The Register

• UK government exempting itself from flagship cyber law inspires little confidence 2026-01-10
  Ministers promise equivalent standards just without the legal obligation ANALYSIS  From May's cyberattack on the Legal Aid Agency to the Foreign Office breach months later, cyber incidents have become increasingly common in UK government.…
  Connor Jones
• Artificial brains could point the way to ultra-efficient supercomputers 2026-01-09
  Sandia National Labs cajole Intel's neurochips into solving partial differential equations New research from Sandia National Laboratories suggests that brain-inspired neuromorphic computers are just as adept at solving complex mathematical equations as they are at speeding up neural networks and could eventually pave the way to ultra-efficient supercomputers.…
  Tobias Mann
• Accenture bets AI will ring up retail sales with Profitmind investment 2026-01-09
  Let the bots figure out what to sell for how much Accenture is betting that the future of retail will run through AI with an investment in Profitmind, an agent-based platform that automates pricing decisions, inventory management, and planning. …
  O'Ryan Johnson
• How hackers are fighting back against ICE surveillance tech 2026-01-09
  Remember when government agents didn't wear masks? While watching us now seems like the least of its sins, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was once best known (and despised) for its multi-billion-dollar surveillance tech budget.…
  Jessica Lyons
• Most devs don't trust AI-generated code, but fail to check it anyway 2026-01-09
  Developer survey from Sonar finds AI tool adoption has created a verification bottleneck Talk about letting things go! Ninety-six percent of software developers believe AI-generated code isn't functionally correct, yet only 48 percent say they always check code generated with AI assistance before committing it.…
  Thomas Claburn
• CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more 2026-01-09
  There's a lot of bad ideas set to create literal waste and be a waste of money From disposable electric candy to voice-activated refrigerators without physical handles, CES was crammed full of enshittified, intrusive, insecure, and wasteful technology this year – just like it is every year. …
  Brandon Vigliarolo
• Meta reacts to power needs by signing long-term nuke deals 2026-01-09
  New nuclear capacity won’t show up until around 2030 Meta is writing more checks for nuclear investment, even though the new capacity tied to those deals is unlikely to come online until around 2030. The company says it will need the new power to run its hyperscale datacenters.…
  Dan Robinson
• Debian goes retro with a spatial desktop that time forgot 2026-01-09
  Trixie plus a carefully configured MATE setup, and absolutely nothing else The Desktop Classic System is a rather unusual hand-built flavor of Debian featuring a meticulously configured spatial desktop layout and a pleasingly 20th-century look and feel.…
  Liam Proven
• Putinswap: France trades alleged ransomware crook for conflict researcher 2026-01-09
  Basketball player accused of aiding cybercrime gang extradition blocked in exchange for Swiss NGO consultant France has released an alleged ransomware crook wanted by the US in exchange for a conflict researcher imprisoned in Russia.…
  Connor Jones
• QR codes a powerful new phishing weapon in hands of Pyongyang cyberspies 2026-01-09
  State-backed attackers are using QR codes to slip past enterprise security and help themselves to cloud logins, the FBI says North Korean government hackers are turning QR codes into credential-stealing weapons, the FBI has warned, as Pyongyang's spies find new ways to duck enterprise security and help themselves to cloud logins.…
  Carly Page
• Microsoft Windows Media Player stops serving up CD album info 2026-01-09
  No naming that tune and no album covers Microsoft is celebrating the resurgence of interest in physical media in the only way it knows how… by halting the Windows Media Player metadata service.…
  Richard Speed
• NASA decides to bring Crew-11 home early after astronaut health scare 2026-01-09
  Medical issue forces mission curtailment and leaves station short-handed NASA is bringing the Crew-11 astronauts back to Earth early after one encountered a medical issue that could not be dealt with aboard the orbiting outpost.…
  Richard Speed
• Copper supplies set to peak just as tech needs more 2026-01-09
  Analysts say production will top out this decade while global electrification keeps ramping Concerns are mounting over copper supplies, with a fresh study warning that demand will likely outstrip production within a decade, threatening to constrain global technological advancement.…
  Dan Robinson
• China-linked cybercrims abused VMware ESXi zero-days a year before disclosure 2026-01-09
  Huntress analysis suggests VM escape bugs were already weaponized in the wild Chinese-linked cybercriminals were sitting on a working VMware ESXi hypervisor escape kit more than a year before the bugs it relied on were made public.…
  Carly Page
• The Microsoft 365 Copilot app rebrand was bad, but there are far worse offenders 2026-01-09
  The software wasn't actually renamed, but you couldn't be blamed for being confused Opinion  Wait? What? I was just cruising along the information superhighway – yes, I'm old, deal with it – when I spotted a Y Combinator story announcing, "Microsoft Office renamed to 'Microsoft 365 Copilot app'." Excuse me!? I looked closer and found […]
  Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
• Very tough microbes may help us cement our future on Mars 2026-01-09
  Extremophile bacteria could help turn Martian dirt into building material for human habitats Tough microbes able to survive extreme environments on Earth could be the key to constructing buildings to allow humans to survive on Mars, according to a research paper.…
  Lindsay Clark
• Nothing to declare at border control except a Windows 7 certificate error 2026-01-09
  The queue might move on, but the software never did Bork!Bork!Bork!  Today's bork - on a UK border control wait-time screen - is doubly unfortunate. Tired passengers get no clue how long until someone checks their passport, and of all organizations that should keep security certs current, the one responsible for keeping out criminals tops […]
  Richard Speed
• Grok told to cover up as UK weighs action over AI 'undressing' 2026-01-09
  Image generation paywalled on X after ministers and regulators start asking awkward questions Grok has yanked its image-generation toy out of the hands of most X users after the UK government openly weighed a ban over the AI feature that "undressed" people on command.…
  Carly Page
• Bank of England's Oracle cloud migration bill triples as project grinds on 2026-01-09
  Initial £7M estimate proves optimistic after multiple contract uplifts The Bank of England has trebled the amount it is spending on its Oracle systems integrator amid efforts to migrate business applications to the cloud.…
  Lindsay Clark
• Help desk read irrelevant script, so techies found and fixed their own problem 2026-01-09
  As you should, when being told the only remedy is deleting everything and starting again On Call  2025 has ended and a new year is upon us, but The Register will continue opening Friday mornings with a fresh installment of On Call – the reader-contributed column that tells your tales of tech support.…
  Simon Sharwood