The Register

Plus: SolarWinds cyber-spies hit US prosecutors' email systems, and more In brief Malicious libraries capable of lifting credit card numbers and opening backdoors on infected machines have been found in PyPI, the official third-party software repository for Python.…

Cast off your chains with this webcast Webcast Even the smallest organisation knows its data is precious. Unlocking the value of your data is crucial to future growth, while protecting it is central to your very survival.…

Also: Why new OS looks this way, and easier install for Linux subsystem Microsoft has added Windows 11 to the Beta channel of its Insider preview scheme and issued a new build which replaces flashing taskbar icons - indicating attention is required - with what it calls a "red pill."…

Irony, thy name is Yes Consumer Solutions Ltd A firm that sells nuisance call-blocking systems is itself nursing a £170,000 fine from the UK's data watchdog, ironically for cold calling almost 200,000 people registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).…

Colour us surprised PC makers are starting to prioritise production lines in favour of more profitable Windows PCs at the expense of Chromebooks, or so warns IDC.…

Also: 5.14 rc4 is out, with Linus saying 'nothing to see here' Paragon Software, in response to a nudge from Linux Torvalds, said it will submit a pull request for its NTFS driver for Linux.…

Hardcoded passwords, unencrypted connections and unauthenticated firmware updates... patches released Security specialist Armis has discovered vulnerabilities, collectively dubbed PwnedPiper, in pneumatic tube control systems used in thousands of hospitals worldwide – including 80 per cent of the major hospitals found in the US.…

Delivery of project to manage £110bn spending 'appears to be unachievable' says UK government's own watchdog NHS England has missed the latest deadline in the procurement of a £200m replacement ERP system responsible for managing the UK's annual health spending of £110bn and is now more than two years late.…

Gatekeeper capitalism at its most odious Column There is much that people of breeding and taste can and should despise in gaming. Some of it comes from the angry undertow of sullen boyish aggression that pervades the over-muscled, over-weaponised first-person-shooter end of the market, where it is impossible to pick up the controller without hearing your mother tell you to tidy your room. Then there's the regrettable aesthetics of the custom gaming PC sector, a curious amalgam of macho metal vibe and sugar-rush amphetamine-acid LED colour cycling.…

Two little letters is all it takes Who, Me? Welcome to another edition of Who, Me? where this week a typo manages to send a hub of rampant capitalism into meltdown.…

Claims it's the first algorithmic bias bounty competition Twitter's saliency algorithm – otherwise known as its automated image cropping tool – has a problem with gender and race bias. The micro-blogging service is hoping to fix it by offering what it reckons is the industry's first algorithmic bias bounty competition.…

IP lawyer says decision is bad because the last thing we need is robot patent trolls An Australian Court has decided that an artificial intelligence can be recognised as an inventor in a patent submission.…

Slams Biden's Executive Order on improving infosec, calls for multilateral trust framework Huawei has decided to school America on cyber-security, and its lesson is to co-operate with China so its vendors – including Huawei – can be trusted around the world.…

Zoombombing class action offers US$85m in payments, meaning even free accounts get a few bucks US-based Zoom users may have a little cash coming their way after the video meeting outfit lodged a preliminary settlement in a class action related to some of its less-than-brilliant security and data protection practices.…

Microsoft's Windows 365 will do much the same when it launches Amazon Web Services has stolen a march on Microsoft's cloud desktop plans by adding browser access to its WorkSpaces desktop-as-a-service offering.…

Plus: Software-detected gunshot withdrawn as evidence from trial In brief If you’ve always wanted to program your Nvidia GPU to accelerate machine learning, image processing, and other workloads, but find Nv's CUDA too daunting or too much of a faff to learn, you’re in luck.…

Plans to make partial payments for almost anything the new normal Square, the credit card processing company run by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has announced plans to acquire Australian buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) outfit Afterpay for $29 billion.…

Open letter drafted against what's seen as unjustified profiteering Many of the almost 24,000 technical standards maintained by the International Standards Organization (ISO) are subject to copyright restrictions and are not freely available.…

Just 'validate third-party code before using it', says Euro body Half of publicly reported supply chain attacks were carried out by "well known APT groups", according to an analysis by EU infosec agency ENISA, which warned such digital assaults need to drive "new protective methods."…

You miss every shot you don't take, we guess Amazon says a European Union privacy watchdog has mustered the temerity to demand a $885m fine for failing to comply with data privacy rules.…

You call this a glitch? Russia said a "software failure" caused its Nauka module to suddenly and unexpectedly fire its thrusters after docking with the International Space Station this week.…

Apparently quite a few people haven't been in the office as much lately HP Inc has acquired remote PC specialist Teradici.…

Fewer and fewer orgs want to run their own data centre Spending on cloud infrastructure services shot up by more than a third again as workload migration and cloud native applications development sped up, according to the latest research from Canalys.…

Biden-Putin summit went well, then Details of 30 servers thought to be used by Russia's SVR spy agency (aka APT29) as part of its ongoing campaigns to steal Western intellectual property were made public today by RiskIQ.…

German software giant's relationships are anything but exclusive SAP has linked arms with Google in the latest dosey doe with the cloud infrastructure market.…

Number of 'strong remaining competitors' within the market planning expansions of their own, says CMA The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given the thumbs-up to SK Hynix's agreed $9bn purchase of Intel's NAND and SSD businesses, ruling that the buyout would have no negative impact on local purchasers.…

ZX Spectrum was pretty cool too It is 60 years since the founding of Sinclair Radionics, a forerunner of Sinclair Research and responsible for some nifty calculators and a not-so-nifty watch.…

There's a tasty NHS contract in there Telefónica Tech – the cybersecurity and cloud wing of the Spanish-owned telecoms giant – has forked out €398m (£340m) to German outfit Cancom Group's UK and Ireland operations.…

Trades Union Congress proposals miss the point, say campaigners Contractors have described a UK union's call to ban umbrella companies as unworkable, leading to a greater void in the under-regulated market and making outsourced workers vulnerable.…

Protip: Don't treat the IT department like this if you value your life Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day so enjoy this Reg reader's story of just what these brave individuals have to put up with.…

Hundreds of millions in damages, Play Store in the sights etc. etc. Yet another anti-Big Tech group litigation lawsuit has been launched in London. This time it's targeting Google, claims to be on behalf of 19 million Android users, seeks up to £920m in damages, and pretty much mirrors Epic Games' lawsuit against the Chocolate Factory over app store charges.…

Customers hacked off as online and mobile service wobbles HSBC has confirmed it is experiencing problems with its online and mobile banking operations after customers took to social media to complain about the lack of service.…

This time the Saturn 1B We ventured back into the world of plastic bricks this week with the building of a Saturn 1B to add to our growing rocket garden.…

I can show you my Three Widths swimming certificate if it helps Something for the Weekend, Sir? As I leave the premises face-first, my ears ring with those oh-so-familiar parting words: "…and never darken our doors again!"…

They're good for stuff like supporting 4TB of RAM and PCIe 4.0 Intel's ten-nanometre Ice Lake architecture has landed in Xeon processors for workstations.…

The company's IT might be on fire, but my needs trump those of the many On Call A call from the executive floor is rarely a harbinger of happiness, especially when one is wading knee-deep through the molasses of malware. Welcome to one Register reader's experience in On Call.…

Nobody wants to run their own data centers anymore, says CFO Amazon.com has released its Q2 2021 earnings, and revealed that revenue from its cloud business Amazon Web Services has jumped 37 per cent to an annualised rate of $59 billion – a figure that takes it past Cisco's annual revenue and puts it within striking distance of Lenovo.…

You just save it in Chrome or Firefox? Ugh. And then it autofills when you need it again? Oh the horror It seems some of us are, in the year of our lord 2021, still reusing the same password for multiple sites, plugging personal gear into work networks, and perhaps overly relying on browser-managed passwords, judging from this poll.…

Toxic smoke from fire forces Australian residents indoors just two days after COVID lockdown lifted Tesla's battery technology is extremely hot in Australia right now – but not in a good way. A 300-megawatt lithium-ion battery built in the state of Victoria using Tesla tech is literally on fire.…

We mention this because Intel stopped shipping them yesterday, ending a strange story Intel has stopped shipping the Itanium CPU.…

Developers accused of ignoring regulations and adding adware where it's not allowed China has cracked down on big tech again, this time telling some of its biggest players to get rid of pop-up ads in apps.…

Crew not in danger, NASA insists The International Space Station tilted 45 degrees today after Nauka, a just-docked Russian module, suddenly and unexpectedly fired its thrusters.…

And come April next year, accurate disclosures of personal data usage will be required Google's pending Play Store policy changes are bringing various privacy improvements – but also include a security enhancement and disclosure requirement that deserve mention.…

Qualcomm tells us it has permission to provide 4G-only Snapdragon 888 chip Huawei officially announced its latest flagship smartphones on Thursday, both lacking 5G capabilities due to ongoing US sanctions.…

Fewer than one-in-four staff want to be in the office for more than three days a week Less than a quarter of Cisco's 77,000-strong workforce want to spend three days or more in their office when COVID-19 restrictions lift – and so Switchzilla is embarking on a "great hybrid work experiment."…

Like FLoC, FLEDGE isn't yet ready to fly for web-based ads, judging from this proof-of-concept exploit code Google's effort to build a "Privacy Sandbox" – a set of technologies for delivering personalized ads online without the tracking problems presented by cookie-based advertising – continues to struggle with its promise of privacy.…

Turns out that Austin factory shutdown was nothing but a blip Samsung Electronics is flying high on the back of a surge in memory prices and demand expected to remain strong for the rest of 2021.…

That's 0.25 DUPs! The cost of the UK's new "national flagship" to replace the Royal Yacht Britannia has already ballooned by £50m in just two months, it was revealed yesterday.…

Elderly lab negotiates tricky docking Russia's elderly Nauka module has made it to the International Space Station (ISS), some 25 years since construction of the research module began.…

More than 120 messages caught trying to filch credentials from customers of USAA Bank, Microsoft Between July 13 and July 16, someone took over the Mailgun account owned by restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill and placed an order for login credentials using misappropriated marketing messages.…