CARBON SPIDER and SPRITE SPIDER give you extra reasons to patch last week’s critical vCenter bug

Two strains of ransomware have recently been updated to target VMware’s ESXi hypervisor and encrypt virtual machine files, says security vendor CrowdStrike.…

Never mind the glue and soldered RAM

Apple, on its French website, is now publishing repairability scores for its notoriously difficult to repair products, in accordance with a Gallic environmental law enacted a year ago.…

Keeping family members out of the country deemed harmful

President Biden has issued a proclamation revoking a series of Trump administration proclamations that halted the issuance of green cards for immigrants. The rule change, however, left in place limitations on temporary work visas for skilled foreign workers.…

Or about five days of annual operating profit

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has offered to pay less than $100m to settle multiple privacy class-action lawsuits in the US.…

Not literally and all in the name of education

Ever idly wonder if a marmot could bring down an ant-eater? Would a fox be foxed by a badger? Could a badger out-badger a fox?…

Uh huh... it's a good time to be in enterprise security analytics

Tired of keeping up with security alerts from your system? Worried that your Security Operations Centre (SOC) is getting deluged in low-level reporting? Fear not: Imperva has produced an aggregator aggregation product that sits over the top of all your other alert-generating security software.…

Still, it's probably best to stick with eye-wateringly expensive official peripherals

In addition to various minor bug fixes, Apple's 11.2.2 update to macOS Big Sur addresses an issue where newer MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models could be damaged by dodgy third-party USB-C accessories.…

Also: Old age a bigger risk for Branson's passengers as Virgin Galactic slips again

What do you buy the richest man in the world? A ticket to ride on Elon Musk's rocket, judging by the latest delay announced by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.…

Though company insists it is 'not a car manufacturer'

With its carrier and mobile businesses in turmoil, and no sign of a reprieve from crushing US sanctions, China's Huawei is reportedly lurching into the growing electric vehicle market.…

Yes, we will never mention the death of the PC again, at least until next time

Dell Technologies spent tens billions of dollars to diversify its kit bag beyond computers, yet it was the humble notebook that broke its sales records in 2020.…

Now, this might shock you, but it's something we like to call 'fun' (if you have friends)

The RPG  Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. Loath as I am to feature another early access survival-exploration-crafting adventure for the second month in a row, February's sleeper smash-hit, Valheim, has forced my hand. So onwards, now, to the 10th realm of Norse mythology. Yeah, there was an extra one, didn't you hear?…

Yeah, you did great, but you should have done better

Salesforce shares slid yesterday despite posting revenues of $5.82bn for Q4 of its fiscal '21, up 20 per cent on the same period last year.…

Worldwide vacancies if you're looking for work – and free ads if you want workers

Job Alert  We're running free job ads to try and keep techies in gainful employment during these testing times.…

Specialist databases will still be necessary, analyst says

EDB, a prominant backer of the PostgreSQL open-source database, expects to focus on graph, JSON, and time-series data in the upcoming autumn release. Analysts, however, are sceptical about its ability to optimise for different data models ahead of built for purpose databases.…

Plus: Full ruling in $5bn High Court case expected by end of Q1

Hewlett Packard Enterprise wants a High Court judge to formally consider a damning report which found that Deloitte auditors committed misconduct when they signed off British software firm Autonomy's annual accounts.…

Lidar-equipped spherical probes or solar panel-powered cranes, perhaps?

The European Space Agency is investigating sending an army of autonomous rovers into underground caves and lava tubes on the Moon.…

Engineers write off GC abuse because Spectre broke everything anyway

In early November, a developer contributing to Google's open-source Chromium project reported a problem with Oilpan, the garbage collector for the browser's Blink rendering engine: it can be used to break a memory defense known as address space layout randomization (ASLR).…

Well, Brexit meant Brexit

One of the consequences of Brexit came back to bite a Seagate customer in the UK who was forced to pay import VAT and brokerage fees on a replacement drive still under warranty that was this month shipped from the Netherlands.…

A bitter pill best swallowed with eight gallons of swimming pool water

Something for the Weekend, Sir?  Those files I promised you? Oh, I'm sorry, they accidentally got taken out with the recycling. A gull swooped down and snatched them out of my hands. They were lost in a tsunami. No, a forest fire. An earthquake. Actually, to tell the truth, my mum put them in the washing machine.…

A matte-black terminal? Neat! Where can I get one?

On Call  Dark Mode is all the rage nowadays, but screens of the blackest black go back further than you might think, as we'll discover in another episode of On Call.…