The Register Kettle

Hey, did you hear about those elections in the US this past week? Honestly, how could you have not? The Democratic party has seized control of Congress and state governments around the country. It's easy to see this entirely as a rebuke of Trump and his policies, but blowback against AI, datacenters, and the tech industry played a role too, if the past week of chaos in markets and Silicon Valley is any indication. Join host Brandon Vigliarolo, El Reg EIC Matt Rosoff, and special guest, senior reporter at The Verge, Elizabeth Lopatto, to talk about what the winds of political change mean for the tech industry. 

It's official: Anthropic is going public, and boy, are our eyebrows tired from pouring over hundreds and hundreds of pages of questionable claims.Anthropic is going to need to do a lot to make its massive IPO more than just a flash in the pan, as systems editor Tobias Mann and senior reporter Tom Claburn tell host Brandon Vigliarolo on this week's episode. For one, the company has nearly a trillion dollars in compute commitments to pay for, which is going to mean it'll be burning through more cash than a datacenter gas turbine turned up to 11. In addition to its massive spending for the foreseeable future, there's also the fact that much of its computing power relies on customers who are also competitors.In short, we're skeptical, but you probably already knew that. It's El Reg, after all, and we're not just taking what the AI industry claims at face value - if it looks like a house of cards, it probably is. 

We've spent the past several decades using duct tape, string, and chewing gum to chain the world's computers together into this thing we call the internet, so there's really no good reason to be surprised that most of it is full of software containing vulnerabilities that are practically just as old. The world is still reeling from the PHP2Shell revelations that hit the news cycle this week, and this week on The Kettle there's no better topic for host Brandon Vigliarolo, cybersecurity editor Jessica Lyons, and FOSS reporter Liam Proven to tease apart.Join us to discuss what exactly is going on, how AI was key to finding another issue no human likely ever would have discovered on their own, and why exposing more bad code in the backbone of the world's computers might be just what we need to rethink the whole thing for the better. 

It's been nearly half a century since the Voyager probes launched from Earth on a mission to explore the outer solar system, and they're still kicking. You're probably familiar with some of Voyager's iconic images, like the Pale Blue Dot and other images of our outer planets - most of which Voyager is the only spacecraft humans have ever sent to those planets. Those photos and observations wouldn't have been possible without Voyager's imaging team, eight members of which were selected from scientists from around the world. The UK's sole representative, Dr. Garry Hunt, joins us on this episode of The Register to talk about his role in the Voyager program, the future of the mission, and the state of science in the UK, US, and beyond. 

The FBI has announced what appears to be a third arrest in its campaign to root out the ShinyHunters after they busted into Bureau systems - but just because they're a highly-capable hacking crew it doesn't mean they won't be outdone by AI. A second vulnerability discovered by Anthropic's Mythos model has been exploited in the wild, and it's not one that humans probably would have discovered, begging the question just how important we are in the future of cybercrime. Join host Brandon Vigliarolo, cybersecurity editor Jessica Lyons, and senior reporter Tom Claburn to discuss those stories, and what they mean for the future of cybersecurity, on this week's episode.