Field notes from the edge.
What our engineers learned this week. Hands-on technical deep-dives, postmortems, and strategy frameworks.
The search company that plants trees just launched a Linux browser to help Europe battle big tech
Berlin-based eco-conscious search outfit Ecosia is expanding its range of European-focused web browsers to include a Linux version, citing the growing number of users in the EU looking for open alternatives to the clutches of American tech giants. Calling Linux users a “critical tech community that has long called for data privacy, digital sovereignty, and sustainability,” Ecos
AI-assisted mushroom hunting is a recipe for a bad trip
If you see a mushroom in the forest and you're wondering if it's safe to eat or poisonous, don't ask an AI. Polish software engineer Piotr Migdał, a founding engineer at AI analytics and cost analysis firm Quesma, explained in a Wednesday blog post why trusting the mushroom insights of leading AI models is a dubious, potentially life-threatening idea in an experiment he ran. Ar
Firefox and Thunderbird hit the fortnightly release treadmill
Mozilla's Firefox 155 and subsidiary MZLA's Thunderbird 155 have arrived. Yes, already. Firefox officially debuted yesterday, although The Reg FOSS desk wasn't offered the upgrade until early evening. Thunderbird followed several hours later. If this seems soon after the previous releases, that's because it is. Mozilla announced Firefox's new fortnightly cadence in July, and MZ
Orbify.eu pitches warped Inception-style 3D maps for navigation
Orbify.eu, a two-year-old Norwegian startup, wants people to see the world in a new way – through a warped lens that bends rendered map scenes into the dream sequence perspective seen in Christopher Nolan's movie Inception. The geospatial biz, co-founded by Karsten Huitfeldt, is developing image processing software that folds a 3D map model onto a curved surface. The technique,
OpenClaw 2.0 pours glitter on slow-burning security dumpster fire
OpenClaw has unveiled what its makers call its largest ever update – large enough to earn a 2.0 moniker – with usability taking center stage, along with some security updates that critics are suggesting will be insufficient. The OpenClaw foundation announced the release of version 2.0 of its AI agent harness on Sunday, describing it as something with far more scope than they ev
Word 97's ghost in the machine: The crash that vanished the moment anyone looked at it
Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen shared another fireside tale – one to strike fear into the hearts of engineers everywhere: the bug that can't be replicated in the debugger. The story begins near the end of the Word 97 release cycle, when a defect surfaced in the test labs but vanished the moment engineers reached for a debugger. It was maddening. A script could trigger
Microsoft's virtual intern Teams Facilitator will be late for the meeting
Microsoft has pushed back detection and question answering by the Teams Facilitator to November, after initially scheduling General Availability for June. Teams Facilitator is an AI assistant that joins meetings. It tracks agendas and can take notes, if enabled. The next stage in its development is to have it pop up and answer questions if it detects a knowledge gap. For exampl
Print management outfit PaperCut is under 0-day attack, and it’s drawing customers’ blood
Nothing smarts like a paper cut, but being attacked after leaving an application’s web interface exposed to the internet might be just as painful. Such attacks are the risk to which users of PaperCut print management software find themselves exposed today, after the company revealed a university’s security teams alerted it to an attack. The company analyzed info provided by the
Google forces Android apps to use memory more wisely as RAMpocalypse rages
Google has declared that Android apps distributed through Google Play will have to meet new memory performance thresholds, starting in early 2027. Google is cracking down on poorly optimized code that might otherwise squander what's now a precious commodity, as RAM prices skyrocket and consumers choose phones with leaner specs. "An ecosystem-wide memory crisis is imminent due t
Nitter might be no more, but Twitter is back (sort of)
There'll be no rest for X Corps' lawyers this weekend after startup Operation Bluebird rolled out the twitter.now social media network this week. The launch came the same week as Nitter was served a cease-and-desist letter, and it's the latest in the saga of Twitter branding that X boss Elon Musk dispensed with when renaming his $44 billion purchase as 'X'. Unlike Nitter, which
Salesforce boasts: 50% of bookings were from 'customers refilling the tank... they consume Flex Credits, they want more'
Announcing upbeat financials and a new offering with AI posterchild Anthropic, Salesforce has begun to drip-feed plans for how it might get customers to spend more as they deploy AI. The CRM giant has been among the victims of the so-called SaaSpocalypse, which sees widespread business application software replaced or diminished by AI models which interact directly with busines
Microsoft slaps a fresh coat of AI paint on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap
Microsoft is dusting off the rebrandogun again, and this time it's aimed at the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. The list of hopes and dreams will henceforth be called the AI at Work roadmap. The notification popped up in the Microsoft 365 admin center earlier this week with the words "The AI at Work Roadmap provides a single destination to discover upcoming innovations across Microsoft
AWS buys DuckLabs, the people behind the popular in-process OLAP database
Amazon Web Services has bought DuckLabs, the support and development company behind open-source DuckDB. The deal — the financial details of which were not disclosed — will see DuckLabs, founded by authors of the in-process OLAP database, become part of AWS. AWS said DuckDB and its related projects would remain free and open source under their MIT licenses, with the nonprofit Du
Self-hosted email is in steep decline, Microsoft and Google are taking over
The number of large users hosting their own email servers has halved in the last decade, according to Artem Berezin, a researcher who works at business e-mail company Live Direct Marketing. On the Internet Society blog, Berezin explained that DNS records reveal a lot about email. “The MX record says where the mailbox lives. The SPF record says who may send on the domain's behal
McKinsey says enterprise AI is finally 'on the road to ROI'
Four years into the generative AI revolution, consulting giant McKinsey reckons we've finally started the engine and are officially "on the road to ROI." Whether that road leads to actual profit-making and how long it takes to travel is anyone's guess, because the firm's data suggests most respondents still aren't reporting an enterprise-level earnings contribution from AI. McK
Microsoft warns that transitioning Excel workbooks to new Exchange connectors might not be smooth sailing
Microsoft has issued a warning to Excel users. Want to keep using the Exchange Connector? You'll have to migrate your workbook connections and switch to Microsoft 365 or Office 2024. The software giant just published a timeline for the switchover in its Message Center. The roadmap puts customer validation of the new Exchange Mail and Calendar connectors as starting in August (a
HMRC dangles £500M carrot for National Insurance system revamp
The UK government is inviting suppliers to bid to build a new national insurance system with a price tag of up to £500 million. The tax collector, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), has issued a call to speak to suppliers about the procurement to continue to run and then update the National Insurance and PAYE System (NPS). The “change” aspect of the new contract, which could last up
I picked Task Manager 'to see how ready AI is for primetime… or if it would just degrade to slop' – OG dev talks to The Reg
The author of the original legendary 1996 Windows Task Manager has released new versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, telling The Reg the project started life as a way to see if vibe coding could produce something useful. "I picked Task Manager as a simpler target to see how ready AI is for primetime… or if it would just degrade to slop," former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer
Canonical backs quest to translate mountains of C into safe Rust with AI
Canonical's fondness for AI and Rust is no secret. Now it is co-funding a three-year PhD project investigating whether the former can translate large C codebases into the latter. Engineering veep Jon Seager announced the investment on Ubuntu's Discourse forum. The PhD project will be conducted at the University of Bristol's Programming Languages Research Group. So don't panic.