Field notes from the edge.
What our engineers learned this week. Hands-on technical deep-dives, postmortems, and strategy frameworks.
Whose roadmap is your software estate running on?
Most enterprise software estates run to somebody else’s calendar. End-of-support dates, license model changes and needless upgrades arrive on the vendor’s schedule, and the IT team absorbs them: the migration nobody budgeted for, the re-platforming that displaces a project the business actually asked for, the patch cadence that is really a product roadmap in disguise. Origina,
Rust upstart reveals 'reimplementation' of Microsoft Office – with Claude on coding duty
ArtCraft has added alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to its growing collection of Rust applications, which it describes as "clean-room reimplementations" of proprietary software. The projects lean heavily on Claude for development and remain unfinished, but our first look at its Word alternative, WordCraft, suggests they are worth watching. The company's Git
Margaret Hamilton, software pioneer who helped put humans on the Moon, dies at 90
"Forget It" was the name of a small computer program never thought to be needed, which will nonetheless go down in history along with its author, Margaret Hamilton, the American software engineer who died on September 30, aged 90. Hamilton led development of the onboard flight software for Apollo's command and lunar modules, helping astronauts reach the Moon in 1969. Among her
COSMIC shuts the door on AI code as GNOME debates letting bug reports in
System76 is banning AI-generated content from contributions to the COSMIC desktop. Some GNOME sub-projects also restrict AI-generated contributions, but one developer is urging them to make an exception for vulnerability reports. The COSMIC desktop project has changed its contributors' guidelines. The latest version now has a clear no-AI rule, insisting that contributors declar
Microsoft extends the Outlook naughty step with two more file types
Microsoft is adding two extra file types to its Outlook block list to strengthen security. The file types are .msix and .msixbundle, used for Windows application packages and bundles. The change affects New Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the Web in Exchange Online. By default, users of the affected clients will no longer be able to download or open attachments with these ex
Classic Outlook clings to stale search results as Microsoft works on a fix
Microsoft is very keen for Outlook users to ditch the classic version in favor of the new one, and a search bug isn't helping the old client's cause. Results can fail to update after mailbox items are moved or changed, with Microsoft's workaround sending affected users back to Windows Desktop Search. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem. When users move an item from the searc
Games Workshop seeks IT leader to summon the legions in epic saga battling the forces of ERP
Games Workshop is on the hunt for a head of IT to guide the organization through its technological saga for the next two years. The UK-based tabletop games retailer and manufacturer of the globally popular Warhammer figures said that under the fixed-term contract, the heroic individual would take overall responsibility for its global IT and customer technology capability, and r
Revive Raskin's 3 laws of software with humane work that considers a dev's duty of care
In 1942, Isaac Asimov formulated three laws of robotics. 58 years later, Jef Raskin responded with three laws of human-computer interface design. They haven’t been bettered yet. There are rules, and even laws, about designing computer user interfaces. Even after 35 years of Linux, which has brought Unix to the masses, the FOSS world has not yet really grasped this. In the meant
Google hearts Apple's Swift so much it's pumping out server-side support
After evolving from an Apple-made, client-side language and years of false starts, Swift could finally make it on the server. Google has taken note and has just rolled out Google Cloud API Client Libraries for Swift, evidently convinced Swift has a backend role thanks to its performance and ease of use. The GCP Swift libraries target Swift 6.2+ and take advantage of SwiftNIO's
Excel Canvas offers to turn your workbook into the boss's next report
Microsoft plans to roll out Excel Canvas through October, adding Copilot-generated reports to its veteran spreadsheet. Excel Canvas "transforms workbook data into a polished report containing visualizations, metrics, and insights," said Microsoft. The reports automatically refresh as the underlying data changes. Users need access to Copilot in Excel and can tweak reports throug
Met Police suspends use of phone-hacking software over Russian links
The Metropolitan Police has stopped using digital forensics software from Oxygen Forensics while it investigates US allegations that the supposedly American outfit was secretly owned by Russians and developing its wares in Moscow. Scotland Yard confirmed it has paused use of the company's tools and launched a "full review," after US prosecutors last week accused Oxygen CEO Lee
Techie was stung by a wasp, held overnight by Chinese police, then trapped in a 13-hour meeting
Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's Friday column that shares your tech support stories. This week we're taking a detour into tech sales, courtesy of a reader we'll Regomize as "Carson," whose employer sent him to China without first securing a visa. The adventure began when a colleague called with a fateful question: "Can you travel to China tomorrow to a
Singapore’s government creates a dating app
Singapore’s digital transformation agency, GovTech, is piloting a dating app. GovTech says the app came about after discussions among its staff, who apparently “shared an interest in exploring some of the challenges people can face when meeting someone new.” “They wondered whether a different approach that places greater emphasis on compatibility through values and preferences,
Show colleagues how much you care by sending an AI avatar to your Google Meet call
If you've always wanted to say you have "people" to attend your meetings, there's an app in development for that, as long as you're comfortable with the idea of eventually sending an AI bot in your place and potentially offending your human colleagues. MeetTwins, from Indian developer Aditya Shinde, is an AI assistant currently recruiting users for its beta. It's designed for a
Firefox 157: Could bold new look be just what Mozilla needs?*
Firefox 157 is here, but this time, Mozilla is making an unusual amount of noise about this release and its new look. This release has a new theme called “Nova,” which in the release notes Mozilla calls “Firefox’s biggest visual refresh in years.” The new theme is the flagship here, and aside from that, the new features in this version are fairly modest. They’re all welcome eno
KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, but the X11 session isn't invited
KDE Plasma 6.8 is nearly here, bringing the revived Oxygen theme and dropping its X11 session. For those who prefer an older look, a new project called Klassik recreates the KDE 3 experience using modern Plasma technology. KDE has released the second and final beta of Plasma 6.8, while developers have already begun landing changes for Plasma 6.9, according to the latest This We
Microsoft sends PDFs to strange new worlds instead of SharePoint
Microsoft has confirmed a bug where saving a PDF from Word for Windows can send the file to an unexpected location with a random name when using SharePoint Online. The Windows giant's odyssey of bork has continued, following issues that included a less-than-ideal September for its flagship operating system and a paste problem in Excel. The latest breakage affects the document f
Techie assumed boss knew what they were talking about and killed Exchange by deleting data
Monday mornings can be filled with trepidation and tension, which is why The Register kicks them off with a little light-hearted fun in the form of a new instalment of “Who, Me?" It’s the reader-contributed column in which you admit to your errors, and reveal the consequences. This week, meet a reader who asked to be Regomized as “Phil” and told us that many years ago he starte
New software dependency validation process increases speeds by 54x
As if the pace of software creation hadn't accelerated enough thanks to generative AI coding agents, computer scientists in Japan have devised a way to turbocharge the process of build dependency verification. Speeds can increase by as much as 54x. Software build systems like Make, CMake, and the Zig build system automate the process of turning source code into executable progr