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COLUMNISTS

The Register brings you commentary from some of tech's most seasoned - and opinionated - experts.

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Stylized black-and-white portrait of Donald Trump on a dark background.

Trump jumps from 'anything goes' to 'strict regulation' AI policy

In a word, 'Huh?'

Microsoft's bad obsession is showing up in shabby services and slipshod software. Here's proof

If you can't bother to keep GitHub running, why should we bother with you?

Locked, stocked, and losing budget: AI vendor lock-in bites back

Execs in the C-suite thought they could swap models in a week. They were hallucinating

Anthropic's magic code-sniffer: More Swiss cheese than cheddar, for now

AI vuln-hunter finds what humans taught it to find. Funny that

AI quota inflation is no token effort. It's baked in

We've been here before. This time, we may not get out

QUIC will soon be as important as TCP – but it's vastly different

Deciphering the third transport protocol's four RFCs is a task to rival the proverbial blind man trying to understand an elephant

The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out

The perfect combination of hardware and experiences will arrive, no matter what Zuck and Neal Stephenson think

What happened when AI ran into the cold hard reality of the legal profession

Hallucinations don't fly in a court of law

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Apple's chips are the core of a new landscape, but its biggest win is Windows

Walled gardens make more sense when it's an AI-lligator infested swamp outside

Google is to journalism what Vikings were to monks. Now their man will run the BBC

Canny planning or dangerous compromise? Matt Brittin takes the hotseat at a pivotal moment

corporate speak. Pic credit: AJR Photo/ Shutterstock

Calling out corporate BS? There's a steaming pile to aim for

Your instinctive revulsion is spot on. Follow your nose

AI has made the Command Line Interface more important and powerful than ever before

Google knows asking agents to navigate GUIs designed for humans is ridiculous. Microsoft might not

Microsoft's Project Silica promises eternal storage. It can't get there from here

Soon turned out, we had a heart of glass

OpenClaw is the most fun I've had with a computer in 50 years

The DECwriter got me hooked in 1975. 'Clawdine' feels like a wonderful new beginning

Dijkstra’s algorithm won’t be replaced in production routers any time soon

Researchers have found a new approach to finding shortest paths, but it's complex

TLS 1.3 includes welcome improvements, but still allows long-lived secrets

Tricky tradeoffs are hard to avoid when designing systems, but the choice not to use LLMs for some tasks is clear

Microsoft exec finds AI cynicism 'mindblowing'

The tech is impressive. Shoehorning it into absolutely everything is not

AI music has finally beaten hat-act humans, but sounds nothing like victory

Top of the slops signposts the undiscovered country for an industry

fed up uni students looking at failing laptop

Networking students need an explanation of the internet that can fit in their heads

Networks have changed profoundly, except for the parts that haven’t

We're all going to be paying AI's Godzilla-sized power bills

Even if you never use it, you'll be paying for it thanks to datacenters' never-ending hunger for electricity

How Windows 11 is breaking from its bedrock and moving away

The once mighty Wintel supercontinent is cracking in more ways than you might think

BGP’s security problems are notorious. Attempts to fix that are a work in progress

Securing internet infrastructure remains a challenging endeavour

The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

Are tech giants getting nervous? They should be

The UK Online Safety Act is about censorship, not safety

US policymakers should take heed, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation

DNS security is important but DNSSEC may be a failed experiment

Nobody thinks of running a website without HTTPs. Safer DNS still seems optional

I just deleted my entire social media presence before visiting the US – and I'm a citizen

In 2025, social media has moved from self-expression to self-entrapment

Selling your digital soul to use Bluesky's DMs isn't just a bad idea, it's the law*

Getting carded is one thing. A full strip search? Welcome to Britain

Trendy graphic illustrating communications skills

To progress as an engineer career-wise, become a great communicator

It'll even help you develop technical skills

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Culture comes first in cybersecurity. That puts cybersecurity on the front line in the culture wars

'Trust us, we're from Trumpland' may not help Microsoft as much as it hopes

Please sir, may we have some Moore? Doesn't look that way

We're on a roadmap to nowhere. Come on inside

Microsoft's Euro-mandated File Explorer surgery shows 'less is more' is still a thing

Humble but with a huge history, the utility's privacy pare-back points to a productive possible future

Illustration of two people talking securely to each other from their laptops

What does it mean to build in security from the ground up?

As if secure design is the only bullet point in a list of software engineering best practices

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Abstract illustration of data streaming across a cityscape-like network

Contrary to some, traceroute is very real – I should know, I helped make it work

Gather around the fire for another retelling of computer networking history

Why Google's Chrome monopoly won't crack anytime soon

Haven't we heard this story before?

Illustration of someone plucking at some passwords

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

Here's why they really should

Huawei's farewell to Android isn't a marketing move, it's chess

HarmonyOS NEXT sounds dissonant until you get the theme

The open secret of open washing – why companies pretend to be open source

Allowing pretenders to co-opt the term is bad for everyone

Intel's processor failures: A cautionary tale of business vs engineering

Chipzilla taking some punches but could it stay down?

The cybersecurity QA trifecta of fail that may burn down the world

Malware is often described as biology. It should be the other way around

Illustration of a robot managing a datacenter

Um, what ever did happen with network automation?

Is it lingering somewhere between fusion power and self-driving cars?

A friendly robot working with someone on a laptop at home

Forget the AI doom and hype, let's make computers useful

Machine learning has its place, just not in ways that suits today's hypesters

Illustration of people working together as a team to build a system

Security is hard because it has to be right all the time? Yeah, like everything else

It takes only one bottleneck or single point of failure to ruin your week

Illustration of someone thinking about cybersecurity

How not to write about network security – and I'm speaking from experience

At least it's no longer an afterthought

NAT, ATM, decentralized search – and other outrageous opinions from the 1990s

The predictions that turned out correct ... and the ones we wished were right

A QA engineer works through a project on a large screen in an office

Open source work makes me appreciate software testing. It's not an academic exercise

Literally...

Busy freeway filled with cars bumper to bumper

How TCP's congestion control saved the internet

We guess it's OK it did

A traditional compass placed on top of a map

Why securing East-West network traffic is so important – and how it can be done

You don't want to hand your datacenter over to an intruder quite so easily

Composition image of someone working on a PDP-15 in the 1970s and someone today in a modern datacenter

It's time to mark six decades of computer networking

As we yearn for a return to a truly decentralized internet

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Building your own private 5G is as easy as Wi-Fi

YMMV. Hold onto your hats, we're diving into network technicals today

Time to study the classics: Vintage tech is the future of enterprise IT

Look back in wonder

A phone showing two apps: Mastodon and Twitter

With Mastodon, decentralization strikes back

ActivityPub isn't just what we've been doing over the Christmas break

Killing trees with lasers isn’t cool, says Epson. So why are inkjets any better?

Imagine there's no printer drivers. It's easy if you can...

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

The ghosts of dead trees haunt us still

Illustration of someone on a laptop in a computer universe being pushed along by digital signals

If you need a TCP replacement, you won't find a QUIC one

But we can say what this upcoming protocol is good for

Rust is eating into our systems, and it's a good thing

Language wars, huh, what are they good for?

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

Your past projects may be a pain, but can they rain fiery death from above?

Illustration of someone standing on the edge of a precipice

The internet's edge routers are all so different. What if we unified them with software?

Wouldn't it be nice to have the features you want, rather than accept whatever's bundled by suppliers

Big Tech is building the metaverse of its own dreams. You don't want to go there

No country for old menus

We were promised integrated packages. Instead we got disintegrated apps

Not to mention the severely disadvantageous subscription model

Dell and Ubuntu certify latest model of XPS 13 ultrabook

Computer giant's Project Sputnik extends to the 2022 model series

Illustration of someone holding a sphere labeled: Qubit

You're not wrong. The scope for quantum computers remains small

Perhaps a QC can help us work out why we'd want a QC

Zero Trust: What does it actually mean – and why would you want it?

'Narrow and specific access rights after authentication' wasn't catchy enough

An illustration of a car's components in a 3D exploded view

How to explain what an API is – and why they matter

Some of us have used them for decades, some are seeing them for the first time on marketing slides

Pretty rendering of an imaginary chip blueprint

RISC-V needs more than an open architecture to compete

Arm shows us that even total domination doesn't always make stupid levels of money

no one can hear you scream out here - bofh

Confirmation dialog Groundhog Day: I click OK and it keeps coming back

Yes/No/Cancel culture at its worst

An abstract illustration of a flexible network

Remember the hype for NFV? Whatever happened with that?

A technical deep-dive with a networking guru who was there

Your AI can't tell you it's lying if it thinks it's telling the truth. That's a problem

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of ML? Er, nobody

The month I worked for DEADHEAD: Yes, that was their job title

We can't have that contractor making us look bad

Illustration of a fictional sci-fi-style network map

The time we came up with a solution – and found a big customer problem

A fascinating firsthand retelling of the technical history of MPLS

Food for thought on the return to the office

Quality time with human beings? Nah. Gimme some free Monster Munch

Illustration of three people studying a giant user manual

You should read Section 8 of the Unix User's Manual

And see the importance of open and accessible operations

Halo Infinite ups the nostalgia factor for fans of the originals, but it's not without limits

343 Industries brings open world to the long-running military sci-fi epic

doc emmet brown back to the future cosplay

The year ahead in technology fail: You knew they were bad, now they're going to prove it

Stock up on schadenfreude, it may be 2022's most popular commodity

Predictive Dirty Dozen: What will and won't happen in 2022 (unless it doesn’t/does)

We confidently predict that the predictions in this article will turn out wrong

What is Magma? An open-source project for building mobile networks

Amar and Bruce explain how cloud native principles can be applied to wireless connectivity

Microsoft Paint + car park touchscreen = You already know where this is going

I'll just pay the- OH MY GOD

Not the kind of note you want to see fluttering from an ATM

This won't buy me beer

Log4j and Omicron: Brothers in harm, mothers of invention

That which does not kill us can still ruin our Christmas

A smarter alternative to password recognition could be right in front of us: Unique, invisible, maybe even deadly

Take your breath awayyyyyyyy

Illustration of a cube suspended in a data center: it represents weird but cool new technology

SmartNICs, IPUs, DPUs de-hyped: Why and how cloud giants are offloading work from server CPUs

Where this technology grew from, and what it offers you

New World: Grindy? Check. Repetitive? Check. Fun? We hate to say it... but check

Goddamn it, Jeff Bezos' lot can make a passable MMORPG after all

An illustration of a road intersection filled with traffic

Everything you wanted to know about modern network congestion control but were perhaps too afraid to ask

In which a little unfairness can be quite beneficial

Get real: Say what you like about your app but don't be surprised if I trollsplain

My next column will be written in spaaaaaace

Abstract illustration of a complex architecture of squares and paths leading to them

Here's an idea: Verification for computer networks as well as chips and code

What tools are available? What are the benefits? Let's find out

When everyone else is on vacation, it's time to whip out the tiny screwdrivers

Fixing laptops and solving UX conundra – all in a night’s work

Horizon Workrooms promises a virtual future of teal despair

Only one company can make VR so bad it makes MS Teams look good – Facebook

It's time to decentralize the internet, again: What was distributed is now centralized by Google, Facebook, etc

The idea was to remove central points of failure, not introduce them

Digital signage error at Stanstead Airport

Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

An unexpected bork in the boarding area

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

It's wonderful that code written for Windows 3.1 still works well today

Illustration of a Git tree alongside some code and some servers

What is GitOps? This is the technical introduction you've been looking for

If you need to get your head around the concept of configuration-as-code, start here

New Bodleian Library, photo by Bodleian Libraries University of Oxford

The world is chaos but my Zoom background is control-freak perfection

Nudge that potted plant a little to the left aaaaand… action!

An abstract picture of a blue-purple mesh

What’s the big deal with service meshes? Think of them as SDN at Layer 7

A technical yet demystifying dive into networking tech you can’t avoid

If HAL did digital signage. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that...

My God! It's full of Bork!