Field notes from the edge.
What our engineers learned this week. Hands-on technical deep-dives, postmortems, and strategy frameworks.
Microsoft fixed Excel 2016 copy-paste bug. Then reintroduced it. Now it's fixed again
The Excel copy-and-paste bug is back, which means Microsoft is making a second round of fixes. The bug first appeared in the September update and manifested in multiple versions of Excel as a silent failure of the paste operation. Users copied content and attempted to paste it, but the destination cell was unchanged no matter how hard they mashed the Ctrl+V keys. Microsoft fixe
SAP promises to open out data flows in both directions
SAP has taken meaningful steps in opening its data to bidrectional sharing across the enteprise, and in decoupling the advanced analytics needed for AI from its ERP upgrade path. During a technical conference last week, the German software giant adopted native support for Apache Iceberg, the open table format, and extended its partnership with Databricks to bring data from lega
Microsoft admits certifications can be a drag, launches creds that recognize skills
When The Register writes about professional certifications offered by vendors, we often receive comments arguing that such credentials are nowhere near as valuable as real-world experience. Now, Microsoft has acknowledged there’s some merit in that argument. Redmond revealed its stance last week in a post from general manager for content and insights Cameron Percy, who observed
Microsoft improves Windows 11 performance on 8 GB PCs as RAM prices keep climbing
With RAM getting more expensive, Microsoft is putting more effort into making Windows 11 run better on systems with just 8 GB of memory. Microsoft said on Tuesday that it was "raising the bar for 8 GB Windows 11 PCs," following a renewed focus on memory optimization earlier this year. The changes come as Redmond continues pushing more expensive Copilot+ PCs, which require at le
GhostBSD 26.2 takes the fright out of FreeBSD with a friendlier installer
GhostBSD, the easiest-to-install flavor of FreeBSD for the daemon-curious desktop dabbler, is back with a fresh update. GhostBSD 26.2-R15.1p6, to give it its slightly unwieldy full version number, is based on FreeBSD 15.1. It brings a new installer, full-disk encryption support, a smaller installation image, and fixes across its desktop tools. FreeBSD 15.1 was released back in
SUSE to cut one in ten employees because of... AI
One in ten employees at SUSE are facing the chop due to "automation and AI," according to a memo dispatched by management at the privately owned open source software biz. In an email to the 1,900 strong workforce on Monday - seen by The Register - CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, the former Red Hat exec who joined SUSE in March 2023, confirmed the "difficult news." "We are announcin
Microsoft's Canada timezone troubles leave admins fixing calendars, pretending they're in Bogota
Microsoft has discovered once again that few things strike fear into the heart of a software engineer quite like a government deciding to fiddle with the clocks. Parts of Canada stopped observing seasonal clock changes on November 1, leaving affected areas of British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba permanently on UTC-07:00, UTC-06:00 and UTC-05:00 respectively. Unfortunately, M
Microsoft's moolah mountain is more massive than ever. It just doesn't want the people who built it
Capitalism can seem so perverse. Take Microsoft, which is celebrating record financial performance by inviting 60,000 employees to consider continuing their careers outside the company. Voluntary redundancy may seem to make sense when a company's running out of cash, but Microsoft is dripping with the stuff. It was a very good fiscal '26 at Redmond. Its Azure business is up ove
India floats AI plan under which ‘The model travels to the data, rather than the data travelling to the model’
As debate and legal argument continue over the extent to which developers of large language models are entitled to feed the world’s data into their systems without paying for it, India’s government has come up with an idea to regulate and secure the flow of information. India’s motive is to create AI models trained on local data, because it thinks offshore model-makers won’t be
Howler will have AI answer your questions, then burn the chat
If you want to ask AI a question and watch the conversation go up in virtual flames when you're done, there's a new Mac app for that. Howler is an open-source app from a Chinese developer going by Aries Zhou, and it takes incognito mode AI questions to a new level by making them graphically interesting and easy to access right from the desktop of a macOS device. Anyone familiar
Matrix takes sovereign messaging into the realm of the tech giants
Decentralized messaging platform Matrix is no longer the upstart it once was. The organization is now a serious challenger to the status quo as concerns about sovereignty and independence reach new heights. At the organization's recent Malmo event, which grew attendance 30 percent year-on-year, the mood shifted from "yes, this is important" to "yes, we're rolling this out." Mat
Reddit's r/opensource bans AI slop, and quite a few humans for good measure
Reddit's r/opensource community has declared war on AI-generated software by introducing a sweeping set of new rules that also manage to shut out solo developers, newcomers, and anyone who doesn't speak English. The crackdown, announced over the weekend, bans projects that use AI, that were created with AI, or that are intended for AI applications. "The long story short, if you
Arc browser on its way out as makers suggest an alternative
The Arc browser has flatlined, with its maker announcing it will be sunsetting it altogether on December 22, 2026. The Browser Company announced the news on October 22, just over three years after we noted Arc's arrival. Nothing will happen immediately, other than an end to new Arc accounts. Starting November 23, lights will begin turning off on iOS and Android, with several AI
Apple App Store review process hits a traffic jam
Whatever the task, there's an app for that… Except for the process of reviewing those apps, apparently. There are a growing number of reports on Apple's developer forums that developers are waiting a long time for their apps to be reviewed before they’re listed on the App Store. Subjects include 'Unusually long Apple 'waiting for review' time", "Stuck in Waiting for Review for
Reach new heights of laziness by burning tokens to let an AI tap your smartphone screen for you
Why use your smartphone when AI can do it for you? We’ve reached a new level of AI inanity with the launch of Opposable, a tool that taps, swipes, and types on Android phones and controls iPhones through a companion computer, sparing users the apparent burden of operating their own devices. If you don't want to update a calendar event, start a timer, or enable dark mode, you ca
Signal bug could keep your mic - and camera - on after hangup
Make sure you don’t say anything mean or secret after hanging up a call on Signal, as a bug in the encrypted messaging app’s calling library could prevent a call from ending properly, potentially leaving audio and possibly video active. The vulnerability, CVE-2026-113380, was published by MITRE on Tuesday and given a CVSS score of 9.3, marking it as a critical issue in Signal’s
AI cuts coding time, but it's also filling open source's inbox with crap
Generative AI is saving open source developers time while giving maintainers more rubbish to sift through, according to a Linux Foundation survey. Respondents estimated that a quarter of incoming pull requests – proposed code changes – were low-quality "AI slop." Open source projects have spent the past year grappling with AI-generated contributions, useful vulnerability discov
The spec is the new code, so brush up on your prose, says Kaseya CTO
Software developers will need to get their kicks from becoming code coaches of AI, professors of prompt engineering, and masters of their domain. So says Pratik Wadher, chief technology officer at Kaseya, who oversaw a team of codesmiths rewriting software across the company’s managed services portfolio, which spans remote monitoring and management, backup and recovery, cyberse
openEuler brings China's enterprise Linux ambitions to the desktop
Surprisingly few organizations were promoting Linux distros at Open Source Summit Europe. The only dedicated stands we found belonged to two Chinese projects, with openEuler occupying the larger booth. For users accustomed to Western enterprise distros, openEuler may be a less familiar name, but it has an impressive history. It's the modern free community version of Huawei's Eu