The Register

The greatest mathematician-cum-singer-songwriter of all time

Obituary  The field of satirists and hit singer-songwriters who were also professional mathematicians and lecturers is a very small one, and as such, we feel sure Tom Lehrer was the greatest who ever lived… And he also invented the modern Jell-O shot.…

5 V-tolerant GPIO opens the way to some intriguing retro-nerdery

The Raspberry Pi team has released an update to the RP2350 microcontroller with bug fixes, hardening, and a GPIO tweak that will delight retro hardware enthusiasts.…

Changes enacted in Trump's budget cover cost of penalty

Electronic design biz Cadence has agreed to plead guilty and pay more than $140 million in fines over charges that it unlawfully sold semiconductor design tools to a university linked with the Chinese military.…

Support for migrations to be scrapped come October

The clock is ticking for administrators pondering a migration path to Exchange Online from an elderly version of Microsoft's email server. Support for public folder migrations from Exchange Server 2010 and older is set for deprecation.…

Troopers to swap radios for Turtle Beaches in preparation for ‘21st century challenges’

The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is doubling down on its endorsement of esports by tasking the British Esports Federation to establish a new tournament to upskill existing servicepeople in the digital skirmishes.…

Google's AI Overviews are wrecking its old ad model, but Google's revenue is increasing with ads based on it

Opinion  Alphabet, Google's parent company, is making money hand over fist. In its latest quarterly report, Google's revenue grew 14 percent year-over-year to $96.4 billion. While Google's cloud revenue, $13.6 billion, with 31 percent year-over-year growth, is growing fast, the bulk of its cash, $54.2 billion worth, still comes from advertising.…

Advocacy group tells UK competition watchdog proposal favors Google

Exclusive  Movement for an Open Web (MOW), an advocacy group that supports web publishers, has filed a complaint with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) challenging the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) call to eliminate third-party cookies.…

Replacement deal not ready, so old one gets 6 more months and budget bump

The UK government is extending two major cloud purchasing agreements due to delayed replacement arrangements under frameworks that could be worth an additional £1.65 billion.…

Look over there!

Amidst its own failure to fix a couple of bugs now under mass exploitation and being abused for espionage, data theft, and ransomware infections, Microsoft said Monday that it spotted a macOS vulnerability some months ago that could allow attackers to steal private data. Redmond reported the bug to Cupertino, which issued a fix back in March.…

'Edge, order two tons of creamed corn...'

Microsoft on Monday introduced Copilot Mode in its Edge browser, a way to use voice or text commands to automate web-based tasks via AI.…

At least big bags of CO2 can be built faster than a fusion plant

Caught in a constant race between its AI power needs and carbon emissions reduction pledges, Google's latest sustainability commitment sees it considering giant bags of carbon dioxide as a solution to dirty energy.…

Plus, 60% don't have enough analysts to make sense of it

Too many threats, too much data, and too few skilled security analysts are making companies more vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to the IT and security leaders tasked with protecting these organizations from digital threats.…

But overall sales are basically flat, says Canalys

For the first time, India has overtaken China as the top manufacturing hub for smartphones shipped to the US.…

Businesses don't seem to care about exclusive features like Recall

Copilot+ PCs are so far failing to penetrate the enterprise as IT decision makers remain understandably unimpressed with the exclusive Windows AI features they offer and other efforts, such as the need to refresh fleets with Windows 11-capable gear, take priority.…

Follow the MAPP

A week after Microsoft told the world that its July software updates didn't fully fix a couple of bugs, which allowed miscreants to take over on-premises SharePoint servers and remotely execute code, researchers have assembled much of the puzzle — with one big missing piece.…

1,400% jump in sign-ups as users try to avoid age verification checks when surfing adult sites

Searches and sign-ups for VPN providers have surged in the wake of online age checks that were introduced on July 25 as part of the UK's Online Safety Act.…

The case of the improbably well-endowed rat

Biomedical visualization specialists haven't come to terms with how or whether to use generative AI tools when creating images for health and science applications. But there's an urgent need to develop guidelines and best practices because incorrect illustrations of anatomy and related subject matter could cause harm in clinical settings or as online misinformation.…

But they were supervised by American 'digital escorts'

Microsoft has been left with egg on its face after an independent investigation revealed a concerning pattern of using workers based in China to maintain and support US government customers on its Azure cloud.…

Some heading into retirement, others to private sector

Almost 3,900 of NASA's workforce is set to leave the agency thanks to voluntary incentives, with senior staffers among those heading out the door.…

Europe is acting like the victim of a bully

world war fee  The US president and EU chief agreed to a deal over the weekend, averting a trade war between the world's two largest economies, but the agreement has a number of European leaders calling foul. …