The Register

That spells trouble for up to one in five workers expected to be WFH Google may push through reductions in pay for employees that sidestep a return to the same office and instead choose to work from home permanently post-pandemic.…

Plus: How the S Pen will work outside the Note – by slipping into a case Samsung has revealed a new pair of foldable smartphones at prices that are no longer outrageous to city traders, but still up there, at $1,799 and $999 respectively.…

Extended support release brings a handful of new features, but browser is still struggling for market share Mozilla has released Firefox 91, with single sign-on for Microsoft 365, improved cookie clearing, automatic switch to HTTPS in private windows, and more, but the browser's market share remains small despite a redesign.…

Potentially putting the squeeze on already constrained supply chains Nine months after Huawei sold off smartphone subsidiary Honor due to "tremendous" supply chain pressure, Republican lawmakers in the US are seeking to put the squeeze back on the low-end handset biz.…

Have they forgotten SysAdmin Appreciation Day so soon? Microsoft appears intent on turning the print spooler remote code execution vulnerability known as "PrintNightmare" into an AdminNightmare, judging by its latest mitigation, which requires administrator privileges for Point and Print driver installation and update.…

'Facing the temptation of interests, he lost his principles' The director of public relations at Sina Weibo – China's equivalent to Twitter – was arrested on suspicion of bribery and fraud, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday.…

An unexpected bork in the boarding area Bork!Bork!Bork! We're all a bit jittery about travel as things in the UK open up. Paperwork is needed and there's always that worry that a surprise visit to one of Her Majesty's Hotels might be needed. Still, at least you aren't the person responsible for today's instalment of signage silage.…

Longevity, PostgreSQL, and 'the default relational database of choice' Interview Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Azure Data, Rohan Kumar, told The Reg the org had no “thought process” around changing current long-term support terms for SQL Server. We were talking to the corporate veep as Microsoft slapped the Azure Arc sticker onto its veteran SQL product, with Kumar discussing both the update and the future of the enterprise database software.…

It's wonderful that code written for Windows 3.1 still works well today Column In preparation for a big SIGGRAPH talk about all of the ways augmented reality will convert us into data-gathering drones for Mark Zuckerberg – if we're not careful – I scoured through some old archives.…

FireEye says Israeli defense agencies were alert to compromises as China works to protect Belt and Road investments Security vendor FireEye says it has spotted a Chinese espionage group that successfully compromised targets within Israel, and that trying to make its efforts look like the work of Iranian actors is part of the group's modus operandi.…

'Google has agreed to become more transparent' - over optimistic? Google has agreed to "major privacy improvements" following a threat to ban the use of Google Workspace in education by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA).…

Stout with a dash of chocolate powder – and very similar packaging – sent back to the drawing board Poll An Australian brewery has been banned from promoting one of its beers, after a minor mistook it for chocolate milk.…

Approval has been granted by Pakistani regulatory body, meanwhile auto material costs rise putting car makers in flux In what seems like an odd move for all involved, Pakistan's telecommunication regulator – the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) – has announced approval for Lucky Motor Corporation (LMC) to manufacture Samsung mobile devices.…

$8B deal will create smallbiz and consumer security monster The discussions between security vendors NortonLifelock and Avast that The Register reported had reached an advanced stage in July have proved fruitful, to the tune of more than $8 billion.…

Helped over 300,000 sellers to get online – on Amazon – which was a bit too cosy in the current political climate Amazon.com will take its leave of an Indian e-tail enablement joint venture named Cloudtail, which will close in 2022 – seemingly because it may have been a little too successful.…

Who's an open-source boy? The $1500 CyberDog, that's who Chinese consumer electronics upstart Xiaomi has let a robot dog off the leash.…

Oh, it's also more likely to leave people in wheelchairs out of the picture Twitter’s image-cropping AI algorithm favors people who appear younger, thinner, and have fairer skin as well as those that are able-bodied.…

Ready to go for telcos, but what's their incentive to lose all that lovely money? Computer science boffins have devised a way to prevent the location of mobile phone users from being snarfed and sold to marketers, though the technique won't affect targeted nation-state surveillance.…

Here's the addresses you need to block Poly Network, a Chinese software biz that processes cryptocurrency transactions across different blockchain platforms, urged hackers to return $600m worth of stolen digital cash in what it called the “biggest [attack] in DeFi history.”…

It's just temporary relief from the typical monthly repair routine Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the fact that it's August and Patch Tuesday brings word of only 44 vulnerabilities in Microsoft's software.…

Is that the sound of hammering we can hear? Boeing's Starliner CST 100 – aka the Calamity Capsule – continues to remain firmly wedded to Earth as engineers work to resolve a problem with valves in the spacecraft's thruster systems.…

Focus on ease of use, and company founder notes extended hardware life and freedom from vendor lock-in Interview Zorin Pro 16 will be released next week, along with a free Lite edition, complete with an optional "Windows 11" desktop theme.…

Don't rocket the boat, says agency - you'll hear from us soon NASA's Office of Inspector General has stuck another knife in the agency's dreams of a 2024 Moon landing by pointing out [PDF] that, er, the astronauts will have to be good at holding their breath because the space suits are unlikely to be ready before 2025.…

Anyone fancy applying? Baroness Dido "Queen of Carnage" Harding will step down from her role as NHS Improvement chair in October.…

Bye Sierra Microsoft is wielding the axe on the OneDrive sync apps for older versions of macOS and will focus only on the three most recent incarnations from September onwards.…

You looked like you needed some good news In what is good news to everyone except possibly the most introverted masochists out there, boffins have decided that it is possible to rid the earth of COVID. In fact, it's probably easier to do than polio, but harder than smallpox, said researchers in the online journal BMJ Global Health.…

Could the fastest Windows on Arm PC be made by Apple? Mac virtualization veteran Parallels has released an update to its flagship Desktop software, with support for the rounded bits of Windows 11 and Mac-in-a-Mac courtesy of the upcoming Monterey update.…

Someone must have broken in and taken docs, said Leathermarket Community Benefit Society A man who viewed documents online for a controversial London property development and shared them on social media was raided by police after developers claimed there had been a break-in to their systems.…

Doc reveals more of what's causing industry to tear its hair out Britain's Telecoms Security Bill will be accompanied by a detailed code of practice containing 70 specific security requirements for telcos and their suppliers to meet, The Register can reveal.…

Unless that's an ad for American Megatrends? Bork!Bork!Bork! Double the advertising space can sometimes equal double the potential for borkage, as this freshest example of the breed demonstrates.…

The machine learning model was trained and tested on limited data Analysis The idea of so-called “master faces,” a set of fake images generated by machine learning algorithms to crack into facial biometric systems by impersonating people, made splashy headlines last week. But a closer look at the research reveals clear weaknesses that make it unlikely to work in the real world.…

RDP-enabled instances attacked, perhaps via Iran and China, then use Telegram desktop client for command and control Data analysis firm Splunk says it's found a resurgence of the Crypto botnet – malware that attacks virtual servers running Windows Server inside Amazon Web Services.…

How much work can you do with eight Arm Cortex-A57 cores? Russia's government and military may be about to find out Russian fabless semiconductor company Baikal is celebrating after local PC-maker IRU started using its silicon in a workstation.…

Industrial parks in Bac Giang, home to Apple and Samsung suppliers, battled shutdowns and skyrocketing COVID infections among workers since May The Vietnamese province of Bac Giang, home to numerous factories that contribute to tech supply chains, is back in full swing after a rocky few months full of COVID outbreaks and related shutdowns.…

South Korea needs Samsung monopolising effectively as it pursues industry development plans Samsung Electronics boss Lee Jae-yong will be released from prison on parole this Friday.…

When it comes to ownership then details count Last December, GitHub recognized that it hadn't revisited the dispute policy for npm packages since acquiring NPM in March, 2020, and in February this year, it suspended transfers of abandoned packages until it could come up with a system that's fair, consistent, and enforceable.…

Coin miners and digicash researchers could be in the clear US Senators have reached an agreement to amend the definition of who counts as a digital asset “broker” in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, a change that makes sure cryptocurrency miners and engineers are exempt from the proposed regulations.…

Offer may not apply in China, or anywhere else warn experts Apple's announcement last week that it will soon be scanning photos on iPhones and iPads that sync to iCloud for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) prompted pushback from thousands of security and privacy professionals and a response from the company that attempts to mollify its critics.…

Previous statements yanked while charter is 'formalized' Perl enthusiasts looking forward to a relaxing summer could be in for disappointment after the foundation put the Community Affairs Team (CAT) on hiatus and the chair resigned.…

Anyone want to start a Kickstarter page for a Reg reader getaway? The Microsoft founder who isn't Bill Gates, Paul Allen, died in 2018 of complications from cancer. Since then, his greatest excesses – like a MiG-29 fighter jet – have been up for grabs.…

'We have labelled this as an enhancement' says engineer Elastic has modified the official Python client for its Elasticsearch database not to work with forked versions, and closed the GitHub issue to comments.…

Plus: Google 'contemplated buying some or all of Epic' A freshly unsealed filing [PDF] in the Epic smackdown between the maker of the Fortnite video game and Google reveals claims that a "senior Google Play" exec had noted users might be put off by the "frankly abysmal... awful experience" of directly downloading and installing games on Android kit.…

Update better aligned with GTK widgets but UI is controversial Red Hat's Allan Day, a member of the GNOME design team, has said that the project's new Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) are now official.…

The pandemic and a tale of two HPs Hewlett Packard Enterprise's UK operation recorded a 20 per cent slide in revenues during pandemic-struck 2020, according to the latest filing at Companies House.…

Orthodox Christian said mouth-watering banner made her break Lent fast Advertisements are so prevalent that many of us have developed internal ad blockers and probably don't rush out for a cheeseburger just because we saw one on the telly or a poster.…

AWS and Azure cruise into government agency The UK's Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has inked cloud deals valued at around £15m with Microsoft and AWS.…

Watts coming down may not go up Column There's a fine line between madness and magic in technology. Unless you're talking about wireless power transmission, where woo outweighs watts every single time.…

Going out with a bang Who, Me? The weekend is over and that means time for a nice biscuit, a hot beverage, and another tale from the vaults of Who, Me?…

Chinese netizens and State media unleash as it emerges web giant lacks formal sexual harassment policy Content warning: sexual assault Chinese tech giant Alibaba has terminated the employment of a manager accused of sexually assaulting a female colleague.…

Wants less 'vanity hardware', more modular and scalable kit The Open Compute Project has outlined a strategy to take it into its second decade, and will pursue open silicon designs and do more work to enable future innovations in optical networking, AI, and immersion cooling.…