Mark Pesce - theregister

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Mark Pesce

The Star Wars cantina scene shows we need a new hope for the agentic web

'We don't serve their kind here' protects today's publishers, but won't help rebels destroy the monetization Death Stars built by Google and Meta

Collage of six surprised faces with wide eyes and open mouths in vertical panels.

Developers build the best tools for developers – and are now defanging the AI menace

Fear and even grief are natural reactions to machines that do your job. The next reactions – acceptance and innovation – are more useful

AI will soon be capable of telling convincing lies

That's fine when playing poker, but less useful when we trust LLMs with serious work like finding software flaws

The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out

The perfect combination of hardware and experiences will arrive, no matter what Zuck and Neal Stephenson think

AI has made the Command Line Interface more important and powerful than ever before

Google knows asking agents to navigate GUIs designed for humans is ridiculous. Microsoft might not

OpenClaw is the most fun I've had with a computer in 50 years

The DECwriter got me hooked in 1975. 'Clawdine' feels like a wonderful new beginning

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Tech that helps people outshone overhyped AI at CES 2026

Nobody really needs an AI toothbrush that sends their gums to the cloud

Vibe coding will deliver a wonderful proliferation of personalized software

They're now good enough to do things well, if you take the time to learn how to steer them

Whatever your job, mentoring is your job – and the one that matters most

Nobody succeeds alone, and no community thrives without generosity

AI is the flying car of the mind: An irresistible idea nobody knows how to land or manage

And which will crash, repeatedly, until users learn how to handle it safely

Toys can tell us a lot about how tech will change our lives

LEGO Mindstorms, PlayStation 2 and Furby all resonate today in their own way

I started losing my digital privacy in 1974, aged 11

An encounter with the healthcare system reveals sickening decisions about data

I just deleted my entire social media presence before visiting the US – and I'm a citizen

In 2025, social media has moved from self-expression to self-entrapment

If you want a picture of the future, imagine humans checking AI didn't make a mistake – forever

CEOs will chase illusory profits as workers are left to pick defective items from an agentic production line

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AI's the end of the Shell as we know it and I feel fine … but insecure

Model Context Protocol has many fine uses, but then it hinted at becoming a Von Neumann machine

AI can't replace devs until it understands office politics

Being human and working on a team is the job, not writing code

Meta's AI, built on ill-gotten content, can probably build a digital you

Llama 4 Scout is just the right size to ingest a lifetime of Facebook and Insta posts

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Vendors just don't want machines to live double lives

Ignorance really is bliss when you’re drowning in information

If only the joy of missing out was easier to achieve

Michaelangelo's David ponders the digital

Memories fade. Archives burn. All signal eventually becomes noise

But where are the comprehensive archives to protect digital works, or allow us to memorialize friends?

three ghosts and old man in christmas carol tale

When your technological ghosts come back to haunt you, expect humbug

Spirits of the NeXTcube, the web ad, and the cursed smartphone deliver a seasonal Technicarol

Data is the new uranium – incredibly powerful and amazingly dangerous

CISOs are quietly wishing they had less data, because the cost of management sometimes exceeds its value

Copilot's crudeness has left Microsoft chasing Google, again

Surely Redmond knows that almost nobody has tamed unstructured data?

AI has colonized our world – so it's time to learn the language of our new overlords

Brush up on your ‘Delvish’ – the lingo that flatters LLMs into a sort of submission

AI stole my job and my work, and the boss didn't know – or care

Everyone knows automation will happen, which is why everyone needs proof of human involvement

Big Tech's eventual response to my LLM-crasher bug report was dire

Fixes have been made, it appears, but disclosure or discussion is invisible

Boss chosing between AI and human workers

Microsoft's Recall should be celebrated as the savior of SMEs and scourge of CEOs

Small businesses have seldom had the chance to understand how they work. A history of PC use makes it possible

I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite – and no one wants to fix this model-breaking bug

Neural nets with flaws can be harmless … yet dangerous. So why are reports of problems being roundly ignored?

A road leading up to a question mark in a cloud

When AI helps you code, who owns the finished product?

It's not settled law. And it's going to mean trouble

Devaluing content created by AI is lazy and ignores history

The answer is not to hide from ML, but to be honest about it

Your PC can probably run inferencing just fine – so it's already an AI PC

Language models are entirely happy on the desktop

Slow Down road sign with cloudy background

It's time we add friction to digital experiences and slow them down

Decades of obsessing about always going faster have left us in constant danger

Apple has botched 3D for decades. So good luck with the Vision Pro, Tim

It looks like a fine product, but it's the ecoystem that will determine success

It's uncertain where personal technology is heading, but judging from CES, it smells

Our vulture spent a week in Las Vegas – here are his key takeaways

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Digital memories are disappearing and not even AI or Google can help

Technology allows us to keep more of our stuff than previously possible – but what use is it if we can't find it?

Software is listening for the options you want it to offer, and it's about time

Talking back to devices will end the confusion caused by long menus of functions nobody uses

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

Or maybe don't let Microsoft's desire to defeat Google dictate your defensive strategy

Portable Large Language Models – not the iPhone 15 – are the future of the smartphone

Personal AI can redefine the handheld experience and perhaps preserve privacy too

Bad software destroyed my doctor's memory

Design this bad should sicken developers – but it's the rest of us who end up feeling queasy

Social media is too much for most of us to handle

I know, because I let it all flood in. And it was damaging to my mental health

Open the pod bay doors, GPT, and see if you're smart enough for the real world

The combination of LLMs and autonomous agents will pour fuel on AI anxiety

Open source AI makes modern PCs relevant, and subscriptions seem shabby

Why sign up for ChatGPT when LLaMA and a multicore beast can do as well?

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It's time to reveal all recommendation algorithms – by law if necessary

We should know why we see what we see, not be left in the dark

Once AI can create endless viral videos, good luck switching off social media

Imagine humans … watching humans …watching TikTok … forever

Conversational AI tells us what we want to hear – a fib that the Web is reliable and friendly

As Google and Microsoft make us all AI consumers, remember that to err is human, but to really mess things up at scale takes a computer

AI may finally cure us of our data fetish

There's still a place in the world for good old-fashioned human intelligence

Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users

Siri? Google? Alexa? Could ChatGPT save us from this data harvesting nightmare?

If Apple's environmental rhetoric is meaningful, Macs and iPads should converge

An Apple a day keeps the doctor away, but too many might be a burden on the planet.

An image of 'A robot painting a picture while running on a treadmill' produced with stable diffusion

AI-driven creativity gives overpowered PCs something worthwhile to do, at last

Take your desktop rig out for a proper run, turning words into images, 3D models and videos – if it can

To preserve Earth's treasures, digital silence is golden

There are beautiful, undisturbed places in the world. You do not have to catch 'em all

Amazon has repackaged surveillance capitalism as reality TV

Smile! You're on Candid Doorbell – and the joke's on us all

After 40 years in tech, I see every innovation contains its dark opposite

From modems to the Metaverse, Mark Pesce has seen it all

If you didn't store valuable data, ransomware would become impotent

Start by pondering if customers could store their own info and provide access

LIDAR in iPhones is not about better photos – it's about the future of low-cost augmented reality

The cost of kit to capture the real world is plummeting, thanks to Apple

'Bigger is better' is back for hardware – without any obvious benefits

Software was supposed to eat the world, but it's scarcely snacking on today's monstrous silicon

The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility

A bolt of lightning has caused me days of misery, because the fix requires too much proprietary tech

Apple has missed the video revolution

COVID-19 turned many of us into media producers, but the tools favour Windows

closeup of a young man in an office holding a briefcase and a surgical mask in his hand

COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it

Faux flexibility – and then back in the office where we can keep an eye on you ...

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A proposal to beat below-the-belt selfies: Crowdsourced machine learning using victims' image stashes

Empty your inboxes, people, we can duck this problem together

Zuck didn't invent the metaverse, but he's started a fight to control it

Begun, the Metaverse Wars have. And the metaverse will fight Facebook's attempts at domination

It's one thing to have the world in your hands – what are you going to do with it?

Google won the patent battle against ART+COM, but we were left with little more than a toy

Through the Looking Glass – holographic display hardware is great, but it's not enough

An intriguing proof of concept for real-time 3D arrives, but without the software it's just a gimmick

Measuring your carbon footprint? There's no app for that

Smartphones can keep us informed about everything other than environmental impact. That needs to change

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

It's wonderful that code written for Windows 3.1 still works well today

Great reset? More like Fake Reset: Leaders need a reality check if they think their best staff will give up hybrid work

Fortune favours the flexible in the new normal

Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

Opting out of data monetisation is neither easy nor cheap

Imagine a world where Apple shacked up with Xerox in the '80s: How might it look today?

An alternative history of the computer revolution

Data collected to promote public health must never be surrendered to police

Voluntary location-tracking to crimp COVID is too good a tool to waste

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The best time to build a semiconductor foundry is 5 years ago

The history of computing is all change, all the time. Yet silicon-slingers let the chips fail where they may

Blessed are the cryptographers, labelling them criminal enablers is just foolish

Preserving privacy is hard. I know because when I tried, I quickly learned not to play with weapons

Harassers and bullies succeed in tech because silence is encouraged

Countless people signed away the right to have their trauma acknowledged, and that can’t stand

A Code War has replaced The Cold War. And right now we’re losing it

There’s always someone to blame for bad infosec, but never a willingness to make meaningful change

How do we combat mass global misinformation? How about making the internet a little harder to use

We’re blinded by our trust of the Search box and its inscrutability

Breaking up big tech can make smartphones interesting again

We’re not upgrading to gorgeous new hardware because cloud services have stagnated

The revolution will not be televised because my television has been radicalised

When recommendation engines promote misinformation during a pandemic, it's a matter of life and death

To stop web giants abusing privacy, they must be prevented from respawning. Ever

History tells us tech companies just get bigger, even after being broken up or battered

Sadly, the web has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'nothing is true; everything is permitted'

Well, isn't this a lovely paranoid bed we've made for ourselves

ewaste: a broken printer lies abandoned in an alleyway, weeds growing through it.

Built to last: Time to dispose of the disposable, unrepairable brick

Maybe sustainability's not just for hipsters?