The Register

But some staffers fared better than others Arm has agreed a pay increase for employees following the scrapping of a wellbeing allowance last year, yet it appears that while engineers were offered an 8 per cent jump, other types of worker fared less well.…

Blame it on the metaverse, Apple, TikTok, inflation, and higher data charges in India For the first time in its history, Facebook has reported a decline in user numbers. Investors hammered the share price of Meta – Facebook's parent company – after the market closed, with scrip slumping from around $323 to $249.…

Currently investigating over 2,000 attacks on US targets – new file every 12 hours US Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray has named China as the source of more cyber-attacks on the USA than all other nations combined.…

Gulp! Code that codes displays some critical thinking capabilities Alphabet-owned AI outfit DeepMind claims it has created an AI that can write programming code, find novel solutions to interesting problems, and do it at the level of the mid-ranking human entrants in coding contests.…

Oh, yeah, and Windows on Arm. Who could forget that? No Apple as a modem customer for much longer? Not too much of a problem for Qualcomm, which is now relying more than ever on Android and China, and to some extent, Windows, to make up for the lost revenue.…

WhiteSource says it spotted 1,300 malicious JavaScript packages in 2021 alone Malware gets spotted in GitHub's npm registry every few months, elevating concerns about the software supply chain until attention gets diverted and worries recede until the next fire drill.…

America focuses on AI and emerging tech, China on the gaps left by US sanctions Chip startups raked in a record $19.4bn in funding last year in a boom market driven by semiconductor shortages and trade wars.…

Bills seek to legalize digital lock breaking when mending stuff, ensure farmers can fix their machines American farmers may soon be able to repair their agricultural equipment without paying the maker of their machinery for the privilege. And owners of other products may also see fewer repair barriers, depending upon how two new pieces of federal legislation are received.…

Patented plastic-free tech from Choose Packaging Paragon of packetry HP has acquired Choose Packaging, inventor of a zero-plastic paper bottle.…

Semiconductor giant sees growth across the board AMD has hailed 2021 as an "outstanding" year with each of its business units growing significantly, thanks to strong sales of its Epyc server chips and data centre GPUs. The firm is hoping to continue this with its Genoa chips this year and Bergamo in 2023.…

Patch now An exploit in Samba 4 allowed remote code as root due to a bug in its support for Mac clients. It's fixed in 4.13.17, 4.14.12 and 4.15.5, and in case you can't update, there are patches.…

Big Blue wants to 'bring edge and 5G to life for enterprises' IBM has acquired Sentaca, a telecoms consulting services and solutions provider, with the aim of boosting its own hybrid cloud consulting business in the communications service provider space.…

Terror watchdog is a bad model to follow, though Even think tanks with close links to the UK's Conservative government are now criticising the Online Safety Bill, with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) describing it today as "a significant threat to freedom of speech, privacy and innovation."…

Decision to affect Google's, Amazon's and Microsoft's online ads biz All data collected through the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) must now be deleted by the 1,000+ firms that pay international digital marketing and advertising association IAB Europe to use it. This includes Google's, Amazon's and Microsoft's online advertising businesses.…

Solved today's in two? Now try and exit Vim We are delighted to note that a version of the word game the New York Times bought for seven figures can now be played via a 50-line Bash script.…

Plumber's right did not lapse 'but carried over and accumulated until termination of the contract' A former worker for Pimlico Plumbers has won a case in the Court of Appeal over the right for backdated holiday pay in a case set to help employees of umbrella companies in all sectors, including information technology.…

But what of the domestic launchers? Updated The UK government is to spend an extra £1.4bn on space defence on top of the £5bn allocated to upgrade the Skynet satellite communication system.…

'Global benefit' chief: Broadcom buyout means pay your own way Brocade sacked a former Sales Manager of the Year who was suffering from cancer when the company was bought by Broadcom – a decision that led to the man's health insurance being cancelled.…

And better compatibility with some more proprietary word processors Six months after LibreOffice 7.2, version 7.3 is out with faster and more accurate file importing and rendering for improved compatibility with Microsoft Office.…

Researcher tells world after being stonewalled There is a live cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in takedowns website DMCA-dot-com's user interface. It's existed for more than a year and the site's operators don't appear to be interested in fixing it.…

Good candidate for fly-by, say scientists, and we’ve got 4,000 years to do it Scientists have confirmed the discovery of Earth's second Trojan asteroid leading the planet in its orbit around its nearest star.…

A familiar face in an unfamiliar place On the last day of January, Oracle Linux 8.5, the current version of Big Red's RHEL-alike, quietly appeared on the Windows Store.…

Take part in this short survey and let's find out together Reg Reader Survey Like many concepts in cyber-security, Zero Trust (hereafter "ZT") has come to prominence recently. The concept is reckoned to have first been used in the mid-1990s, though it came to prominence around 2010 and has really started to take off in the past three years or so.…

Parent company Alphabet hails first year of revenue above $250B Google Cloud has racked up another 12 months of losses, despite extending the life of its hardware by a year.…

China's slow signoff didn't help matters one bit A deal that would have brought a German silicon wafer manufacturer under Taiwanese control has been scuppered by German regulators – with help from China.…

Designates data centres as infrastructure to attract more outside investment India's government has ordered its Reserve Bank to have a digital rupee into circulation by next year, and outlined plans to raise revenue with a 30 per cent income tax on cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens.…

Legislation to punish online services for users' illegal content would damage speech and encryption, it's claimed The EARN IT Act, a legislative bill intended "to encourage the tech industry to take online child sexual exploitation seriously" has been revived in the US Senate after it died in committee back in 2020.…

Snoopware maker suggests remarks made 'in jest' as congressman refers allegations to prosecutors A whistleblower's allegations about spyware maker NSO Group should be investigated by American prosecutors, US House Rep Ted Lieu (D-CA) has said.…

How do you sell a product like Maria? How do you cash out within the cloud? MariaDB Corporation Ab, which sells the popular open source database by the same name, said on Tuesday that it intends to become a public company with the help of Angel Pond Holdings Corporation.…

Slowing to a crawl like a human not actually allowed Tesla will switch off a feature in its Full Self-Driving software, present in more than 50,000 vehicles in the US, that allowed the cars and SUVs to roll past stop signs at junctions without coming to a halt.…

Forget the Blue Screen of Death. How about the Red Lines of Discovery? Although the majority of Microsoft's desktop trumpeting is about Windows 11, the company's PowerToys project has quietly become a very handy addition to the user's toolbox.…

Failure can be factored in when you're doing your sums, says vendor Cloud storage and backup provider Backblaze has released a comprehensive report detailing reliability statistics for the hard drives it operated during the whole of 2021, with an interesting finding on its older kit.…

Shell station logistics supplier Oiltanking 'operating with limited capacity' Two companies owned by Hamburg-based company fuel group Marquard & Bahls are battling cyberattackers, with loading and unloading systems at the German arm of petrol tank terminal provider Oiltanking affected.…

To lose an entire Moderation Team might be considered bad luck. But three of the Core Team? There is only drama in the open source community when the day has a "y" in it, and sure enough a trio of members have decided to step back from the Rust Core Team, including a nine-year veteran of the language.…

Vendors shipped more but demand outstripped supply, says Gartner Semiconductor supply shortages last year led to the world's top original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) spending 25.2 per cent more on chips than the previous year, with Apple and Samsung heading up the list.…

You must be this small to ride Some out-of-this world generosity emerged out of Florida this week as it was revealed that one of the passengers on SpaceX's first space tourist flight in September was actually given his ticket by a friend.…

It wasn't what Microsoft promised... but it wasn't all bad either On January 30 2007, 15 years ago this week, the delayed and delayed again Windows Vista was released.…

Muscle-flexing rather than publicised 'sabotage right here' plan A Russian naval exercise in the Atlantic, near several submarine cables between Britain, France and the US, is more likely to be sabre-rattling than an attempt to sabotage critical communication links.…

One streaked across 750km of sky, the other set a duration record The World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations' weather watching agency, has certified two new world records for lightning.…

$600M sale to new owner created and funded just to handle mobile, networking, and messaging IP BlackBerry, once a byword for the world's most ubiquitous mobile messaging devices, has decided the tech that propelled it to the top of the charts is now a non-core legacy asset and disposed of it for $600 million.…

Allege content delivery network enables piracy Four major Manga publishers are set to sue internet-grooming firm Cloudflare, on grounds its content delivery network facilitates piracy of their wares.…

Developer overwhelmed by game's runaway success, doesn't oppose future paywall Viral online puzzle game Wordle has been acquired by The New York Times Company (NYTCo), publisher of The New York Times.…

Supply chain management is back at the forefront Unnerved by a pre-pandemic electronics materials shortage, STMicroelectronics took the decision to start bringing its supply chain for silicon carbide in house, from substrates to end products.…

Bullet-proof hosting? Can't help you there. Will you settle for rapid repairs? Comcast Xfinity technicians have restored service to customers in Oakland, California, after the cableco's cables were pierced by gunfire early Sunday morning.…

A timeline of the x86 giant's stumbles – and commitments for the future Analysis Intel is cranking up its research spending to fix past mistakes, catch up with and overtake the competition, and build a foundation to grow in future.…

Now that's egg on your typeface Earlier this month, a German court fined an unidentified website €100 ($110, £84) for violating EU privacy law by importing a Google-hosted web font.…

Semiconductor shortage helps cause reshuffle at the top The semiconductor shortage helped smartphone and memory chips in 2021, and Samsung toppled Intel to become the world's largest chip company, according to Counterpoint Research.…

PC makers ditch Google OS portables for higher-margin Windows machines as component shortages linger Chromebook shipments collapsed in calendar Q4 as the channel – with an eye on market saturation – ordered in lower volumes and PC makers moved available components to higher-margin builds running on Windows.…

Oracle replacement project continues as SLC opts for SaaS model Workday has pocketed a £9.8m contract for the second phase in an ERP project intended to improve efficiency in finance and HR management at the UK's Student Loans Company (SLC).…