The Register

Rideshare companies said it isn’t happening. Lawmakers aren’t convinced

India’s government has ordered an investigation into whether Uber and local ride-share champion charge Ola customers more if they use iPhones.…

Veteran of Oracle vs Google Java trial fumes over 'gimmicks' and 'sham' arguments

A federal judge has ordered six US government agencies to immediately rehire employees fired this year by the Trump administration.…

It'll take a few days, give or take your situation

Google has told The Register it's beginning to roll out a fix for Chromecast devices that were crippled by an expired security certificate authority. We're assured this deployment will take place over the next few days.…

Pouring sensitive info into unapproved, unaccountable, unsafe models would be a 'severe' cybersecurity fail

House Democrats have sent letters to 24 federal agencies asking for assurances that Elon Musk's DOGE team is not feeding sensitive government data into "unapproved and unaccountable" AI systems.…

Restoring x86 giant to its former glory, a job no one will envy

Intel has tapped former Cadence CEO and Intel board member Lip-Bu Tan to lead the embattled x86 chipmaker as it struggles to overcome mounting losses stemming from its foundry business.…

Try it out now on Pixel phones for some penguin on penguin fun

The March "feature drop" for Android 15 on Google Pixel devices includes an optional Linux session.…

Indie browser maker asks judge for legal shield against copyright threats over AI summaries

Brave has gone to court to head off potential legal action from News Corp over the browser maker's auto-generated AI summaries of articles published by Rupert Murdoch's media empire.…

The rest of the world doesn't think 'fair use' is fair but we should make 'em

Updated  OpenAI wants the US government to ensure it has access to any data it wants to train GenAI models, and to stop foreign countries from trying to enforce copyright rules against it and other American AI firms.…

Google apologizes but won’t say what went wrong nor when it will make things right

Updated  Older models of Google’s Chromecast media-streaming sticks remain broken, and independent research suggests a fix could take potentially weeks to materialize.…

Agency tries to save face as it also pulls essential funding for election security initiatives

Uncle Sam's cybersecurity agency is trying to save face by seeking to clear up what it's calling "inaccurate reporting" after a former senior pen-tester claimed the organization axed two red teams.…

Election infosec advisory center also shuttered

Updated  A penetration tester who worked at the US govt's CISA claims his 100-strong team was effectively dismissed after Elon Musk's Trump-blessed DOGE unit cancelled a contract – and that more folks have also been put out of work by the cybersecurity agency.…

Phishers check in, your credentials check out, Microsoft warns

An ongoing phishing campaign disguised as a Booking.com email casts keystroke and credential-stealing malware into hospitality employees' inboxes for financial fraud and theft, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence.…

So much for 'carbon negative by 2030'

Microsoft says there is plenty of wind and solar to power datacenters in the US, but it is still eyeing natural gas generation as it juggles the growing energy needs of AI with its own net-zero commitments.…

It might need polishing, but a useful find for any budding cybercrooks out there

DeepSeek's flagship R1 model is capable of generating a working keylogger and basic ransomware code, just as long as a techie is on hand to tinker with it a little.…

If operators are willing to cough up a 'green premium' and tax credits are not repealed

An independent research body claims that geothermal power generation could provide an answer to the growing energy requirements of datacenters.…

Steering Committee decides against merge of over-complex and largely unloved ALGOL-68 'at this point'

Version 15 of the GNU Compiler Collection is getting close to release, and as it does, some changes are not going to make it.…

Opposition faults leadership as officers accused of misleading councillors

Birmingham City Council voted down proposals to hold a full independent inquiry into its disastrous introduction of an Oracle ERP system, which "effectively crippled" its ability to manage and report on its finances.…

Community calls for off-by-default data sharing setting

Open source software biz Nextcloud issued fixes to its software this week after bug hunters raised concerns about data collection.…

Feds warn gang still rampant and now cracked 300+ victims around the world

A crook who distributes the Medusa ransomware tried to make a victim cough up three payments instead of the usual two, according to a government advisory on how to defend against the malware and the gangs who wield it.…

Eggheads call for comprehensive rules to govern machine learning in medical settings

The tendency of AI models to hallucinate – aka confidently making stuff up – isn't sufficient to disqualify them from use in healthcare settings. So, researchers have set out to enumerate the risks and formulate a plan to do no harm while still allowing medical professionals to consult with unreliable software assistants.…