The Register

Signatories include 10 Nobel Prize winners

ai-pocalypse  Ten Nobel Prize winners are among the more than 200 people who've signed a letter calling on the United Nations to define and enforce “red lines” that prohibit some uses of AI.…

Misalignment risk? That's an area for future study

Google DeepMind added a new AI threat scenario - one where a model might try to prevent its operators from modifying it or shutting it down - to its AI safety document. It also included a new misuse risk, which it calls "harmful manipulation."…

Promises, promises

analysis  OpenAI and Nvidia have signed a letter of intent wherein OpenAI agrees to buy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems for its datacenters, while the AI arms dealer returns the favor with an investment of up to $100 billion in the house that Altman built.…

However, the changes could lead to more offshoring

In a surprise announcement on Friday, President Trump issued a proclamation on the H-1B visas many tech companies use to import qualified foreign workers. The headlines mentioning a $100,000 fee caused panic among many visa holders, leading the White House to issue a clarification: Only new applicants will cost their companies this exorbitant price.…

Long-time contributor Ellen Dash steps down after GitHub access shake-up and governance dispute

A decade-long RubyGems maintainer, Ellen Dash (also known as duckinator), has resigned from Ruby Central following what she described as a "hostile takeover" of the open source project.…

It will hit outsourcing companies hardest

On Friday, President Trump signed a presidential proclamation to sharply raise the cost of employing H-1B workers by restricting entry unless employers make a $100,000 payment with the petition.…

Not old enough to drink, old enough to be accused of causing millions in damage

A teen surrendered to Las Vegas police and was booked on suspicion of breaking into multiple Las Vegas casino networks in 2023, as part of a series of hacks attributed to Scattered Spider.…

Spooky season is nearly here. Want to be scared? There are fresh betas to try

Two of the biggest names in fixed-release distros are nearly finished and ready to drop. You can taste them now, but they're not fully baked yet.…

Cloud and apps chiefs step up as Safra Catz moves upstairs. Larry remains Larry

Oracle on Monday named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as its new co-chief executives, replacing Safra Catz, who will shift into the role of executive vice chair of the board after more than a decade as top dog.…

Safety watchdog doubts SpaceX can ready HLS in time for 2027 Artemis mission

NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has cast doubt on SpaceX's Starship making the 2027 Artemis III lunar landing deadline.…

Ratings agency points out there's a risk of relying on a small number of buyers

Ratings agency Moody's has pointed to the dangers inherent in Oracle's $300 billion agreement with OpenAI - one of the deals contributing to a staggering $455 billion pipeline of obligations for Big Red's cloud infrastructure.…

Lloyds Data and AI lead doesn't want devs downloading models from the likes of Hugging Face – too risky

Lloyds Banking Group is leaning into 21st century tech - yet trying to do so in a way that the data of its 28 million customers is kept away from untested AI models developers might be tempted to deploy.…

Q: How many Excel users do you need to correctly set the number formatting of a cell? A: Monday, January 1st, 1900

The inaugural finals of the UK Excel Championship have come and gone, and there is now one spreadsheet wrangler to rule them all, at least in the United Kingdom.…

Protected content in some Blu-ray and DVD applications broken

Microsoft has added another entry to its growing list of problematic updates in the Windows Hall of Shame, this time causing Digital TV and Blu-ray applications to stutter and freeze when playing protected content.…

Automaker insists only names and emails exposed, no financials

Car giant Stellantis is admitting that attackers targeted one of its third-party partners, spilling its own customers' details in the process.…

It's one small sip for man...

British boffins say they've discovered a way of taking one of the country's favorite pastimes – having a nice cup of tea – into outer space.…

Project rated at 'Red' risk as it struggles to move off obsolete Oracle tech and cloud transition stalls

The risk rating of the UK's crime intelligence database is being elevated to "Red" by the governments projects' watchdog as the DB struggles to migrate from a legacy Oracle platform.…

Darwin would understand microkernels. We need microkernels that understand Darwin.

Opinion  The IT industry is not only full of sharks, it has shark nature itself. It must keep moving forward to survive. Not all sharks are obligate ram ventilators, and not all IT changes all the time, but without innovation the sector would curdle and die.…

Feds say gift card splurges tied suspect to multimillion-dollar ransomware crew

Thalha Jubair, one of the two UK teens arrested on Tuesday and accused of being members of the notorious Scattered Spider cybercrime gang, allegedly played a role in bilking more than 100 organizations out of at least $115 million in ransom payments. Cops nabbed him after following a number of clues, including gift cards purchased from a cryptocurrency wallet on the same server that also held wallets receiving extortion payments.…

Optus was unaware network changes caused a problem, and ignored some customer complaints

Australian telco Optus says its staff may not have followed established processes when a firewall upgrade they conducted resulted in customers not being able to call emergency services for 14 hours – a period during which it is thought three of the carrier’s customers died after trying to seek help, according to the company's CEO.…