The Register

US pulls back from Trump's threatened 100% levy but not everyone pleased at Europe's concessions

World War Fee  The US and European Union have fleshed out details on their sweeping trade deal, promising billions in AI chip sales, a 15 percent tariff cap on key sectors including autos and semiconductors, and a framework for digital rule-making that could reshape the transatlantic tech industry.…

If anyone’s gonna lock in Uncle Sam’s business, it'd better be us!

It's now safe to say the gang's all here when it comes to big generative AI model makers signing dollar discount deals with Uncle Sam. Google has joined Anthropic and OpenAI, inking questionable short-term discount terms for government agencies. …

Update boosts Microsoft file imports, adds new spreadsheet functions, and drops older Windows

LibreOffice 25.8 arrives with a tagline of "smarter, faster and more reliable." That all sounds good. So what's new?…

But the free AI Mode itself can now take your history into account

The all-AI search mode Google introduced earlier this year has sprouted a one-trick AI agent – but only those willing to pay top dollar for the privilege.…

Latest Windows Insider Build puts time and language options in Settings

Microsoft has continued its efforts to nudge users toward the Windows Settings app from the venerable Control Panel, with language and time settings making the jump.…

GSA AI chief says market can do better but the feds needed a kickstart

The Trump administration just launched a detailed, AI-pushing platform for federal agencies last week, but a government leader is already promising to kill it. …

What testing is happening before changes hit production?

Microsoft had a midweek meltdown on Wednesday as a chunk of its productivity suite fell out of the cloud.…

Everything a criminal needs for targeted attacks exposed, but telco insists 'no critical data compromised'

A significant data theft at Orange Belgium has opened hundreds of thousands of its customers to serious cybersecurity risks.…

Good start, but you have to keep it up, say key players

Feature  It's not easy to grow a national chip industry. Semiconductor startups are a risky investment. They chew through early-stage capital, often with little to show for it, making them a long-term proposition. Those that pay off can deliver big, but success is far from guaranteed.…

Feds say Mirai-spawned botnet blasted 370K attacks before AWS and pals helped yank its servers

RapperBot, a botnet-for-hire blamed for hundreds of thousands of DDoS attacks, has been yanked offline by the Feds, who also hauled in its alleged Oregon-based mastermind.…

Another 'extremely sophisticated' exploit chewing at Cupertino's walled garden

Apple has shipped emergency updates to fix an actively exploited zero-day in its ImageIO framework, warning that the flaw has already been abused in targeted attacks.…

Researcher claims extension didn't start out by exfiltrating info... while dev says its actions are 'compliant'

Security boffins at Koi Security have warned of a shift in behavior of a popular Chrome VPN extension, FreeVPN.One, which recently appears to have begun snaffling screenshots of users' page activity and transmitting them to a remote server without their knowledge – and Google has yet to take it down.…

Researchers disclosing their findings said 'it's as bad as it sounds'

Updated  Researchers at watchTowr just published working proof-of-concept exploits for two unauthenticated remote code execution bug chains in backup giant Commvault.…

Compositional risk from multiple MCP Servers highlighted by report

Microsoft has declared general availability for MCP (model context protocol) servers in Visual Studio, likely to be the second most popular IDE after Visual Studio Code and with wide enterprise use.…

Web giant reworks AI infra to improve utilization, with mix of chips from home and away

Chinese web giant Baidu's robot taxi operations in China are breaking even when measured as a standalone business - and is confident they will be profitable once the company rolls into global markets.…

They're cheap and grew up with AI … so you're firing them why?

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has suggested firing junior workers because AI can do their jobs is "the dumbest thing I've ever heard."…

Fork runs Android apps and keeps old PCs ticking over ... all without signing into an account with the mothership

FydeOS is an alternative to ChromeOS Flex, but with a few significant differences – including Google-account-free operation.…

US policymakers should take heed, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation

opinion  Implementation of the UK's Online Safety Act is giving internet users around the globe – including those in US states moving to enact their own age verification laws – real-time proof that such laws impinge on everyone's rights to speak, read, and view freely. …

Great Firewall took out all traffic to port 443 at a time Beijing didn't have an obvious need to keep its netizens in the dark

China cut itself off from much of the global internet for just over an hour on Wednesday.…

Redmond doesn't bother informing customers about some security fixes

UPDATED  Microsoft has chosen not to tell customers about a recently patched vulnerability in M365 Copilot.…