The Register

Using LLMs to pick programs, people, contracts to cut is bad enough – but doing it with Musk's Grok? Yikes

Updated  A group of 48 House Democrats is concerned that Elon Musk's cost-trimmers at DOGE are being careless in their use of AI to help figure out where to slash, creating security risks and giving the oligarch's artificial intelligence lab an inside track to train its models on government info.…

In effect: 'Ha ha – the government is borked and so are you'

Ransomware scumbags - potentially those behind the Fog gang - are channeling their inner Elon Musk with their latest ransom note, spotted by researchers at Trend Micro.…

Plenty of tortillas onboard but not quite so much science this time

SpaceX's latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) – CRS-32 – just docked to the orbiting outpost, bringing extra crew supplies, which resulted in the deferral of several science payloads.…

Can't run Windows 11? Don't want to? There are surprisingly legal options

You will have to reinstall everything, but there is another way to escape the end of Windows 10 support in October – and it's cheaper than a new PC.…

Re-writing applications takes years, is expensive, in-house expertise needed

When moving to the cloud, companies with significant investments in Microsoft infrastructure wares simply can't afford to rewrite everything for Linux, so they end up migrating to Azure to dodge the markups Redmond charges for running its server software in competitors' clouds.…

Security bods can earn up to $10K per report

Ransomware threat hunters can now collect rewards of $10,000 for each piece of intel they file under a new bug bounty that aims to squash extortionists.…

Retailer tight-lipped on details as digital hiccup disrupts customer orders

UK high street mainstay Marks & Spencer told the London Stock Exchange this afternoon it has been managing a "cyber incident" for "the past few days."…

What used to be a serious issue mainly in Southeast Asia is now the world’s problem

Scam call centers are metastasizing worldwide "like a cancer," according to the United Nations, which warns the epidemic has reached a global inflection point as syndicates scale up and spread out.…

Hyperscaler says there's no decrease in demand, it's just looking for good deals

Amazon has joined Microsoft in pausing some datacenter leasing deals, sparking fresh concerns about whether the AI hype train may be running out of steam.…

Running GenAI models is easy. Scaling them to thousands of users, not so much

Hands On  You can spin up a chatbot with Llama.cpp or Ollama in minutes, but scaling large language models to handle real workloads – think multiple users, uptime guarantees, and not blowing your GPU budget – is a very different beast.…

On a road trip with an AI by your side

UK-based autonomous vehicle biz Wayve is continuing its global expansion by opening a testing and development center in Yokohama, Japan.…

I was into Adversarial Noise before they were famous

Opinion  6:56 PM. April 11, 2025. Write it down. That's the precise moment the tech-bro-niverse imploded due to the gravitational force of irony at its core. That was the moment Jack Dorsey posted "Delete all IP law" on X. A little later, Elon Musk added his approval with "I agree."…

PLUS: Malware developers adopt Node.js; US disinformation warriors disbanded; Gig worker accounts for sale; and more

Infosec In Brief  Email security outfit EasyDMARC recently spotted a phishing campaign that successfully spoofed Google with a sophisticated attack.…

Which is one reason US regulators just sued the rideshare and delivery giant

The USA’s Federal Trade Commission on Monday launched a lawsuit against Uber, alleging the rideshare giant ripped off customers by enrolling them in its “Uber One” membership scheme without permission, failing to deliver promised savings, and making it devilishly difficult to opt out.…

Sam says it's Son's money well spent

Conventional wisdom holds that being polite to AI chatbots makes them respond better, but no one stops to think how much energy that politeness is wasting. …

No one should be excluded – unless you have certain views on the Mid-East crisis

In line with Trump administration directives, the US government's National Science Foundation has started canceling grants for studies into workplace diversity and the spread of misinformation.…

Erlang? Er, man, no problem. ChatGPT, Claude to go from flaw disclosure to actual attack code in hours

The time from vulnerability disclosure to proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code can now be as short as a few hours, thanks to generative AI models.…

Wrangling your data into LLMs just got easier, though it's not all sunshine and rainbows

Hands On  Getting large language models to actually do something useful usually means wiring them up to external data, tools, or APIs. The trouble is, there's no standard way to do that - yet.…

Only Peter Thiel-backed biz can pull off $30M IT deal, apparently

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has an urgent need for a new software system to help implement the Trump administration's deportation plans, and it's turning to longtime ICE supplier Palantir for a rush build job.…

Redmond talks up preview of AI agents navigating apps through the UI

Microsoft will soon let Copilot agents drive computers through the GUI just like humans – by clicking buttons, selecting menus, and even completing forms on screen.…