The Register

SQL Server and Cosmos DB added to data lake platform as lure for building AI features into transactional systems

Microsoft is throwing more transactional database systems into its Fabric analytics and data lake environment in expectation the proximity will help users that are adding AI to their systems.…

A simple text editor that dates back to Windows 1.0 is getting smartified

Microsoft has continued to shovel AI into its built-in Windows inbox apps, and now it's rolling out a Notepad update that will use Copilot to write text for you.…

Fastly acquisition asks that redirects be set up before December 31

Three years after confirming its acquisition by Fastly, Glitch is pulling the plug on its app hosting platform.…

Aircraft Hazard Area now stretches 1,600 nautical miles

Updated  The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given SpaceX the go-ahead to launch Starship Flight 9, but has nearly doubled the size of the vehicle's Aircraft Hazard Area (AHA).…

Cyberbaddies are coming for your M365 creds, US infosec agency warns

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that SaaS companies are under fire from criminals on the prowl for cloud apps with weak security.…

The coffee shows no signs of cooling

Feature  It was 30 years ago when the first public release of the Java programming language introduced the world to Write Once, Run Anywhere – and showed devs something cuddlier than C and C++.…

From bit barn to algae farm?

Euro datacenter operator Data4 is trialling a project to reuse heat from its servers and captured carbon dioxide to grow algae that can then be used in the agri-food or pharmacology sectors.…

AI-optimized CPUs promise 4.6GHz clocks, at least for one in eight cores

Computex  When Nvidia first teased its Arm-based Grace CPU back in 2021, many saw it as a threat to Intel and AMD. Four years later, the Arm-based silicon is at the heart of the GPU giant's most powerful AI systems, but it has not yet replaced x86 entirely.…

It's not radical, but it is slim and pretty – usually a winning combination

AnduinOS, a one-man project from a Chinese Microsoft engineer, is quite a new Ubuntu remix that reshapes GNOME in the image of Windows 11.…

Care board defers decision to adopt national system

Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB) has decided not to adopt a national data platform – prescribed by the UK government and run by Palantir – until it has more evidence of the benefits and risks.…

Callous fraudster tricked elderly gents into smuggling meth hidden in chocolate truffles

A ruthless cyber conman who duped elderly pensioners – including an 80-year-old man – into smuggling deadly class A drugs was this week locked up.…

Annoyed at poor or missing salary increase offer as Brit telco pays out dividend

BT is facing a revolt over pay from its line managers, with unions complaining today about the telco giant dishing out increased dividends to shareholders from its fiscal 2025 earnings.…

For once, the IT department was rewarded for finding the fix, and the perfect-if-unexpected fixer

On Call  Welcome to a fresh instalment of On-Call, The Register’s reader-contributed column in which you share your tales of tech support triumph, and we try to retell them in an amusing fashion.…

Says it will serve half of humanity but testing that claim produced a hilarious ChatGPT fail

Stargate, the Open AI led consortium that aims to build giant AI datacenters, has picked the United Arab Emirates as its first non-US destination.…

Consumer affairs Minister is not happy with Uber for following local players with this scheme to encourage rapid pickups

India’s consumer affairs minister has criticized Uber for adding a feature that allows users to tip their driver before a trip as an incentive to take a job.…

If it ain't broke?

A suspected Chinese government spy group is behind the rash of attacks that exploit two Ivanti bugs that can be chained together to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE), according to analysts at threat intelligence outfit EclecticIQ.…

Agents thought they shut this all down in 2023, but the duck quacked again

Uncle Sam on Thursday unsealed criminal charges and a civil forfeiture case against a Russian national accused of leading the cybercrime ring behind Qakbot, the notorious malware that infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide and helped fuel ransomware attacks costing victims tens of millions of dollars.…

Cable Labs predicts two percent packet loss and 10ms latency in some buildings unless more spectrum freed

Rapid growth in Wi-Fi use means the 6 GHz band’s carrying capacity may soon be exhausted, according to CableLabs, the nonprofit networking think tank run by cable television operators.…

Names spies, web hosts, GPS jammers, fishing (not phishing) biz

The European Union has sanctioned Russia-linked entities it says jammed GPS signals, sabotaged undersea cables, and ran a web hosting business that aided "information manipulation interference and cyber-attacks."…

Blackmailed teen allegedly scared into carving his handle onto her arm

The FBI has filed an affidavit detailing how it identified a US Navy man who was allegedly distributing child sex abuse material (CSAM) through Discord.…