This week, we've got annoying holiday movies, chatty White House insiders, and cheese.

An unpredictable and exciting college football season is coming to a close. This weekend's first-round slate is set up for two tight games and two blowouts — but in the playoffs, anything goes.

Friday is the deadline for the government to release files related to the life and death of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and there are still questions about what will be published and when.

While he is directly appealing to Americans that the economy is improving, President Trump will visit a congressional district Republicans are eyeing in their attempts to keep control the U.S. House.

If you're tempted to bail on potentially fun events becuase you feel awkward, read this. Level up your small talk game and practice social courage with six tips from psychologists.

The chip industry in China is hustling to overcome a Western tech choke hold, even as President Trump appears poised to loosen U.S. chip restrictions.

NPR's Leila Fadel tags along for lunch with Elazar Sontag, the Washington Post's new food critic.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump's direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program.

European Union leaders have agreed to provide a massive interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years. The loan will not rely on frozen Russian assets.

A jury returns a guilty verdict in the case of Hannah Dugan.  The Milwaukee judge was accused of allowing an undocumented immigrant defender to evade immigration agents

EU leaders agreed to loan Ukraine €90bn to stay financially afloat for the next two years.

The trade minister says information was accessed and an investigation has been launched.

Card providers can decide whether to offer unlimited payments on contactless cards.

Australia's prime minister visited Ahmed in hospital as he's treated for shooting injuries.

Road, rail and air travellers are being advised to allow extra time for travel and check their routes.

BBC Sport breaks down one of the most controversial fights of the decade, as Britain's Anthony Joshua says he will not carry Jake Paul for one second longer than he has to.

Suspect Claudio Neves Valente has also been linked by police to the murder of an MIT professor on Monday.

The deals would end years of efforts by Washington to force ByteDance to sell its US operations.

Supermarket sales fell for the fourth month in a row, while discounts did not lift Black Friday spending in November, figures suggest.

Whale breath collected by drones is giving clues to the health of wild humpbacks and other whales.

Ofcom survey finds 18-34s increasingly see life online as bad for society and their mental health

Young Brits are souring on the internet, with increasing numbers seeing it as damaging to society and their mental health, according to latest research published by Ofcom.…

Coming with added 'filters and rules' after prototype spat out inaccurate or outright wrong responses

The UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) will add an AI chatbot to its GOV.UK app in early 2026, before rolling it out across the GOV.UK website used by most government departments and services.…

Are pasties a proxy for weight? Or a cypher for circumference?

The Reg Standards Bureau was plunged into uproar this week when a reader suggested a new unit for weight, inspired by Cornwall's revamped food recycling service.…

Hey, teacher, leave that cabling alone

On Call Welcome once more to On Call, The Register's reader-contributed Friday column in which we share your stories of tech support jobs so wrong, they're right.…

Optus gave bad instructions, staff didn’t escalate their concerns

Technicians working on a firewall upgrade made at least ten mistakes, contributing to two deaths, according to a report on a September incident that saw Australian telco Optus unable to route calls to emergency services.…

Beijing wants to 'seize the initiative in the international competition in cyberspace'

Chinese authorities on Thursday certified the China Environment for Network Innovation (CENI), a vast research network that Beijing hopes will propel the country to the forefront of networking research.…

Plus: Lazarus Group has a brand new BeaverTail

Even Amazon isn't immune to North Korean scammers who try to score remote jobs at tech companies so they can funnel their wages to Kim Jong Un's coffers.…

Even if Mozilla is going to add an AI kill switch, that may not be enough to reassure many.

Waterfox, a popular fork of Firefox, is saying nay to AI. Considering how unpopular Mozilla's plan to botify its browser has become, this could win the alternative some converts.…

Customers in 10 of the company’s 23 regions had “operations fail or take an extended amount of time to complete.”

Snowflake pushed an update this week that caused a “major outage” worldwide, leaving many users unable to query data, experiencing failures when ingesting files, and receiving error messages for 13 hours, the company wrote in an impact statement.…

Study finds built-in browsers across gadgets often ship years out of date

Web browsers for desktop and mobile devices tend to receive regular security updates, but that often isn't the case for those that reside within game consoles, televisions, e-readers, cars, and other devices. These outdated, embedded browsers can leave you open to phishing and other security vulnerabilities.…

DiskSat's design offers "a power-to-weight ratio unmatched by traditional aluminum satellites."

They were infected by roundworm, whipworm, and microscopic protozoans called Giardia duodenalis.

Also, the Trump administration wants to put some nuclear power reactors there, too.

Google loves AI content, except when it doesn't.

Subscribers will start seeing ads when selecting a user next year.

Help increase our charity haul of nearly $18,000 in just over a week.

I would avoid building a PC right now, but if you can't, here's our best advice.

Human review didn't stop AI from triggering lockdown at panicked middle school.

Once researchers turn to LLMs, paper counts go up, quality does not.

Mayer gets the "Archetype" treatment.