This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started It all started with J.A.R.V.I.S. Yes, that J.A.R.V.I.S. The one from […]
"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship"
About 1,000 of a set of 15,000 open access scientific journals appear to exist mainly to extract fees from naive academics.…
Running AIs on your own machine lets you stick it to the man and save some cash in the process
Feature After a decade or two of the cloud, we're used to paying for our computing capability by the megabyte. As AI takes off, the whole cycle promises to repeat itself again, and while AI might seem relatively cheap now, it might not always be so.…
Verizon has confirmed to customers in stores and online that its network is having an issue on Saturday. Many people have been unable to connect and make or receive calls for hours, while DownDetector’s tracker peaked in the afternoon at around 3:30PM ET with more than 20,000 reports. Some customers report their service has continued […]
For the last week or two, reports have been circulating that recent Windows 11 updates (specifically KB5063878 and KB5062660) were causing some SSDs using Phison controllers to fail. Tech influencers on YouTube and TikTok were quick to jump on the reports of corrupted data and disappearing drives, laying the blame squarely at Microsoft’s feet. We’re […]
Labor Day weekend has finally arrived, and after a week of early discounts trickling in, the sales are now in full swing. From big-screen OLED TVs and outdoor gear to back-to-school essentials like the latest MacBook Air, we rounded up a guide of almost 100 deals we think are worth your time and money. But […]
There's a pleasing rhythm to cozy life sims. The virtual days pass, filled with chores of tending crops or running a business, punctuated by strange mysteries or evolving relationships. At their best, these games merge busywork with exploration and storytelling, in a way that makes them hard to step away from. Discounty, from developer Crinkle […]
When a Waymo pulls up and parks in front of her home on a residential street in West Los Angeles, 10-year-old Morgan rushes to the window. "The Waymo is home!" she says, calling to her parents, Lisa Delgin and Zach Tucker. It is by no means the first time a Waymo has come "home" to […]
We are drowning in code, but at least some folks are swimming
opinion To fight the enshittification of software, the first step is to pinpoint why and how it happens. Some observers are trying to do that.…
All good things must come to an end
All good things must come to an end, and so too must the blocky glory of the Kilopixel. As the wood and robotic marvel crested the 200,000-pixel mark, its creator pulled the metaphorical plug.…
End of verified end user status means South Korean memory vendors will need licenses to bring restricted chipmaking tech into Chinese fabs
The US government already has a lot to say about what products chipmakers can and can't sell in China. This week the Commerce Department moved to make it harder for South Korean memory vendors Samsung and SK Hynix to continue manufacturing in the region.…
The admin controls were left wide open on Pudu's robots
A researcher caught the world’s leading supplier of commercial service robots using shoddy admin security that let attackers redirect the delivery machines to anywhere and make them follow any command.…
Chinese cloud provider reportedly joins the homegrown silicon party
Alibaba has reportedly developed an AI accelerator amid growing pressure from Beijing to curb the nation's reliance on Nvidia GPUs. …
As one of the cofounders behind Oculus Story Studio, Edward Saatchi knows how hard it can be to sell people on new tech that bills itself as revolutionary. Even though Story Studio snagged an Emmy for one of its three animated features, a general lack of public interest in VR movies led Meta to shutter […]
Bias, a lack of safety reporting, and the whole 'MechaHitler' thing are all the evidence needed, say authors
Public advocacy groups are demanding the US government cease any use of xAI's Grok in the federal government, calling the AI unsafe, untested, and ideologically biased.…
Every platform wants to be the place you hang with friends — even Spotify as of this week — so it’s apparently time for TikTok to shore up its direct messaging feature! It told TechCrunch that over the next few weeks, all users should see voice messages and image sharing options arrive in their DMs. […]
The schedule of annual updates for Windows 11 that arrive in the second half of the year will hold steady for 2025, and today, Microsoft announced that the 25H2 package is available now for testing in the Release Preview Channel. So, will you see new UI features or more AI tweaks included on your desktop […]
There’s already been a number of leaks of upcoming Philips Hue products that are expected to be announced next week ahead of IFA. But one thing that hasn’t been mentioned was support for Matter-over-Thread. While there’s no confirmation that support is coming, there’s compelling evidence to suggest it might be. First off, packaging for two […]
Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer, and while the prospect of cooler weather and shorter days can be a tough adjustment, at least there is always a great selection of deals to combat the post-summer blues. You’ll have to wait until September 1st to celebrate the actual holiday, sure, but in the meantime, […]
GMP library test meltdown has AMD looking for answers
Chipmaker AMD is looking into a report from the GMP project about two Ryzen processors that failed during testing. Could too much math be to blame?…
But the cure may ruin the web....
With AI's rise, AI web crawlers are strip-mining the web in their perpetual hunt for ever more content to feed into their Large Language Model (LLM) mills. How much traffic do they account for? According to Cloudflare, a major content delivery network (CDN) force, 30% of global web traffic now comes from bots. Leading the way and growing fast? AI bots.…
Look who's visiting the watering hole these days
Amazon today said it disrupted an intel-gathering attempt by Russia's APT29 to trick Microsoft users into unwittingly granting the Kremlin-backed cyberspies access to their accounts and data.…
Platform's staffer complains security review was 'rushed'
Microsoft-owned collaborative coding platform GitHub is deepening its ties with Elon Musk's xAI, bringing early access to the company's Grok Code Fast 1 large language model (LLM) into GitHub Copilot. However, a whistleblower has claimed that the rollout suffers from inadequate security testing and an engineering team operating under duress.…
'It blows my mind,' says SecDef
The Pentagon has formally kiboshed Microsoft's use of China-based employees to support Azure cloud services deployed by US government agencies, and it's demanding Microsoft do more of its own digging to determine whether any sensitive data was compromised. …
On Tuesday, I told you how the modular computer company Framework was finally fulfilling its promise of the "holy grail for gamers" - a laptop with modular, swappable discrete graphics cards so easy to swap, practically anyone can do it at home. The first futureproof gaming laptop, perhaps? Today, I can confirm the system actually […]
The $5.7B check has cleared, CFO says
Intel's agreement with the US government incudes a clause that would allow the feds to take an additional five percent stake in the chipmaker if it ceases to have a controlling share in its foundry business.…
Lawyers for Tesla filed a motion in court Friday to throw out a jury verdict that found the company’s Autopilot software had contributed to the death of a woman in a crash from 2019. Earlier this month, a jury found Tesla partially responsible for the death of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides, who was killed by a […]
I dream of a gadget that can do it all. Instead, when I leave for the office, I pack one or two phones, a portable battery bank, a laptop, a Kindle, a new product I'm testing, and at least one pair of earbuds. In my backpack, there's a pouch full of cords and adapters. On […]
Chocolate Factory says people keep marking them as such, so QED
The Trump administration has accused Google of discriminating against Republicans' emails and warned that the tech giant could be in line for a crackdown.…
It’s hard to realize that Labor Day weekend — signalling the end of summer — is already here. It would be a bit depressing, except that the weekend also brings with it some really good deal. For example, you can nab a Hisense S7N 55-inch TV at Best Buy and Amazon for $699.99, a solid […]
A remarkable mixture of different components, but it works
RefreshOS is a Debian and KDE-based distro with a difference: it casts its net a lot wider for tools and components.…
When you watch KPop Demon Hunters, it is easy to see why it has become the most popular movie that Netflix has ever released. The animated musical's story about a trio of pop stars tasked with protecting humanity from monsters is familiar, but refreshingly different and infinitely more stylish than other narratives like it. The […]
Tesla is offering a new performance version of its Model Y crossover for the European market. The new variant is aimed at boosting the company’s sales on the continent, which have been in free fall for most of the year thanks to growing competition from China and brand damage from Elon Musk’s fascist antics. The […]
Valve has started to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act, by rolling out a requirement for all Brits to verify their age with a credit card to access “mature content” pages and games on Steam. UK users won’t even be able to access the community hubs of mature content games unless a valid credit […]
Limited Run Games swaps in silicon to emulate Super FX chip and hit 20 fps
Forget Windows 95, it's 30 years since Doom was released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. And thanks to the Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller, the game is back in cartridge form.…
Up to 29,000 organizations and potentially 370,000 security and IT pros affected
Australian development house Click Studios has warned users of its Passwordstate enterprise password management platform to update immediately if not sooner, following the discovery of an authentication bypass vulnerability that opens the doors to an emergency administration account with nothing more than a "carefully crafted URL."…
More than 450 game developers on Blizzard’s Diablo team have formed a union, making them one of the largest and latest groups of Microsoft workers to do so. The new union includes game developers, artists, designers, engineers, and support staff across the Diablo franchise, according to the Communications Workers of America (CWA) press release, which […]
Nobody knows why they need one, but folk seem to be buying them
HP says AI PCs now make up a quarter of its sales, boosting revenue thanks to their higher price tags and the Windows 11 refresh.…
This seems to be the year that Google's AI features are actually starting to add up to something useful. After a week testing the Pixel 10 Pro, my colleagues Allison Johnson and Vee Song say some of the new features are legitimately useful - at least when they work, which isn't always as expected. Case […]
Lenovo is gearing up to show off its latest products at Europe’s IFA tech tradeshow next week, but leaks may have just given us a first look at what’s being announced. The most notable gadget shared by reputable leaker Evan Blass shows an image of a concept laptop design with a display that rotates between […]
Senior officials summoned to science and tech committee to explain further
Senior officials are being summoned to the UK's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee to explain why the government has not fully implemented the security recommendations made in a secret review following the 2021 Afghan data breach.…
Apple is just days away from revealing its newest iPhones during its "Awe dropping" event on September 9th. It seems like this year's launch will offer more than just a simple spec bump, as rumors point to an ultra-thin iPhone arriving alongside the rest of Apple's upgraded smartphone lineup. Though the iPhone 17 will undoubtedly […]
Microsoft shifts cellular management to Settings and the web
Microsoft is to permanently hang up on its Mobile Plans app, directing users to the web and the Windows Settings app in the future.…
In June, Mark Zuckerberg went for the ultimate Hail Mary in the ever-intensifying AI race: He spun up a brand-new Meta AI lab after making a $14.3 billion acquisition of Scale AI - and then spending billions more hiring some of the industry's preeminent researchers and engineers. Fast-forward a couple of months, and Zuckerberg may […]
Hang on, what happened to gov.UK's bitbarn-favoring Industrial Strategy?
Datacenter developers in the UK are turning to gas for power generation amid lengthy wait times for a connection to the electricity grid.…
Dangbei is bringing its S7 Ultra Max all-in-one projector to Berlin next week for the big IFA tech show. That’s a good indication that the China-only 4K projector with a ridiculously bright 6,200 ISO lumen output is preparing for a global launch. Here’s the teaser Dangbei just sent to my inbox: Experience cinema-grade brilliance with […]
Google’s Phone app is adding “Calling Cards” that let you customize the appearance of contact screens for incoming calls. They’re similar to the Contact Poster feature that iPhone users have had since 2023, allowing Google Phone app users to replace the teeny contact photos that appear when someone is calling you with full-screen images and […]
The once mighty Wintel supercontinent is cracking in more ways than you might think
Opinion Say what you like about its role in the destruction of civilization, the net is still good for a few party games. Take bets on when the "Wintel Empire" was first reported as under attack, and by what. Then go and find out.…
Maybe someday we'll just call it 'data processing' again
Feature In IT, terms and categories come and go. Distinctions disappear as computing evolves and as something that was shiny and new simply becomes the way that we do things.…
Network Time Protocol sometimes needs help from a temporal cops
On Call Why, look at the time! 7:30 AM on Friday morning, the moment at which The Register regularly runs a fresh instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that shares your finest tech support stories.…
700 meters under a mountain, a 20,000-tonne detector and a giant sphere await elusive particles
More than a decade after construction began, China has commenced operation of what it claims is the world’s most sensitive neutrino detector.…
Supports several Chinese chips and GPUs – and of course it has AI inside
China’s KylinSoft has delivered a major update to its flagship Linux, which Beijing hailed as a great leap forward for the nation’s ambition to develop operating systems that match and exceed the capabilities of western products.…
Plus millions of other people across 80+ countries
China's Salt Typhoon cyberspies hoovered up information belonging to millions of people in the United States over the course of the years-long intrusion into telecommunications networks, according to a top FBI cyber official.…
They use AI more but also check it more
For those who thought AI vibe coding was just for the youngsters, newly published research shows that developers with over 10 years of experience are more than twice as likely to do it.…
Microsoft has fired two more employees who participated in recent protests against the company’s contracts with the Israeli military and government. The two employees, Nisreen Jaradat and Julius Shan, were fired “in connection” with demonstrations that saw protesters set up encampments at Microsoft’s headquarters, according to Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the No Azure for […]
Microsoft AI honcho insists partnership with Sam Altman's brainbox behemoth is alive and well
Microsoft has introduced two home-grown machine learning models, potentially complicating negotiations with its current favored model supplier, OpenAI.…
My brain hurts a lot
Claude creator Anthropic has given customers using its Free, Pro, and Max plans one month to prevent the engine from storing their chats for five years by default and using them for training.…
Microsoft’s AI division announced its first homegrown AI models on Thursday: MAI-Voice-1 AI and MAI-1-preview. The company says its new MAI-Voice-1 speech model can generate a minute’s worth of audio in under one second on just one GPU, while MAI-1-preview “offers a glimpse of future offerings inside Copilot.” Microsoft already uses MA1-Voice-1 to power a […]
But private cloud contender sees upside in its modernization mission
Donald Trump's DOGE cost-cutting unit has made it harder to do business with the US federal government, according to private cloud contender Nutanix.…
Nor is its Arm port
When VMware delivered its Cloud Foundation 9 suite in June, it marked the end of a two-year push to integrate its compute, storage, and networking products. What’s next for the Broadcom business unit? At the VMware Explore conference this week, The Register sniffed out a few other items on its to-do list.…
Our drones are OK, but those other drones?
The US Department of Homeland Security has revealed plans to spend more than $100 million on systems designed to take out hostile drones. …
Web browsing belongs to the people, not the bots
Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Norway-based browser maker Vivaldi, believes the tech industry's efforts to automate web browsing using generative AI models have gone too far.…
$6.4M VerifTools marketplace offline
The FBI and Dutch police today said that they seized two domains and a blog tied to VerifTools, an international criminal marketplace that sold identity documents for as little as $9.…
'The homeland is no longer secure,' says Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency leader
The Pentagon outfit responsible for preventing foriegn agents from infiltrating defense agencies says the US isn't doing a very good job of preventing state secrets from falling into Chinese hands.…
Google is phasing out its Preferred Care extended warranty plan for the Pixel Care Plus program. Pricing between the two is pretty similar. You’ll still pay $8 per-month, or $159 for a two-year plan on a Pixel 9. For a Pixel 10 Pro Fold, that jumps up to $339 for two years, or $18 per-month, […]
Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer, which is a bit sad, but it’s a great time to get a deal on a fancy, new TV. The US holiday is happening just before the start of the 2025-2026 NFL season, the World Cup qualifiers, and the lead-up to the MLB post-season games. This […]
Only a few Android phones will be able to support the service
Users of Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones could soon find themselves able to make voice calls via a satellite connection, if Skylo Technologies can get all its ducks in a row.…
On Thursday, Xbox announced it’s widely rolling out cross-device play history. With the new update, even if you’re on a different Xbox console, Ally handheld, or PC, your recently played game list will remain the same, so you can jump right back in where you left off. The change, which first started testing with Insiders […]
You might find it kind of sad to put your hard-earned Switch 2 into a protective case. To me, it’s freeing. Using a case relieves me of the worry that it will accumulate tons of little scratches, or worse. I’ve tested several types of cases on the Nintendo Switch 2 since its June 2025 debut, […]
Media multitool taps Vulkan for GPU encoding, adds VVC support, and dusts off some ancient formats
FFmpeg 8.0 brings GPU-accelerated video encoding via Vulkan – and can now subtitle your videos automatically using integrated speech recognition.…
Look, I sympathize. When General Motors said it would adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) for its electric vehicles back in 2023, we knew this meant adapters. But we never could have imagined how many adapters we would get. Today, GM announced three additional adapters to help EV owners charge at home or in […]
Production on Star Wars: Starfighter officially began today, and Lucasfilm has finally confirmed the other actors who will be bringing the film to life alongside Ryan Gosling. Lucasfilm announced today that Star Wars: Starfighters has added Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams to its […]
Also, not one but two new models of the classic 1200
The new native 68K AmigaOS web browser leans on the machines' underlying emulation system to offer modern facilities on a retro OS.…
EA is promising Battlefield 6 will offer “the best PC experience in the history of the franchise,” including 4K resolution, 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide monitors, HDR, uncapped framerates, both PS5 and Xbox gamepad support on PC, the ability to create and browse servers, streamer and incognito modes, and more — but it won’t require powerful […]
Fubo is launching a new Sports plan on September 2nd that costs $55.99 per month and comes with over 20 live sports and news-focused channels, including the ESPN and Fox Sports channels, as well as local stations owned by ABC, CBS, and Fox. Where available, this package includes coverage for network TV-broadcast pro and college […]
Think BYOC will solve all your sovereignty and privacy worries? You might be missing the point
INTERVIEW Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) is a concept gaining traction as companies seek ways to resolve sovereignty and privacy issues, but its implementation can vary widely depending on interpretation.…
A big draw of Kobo e-readers has always been Pocket integration. But, when Mozilla announced in late May that it was shutting down the read-it-later app in July, the Kobo community was left in a bit of a lurch. To the company’s credit, in late July, it announced that it would be replacing Pocket with […]
So I heard you want to play Kirby on hard mode: tough bosses, tricky platforming, complicated puzzles, hidden collectibles, and maybe even punishments for failing. The Star-Crossed World expansion in Kirby and the Forgotten Land's Switch 2 edition certainly introduces new challenges. There's pressure from time constraints and consecutive platforming sequences, multistep puzzles, and bosses […]
Anthropic will start training its AI models on user data, including new chat transcripts and coding sessions, unless users choose to opt out. It's also extending its data retention policy to five years - again, for users that don't choose to opt out. All users will have to make a decision by September 28th. For […]
Microsoft is making a big change to how Word for Windows saves documents. The word processing app will soon automatically save new documents to the cloud, instead of Word users having to enable AutoSave and cloud storage options. “We are modernizing the way files are created and stored in Word for Windows,” says Raul Munoz, […]
Because not every bot wants to live inside Microsoft's walled garden
Google and code editor company Zed Industries have introduced the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) as a standard way for AI agents to integrate with an IDE, with the idea that this will prevent developers getting locked into VS Code.…
This week, Netflix shared a few more details about its budding location business: The company will open its very first Netflix House in Philadelphia on November 11th, with a second location set to open in Dallas on December 11th. Both locations will span across 100,000 square feet, and offer ticketed experiences related to Netflix franchises […]
If FromSoftware’s multiplayer take on Elden Ring was just a little too easy for you, the developer has just the thing coming up. The studio announced “Deep of Night,” a new mode for Nightreign that is focused specifically on difficulty. Namely, it sounds like it’ll make things much harder. From describes it as “a high-difficulty […]
If you’re considering a gaming laptop, but you understandably don’t want to spend anywhere near $2,000, MSI’s Katana gaming laptop with the midrange RTX 5070 GPU is $1,099 (was $1,499.99) at Walmart. This machine has a lot to offer aside from a solid graphics chip for gaming. It includes a 15.6-inch QHD screen with a […]
Regulator points to lack of 'basic access controls' between internet-facing systems, internal network
South Korea's privacy watchdog has slapped SK Telecom with a record ₩134.5 billion ($97 million) fine after finding that the mobile giant left its network wide open to hackers through a catalog of bungles.…
Company cleared to launch again after April failure
Firefly Aerospace has been given the green light to resume launches after its April failure.…
Honor's Magic V5 is the thinnest book-style foldable in the world, but you probably couldn't tell. It's just 0.1mm thinner - that's four-thousandths of an inch - than the Oppo Find N5 or Samsung's recent Galaxy Z Fold 7. If that's a difference you claim to perceive, then I'm afraid I simply don't believe you. […]
Honor is bringing the Magic V5 — the world’s thinnest foldable phone, though only just — to Europe, where it’s available to order now following its Chinese launch last month. It’s joined by a new MagicPad 3 tablet and MagicBook Art 14 laptop. I’ve just reviewed the Magic V5, which is a whole 0.1mm thinner […]
Taco Bell’s plan to outfit hundreds of drive-thrus with an AI voice assistant isn’t going exactly as the chain expected. Dane Mathews, Taco Bell’s chief digital and technology officer, admitted to The Wall Street Journal that the company is re-evaluating where to deploy the tech as customers air their frustrations on social media, and others […]
One of the most devastating parts of grief is how it can strike out of nowhere. There you are, doing a perfectly normal, everyday thing, and then that perfectly normal, everyday thing reminds you of something or someone who is no longer there. And when that presence you lost was intimately connected with your life, […]
Credit agency offers own services as compensation
Credit scoring and monitoring biz TransUnion says that it recently suffered a breach affecting nearly 4.5 million individuals.…
Shadowserver counts more than 13,000 appliances still wide open – including thousands in US, Germany, and UK
Thousands of Citrix NetScaler appliances remain exposed to a trio of security flaws that the vendor patched this week, one of which is already being actively exploited in the wild.…
Miljödata meltdown leaves 200 local authorities scrambling over 1.5 BTC
Sweden's municipal governments have been knocked offline after ransomware crooks hit IT supplier Miljödata, reportedly demanding the bargain-basement sum of $168,000.…
ChargePoint is ramping up the power for its next-generation DC fast charging architecture to 600 kW for passenger vehicles, and up to 3.75 megawatts (3,750 kW) for heavy-duty trucks — enough to power an entire football stadium. Most EVs on the road aren’t able to accept more than 350 kW of power while charging, but […]
When this article was originally written in February 2022, the big Spotify controversy was that artists were abandoning the audio service in protest of the company's contract with podcaster Joe Rogan, and some subscribers were deciding to follow the musicians' example. More recently, some users have threatened to bail after CEO Daniel Ek invested in […]
Microsoft blames incoming UK Online Safety Act, says you have until 2026
Microsoft has begun emailing users of its Xbox gaming platform with likely unwelcome news: users will need to verify their age if they want to keep access to the company's various social services, and it's blaming the UK Online Safety Act.…
You can now add swappable magnetic PopSocket grips to Kindle e-readers without undertaking any DIY hacks. PopSocket has launched new PopCase Kindle cases that come with a built-in MagSafe ring, optimally positioned for hand placement and weight management when a MagSafe-compatible PopGrip is attached. The $40 cases are available for 11th and 12th-generation Kindles in […]
DJI is making its latest wireless lavalier microphone system even smaller without scrimping on features or battery life. The DJI Mic 3 is half the size and weight of its Mic 2 predecessor and introduces new capabilities, including two adaptive gain control modes, three voice tone presets, and a sizable increase in storage capacity for […]
US payments platform back in action, says it's informing affected customers
Shoppers and merchants in Germany found themselves dealing with billions of euros in frozen transactions this week, thanks to an apparent failure in PayPal's fraud-detection systems.…
Apple has removed the iPhone torrenting client, iTorrent, from AltStore PAL’s alternative iOS marketplace in the EU, showing that it can still exert control over apps that aren’t listed on the official App Store. iTorrent developer Daniil Vinogradov told TorrentFreak that Apple has revoked his distribution rights to publish apps in any alternative iOS stores, […]
