ON CALL By the end of the working week it can be tempting to phone it in, but The Register instead works to bring you extra amusement in the form of a new edition of On Call – the reader-contributed column that shares your tech support stories. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Orson” who told us they very much enjoyed the recent On Call about the lawyer who didn’t understand italics. “It reminded me of an incident many years ago when I was a Facilities Manager for a major UK food company,” Orson told On Call. “I came in one morning and was summoned by the Company Secretary, who was clearly annoyed because the night before, she tried to send an extremely urgent fax and the fax machine did not work.” For those who don’t remember fax machines, or successfully tried to forget them, they packed a low-res scanner, a nasty printer, and a slow modem into a small appliance. The user interface included a numeric keypad used to enter the phone number of whichever remote fax machine you wanted to send a document to. Faxes were horrible, but faster than the postal service. Email killed faxes in the late 1990s (except in Japan) though manufacturers kept including fax functions in multifunction printers (MFPs) for years. But we digress: Orson decided the way to solve this problem was to start with the wetware. “I asked her to show me what she had done and watched as she placed the document on the in-tray, used the keypad to dial the number, and then hit Enter,” he told On Call. Having gone through those steps, the Company Secretary stared at Orson, her pose clearly communicating a desire for him to swiftly explain why technology had let her down – and why the facilities team had left the fax machine in such a state. “I told her she was trying to use the photocopier,” Orson told On Call. To be fair, the presence of MFPs in many workplaces meant that wasn’t a completely horrible mistake. But as an example of a rather silly tech support moment, it makes for a fine On Call! Does a similar tale lurk in your memory? If so, click here to send your story to On Call. We’d offer to let you fax it in, but The Register doesn’t have a fax machine anymore. ®
There'll be no rest for X's 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 lets users view X content without an account, twitter.info is a new social media platform and "not affiliated with X Corp." Users must sign up for a paid account and can then post and view posts. "You'll see trust signals on posts," a FAQ on the service's website explains, "and you control your own feed with a simple dial — freedom of speech, not freedom of reach." At present, the service is asking $20 for early access as a founder, and $40 for the "Fighter" tier, which adds a slingshot badge to the user's profile. As for why the service isn't free, like other X alternatives such as Bluesky or Mastodon, the answer is, "To keep bots out and stay independent." The FAQ continues, "A paid door proves there's a real person behind an account, and member funding keeps us answerable to you instead of advertisers." Operation Bluebird filed to claim the Twitter trademark last year, reasoning that since Musk ditched it in favor of X, it was fair game. X disagreed, and snapped back: "Twitter never left and continues to be exclusively owned by X Corp." The case is ongoing, and no judgment has been made. However, the team behind Operation Bluebird is clearly confident enough in the outcome to launch twitter.now and posted, "Twitter is a reclaimed brand." It also notes, "Twitter.now is not an attempt to recreate the old platform." The Register asked X what it makes of it all, but Musk's mouthpiece has yet to respond. In a week in which X lawyers have seen off the likes of XCancel and Nitter, at least for the time being, it will be interesting to see what happens to twitter.now. X's content is not what the service is offering, but the old Twitter branding is certainly in its crosshairs. Your move, X. ®
HP reckons enterprises fretting about the spiraling cost of AI tokens have an obvious alternative: run the models locally and spend the money on a more expensive PC instead. The pitch emerged during HP's third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, where executives repeatedly pointed to cloud AI costs as one reason customers are buying higher-spec machines that can do more AI work locally. AI PCs are becoming harder to avoid as HP pushes more of its lineup upmarket, but the company insists customers are getting something for the extra cash. "Clearly, the AI PCs are now providing more value than what it was last year," said Ketan Patel, president of HP's Personal Systems business. "Clearly, as the workloads are coming from cloud to the device, it is adding significant value for our customers, especially on token economics, which is a big topic right now, as you start deploying workloads in a customer environment." Patel also pointed to keeping sensitive data closer to where it is generated, reduced dependence on network connectivity, and faster response times as reasons to run AI locally. HP says it is already seeing customers use the machines for employee productivity, engineering and design, customer service, and predictive maintenance. The token issue came up again later in the earnings call, when HP was asked whether enterprises were looking at AI PCs specifically to get models off the internet and avoid cloud charges. "Yes, there are two meaningful conversations which are going on right now," Patel replied. The first, he said, was "this increasing cost of token and how bringing models locally on the edge can help them optimize cost." The second was how enterprises securely govern the growing number of AI agents wandering around their environments. All of this is rather convenient for HP, since AI PCs cost more and, by the company's own admission, are good for its margins. AI PCs made up 46 percent of HP's PC mix during the quarter, and the company expects that to rise to between 60 and 70 percent in fiscal 2027 and more than 70 percent in 2028. Patel said the shift would be "margin accretive," while interim CEO Bruce Broussard noted that AI PCs come at "premium pricing" and give HP opportunities to pile additional services and security products on top, making them "more valuable to the customer and frankly, more valuable to us." The effect is already showing up in HP's numbers. Personal Systems revenue jumped 18 percent year over year to $11.8 billion even though PC volumes fell 16 percent. HP attributed that seemingly improbable combination to higher prices, a richer mix of premium machines and AI PCs, and sales of attached services and peripherals. Those non-hardware businesses now contribute about a third of Personal Systems gross profit. Anyone hoping PC prices have finished climbing may also want to look away. CFO Karen Parkhill said HP has been increasing prices as component costs rise and "expect[s] to continue to increase pricing." Patel added that, depending on how a machine is sold, it can take anywhere from immediately to "a few months" for those increases to reach customers. Still, HP's AI ambitions aren't confined to convincing enterprises they need beefier laptops. The company has also deployed AI to tackle one of computing's more enduring problems: people printing all the rubbish surrounding the thing they actually wanted. It talked up its Precise Print software, which uses AI to remove unnecessary web content before printing, which HP claims can cut paper use by up to 38 percent and ink consumption by as much as 47 percent. After decades spent finding increasingly imaginative ways to sell us printer ink, HP has apparently decided artificial intelligence can help us use less of it. ®
The panel explores Samsung’s entry into the credit card market, why iPhone owners continue to resist switching to Android, and the growing influence of AI across technology and society. Discussion ranges from AI escaping coding sandboxes and solving long-standing mathematical problems to AI-generated music and the impact of European Union regulations on innovation, competition, consumer […]
This edition of Foreshadowing Tech considers how so many AI speculations from Colossus: The Forbin Project have come true in both surprising and subtle ways. Regular panelists Chuck Joiner, Marty Jencius, Jeff Gamet, are joined by guest AI enthusiast Jill McKinley to look at how the film predicted things like machine autonomy, surveillance, privacy and self-improving systems. Wrapped in a thriller that is as much political as it is tech, there are questions about freedom and security that we have yet to address today. The panel mixes film trivia, tech analysis, and unsettling parallels to today’s AI debates in a thoughtful discussion.
The debut of a new MacVoices’ series, Foreshadowing Tech, examines how science fiction has influenced real-world technology using 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Made Contact as the first case study. Chuck Joiner, Jeff Gamet, and Marty Jencius discuss the depictions of various technologies, and how they measure up to the current state of things, including space travel, tablets, biometrics, HAL, AI, cryosleep, movie aesthetics, and the lasting cultural impact of both films.
Much of western Europe has endured long stretches of hot weather and heat waves this summer. France recently experienced its hottest day on record and put 54 of its 96 departments under the highest heat alert.
A research team has developed a highly durable platinum-nickel (PtNi) hydrogen evolution catalyst that suppresses nickel (Ni) leaching through atomic ordering. Nickel leaching is a major cause of performance degradation in catalysts used for anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE). The findings are published in the journal Carbon Energy.
As extreme weather intensifies, Reese Greenlee is testing the limits of 3D-printed concrete to create stronger, more accessible storm shelters for vulnerable communities.
With airlines and consumers increasingly concerned about carbon, nitrogen and hydrocarbon emissions, biofuels have emerged as a green alternative. Among these, those made from coconut oil are particularly attractive because they have fatty acid chain lengths similar to the hydrocarbon chain lengths required for jet fuel, suggesting they could make effective fuels with minimal processing.
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The Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011, triggered by a tsunami and leading to multiple reactor meltdowns, shook confidence in nuclear safety well beyond Japan. In Germany, it was a turning point: Chancellor Angela Merkel's government suspended nuclear power's earlier lifetime extensions and ultimately pursued a phase-out, with broad parliamentary support.
Cet été, la France bat des records de chaleur et les moustiques, eux, n'ont jamais été aussi présents. Rien qu'en 2026, plus de la moitié du territoire est désormais colonisée par le moustique tigre et les cas de dengue autochtone explosent dans le sud du pays. Les autorités sanitaires...
For the fourth time in four years, Peacock has raised its prices.
The Select plan, which has ads and doesn’t include sports, movies, or Peacock originals, went from $8/month to $9/month. The monthly fee for the standard ad plan (Premium) went from $11/month to $13/month, and the ad-free plan (Premium Plus) went from $17/month to $20/month. Annual pricing, as previously, offers 12 months for the price of 10 months.
Peacock’s previous price hike was in July 2025, when the middle tier (with ads) went from $8/month to $11/month, and the ad-free plan increased from $14 to $17. Peacock also raised prices in July 2024 and August 2023. NBCUniversal launched the service in 2020.
As smartphone designs have become more refined, they've also become less repairable. Fairphone bucks that trend, offering devices that can be fully disassembled and serviced using a single screwdriver. But its devices were a pain to get in the US until now.
The Dutch company has launched the Fairphone Gen 6+ in the US, offering not only the phone but a full line of accessories and replacement parts so you can keep your phone running for years. And yes, the battery is removable.
Don't expect the Fairphone Gen 6+ to blow you away in the spec department—it focuses on being repairable and paying workers a fair wage. Half of the phone is made from recycled materials, and it has a microSD card slot. How retro.
Petlibro founder and CEO York Wu provided more information about an outage that left users unable to control their smart pet feeders through the companion app and, in some reported cases, left them with hungry pets.
Petlibro, a company owned by Shenzhen, China-headquartered firm Shenzhen Libro Technology Co., first acknowledged the outage on Tuesday at 5 am PT. At 7 pm PT on Wednesday, Petlibro said the outage was resolved. Notably, some people online reported different information at the time, and some claimed to still have problems as of August 13.
In a blog post on Saturday that included an apology and acknowledgement of the “frustration and concern” the outage caused, Wu confirmed that problems with Petlibro’s cloud server caused the outage:
The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity. That aviation feat comes at a time when jet fuel prices have skyrocketed because of the US war with Iran.
The test flight of Heart Aerospace’s X1 demonstrator aircraft took place at Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York on August 12. The X1 aircraft is comparable in size to a small regional airliner and can achieve a maximum takeoff weight exceeding 25,000 pounds with the help of four wing-mounted electric motors. The battery-electric propulsion system delivered more than one megawatt of power during the maiden flight.
All-electric aircraft can offer quieter and cleaner flight without the emissions that come from burning jet fuel. They may also prove more reliably cost-effective than conventional aircraft that come with jet fuel costs subject to geopolitical disruptions.
Google began offering third-party app store downloads in the Play Store earlier this week, but US District Judge James Donato says the company isn't doing enough. After reviewing the process for accessing the first non-Google store, Donato ruled that Google has added unnecessary "anticompetitive friction," ordering the company to rectify the issues.
While Epic and Google are patching things up with a global partnership agreement, the two are still on opposite sides of the antitrust case in the US. Google lost the case in 2023, and the intervening years have been about determining how to implement remedies to address Google's anticompetitive behavior. One of the court's key elements is the requirement that Google include third-party app stores in the Play Store, giving users an easy way to get apps from non-Google sources. Aptoide Games became the first such app store recently.
However, Google worked hard to avoid this outcome, attempting to settle with Epic to keep third-party app stores out. When it was forced to admit the Aptoide store under the terms of the ruling, Google didn't exactly put up a banner welcoming third-party app stores. In fact, Judge Donato found in a Thursday hearing that Google's implementation was not good enough, according to The Verge.
Samsung has largely defined the foldable phone category, but it's no longer alone in releasing flexible devices. Google, Motorola, and a raft of Chinese OEMs have their own take on this form factor. Is the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra really "ultra" enough to remain on top?
This phone doesn't have the wide frame of the new Z Fold 8, instead matching the approximate size and shape of the company’s last few tablet-style foldables. The Z Fold 8 Ultra is not a big leap, but it continues Samsung's pattern of iterative foldable improvements. At this point, there's very little left to improve. The compromises of going with a foldable over a regular flat phone have largely been erased with the Z Fold 8 Ultra. Well, except for the price.
Flatter and a little better
Foldables used to be real pocket-busters, almost like carrying two phones glued together. Samsung has successively shaved a few millimeters off every year, taking a leap last year with the Z Fold 7. The Z Fold 8 Ultra is even a bit slimmer than that phone, but the difference is basically imperceptible. It still has the same buttons in the same places, including a fingerprint sensor in the power button.
Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.
The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.
US armored vehicles were being destroyed so quickly that they were “respawned” and sent back into the simulated fray, a US official told The Wall Street Journal. The US troops who participated in the exercise—held in Germany from April 9 to May 10—were on rotational deployment from Fort Hood, Texas.
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