The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

FBI to ShinyHunters: 'We know how to find you'

The FBI’s cyber chief has a message for the criminals that hacked the bureau’s jobs portal last week: "We know how to find you," so turn yourself in. In a video message following the Dutch National Police’s arrest of a 24-year-old whom the FBI described as “one of the alleged leaders of ShinyHunters,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, had some advice for the “remaining members” of the data theft and extortion gang. “We're confident you've seen or heard things in recent days that the public has not,” Leatherman said. “Other groups believed anonymity or their friends would protect them, and they were wrong. Arrests have a way of changing who is willing to talk, and seized infrastructure has a way of showing us who's left. The longer you stay in this, the more we learn about you. You know how to find us, and we know how to find you. I suggest you reach out first while the choice is still yours.” The FBI declined to answer The Register’s questions about the video message, including whether it had seized any of the cybercrime group’s infrastructure, and whether any of ShinyHunters’ members had taken Leatherman up on his offer to “reach out first.” After the Dutch suspect’s arrest, police said on Tuesday that they uncovered “a large amount of information” on the man’s laptop, “including details about two murders that were to be committed abroad. There are indications that the suspect gave the order for this.” According to FBI Director Kash Patel, the feds assisted Dutch investigators in cuffing the 24-year-old suspect. In a subsequent xeet, the bureau said that cops seized electronic devices and are investigating additional leads: “More arrests possible.” Early last week, ShinyHunters hacked the FBIJobs.gov portal and claimed to steal sensitive personal details about current, former, and prospective FBI employees. But unlike the group’s typical theft-and-extortion intrusions, a spokesperson told The Register that this one was “NOT financially motivated … We want the FBI to correct or retract their statements they made, which included substantial false allegations.” Later, in an exclusive interview, the spokesperson told us the attention-grabbing hack would preserve ShinyHunters’ reputation and keep its “business” afloat. “It’s a game and it’s the world we live in,” a ShinyHunters spokesperson said. “We are just protecting our business as any other business would do. It’s about who does their job better.”®

Zuckerberg touts enterprise AI push because Meta would never do anything to damage your reputation

Meta continued its search for profits at the bottom of the AI rabbit hole on Monday when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the formation of an enterprise services business built on the back of its Muse models and agent harnesses. Meta uses its social networking and messaging services to gather data about users so it can use AI-powered recommender systems to present targeted ads, a service its advertiser customers find valuable. The company's online businesses (excluding virtual reality) earned $50.3 billion in profits in the first half of 2026, essentially all from advertising, and its ad revenue amounted to $114.4 billion during the same period. The company has edged toward having LLMs write those ads and also imagines AI managing some aspects of advertisers' businesses – such as responding to customer inquiries. With the new Meta Enterprise Platform, the company is now trying to capitalize on more than the fact businesses can't help but to have a presence on its social media properties. In addition to companion agents, Zuckerberg sees opportunities to sell business and coding agents, and even power customer applications through its API platform. This puts Meta in a position not only to compete with other model builders but the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google – all of which have a head start in bringing AI-powered services to enterprise customers. "Initially, we will focus on bringing our full technology stack, including the Muse agent, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, Muse Code, and more to businesses and developers to help them grow," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. Leading the company's enterprise push is Chirantan "CJ" Desai, who on Monday quit as CEO of MongoDB to take the Meta gig. Desai gets the job of convincing enterprises to embrace Meta, an idea that flopped in 2016 when the company introduced Facebook At Work, a version of its social networks tuned for internal collaboration. While Meta's AI rivals – Microsoft, Amazon, and Google – have all endured various scandals, they are established B2B players and have rap sheets rather shorter than Meta's. The Social Network recently agreed to an $18 billion settlement over allegations it employed additive features that negatively affected children's health. That's just the tip of an iceberg filled with everything from perve glasses to age-inappropriate chatbots and of course the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But like a kid in a suit, Zuckerberg now wants you to believe he's really grown up and you can totally trust Meta for all your AI needs. ®

Close the observability gap with agentic observability

When a critical application fails, the last thing an IT team needs is a debate over who's responsible. Yet in complex enterprise environments, network, application, and compute teams often rely on separate legacy monitoring tools, each providing only part of the picture. Identifying the root cause can become a time-consuming exercise while essential services remain unavailable. As organizations expand their use of AI, hybrid infrastructure, and sovereign cloud environments, the challenge is becoming more pressing. The systems supporting critical services are growing more interconnected, while the need for resilience, operational efficiency, and effective governance continues to increase. AI agents are starting to take on some of that operational load, but an agent reasoning from legacy monitoring data sees the same partial picture the humans do. But are enterprise leaders seeing the same risks as the teams responsible for keeping these systems running? Research by Virtana suggests a significant observability gap between what boardrooms believe they know about their IT environments and what frontline operators experience. In this interview, The Register's Tim Phillips speaks with Paul Appleby, CEO of Virtana, about the limitations of legacy monitoring approaches and how agentic observability could help organizations gain a clearer picture of their infrastructure. Appleby explores why fragmented legacy monitoring can leave IT teams struggling to distinguish the cause of an incident from its symptoms, and how agentic observability, which correlates real-time telemetry across applications, cloud, infrastructure, networks, and AI systems, gives AI agents the context to accelerate root cause analysis and remediation. The discussion also examines the growing importance of observability for data sovereignty and AI infrastructure. As enterprises invest in AI factories and increasingly complex workloads, Appleby considers how organizations can maintain visibility across the technology stack, strengthen governance, and address operational risks before they disrupt critical services. For IT leaders, the interview offers a perspective on moving beyond the traditional focus on proving which team wasn't responsible, toward faster resolution, preventative observability, and more resilient operations. It also raises an important question for executive teams: Is investment in governance and operational controls keeping pace with the infrastructure and AI services their businesses increasingly depend on? Watch the full interview below to explore how agentic observability can help enterprises can close the observability gap and strengthen their approach to IT resilience. Contributed by Virtana

AMD's 192 GB Gorgon Halo prices might leave you petrified

The first systems powered by AMD's Gorgon Halo system-on-chip (SoC) platform have arrived, boasting up to 192 GB of unified memory on board. That's enough to put DeepSeek V4 Flash on your desk if you can afford to pay a hefty premium for all that RAM. GMKtec's EVO-X5 Pro is among the first to feature the House of Zen's top-specced Ryzen AI Max+ 495 SoC — you can see why we're just going to call it Gorgon Halo from here on out — but with regular pricing starting at $6,799, all that memory doesn't come cheap. But for local AI enthusiasts and perhaps privacy-conscious small businesses, it might be worth it just to run larger, more capable models from the security of their homes and offices. At 4-bit precision, Gorgon Halo is equipped with enough memory to run models to around 345 billion parameters on Linux or 320 billion parameters on Windows. The difference here comes down to memory partitioning. On Windows, you'll need to allocate 160 GB of memory to the GPU, while the Linux kernel and AMD's GPU drivers enable users to take advantage of nearly all of the available memory. This puts high-profile frontier models like the 284 billion parameter DeepSeek V4 Flash or Z.AI's 320 billion parameter GLM-5.3-Flash within reach of Gorgon Halo customers. The chip Announced earlier this year, Gorgon Halo is essentially a factory overclocked version of the Strix Halo APU that powers AMD's AI Halo workstation that we reviewed this summer. Both chips can be had with up to 16 Zen 5 cores, a 40-compute-unit integrated GPU, and an XDNA 2-based NPU to power all the Copilot+ features you didn't ask for but Microsoft is pushing on you anyway. The big difference between the chips is that AMD has bumped up the clocks by about 100 MHz across the board, and Gorgon Halo now supports 192 GB of faster 8,533 MT/s LPDDR5x memory compared to Strix Halo's 128 GB of 8,000 MT/s. In terms of performance, we don't expect the clock bump to make a meaningful difference. With that said, the faster memory could help a little bit for local AI enthusiasts. Large language model (LLM) inference — that is, the process of running pre-trained models — is predominantly memory bound. That means the faster your memory is, the faster the system can generate tokens. But while Gorgon Halo does achieve high memory bandwidth at 273 GB/s, that's only about 6.5 percent faster than Strix Halo at 256 GB/s. At most, you can expect to see a few more tokens a second on highly optimized models. Priced out of the market Gorgon's main attraction is really the prospect of higher memory capacity. But as we mentioned before, the ongoing memory shortage has not been kind to consumer electronics. A year ago, a 128 GB Strix Halo box would have set you back between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on OEM. DDR5 prices have skyrocketed since then and by the time AMD launched its AI Halo workstation this summer, prices had jumped to $4,000. With 50 percent more memory, you can expect Gorgon Halo-based products to be even pricier. The GMKtec unit is already 64 percent more expensive and the brand is usually on the more affordable side of things. More premium brands like Framework and notebooks like HP's ZBook Ultra G3a will likely command a steep premium. Unfortunately for AMD, there's not a lot that can be done. LPDDR5x is in short supply thanks to the AI boom. Each NVL72 rack Nvidia sells is packed with between 36 and 54 TB of the stuff, and that's just CPU memory. The situation is only going to get worse as AMD embraces LPDDR5x for its own AI-optimized Verano Epycs. If you need a lot of memory right now, you're in for a lot of pain, and the situation isn't expected to improve anytime soon. Earlier this year, Samsung warned that memory supplies are likely to remain constrained through 2028, which is bad news for everyone including AMD's top competitor Nvidia. Nvidia has also seen the price of AI workstations based on its GB10 SoC roughly double over the past year, jumping from $3,000-$4,000 a year ago to $6,000-$8,000 today, which doesn't bode well for its Windows SoC debut. Announced at Computex late this spring, Nvidia's RTX Spark is a family of premium Windows systems from major OEMs based around the same GB10 SoC and offering up to 128 GB of memory capacity. Considering these systems will be offered as both mini PCs and notebooks, we wouldn't be surprised to see them command a premium over existing GB10 boxes. Once again, this puts AMD in a position to undercut its competitor by offering more memory for less, but it's awfully hard to cross shop when you can't afford either option. ®

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Google Says Chromebook Updates End In 2034, 'Many' Models Move to Googlebook OS

Google says ChromeOS will keep receiving regular updates and security patches through mid-2034, after which qualifying newer Chromebooks will be able to migrate to the new Googlebook OS. 9to5Google reports: Starting with Chromebook updates, Google says that "Chromebooks you have today will continue to receive updates through their supported lifetime," with all Enterprise and Education management capabilities remaining in place as well: "We will maintain support for current Chromebook devices running ChromeOS as outlined in our Auto Update policy and the Chromebooks you have today will continue to receive updates through their supported lifetime..."

Google adds that similar management tools will be coming to Googlebook, but they're not available yet. Apparently they're planned for the second half of 2027. Meanwhile, Google says that "many" existing Chromebook models will be eligible to transition from ChromeOS to Googlebook OS. More details are coming "soon." A later note specifies that Google is referring to "newer commercial Chromebook models."

Notably, Google specifies a year when ChromeOS updates will come to an end in a later note -- 2034. Chromebooks with a 10-year update policy that extends past 2034 will be eligible to move to Googlebook OS. [...] Finally, in regards to apps, Google says that it is "committed" to web developers despite an increased focus on Android apps on Googlebooks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Meer dan vierhonderd arrestaties bij schoolprotesten Frankrijk

PARIJS (ANP) - Bij demonstraties op scholen in Frankrijk zijn zeker 440 arrestaties verricht, meldt het Franse ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken. Eerder op dinsdag stond dat aantal nog op circa veertig. Veel van de arrestanten zijn minderjarig. Het ministerie schat het aantal demonstranten op meer dan 200.000 mensen.

Er heerst onvrede op scholen in Frankrijk, onder meer vanwege een gebrek aan leraren, gebrekkige lesroosters en materialen. Rond Parijs werd daarom sinds afgelopen week geprotesteerd, waarna een scholierenbond opriep tot landelijke protesten op scholen.

Minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Laurent Nunez verklaarde tegen BFMTV dat de diensten secuur hebben opgetreden tegen het geweld en de vernielingen die daarmee gepaard gingen. De politie zou "extreem proportioneel" hebben gehandeld.

De burgemeester van de Noord-Parijse gemeente Saint-Denis noemde het geweld eerder op dinsdag in sommige gevallen geoorloofd. Nunez noemde die opmerkingen tegenover BFMTV "zeer ernstig" en "onacceptabel".


Milieuorganisatie dient in Brussel klacht in over Nieuw-Zeeland

UTRECHT (ANP) - De Nederlandse milieuorganisatie Both ENDS dient in Brussel een klacht in tegen Nieuw-Zeeland, omdat het land klimaatafspraken uit een twee jaar oude handelsovereenkomst met de Europese Unie niet zou nakomen. De Nieuw-Zeelandse regering hief vorig jaar een verbod op de zoektocht naar nieuwe olie- en gasvelden op zee op. Ook voerde ze onlangs wetgeving in die een lopende klimaatzaak tegen een zuivelconcern onmogelijk maakte.

Both ENDS vindt dat daarmee de afspraak geschonden wordt dat de EU en Nieuw-Zeeland milieuwetgeving niet zullen afzwakken om investeringen en handel aan te moedigen. Ook zou Nieuw-Zeeland de belofte om zich te houden aan het klimaatakkoord van Parijs niet langer nakomen.

De milieuorganisatie heeft de klacht ingediend bij een meldpunt waar mensen de Europese Commissie kunnen verzoeken om naleving van handelsafspraken af te dwingen. Zij krijgt daarbij steun van Nieuw-Zeelandse milieuorganisaties Greenpeace Aotearoa en Environmental Law Initiative.


Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri wordt de eerste vrouwelijke premier van Marokko

Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, nu burgemeester van Marrakech, is aangewezen als de nieuwe premier van Marokko. Zij zal een kabinet vormen in een tijd van grote politieke onvrede, na de grootschalige jongerenprotesten en de bestorming van Ceuta.

Kwetsbare kinderen kunnen dankzij een maatje weer even kind zijn en leuke dingen doen. ‘Pannenkoeken bakken!’

Een scheiding, geen tijd, geen geld: om allerlei redenen kunnen kinderen thuis niet de aandacht krijgen die ze nodig hebben. Dan kunnen ze terecht bij vrijwilligersinitiatief Vitalismaatjes voor een maatje. „Sommigen blijven echt járen bij elkaar.”


Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

In deze gemeente hebben mensen het meeste PFAS in hun bloed

Zo’n driekwart van de Nederlanders had in 2025 te veel PFAS in het bloed. Dat meldt het RIVM. In Dordrecht waren de waarden bijna het slechtst van het hele land. Alleen rond de industrie in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen was het nog extremer.

Opruimvrijwilliger Frans maakt zich zorgen om afval naast de snelweg: 'Zo gebeuren ongelukken’

Grote stukken piepschuim, karton, banden en zelfs meubilair: Zwerfie Rotterdam ergert zich mateloos aan al het afval dat in bermen langs snelwegen ligt. Volgens de organisatie die zwerfafval opruimt wordt het steeds viezer langs de snelweg. "Nederland wordt zo steeds vuiler", verzucht Frans van Zaalen, vrijwilliger bij Zwerfie.

this isn't happiness.

ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, DESIGN & DISAPPOINTMENT INSTAGRAM ★ ELSEWHERES

Soon, Jon Adams

Soon, Jon Adams

kottke.org

Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products

Brett Simmons on how using the stock Mac UI isn’t the...

Brett Simmons on how using the stock Mac UI isn’t the easy choice it used to be. “Many of the apps people think look good are not using stock UI.” Simmons’ own quickie redesign of NetNewsWire looks much better to me than the Liquid Glassified version.

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

‘You make me want to throw up’: Republicans attack ex-special counsel Jack Smith at Senate hearing

GOP senators lash out on Smith, who led criminal cases against Trump, with invective and inaccurate information

Jack Smith, the former special counsel who led two criminal cases against Donald Trump in 2023, faced attacks from Republicans in a wide-ranging hearing on Tuesday that included a basketball mix-up, a reference to the tooth fairy and accusations of perjury.

In the Senate judiciary committee hearing on Tuesday, the Republican senator Eric Schmitt, of Missouri, raised perjury allegations against Smith, seemingly over a mix-up about the Atlanta Hawks and University of Iowa Hawkeyes basketball teams.

Continue reading...

‘The emperor is naked’: Uefa president Ceferin takes new swipe at Infantino

  • Aleksander Ceferin condemns FFE and Balogun affair

  • Tells club chiefs it is ‘time to say enough’ to Fifa

The Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, has attacked his embattled Fifa counterpart Gianni Infantino in a scathing takedown of the failed Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) project and other recent scandals, saying “the emperor is naked” and declaring “it is time to say ‘enough’”.

In a pointed address to the European Football Clubs (EFC) general assembly, Ceferin did not mention Infantino by name but made clear his view that Fifa’s leadership must change. He drew on the event’s location, Copenhagen, to make a comparison to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes in assessing Infantino’s conduct, making clear reference to the peace prize awarded to Donald Trump and last summer’s Folarin Balogun affair along with the FFE scheme.

Continue reading...

Texts about alleged Cornell gang-rape released after investigation reopened

Texts, including unnamed male defendant appearing to apologize, reportedly sent days after alleged 2024 assault

Excerpts of text messages reportedly exchanged by a defendant in the Cornell University gang-rape case and the woman who claims she was assaulted were published by CBS News on Tuesday, a day after New York prosecutors said they were reopening a criminal investigation.

The texts were reportedly sent within days of the alleged October 2024 assault at a campus fraternity house in which a female student said she was drugged and repeatedly raped over the course of seven hours by multiple men who were alerted to her presence on the social media platform Snapchat.

Continue reading...

Cherise Saywell wins national short story award for ‘tender’ tale of a child facing violence – read an extract here

The Edinburgh-based writer takes £15,000 prize for Ditto, a ‘beautifully told’ story about domestic abuse in a small Australian town

  • Read an extract from Ditto below

Edinburgh-based writer Cherise Saywell has won this year’s BBC national short story award for a “tender” and “taut” story about a young boy caught in the midst of domestic violence.

Saywell was announced as the winner of the £15,000 award, run in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, at a ceremony held at BBC Broadcasting House on Tuesday evening.

A full audio recording of Ditto is available on BBC Sounds.

Continue reading...

VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Nieuw belastingvoordeel voor zeer vermogende Nederlanders gaat ten koste van minder vermogenden

Sargasso

Hopeloos Genuanceerd

Closing Time | Psycroptic

Psycroptic zijn een soort legendes in de Australische technische death metal scene. Ze bestaan al sinds 1999, en The Pulse of Annihilation is al hun 9e album. Shame on me dat ik er tot recent nog nooit van gehoord had. Maar hee, je kunt niet in elke muzikale niche duiken, toch? Blij dat ik ze nu toch ergens tegenkwam, want dit is werkelijk alleraardigst! Bij deze ook het hele album in de Closing Time, zodat jullie er ook allemaal extra lang van kunnen genieten.

GSTV. Wie wil Jetten eigenlijk op zijn bek slaan?

Social

Ja terwijl de Haagse waan van de dag zich alweer opwindt over de uitgestoken linkerhand van de minderheidscoalitie naar PRO, willen wij het toch nog even over afgelopen zondag hebben. Want ten eerste: wat nou slip of the tongue? En ten tweede, zoals Jan Dijkgraaf vanochtend schreef: wat nou goed georganiseerde en goed gefinancierde organisaties die proberen eerst een kleine groep te pakken, daarna een steeds grotere groep, om alleen maar zelf meer macht te krijgen en de eigen diepe zakken meer te vullen? Is dat gelul van een dronken aardbei? Of weet Rob Jetten iets wat wij niet weten? En zo ja, wat dan? En zou hij die lui dan niet eens heel gauw op hun bek moeten slaan?