The Register

Big words from co-CEO after Larry Ellison ribs vendor during earnings call Death, taxes and vendor feuds seem the only certainties to which the disheartened technology careerist can cling in these troubled times.…

'They have not reported an objective analysis' – now that's a zinger A newly published study into the start date for the Earth's magnetic field has provoked claims of foul play among rival academics.…

New leasing and rental options rolled out to tempt buyers stuck in a rut The bank of Hewlett Packard Enterprise - aka its Financial Services arm - is creating a Payment Relief Programme (PRP) to tempt tech buyers to refresh their infrastructure amid a global pandemic and pay later.…

Also: Interim CEO Mitchell Baker drops the 'interim' part Mozilla has squeezed out version 75 of the Firefox browser, crediting "empathy" in its systems for an ability to continue emissions even as Microsoft and Google hit the pause button on their Chromium-based apps.…

We'll have to wait until the US wakes up before we can answer that one In an impressively frank postmortem, Microsoft has admitted that at least part of its organisation was asleep at the wheel in a very real sense while its European DevOps tooling tottered.…

We've got just a few Qs about automation, storage, AI Reader survey Like other parts of your business, the IT team is beginning to suffer as key people fall sick or need to self-isolate. At the same time, they have the added pressure of supporting many more users working from home, which has dramatically changed some established internal service dynamics.…

Quiet legal word leads to blanket month-long delay Exclusive A UK tribunal halted 60 cases against the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) because the data watchdog's staff can't print documents or electronically organise them into hearing bundles, The Register has learned.…

Such a move could standardise deployment of new versions, rather than it being at the whim of OEMs Despite Google's better efforts, operating system updates on Android have long been a fragmented, disconnected mess. The launch of Android 11 will go some way to resolving that, with Google likely to force manufacturers to use the Virtual A/B partitioned updates system.…

Another reason to hate auto-play videos: they drain your power Brave has updated its Android web browser and claims a 5 per cent battery saving versus the previous release.…

But outgoing Carphone Warehouse staff can't use government support scheme to defer redundancies Exclusive - updated Dixons Carphone CEO Alex Baldock and his fellow execs have agreed to a temporary pay cut as they prepare to furlough swathes of the workforce weeks after the UK government forced the closure of stores.…

Focus to be 'evolving the technology to a Kubernetes-based platform' Cloud Foundry, home of open-source projects that simplify development and deployment of cloud-native applications, has named former CTO Chip Childers as exec director and VMware's Paul Fazzone as board chair.…

Asking price to banish ghost of Active Directory admin past was $1.7m: Redmond paid 'undisclosed amount' Victims of early versions of Microsoft's Active Directory can breathe a sigh of relief: the software giant has snapped up the infamous corp.com domain.…

Xbox co-creator Rob Wyatt would like his $260,000 invoice paid, please The architect of a retro games console has sued Atari for allegedly failing to pay his invoices, amounting to $261,720.…

Kinsing malware infections surge – so please check your configurations Some Docker installations are getting hammered by malware skiddies hoping to mine digital cash using other people's CPU time.…

Changes may help, but big user requests are still missing Microsoft is rolling out improvements to its Teams collaboration software, while no doubt eyeing the success of Zoom in capturing millions of new video-conferencing users as much of the world endures lockdown.…

Only half the nation prefers digital radio to analogue, though Britain's airwaves are opening up to DAB versions of local radio stations, Ofcom has declared as it tries to shift more Brits away from AM and FM radio.…

20 million of them coming soon as supply chain muscles flexed Apple has designed a face shield to help health workers stay safer when working around the novel coronavirus.…

Picked up xHelper 'matryoshka' trojan? Best to just nuke the site from orbit An Android malware package likened to a Russian matryoshka nesting doll has security researchers raising the alarm, since it appears it's almost impossible to get rid of.…

But warns things probably aren’t great long term, which HPE has just done too Broadcom has told investors that its second quarter looks good, for reasons that may well be bad news in the longer term.…

Government and local business told to buy local, but slum it with Google or Microsoft if you must A parliamentary order issued yesterday says the nation’s Department of Cyber Security (DCS) has decided that when government agencies, and some private entities, use videoconferencing: “The underlying video software to be used should not have associated security or privacy concerns, such as the Zoom video communication service.”…

The spicy memes must flow even under new ‘circuit breaker’ corona-crackdown Singapore has explicitly singled out social media workers as essential contributors to the city state’s economy as it goes into a new phase of coronavirus-crimping precautions.…

Speedier license applications possible, uncertainty remains for many The White House has issued an executive order establishing a committee to help the Federal Communications Commission review the participation of foreign companies in US telecommunication services.…

Office 365 will finally get DNSSEC-based protection later this year Microsoft will add DNSSEC and DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) to its email systems by the end of the year, the software giant has announced. That'll be a big thumbs up for the pair of internet security technologies.…

Japanese giant defends decision, says trendy office rental biz didn't meet its terms WeWork sued SoftBank on Tuesday after the Tokyo-based holding company nixed its plan to purchase $3bn in shares of the struggling office-leasing biz from existing shareholders.…

iPhone 6S killer is no longer supported Four years after it hit shelves, Samsung is discontinuing security updates for the venerable Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones.…

After claims of dodgy deals and rigged procedures, the contract is finally inked After a controversial rebidding process that provoked industry outrage, accusations of corruption, and resignation calls for a government minister, Colombia's .co contract has been returned to its current operator, Neustar.…

Jan and Feb contained bumper load of fake invoice emails Business email compromise (BEC) attempts were globally up by a quarter in the first two months of this year alone, according to research from threat intel firm Trend Micro.…

The project 'got kind of gangly and awkward for a while' dev relations veep tells The Reg Distributed NoSQL database slinger DataStax has launched an upgrade to its flagship product, DataStax Enterprise, adding new features aimed at improving speed, control and graph analytics.…

Bug that let malicious site snoop on users squashed, so make sure you're on the most recent version Independent security researcher Ryan Pickren has revealed how a malicious website could hack Apple's Safari browser on iOS and macOS to spy on the user through the computer's camera without prompting for permission.…

Meanwhile, the Xbox gang spreads cloudy joystick joy to more countries Roundup Amid mutterings from the peanut gallery that at least a year's worth of events were ripe for "reimagining", it also looks like any musical numbers from 2020's batch of Microsoft interns will be strictly virtual.…

Don't get comfortable, Sammy Samsung has published its earnings guidance for Q1 2020, and it's looking fairly sunny for the South Korean tech conglomerate, with revenue and profit both expected to show year-on-year growth.…

Being under the Linux Foundation umbrella is a good way to get that done The team behind the seL4 secure microkernel has created a foundation to help build a wider ecosystem.…

Blighty's wage bill tops £1bn as more staffers are added Google's UK tentacle booked a jump in revenues for the year ended 30 June 2019 while still managing to cut its tax bill by more than £21m.…

BlackBerry says Winnti-derived group is playing it quiet with rootkit attacks A group of hackers operating as an offshoot of China's Winnti group managed to stay undetected for more than a decade by going open source.…

A reflight beckons for Starliner as rival SpaceX admits: 'Rockets are hard' Roundup Boeing is to repeat December's CST-100 test while Russia prepares for what might be the last launch of its space station taxi monopoly in this week's wrangling of rocket news.…

Asked to verify the identity of medics using video chat apps Zoom and Facetime Exclusive The Register can reveal Capita gave 60 minutes of training to staff it tasked with screening recently retired doctors and nurses that were urged by the NHS to return to active duty during the crisis.…

But hey, maybe a Google-free experience is a selling point for you Hands On Smartphone manufacturers love to use the word "pro" in their branding. Perhaps at one point it meant something, conveying a level of power you wouldn't get with cheaper kit. That isn't the case in 2020, with the term awkwardly slapped on sub-£250 devices, like the subject of this review: the Honor 9X Pro.…

$310.8m revenue? That's adorable Enterprise software is known for its grand global players with multibillion-dollar revenues – namely SAP and Oracle. But not all vendors are like that.…

Official stats reach Vulture Towers Tech distributors' sales jumped 9.5 per cent to €5.9bn in Western Europe for the four weeks ended 22 March with a raft of lines including virtualization and database software helping to swell their coffers, as well as kit needed to help employers switch their workforce to homeworking.…

For women, anyway. Guys can get away with boxer shorts and socks under the desk The fashion industry has carved itself a new niche – outfits and accessories for video chats – but kept all its old double standards about what different people need to look their best.…

Alarm sounded after orgs open up internal platforms for work-from-home staff As companies move their staff to remote working amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, some IT teams have made internal platforms, such as tech support desks, face the public internet.…

Well, when we say we, we mean... we read a paper some others wrote Machine-learning software can predict the remaining useful lifetime of a lithium-ion battery by seeing how it reacts when a rapidly oscillating voltage is briefly applied across it, according to a study published in Nature Communications.…

First day letter to staff calls for ‘maniacal focus’, OpenShift dominance and client love IBM’s new CEO Arvind Krishna has revealed the letter he sent to staff on his first day in the job, and it’s big on hybrid cloud as a new platform for IBM’s future.…

Farewell, 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium. Arise, Ethernet Technology Consortium The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium has decided to ditch its name as it heads off in search of serious speed.…

Australia just wants to get supplies in and keep people moving safely The novel coronavirus is yet to reach Antarctica’s small human population, but will impact science on the frozen continent next southern summer.…

Over 90 percent of nation’s IT services sector now works from home Senior execs from Infosys and Accenture India have taken the reins of India’s influential National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), just as the industry is reconfiguring itself in light of the country's coronavirus stay-at-home shutdown.…

Tightening privacy and security may cause pain for add-on makers Google is testing a user-interface change that will hide Chrome extensions by default, which is not going down well with developers.…

Could takeover actually not shaft internet web address holders? The world’s largest seller of domain names, GoDaddy, is making a bid for market domination with the purchase of hundreds of registries, including .biz, .co, .nyc, and .us, from Neustar.…

And you can still open its improved version with a strong magnet The manufacturer that claimed its Bluetooth-connected fingerprint-reading smart lock was “unbreakable,” only to find it being opened in seconds by someone armed with nothing more than a mount and a screwdriver, has been slapped down by a US watchdog.…

Update now before it's too late Mozilla has released security updates for its Firefox browser in conjunction with a US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) advisory warning that critical vulnerabilities in the browser are being actively exploited.…