The Register

Stopping users shooting themselves in the foot with last century's tech

Microsoft has twisted the knife into ActiveX once again, setting Microsoft 365 to disable all controls without so much as a prompt.…

Analysts say the bubble won't burst, but it is possible, admits world's largest colo provider

Interview  Those who ignore history are destined to repeat mistakes of the past and, with signs of an inflating bit barn spending bubble, comparisons are being made with the infamous dotcom bust a quarter of a century ago.…

You can't keep a good OS down

The first Intel-based Mac was 19 years ago, but new versions of apps for both Classic Mac OS and PowerPC Mac OS X still occasionally appear, and we are here for it.…

UK's play to win a quantum computing race that is still highly theoretical

To mark World Quantum Day, the UK government says it will stump up a £121 million ($158 million) investment in the ever-distant technology that proponents claim has the potential to shake up the world.…

When the power went out, they didn’t switch on

Google has revealed that a recent six-hour outage at one of its cloudy regions was caused by uninterruptible power supplies not doing their job.…

Meanwhile in China, factories that work for Apple and HP are reportedly closing some production lines

Tech manufacturers worked overtime in early 2025 to produce hardware before the US imposed tariffs that would increase the prices punters pay for product.…

Copilot vibe coding for OS development? Why not

Canny Windows users who've spotted a mysterious folder on hard drives after applying last week's security patches for the operating system can rest assured – it's perfectly benign. In fact, it's recommended you leave the directory there.…

What's the goal here, Homeland Insecurity or something?

As drastic cuts to the US govt's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency loom, Rep Eric Swalwell (D-CA), the ranking member of the House's cybersecurity subcommittee, has demanded that CISA brief the subcommittee "prior to any significant changes to CISA's workforce or organizational structure."…

Q1 sector growth unlikely to survive current trade policy

Profiteering resellers stateside filled up on smartphone inventory in calendar Q1 before the scheduled imposition of US tariffs, which have rocked global stock prices and US Treasury bonds since April 2.…

Sales backstop deal? More like ... Sales? Back, stop! Deal!

Arizona electronics supplier Avnet has accused California semiconductor design firm Ampere Computing of going against its word and backing out of a server purchasing deal.…

Watchdog wants to know whether EU posts were used without consent under GDPR

Elon Musk's social media outfit X is again under the regulatory microscope in Europe – this time for allegedly using EU users' public posts to train its Grok AI chatbot, possibly without the transparency or legal basis required under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).…

Houston, we have a funding problem

The US administration appears set to slash NASA's science budget with cuts to spending in the order of almost 50 percent, according to a draft of the White House's proposal.…

Safeguard hold finally lifted as Microsoft realizes animated backgrounds aren't the end of the world

The day before the release of Windows 11 24H2, Microsoft slapped a compatibility hold on devices using wallpaper customization applications. More than six months later, it is gradually removing the safeguard hold.…

If this techie had been older and slower, this never would have happened

Who, Me?  Returning to work on Monday often imparts a rude shock, which is why The Register opens the week with a new installment of Who, Me? It's the reader-contributed column in which you admit to your worst moments at work and explain how you survived them.…

Investment delays are inevitable as uncertainty clouds US trade policy, warns investment bank

World War Fee  Trump administration tariffs are leaving the IT industry in "limbo", with CIOs hitting the pause button on new projects as they're unsure whether budgets set today will be disrupted by taxes tomorrow.…

Miyazaki, copyright protection and the 'insult to life itself' of AI images

Opinion  Many people are having fun making Studio Ghibli-style images with OpenAI's ChatGPT. I see it as copy-and-paste intellectual property stealing on an industrial level.…

Royal McBee's desk-sized deskside early computer was the stuff of legend

In these days of multi-gig OSes, we cast our eyes back to something both much bigger and much smaller.…

UK holds onto oversight by a whisker, but it's utterly barefaced on the other side of the pond

Opinion  The UK government's attempts to worm into Apple's core end-to-end encryption were set back last week when the country's Home Office failed in its bid to keep them secret on national security grounds.…

Home labs and bare bones test rigs matter so Broadcom's back in the game

VMware has resumed offering a free hypervisor.…

PLUS: Chinese robodogs include backdoor; OpenAI helps spammer; A Dutch data disaster; And more!

Infosec In Brief  Fortinet last week admitted that attackers have found new ways to exploit three flaws it thought it had fixed last year.…