that kills Ingress NGINX with Japanese poetry and art

2026-04-23T01:44:41.00Z

Release team sets new standard for release notes by linking between Version 1.36 and classic print The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Kubernetes issued a new release called “Haru” on Wednesday, and the release notes and logo might be more interesting than the software.…

Another npm supply chain worm is tearing through dev environments

2026-04-22T22:34:59.00Z

Plus, the payload references 'TeamPCP/LiteLLM method'

Yet another npm supply-chain attack is worming its way through compromised packages, stealing secrets and sensitive data as it moves through developers' environments, and it shares significant overlap with the open source infections attributed to TeamPCP last month.…

Anthropic's super-scary bug hunting model Mythos is shaping up to be a nothingburger

2026-04-22T21:39:44.00Z

Hackpocalypse deferred

Anthropic's Mythos model is purportedly so good at finding vulnerabilities that the Claude-maker is afraid to make it available to the general public for fear that criminals will take advantage. But early analysis shows that Mythos may not be as dangerous as some would have you believe.…

SK Hynix’s aspirations for ’Merica-made HBM inch closer to reality

2026-04-22T20:28:25.00Z

New site set to begin manufacturing and testing HBM memory just in time for Nvidia's Rubin-Ultra GPUs in 2028

SK Hynix has reportedly broken ground on a new advanced memory packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, that should boost the supply of US-made high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a key component in high-end AI accelerators from the likes of Nvidia and AMD.…

OpenAI now lets you screenshot your privacy in the foot

2026-04-22T19:56:58.00Z

Make your model smarter through self-surveillance

Those who cannot remember Microsoft Recall are condemned to repeat it. …

GitHub opts all CLI users into telemetry collection whether they want it or not

2026-04-22T18:33:09.00Z

Opt-out instructions included if you're not keen on GitHub watching you in the name of product improvement

Users of GitHub's command-line interface (CLI) who value privacy, beware. The Microsoft-owned code-hosting platform has quietly begun collecting pseudonymous client-side telemetry from CLI users and enabled it by default.…

Linux may get a hall pass from one state age-check bill, but Congress plays hall monitor

2026-04-22T17:55:25.00Z

Colorado amendments could exempt open source OSes, code repos, and containers

The prospect of OS-level age checks applying to open source systems is a serious concern for FOSS advocates. Campaigners appear to have secured proposed exemptions for open source operating systems, code repositories, and containers in one US state, but stricter federal legislation has already been introduced in Congress.…

Datacenter boom keeps dirty coal plants alive in the US

2026-04-22T17:10:14.00Z

Happy Earth Day!

Datacenter growth in the US is helping keep aging fossil-fuel plants online longer, slowing the shift to a cleaner grid and worsening air pollution, according to new research from a group of environmental nonprofits.…

Workday, Rippling, and Slack flunk data access test, claims Fivetran

2026-04-22T16:40:21.00Z

Report also slams multiple vendors for poor data integration and egress fees

Workday, Rippling, and Salesforce-owned Slack rank among the worst performers for enterprise data movement, according to a new industry benchmark tracking the speeds needed to power analytics, machine learning, and AI agents.…

Thunderbird in hand worth 2 Outlooks as fresh FOSS fave and Firefox arrive

2026-04-22T16:06:22.00Z

Still here, still changing, still relevant, still your best choice

If you're stuck without access to tech support – say, half way to the Moon – then you're better off with a single install of Thunderbird than any number of Outlooks.…

You can now run WSL on Windows 95, in case you're crazy, too

2026-04-22T15:29:21.00Z

'I think this might be one of my greatest hacks of all time,' says dev behind unholy abomination

The Windows Subsystem for Linux is an invaluable tool, but anyone wanting to run it on a Windows 9x system would find themselves out of luck until now.…

NASA reckons the Artemis II heat shield performed like a champ

2026-04-22T14:13:19.00Z

Good news for future missions as initial findings agree with agency's design decision

Initial reports have confirmed NASA's assessment that the Orion heat shield kept the Artemis II crew safe during re-entry.…

Grafana offers AI assistant for free, warns users not to go mad

2026-04-22T12:57:02.00Z

Observability biz bets on business analytics wedge as Loki put on long-overdue diet

Grafana is offering its AI assistant for free to open source and on-prem users — though on stage at its Barcelona user conference this week, CEO Raj Dutt joked they shouldn't use it too much.…

Right to repair champ Framework punts modular 13in laptop with Core Ultra Series 3

2026-04-22T12:31:07.00Z

Latest hardware sports dock for graphic card, power sipping battery

Framework, maker of modular and repairable laptops, has spruced its line-up with a completely redesigned 13-inch model sporting the latest Intel CPUs, new components for its 16-inch system, and a dock that lets users add devices like a desktop graphics card.…

Google claims to have all the answers for enterprise AI agent sprawl

2026-04-22T12:03:32.00Z

As biz agentic bot-wrangling intensifies, company says AI orchestration, security and infrastructure tools on the way

Google Cloud Next Google has overhauled its enterprise AI strategy in the wake of the agentic push across the biz landscape, rebranding and expanding its Vertex AI developer platform into what it now calls the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.…

Google unleashes even more AI security agents to fight the baddies

2026-04-22T12:01:43.00Z

Along with a bunch of new services to make sure those same agents don't cause chaos

Google Cloud Next Google Cloud chief operating officer Francis deSouza has summed up his company's security strategy du jour as follows: "You need to use AI to fight AI."…

Forget one chip to rule them all: With TPU 8, Google has an AI arms race to win

2026-04-22T12:00:07.00Z

x86 gets the boot as Google pairs up its TPUs with some Arm-based Axion cores

Google Cloud Next Google unveiled two new in-house AI accelerators at its annual Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday: one designed to speed up training and another aimed at driving down model serving costs.…

France's 'Secure' ID agency probes breach as crooks claim 19M records

2026-04-22T11:30:09.00Z

Gov admits 'incident' as forum sellers boast of fresh haul covering up to a third of the population

France's National Agency for "Secure" Documents is explaining a potential data spill just as crooks online claim they've nicked a third of the country's ID information.…

Scotland Yard can keep using live facial recognition on people in London, say judges

2026-04-22T11:14:33.00Z

Judges say cops face-slurping not a problem under current human rights laws

London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has survived a legal challenge that attempted to curb its rollout of live facial recognition (LFR) technology across the capital.…

UK tribunal sends £2B claim accusing Microsoft of overcharging for licensing to trial

2026-04-22T11:08:04.00Z

Legal action claims tech giant charges more for Windows Server when it's not on Azure

A UK Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) has dismissed Microsoft's objections to a collective action lawsuit brought by UK-based cloud licensees, clearing the way for trial.…

Database world trying to build natural language query systems again – this time with LLMs

2026-04-22T10:00:08.00Z

Text-to-SQL might be useful for analysts and DBAs, but be cautious with general user adoption

Over the past few years, database and analytics vendors have hopped on a bandwagon that may take us all to a destination where common data queries are free from the constraints of the specialist query language SQL.…