The Register

The rest of the world doesn't think 'fair use' is fair but we should make 'em

Updated  OpenAI wants the US government to ensure it has access to any data it wants to train GenAI models, and to stop foreign countries from trying to enforce copyright rules against it and other American AI firms.…

Google apologizes but won’t say what went wrong nor when it will make things right

Updated  Older models of Google’s Chromecast media-streaming sticks remain broken, and independent research suggests a fix could take potentially weeks to materialize.…

Agency tries to save face as it also pulls essential funding for election security initiatives

Uncle Sam's cybersecurity agency is trying to save face by seeking to clear up what it's calling "inaccurate reporting" after a former senior pen-tester claimed the organization axed two red teams.…

Election infosec advisory center also shuttered

Updated  A penetration tester who worked at the US govt's CISA claims his 100-strong team was effectively dismissed after Elon Musk's Trump-blessed DOGE unit cancelled a contract – and that more folks have also been put out of work by the cybersecurity agency.…

Phishers check in, your credentials check out, Microsoft warns

An ongoing phishing campaign disguised as a Booking.com email casts keystroke and credential-stealing malware into hospitality employees' inboxes for financial fraud and theft, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence.…

So much for 'carbon negative by 2030'

Microsoft says there is plenty of wind and solar to power datacenters in the US, but it is still eyeing natural gas generation as it juggles the growing energy needs of AI with its own net-zero commitments.…

It might need polishing, but a useful find for any budding cybercrooks out there

DeepSeek's flagship R1 model is capable of generating a working keylogger and basic ransomware code, just as long as a techie is on hand to tinker with it a little.…

If operators are willing to cough up a 'green premium' and tax credits are not repealed

An independent research body claims that geothermal power generation could provide an answer to the growing energy requirements of datacenters.…

Steering Committee decides against merge of over-complex and largely unloved ALGOL-68 'at this point'

Version 15 of the GNU Compiler Collection is getting close to release, and as it does, some changes are not going to make it.…

Opposition faults leadership as officers accused of misleading councillors

Birmingham City Council voted down proposals to hold a full independent inquiry into its disastrous introduction of an Oracle ERP system, which "effectively crippled" its ability to manage and report on its finances.…

Community calls for off-by-default data sharing setting

Open source software biz Nextcloud issued fixes to its software this week after bug hunters raised concerns about data collection.…

Feds warn gang still rampant and now cracked 300+ victims around the world

A crook who distributes the Medusa ransomware tried to make a victim cough up three payments instead of the usual two, according to a government advisory on how to defend against the malware and the gangs who wield it.…

Eggheads call for comprehensive rules to govern machine learning in medical settings

The tendency of AI models to hallucinate – aka confidently making stuff up – isn't sufficient to disqualify them from use in healthcare settings. So, researchers have set out to enumerate the risks and formulate a plan to do no harm while still allowing medical professionals to consult with unreliable software assistants.…

Expired security cert kerfuffle leaves second-gen, Audio gadgets useless

Google's second-generation Chromecast and its Chromecast Audio are suffering a major ongoing outage, with devices failing to cast due to an expired security certificate authority. The web giant is aware of the breakdown and says a fix is in the works.…

Yeah, yeah ... if we were all exclusively on IPv6, this wouldn't be a thing. But here we are

IP address marketplace IPv4.Global has started offering loans on terms that consider public IPv4 network addresses as valid collateral.…

Who still uses a printer anyway? Oh ... quite a lot of you, it seems

Has your printer suddenly started spouting gibberish? A faulty Windows 11 23H2 update from Microsoft - rather than a ghost in the machine - could be the cause.…

Don't, don't, DON'T believe the hype

The developer of Free95 says it will be a free Windows 95-compatible OS, but we suspect an elaborate prank. At best, maybe an unknowing one.…

Root cert expiry may bring breakage or worse for add-ons, media playback, and more

If you're running an outdated version of Firefox, update by Friday or risk broken add-ons, failing DRM-protected media playback, and other errors, due to an expiring root certificate.…

Redmond insists it's got this right and has even more impressive results to share soon

Updated  Microsoft's claim of a quantum computing breakthrough has attracted strong criticism from scientists, though the software giant says its work is sound – and it will soon reveal data that proves it.…

Not so much thrown under a bus as under an unwanted electric car

Elon Musk is trying yet again to get his $56 billion Tesla pay package reinstated with a fresh appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court. …