Wednesday, 4th February 2026

The Register
Updated: 17:10 Wed, Feb 04 2026. (Last checked: 273 mins ago [FAILED!])

Server CPUs join memory in the supply shortage, pushing up prices - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:06:52 GMT)

Silicon manufacturing issues to blame

Datacenter servers will face a double whammy this year as CPU supply constraints pile on top of an already severe memory shortage. Even so, shipments are still expected to grow at a double-digit rate.…


Estonia hedges its bets on US tech while going all-in on Microsoft - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:47:12 GMT)

Riigi IT preps European escape plan as it herds civil servants into Redmond's cloud

An Estonian government IT agency is trialling European alternatives to US software providers, even as it moves many of the country’s civil servants to a centrally-managed cloud computing service provided by Microsoft.…


Microsoft engineer speedruns Raspberry Pi magic smoke in five minutes - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:58:52 GMT)

Only cool dudes should wear a HAT backward

Microsoft is no stranger to things breaking unexpectedly – and now one of its engineers has added a Raspberry Pi to the list.…


DWP finds Copilot saves civil servants a whopping 19 minutes a day - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:18:00 GMT)

Tool speeds up searches and first draft emails, becomes 'comfort blanket' for Whitehall workers

Microsoft Copilot saved civil servants 19 minutes daily on routine tasks, according to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) research comparing users to a control group of non-users.…


Nitrogen ransomware is so broken even the crooks can't unlock your files - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:50:49 GMT)

Gang walks away with nothing, victims are left with irreparable hypervisors

Cybersecurity experts usually advise victims against paying ransomware crooks, but that advice goes double for those who have been targeted by the Nitrogen group. There's no way to get your data back from them!…


UK watchdog to rule on £246M Post Office subsidy over Horizon scandal and IR35 - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:34:53 GMT)

CMA's Subsidy Advice Unit reviewing state aid linked to redress and off-payroll tax costs

The UK competition regulator is set to report on a request for £246 million in subsidies to the Post Office, a publicly owned company, to cover its costs in compensation for the Horizon IT scandal and tax liability for IR35, a mechanism commonly used by tech consultants.…


Microsoft actually does something useful, adds Sysmon to Windows - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:33:28 GMT)

After years of bolting AI onto everything, Redmond remembers admins exist

There is good news for administrators: Microsoft has delivered on its promise to build Sysmon functionality into Windows.…


EU's fishy digital certificate system leaves exporters floundering - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:53:12 GMT)

Catch platform sinks under weight of bugs, missing species, and postal code gaffes while containers pile up at ports

Problems with a new digital European system for certifying fishing catches are hampering producers and delaying exports, according to ministers from several EU member states.…


Universal £7,500 payout offered to PSNI staff over major data breach - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:41:59 GMT)

Affected police officers squeezed mental health services, relocated over safety fears

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) employees who had their details exposed in a significant 2023 data breach will each receive £7,500 ($10,279) as part of a universal offer of compensation.…


SpaceX halts Falcon 9 flights after second stage anomaly - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:02:50 GMT)

Failed deorbit burn grounds workhorse rocket

SpaceX has paused flights of its workhorse Falcon 9 after a second stage failure resulted in the spent rocket tumbling uncontrollably back to Earth.…


'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:49:51 GMT)

Open source gains urgency as Europe reassesses reliance on US tech

Open Source Policy Summit 2026 European tech leaders are waking up to the risk of the US simply turning off their IT services.…


AWS says you're on your own if media codec patent owners come knocking - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:43:22 GMT)

Service terms update removes infringement cover tied to audio and video encoding tech

Exclusive Amazon is warning users of its media services that it will not protect them against patent infringement claims relating to media codec technology supported by those services.…


Lego shrinks NASA's biggest rocket – accuracy sold separately - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 09:30:12 GMT)

Bring your own sound effects to a Technic-enabled Space Launch System

The launch of the Artemis II mission to send humans around the Moon is fast approaching. The Register had a go at building Lego's latest SLS set and found it a lot of fun, particularly making whooshing noises as the rocket "launches."…


UK to properly probe xAI to test if its revolting robo-smut generator broke the law - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 06:46:07 GMT)

As Spain announces stern laws for social media, and Elon Musk’s response shows regulators keep looking his way

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has launched a probe into Elon Musk’s xAI, after its Grok chatbot produced sexual images of real people, without their consent.…


Clouds rush to deliver OpenClaw-as-a-service offerings - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 05:28:12 GMT)

As analyst house Gartner declares AI tool ‘comes with unacceptable cybersecurity risk’ and urges admins to snuff it out

If you’re brave enough to want to run the demonstrably insecure AI assistant OpenClaw, several clouds have already started offering it as a service.…


For once, Supermicro has dodged drama and just delivered datacenters - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 02:52:40 GMT)

Single customer accounted for 63 percent of surging revenue

In recent years, Supermicro’s regulatory filings often have delivered dramas such as losing its listing on the NASDAQ stock exchange, an admission its books may not be accurate, another possible delisting, and missing the AI boom.…


Too much AI for some, too little for others: Why AMD can't win with investors - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 02:11:57 GMT)

A diverse portfolio is usually a good thing, except when AI is the only thing

Usually diversity is a sign of a healthy and resilient business. But for the folks on Wall Street, the breadth of AMD's portfolio is a bug, not a feature – one that sent the House of Zen's share price down by more than eight percent in after hours trading on Tuesday.…


VS Code for Linux may be secretly hoarding trashed files - (pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:51:12 GMT)

Versions installed via Snap don't delete files when users empty system trash

Linux users who installed Microsoft's Visual Studio Code as a Snap package may want to check to see whether files they sent to the trash with the app have actually been deleted.…


AI agents can't yet pull off fully autonomous cyberattacks – but they are already very helpful to crims - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 23:57:55 GMT)

Don't relax: This is a 'when, not if' scenario

AI agents and other systems can't yet conduct cyberattacks fully on their own – but they can help criminals in many stages of the attack chain, according to the International AI Safety report.…


Sudo maintainer, handling utility for more than 30 years, is looking for support - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:28:07 GMT)

Many vital open source resources rely on the devotion of a few individuals

It's hard to imagine something as fundamental to computing as the sudo command becoming abandonware, yet here we are: its solitary maintainer is asking for help to keep the project alive.…


GitHub ponders kill switch for pull requests to stop AI slop - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:32:23 GMT)

Code community site begins to see that AI could drive people away

updated GitHub, the Microsoft code-hosting shop that popularized AI-assisted software development, is having some regrets about its Copilot infatuation.…


Amazon's European datacenter buildout blows a breaker as grid connection wait list hits 7 years - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:07:27 GMT)

E-commerce giant has watts of bit barns to deploy but nowhere to plug them in

Amazon Web Services' European expansion has hit the buffers as the American cloud provider grapples with aging grid infrastructure and lengthy interconnect delays.…


'Lethal' and 'magical' Palantir tech is in demand by Pentagon, China, Middle East, CEO says - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:41:51 GMT)

Less popular in Canada and Northern Europe

Palantir is shaping the "under-the-hood" practices of the US Defense Department as demand for its software grows across warfighting, shipbuilding, and weapons procurement, CEO Alex Karp said during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call on Monday.…


Critical React Native Metro dev server bug under attack as researchers scream into the void - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:01:03 GMT)

Too slow react-ion time

Baddies are exploiting a critical bug in React Native's Metro development server to deliver malware to both Windows and Linux machines, and yet the in-the-wild attacks still haven't received the "broad public acknowledgement" that they should, according to security researchers.…


Next-gen nuclear reactors safe enough to skip full environmental reviews, says Trump admin - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:40:18 GMT)

DoE trims NEPA paperwork for advanced reactors

The Department of Energy says advanced nuclear reactor designs - many of which have so far existed mainly at the experimental, testing, or demonstration stage - generally pose limited environmental risk and can qualify for a streamlined environmental review for future projects.…


Snowflake plugs PostgreSQL into its AI Data Cloud - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:06:12 GMT)

Yes, it already had Unistore

Snowflake is launching a PostgreSQL database-as-a-service within its AI data environment to place transactional workloads alongside analytics and AI under a single set of governance rules.…


CISA updated ransomware intel on 59 bugs last year without telling defenders - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:17:16 GMT)

GreyNoise's Glenn Thorpe counts the cost of missed opportunities

On 59 occasions throughout 2025, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) silently tweaked vulnerability notices to reflect their use by ransomware crooks. Experts say that's a problem.…


Palantir declares itself the guardian of Americans' rights - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:08:15 GMT)

CEO Alex Karp meets criticism with soaring revenues and a sermon

Opinion Palantir had a whopper of a Q4, showing accelerating revenue growth, beating Wall Street's profit estimates, and enjoying a share price jump of as much as 11% during pre-market trading on Tuesday before coming back down to earth.…


Azure outages ripple across multiple dependent Microsoft services - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 16:31:03 GMT)

Managed Identity and virtual machine failures triggered knock-on problems throughout cloud platform

Microsoft has reported two Azure service wobbles in as many days, including a disruption affecting Virtual Machine management ops yesterday and a Managed Identity for Azure resources outage in East US and West US regions today.…


Europe shrugs off tariffs, plots to end tech reliance on US - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:05:17 GMT)

Governments and businesses respond to Trump pressures by upping spending in domestically controlled infrastructure

US tariffs may be squeezing Europe's trade balance, but they are also pushing governments and businesses to spend big on keeping tech closer to home.…


HP CEO prints final page after six years, moves to PayPal - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:54:51 GMT)

Multimillion-dollar tenure could have bought a couple of crates of toner

Longtime HP CEO Enrique Lores is decamping for a top job at PayPal, handing the reins to an interim chief while the business hunts for a permanent successor.…


X marks the raid: French cops swoop on Musk's Paris ops - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:09:08 GMT)

Algorithmic bias probe continues, CEO and former boss summoned to defend the platform's corner

French police raided Elon Musk's X offices in Paris this morning as part of a criminal investigation into alleged algorithmic manipulation by foreign powers.…


Microsoft finally sends TLS 1.0 and 1.1 to the cloud retirement home - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:59:03 GMT)

Azure Storage now requires version 1.2 or newer for encrypted connections

Today is the day Azure Storage stops supporting versions 1.0 and 1.1 of Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS 1.2 is the new minimum.…


Polish cops bail 20-year-old bedroom botnet operator - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:34:17 GMT)

DDoSer of 'strategically important' websites admitted to most charges

Polish authorities have cuffed a 20-year-old man on suspicion of carrying out DDoS attacks.…


UK names Barnsley as first Tech Town to see whether AI can fix... well, anything - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:25:05 GMT)

South Yorkshire becomes ground zero for nationwide experiment with £500K seed funding

AI-pocalypse Barnsley, a town in South Yorkshire, England, best known for coal mining and glassmaking, is being thrust into the limelight as the country's first "Tech Town" – shoehorning AI into everything from local businesses to public services.…


Firefox makes AI optional, like it probably should have been all along - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:08:12 GMT)

Users can disable every generative feature in one click – not everyone wants a chatbot bolted to their tabs

Mozilla has decided that if AI is going to live in your browser, you should at least be able to kill it when it gets annoying.…


NASA delays Artemis II to March after hydrogen leaks bedevil countdown test - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:31:26 GMT)

This is starting to sound oddly familiar

NASA has concluded a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for Artemis II, but recurring liquid hydrogen leaks forced the test to be halted short of completion, prompting the agency to delay the mission's launch to at least March 2026.…


DIY AI bot farm OpenClaw is a security 'dumpster fire' - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:14:14 GMT)

Your own personal Jarvis. A bot to hear your prayers. A bot that cares. Just not about keeping you safe

OpenClaw, the AI-powered personal assistant users interact with via messaging apps and sometimes entrust with their credentials to various online services, has prompted a wave of malware and is delivering some shocking bills.…


British military to get legal OK to swat drones near bases - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 09:30:12 GMT)

Armed Forces Bill would let troops take action against unmanned threats around defense sites

Britain's defense personnel will be given the authority to neutralize drones threatening military bases under measures being introduced in the Armed Forces Bill, currently making its way through Parliament.…


Microsoft kills standalone SharePoint and OneDrive plans, because they’re not suite enough - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 06:13:13 GMT)

Blames ‘unintended or nonstandard usage’ and the cost of keeping them alive

Microsoft has slipped out news that it’s killing some standalone SharePoint and OneDrive plans.…


South Korea enlists AI to spot pump and dump schemes on social media, or in Spam - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 04:42:37 GMT)

Main stock exchange targets shares, government agency looks for crypto crooks

South Korea’s government and main stock exchange have developed and deployed AI-powered tools to detect schemes that aim to send the price of cryptocurrencies and shares soaring so that unscrupulous investors can cash in.…


Elon Musk merges xAI into SpaceX to spread universal consciousness via a sentient sun - (pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 01:02:44 GMT)

Burning Man woo woo values House of Grok at $250 billion

Elon Musk on Monday revealed his space company SpaceX has acquired his AI outfit xAI, and that the two will work together to escape the surly bonds of Earthly powers by tapping the sun's enduring glow.…


Notepad++ hijacking blamed on Chinese Lotus Blossom crew behind Chrysalis backdoor - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 23:23:18 GMT)

The group targets telecoms, critical infrastructure - all the usual high-value orgs

Security researchers have attributed the Notepad++ update hijacking to a Chinese government-linked espionage crew called Lotus Blossom (aka Lotus Panda, Billbug), which abused weaknesses in the update infrastructure to gain a foothold in high-value targets by delivering a newly identified backdoor dubbed Chrysalis.…


Let them eat Pi: RAM shortage bumps Raspberry prices as much as $60 - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:26:52 GMT)

Second price increase in just two months

That slice of Pi is getting much more expensive. Everyone’s favorite single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi, is jumping up in price again, with increases ranging from $10 to $60, depending on how much memory your board has.…


Intel welcomes memory apocalypse with Xeon workstation refresh - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:30:11 GMT)

Chipzilla touts 4 TB of DDR5 and 128 lanes of PCIe 5 for less than the House of Zen just in time for memory winter

Intel's workstation lineup is getting a much-needed refresh with the launch of its Xeon 600-series processors, boasting up to 86 cores and clocks topping 4.9 GHz. Chipzilla's timing couldn't be worse.…


There's nothing micro about this super-sized Arduino Uno - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:31:10 GMT)

It's 7x the size of the regular board

Arduino boards power everything from robots to RGB lights, but they're a little on the small side. YouTuber UncleStem has his own solution: build a gigantic, yet fully functional one.…


Want more ads on your web pages? Try the AdBoost extension - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:51:57 GMT)

'If we don't feed the advertisers, then we'll be forced to pay artists for their creative work'

Come on, admit it. You like seeing banner ads on your favorite web pages, because they provide a nice break from reading text. If you're honest about this feeling, there's a new extension for you.…


DRAM prices expected to double in Q1 as AI ambitions push memory fabs to their limit - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:32:59 GMT)

NAND flash now expected to surge 55–60% compared to Q4

The memory shortage is worse than most of us first thought. Prices on DRAM and NAND flash memory are expected to surge in the first quarter of 2026 as AI-driven hyperscalers and cloud service providers (CSPs) continue to strain supply chains.…


StopICE hacked to send alarming text messages, admins accuse border patrol agent of sabotage - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:16:41 GMT)

The ICE-tracking service says it doesn't store usernames or addresses

ICE-reporting service StopICE has blamed a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent for attacking its app and website and sending users text messages warning them that their information had been "sent to the authorities."…


Russia-linked APT28 attackers already abusing new Microsoft Office zero-day - (pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 18:18:22 GMT)

Ukraine’s CERT says the bug went from disclosure to active exploitation in days

Russia-linked attackers are already exploiting Microsoft's latest Office zero-day, with Ukraine's national cyber defense team warning that the same bug is being used to target government agencies inside the country and organizations across the EU.…

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