The Register

Only 13% are AI-ready; the rest are bolting it on and hoping for ROI

Contrary to popular belief, you can't succeed in business (or AI) without really trying. Many orgs are jumping on the AI bandwagon without the infrastructure they need to make it work or track results, Cisco says. Most haven't even defined what they want their AI agents to do.…

Vibe coding may have played a role in what took researchers months to fix

Developers of VS Code extensions are leaking sensitive secrets left, right and center, according to researchers who worked with Microsoft to combat an issue that could have led to some nasty supply chain attacks.…

Raymond Chen says the OS used green-screen overlays to fake video playback – with curious side effects

Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has answered a lingering Windows question – why did video screenshots keep playing in Paint?…

Beijing's self-reliance push and US export limits hit orders

Europe's tech darling ASML has warned Chinese demand for its chipmaking kit will plummet next year, as Beijing doubles down on home-grown alternatives in response to Uncle Sam's export restrictions and trade war shenanigans.…

Downstream Linux projects line up behind the latest release

A month after Debian 13.1's release, some of the more visible downstream forks, including Raspberry Pi OS, have decided it's time to incorporate the latest version of the main OS into their builds.…

Second huge increase in six months sees some devs heading for the exit

Augment has updated its pricing model for Augment Code, an AI coding assistant, to be based on AI usage rather than message interactions. The company said its existing model "isn't sustainable" but users have calculated that the new one is more than ten times as expensive.…

IDC and Counterpoint say premium kit is driving sales in both new and used markets

Premium devices are what smartphone buyers want right now, and it seems that applies equally to the latest devices and second-hand models destined for emerging markets.…

ICO makes example of outsourcing giant over sluggish cyber response

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a £14 million ($18.6 million) penalty to outsourcing giant Capita following a catastrophic 2023 cyberattack that exposed the personal data of 6.6 million people.…

Germany's northernmost state bins Outlook – and tens of thousands of Redmond licenses

Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of Germany, has finally concluded one element of a long-running project to eject Microsoft from its infrastructure by giving Exchange Server the boot.…

University team picks up voice calls, texts, and corporate data from orbit with off-the-shelf kit

Updated  Geostationary satellites are broadcasting large volumes of unencrypted data to Earth, including private voice calls and text messages as well as consumer internet traffic, researchers have discovered.…

Think tank cautions that without job cuts or capital savings, the math doesn't add up

UK government's plans to save £45 billion through the application of AI in the public sector lack clarity and are based on broad-brush assumptions, Members of Parliament have heard.…

And which will crash, repeatedly, until users learn how to handle it safely

Column  Steve Jobs probably didn't remember how many times he skinned his knees learning to ride a bike before describing a personal computer as a "bicycle for the mind." Jobs' point was that both tools help us to go further, faster, with just a little extra effort.…

In the Agentic Enterprise, 'AI doesn’t replace people, it elevates them'

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff heralded the arrival of the agentic era during his keynote at the CRM giant's annual Dreamforce conference.…

Plus: Adobe, SAP, Ivanti offer treats, not tricks

Spooky season is in full swing, and this extends to Microsoft's October Patch Tuesday with security updates for a frightful 175 Microsoft vulnerabilities, plus an additional 21 non-Microsoft CVEs. And even scarier than the sheer number of bugs: three are listed as under attack, with three others publicly known, and 17 deemed critical security holes.…

America's main cybersecurity agency has lost almost 1,000 people this year

The Trump administration has continued to cut staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and is reportedly reassigning others, further imperiling the US' cybersecurity posture. …

New clusters to feature 800,000 Nvidia Blackwell and 50,000 AMD Instinct MI450X GPUs

Oracle on Tuesday revealed it would field more than 18 zettaFLOPS worth of AI infrastructure from Nvidia and AMD by the second half of next year.…

Maybe this will bring in some actual profit?

OpenAI has mitigated ChatGPT behavior that might exacerbate users' mental health issues, claims CEO Sam Altman, so the natural next step is to make ChatGPT act more human again - complete with the ability to generate "erotica for verified adults."…

You can't always get what you want

Most corporate laptop fleets consist primarily of PCs. However, there’s always a contingent of users who beg for Macs. Deciding who gets a Mac in your organization involves balancing IT’s need for simplicity, finance’s requirement to keep costs under control, and users’ desire to work with their preferred tools.…

To the slop trough, kiddos!

Not content to shove Copilot into every corner of the enterprise it can think of, Microsoft has announced plans to force feed AI to students across its home state of Washington. …

Crims turned trusted mapping software into a hideout - no traditional malware required

A Chinese state-backed cybergang known as Flax Typhoon spent more than a year burrowing inside an ArcGIS server, quietly turning the trusted mapping software into a covert backdoor.…