The Register

Meeting with former UK prime minister and his chief advisor withheld from official records, according to leaked documents

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings met with Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir, in 2019, months before the US spy-tech company landed a key role in the UK's COVID-19 response, according to papers seen by The Guardian.…

It's the season of FOSS fruitfulness as juicy goodness falls from the branch

The Northern hemisphere is moving into autumn and FOSS vendors are falling over themselves in their efforts to get new versions out for the season.…

Four-tier core design debuts amid NPU debate

Arm has lifted the lid on its latest mobile platform, comprising new CPU and GPU designs plus rearchitected interconnect and memory management logic, all optimized with a coming wave of AI-enabled smartphones in mind.…

Government wants to assess would-be immigrants' language skills remotely

Plans for an £816 million system to test the English skills of UK visa applicants have stalled, with the Home Office pushing procurement back at least five months after repeated consultations with suppliers.…

Management software stumbles at start of term, leaving staff unable to track attendance or reach parents

UK school management information system (MIS) provider Bromcom has had a bad start to the academic year after its Azure-based service left staff struggling to track student attendance, let alone access contact details for parents and guardians.…

Big Red's profits are flat, but its order book is phat

Larry Ellison moved a lot closer to being the world's richest man on Tuesday after Oracle saw a huge leap in its stock price, the largest single day's improvement in decades, thanks to a pipeline stuffed full of big deals.…

If you can find the T&Cs, which are often hidden, you may spot hidden costs and nasties galore

Vendors’ licenses for AI software and services are in a state of “pandemonium,” according to Gartner VP analyst Jo Liversidge.…

ERP giant patches flaw that allows total takeover of NetWeaver, Microsoft has nothing under attack for once

September’s Patch Tuesday won’t require Microsoft users to rapidly repair rancid software, but SAP users need to move fast to address extremely dangerous bugs.…

Including messages sent to users, a potential problem for the privacy-conscious

Updated  Encrypted messaging app Signal is rolling out a free storage system for its users, with extra space if folks are willing to pay for it.…

We're making billions on AI, how about you?

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says the Chocolate Factory's rental computing business has $106 billion of unfulfilled contracts, and he expects Google Cloud will be able to realize about half of that in revenue within two years.…

Miscreants cost victims time rather than money

During the two-hour window on Monday in which hijacked npm versions were available for download, malware-laced packages reached one in 10 cloud environments, according to Wiz researchers. But crypto-craving crims did little more than annoy defenders.…

iPhone 17 Air shows company lightening up

Apple on Tuesday showed off its iPhone 17 lineup at a media event dubbed, "Awe Dropping," favoring timeworn self-adulation over a more literal pun like "Four Play."…

Now if only someone would remember to apply those rules inside the DoD

It's about to get a lot harder for private companies that are lax on cybersecurity to get a contract with the Pentagon, as the Defense Department has finalized a rule requiring contractor compliance with its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program.…

If you're within 50 miles of Redmond, then it's time to come in

Microsoft is rolling out a new return-to-office policy that will see first Redmond, then US, and then global staff getting back on-prem at least three days a week.…

'The practice… has since been fixed,' Pentagon official tells The Reg

The US Department of Defense, up until this week, routinely left its social media accounts wide open to hijackers via stream keys - unique, confidential identifiers generated by streaming platforms for broadcasting content. If exposed, these keys can allow attackers to output anything they want from someone else's channel.…

Microsoft invitation lost in mail after HoloLens made soldiers sick

The US Army's troubled attempt at outfitting soldiers with mixed-reality headsets is getting a $354 million boost and a new pair of lead contractors as part of a second attempt to make the kit stick without making troops sick.…

HelloGym's data security clearly skipped leg day

Exclusive  Sensitive info from hundreds of thousands of gym customers and staff – including names, financial details, and potentially biometric data in the form of audio recordings – was left sitting in an unencrypted, non-password protected database, according to a security researcher who shut it down.…

Analyst bets smart money on 'proactive digital companion' upgrade cycle

Generative AI will supposedly spark a smartphone renaissance, driving both unit shipments and the value of devices sold this calendar year – or so claims a rather optimistic forecast from Gartner's consultants.…

Microsoft feared too many machines would end up bricked

Microsoft vet Raymond Chen first told the story of HLT and Windows 95 more than 20 years ago. The instruction tells the CPU to effectively shut itself down until the next hardware interrupt – ideal for laptops, since power consumption would be hugely reduced.…

For the third time in a decade

Streaming platform Plex is warning some users to reset their passwords after suffering yet another breach.…