The Register

Decision to use MXFP4 makes models smaller, faster, and more importantly, cheaper for everyone involved

Analysis  Whether or not OpenAI's new open weights models are any good is still up for debate, but their use of a relatively new data type called MXFP4 is arguably more important, especially if it catches on among OpenAI's rivals.…

PLUS: Huawei open sources its CUDA equivalent; China boosts brain-computer interfaces; Scientists to visit penguins Trump taxed; And more!

Asia In Brief  Indian services giant Tata Consultancy Services will shed over 10,000 staff but will give pay rises to most of those who remain.…

PLUS: Crypto mixer founders plead guilty; Another French telco hacked; Meta fights WhatsApp scams; And more!

Infosec In Brief  A critical vulnerability in the on-prem version of Trend Micro's Apex One endpoint security platform is under active exploitation, the company admitted last week, and there's no patch available.…

'Although the incident has been marked resolved, in practice it lingers,' admin tells us

A problem with resources for virtual machines is still affecting users in Azure's East US region after more than a week, frustrated admins have told us, despite Microsoft saying the incident is now resolved.…

Five pilot deployments are just a drop in the bucket, so it's time to turbo scale

def con  A DEF CON hacker walks into a small-town water facility…no, this is not the setup for a joke or a (super-geeky) odd-couple rom-com. It's a true story that happened at five utilities across four states.…

Acting Administrator has selected a lucky orbiter, but won't say which one

The NASA acting Administrator has picked a Space Shuttle to move to Houston, and the lucky vehicle is... NASA's not telling.…

A pair of German researchers showed how easy it is

Black Hat  Four countries have now tested anti-satellite missiles (the US, China, Russia, and India), but it's much easier and cheaper just to hack them.…

Not everyone wants to be simulated after they're gone

People die but their data may endure, which troubles legal scholar Victoria Haneman.…

Does 40 quid from the supplier sound all right for waiting over 6 weeks for a fix?

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero plans "tough new obligations" for energy suppliers to boost the long-delayed and heavily over-budget UK rollout of smart meters, while promising better support for those who have already received such a device.…

LLMs still struggle with accurate text within graphics

hands on  OpenAI's GPT-5, unveiled on Thursday, is supposed to be the company's flagship model, offering better reasoning and more accurate responses than previous-gen products. But when we asked it to draw maps and timelines, it responded with answers from an alternate dimension.…

Campaigners brand Home Office’s lack of transparency as ‘astonishing’ and ‘dangerous’

updated  Privacy groups report a surge in UK police facial recognition scans of databases secretly stocked with passport photos lacking parliamentary oversight.…

To keep toxic content from damaging brands, both people and machines have a place

Human content moderators still outperform AI when it comes to recognizing policy-violating material, but they also cost significantly more.…

In misinformation, Russia might be the top dog but the Chinese are coming warns former NSA boss

DEF CON  A cache of documents uncovered by Vanderbilt University has revealed disturbing details about how a Chinese company is building up a database of US politicians and influencers with whom to share propaganda.…

Bugs in the current LTS are getting squished

The latest point release of the current Ubuntu LTS is here, with a new kernel and a host of improvements for server and desktop alike.…

Fun feature found in Debian 13: send your selected text to China – in plaintext

As Trixie gets ready to début, a little-known app is hogging the limelight: StarDict, which sends whatever text you select, unencrypted, to servers in China.…

Tells The Reg China's ability to p0wn Redmond's wares 'gives me a political aneurysm'

Comment  Roger Cressey served two US presidents as a senior cybersecurity and counter-terrorism advisor and currently worries he'll experience a "political aneurysm" due to Microsoft's many security messes.…

Science budget? Whatever. It's all about beating China and Russia

NASA's Acting Administrator, Sean Duffy, has directed the US space agency to come up with a plan to deploy a nuclear reactor on the Moon.…

Not a very smart home: crims could hijack smart-home boiler, open and close powered windows and more. Now fixed

Black hat  A trio of researchers has disclosed a major prompt injection vulnerability in Google's Gemini large language model-powered applications.…

New SaaS system awaits a 'fully costed and deliverable integrated plan' before it can support 280,000 employees

The UK's pensions and social security department has modified a 12-year-old contract with Sopra Steria, tacking on more than £100 million to allow it to run legacy systems for another three years.…

It's 'more than a temporary trend,' Decodo claims

Amid the furor around surging VPN usage in the UK, many users are eyeing proxies as a potential alternative to the technology.…