The Week in Summary

1. Wednesday, 22 May 2013

   Juniper, Seagate stuff cash down Cloudscaling's OpenStack trousers

   Randy Bias's biz bags $10m in new round

   The founders at Cloudscaling - one of the myriad companies trying to become the "Linux of the cloud" by enhancing and commercializingthe OpenStack cloud control freak - have just landed a second wad of cash from investors. Cloudscaling was founded in the middle of 2009 by Randy Bias, the company's CTO, and Adam Waters, the COO …

   FLABBER-JASTED: It's 'jif', NOT '.gif', says man who should know

   Jood Jod, jrumble disjruntled Tumblr hardlinrs

   The internet - and especially the recently-sold content sausage machine Tumblr, epicentre of the animated gif rebirth - is reeling today at the news that when referring to image files formatted as .gifs one should pronounce it "jif". That's according to no less an authority than Steve Wilhite, the man who invented the Graphics …

   Bunging servers in disk arrays achieves nothing. There, I said it

   Blocks and Files If you disagree with the Reg storage desk, explain yourself

   A while ago in-array compute was going to be a big thing, with apps running inside VMAX and VNX arrays using spare controller engines and getting rid of network-lagged data access latency. DataDirect Networks went down the same development avenue, and Lustre and the GPFS stack certified to run in its storage arrays. Bringing …

   BMW offers in-car streaming music for cross-Europe road trips

   It was nice knowing you, radio - thanks for all the jingles

   BMW is to offer access to Brit streaming music service Rara in its new Series 5 motors. Is this the beginning of the end for broadcast radio? What's unusual and interesting about the deal is that it includes 3G access to the music - via Vodafone's mobile network - across Europe. So, wherever you can get a signal, you can get …

   NetApp: We laid off 100s, profits dived - and it's all YOUR fault

   Analysis 'Constrained' IT budgets blamed as sales growth flatlines

   Storage giant NetApp has reported unremarkable revenue and falling profit for its 2013 financial year. It signals that NetApp is now a mature company and not a high-growth stock. But, behind the numbers, the firm has laid off hundreds of employees to help it stay in the black and keep investors at bay. The recently announced …

   Ed Miliband brands Google's UK tax avoidance 'WRONG'

   Big Tent Pfft. 'Just capitalism? I disagree!'

   Ed Miliband launched a caustic attack on Google today, saying: "When Google goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying its taxes, I say it’s wrong." The Labour party leader - who was speaking at Google's annual Big Tent event in Watford - accused the "biggest companies" of having a "culture of irresponsibility" when it …

   Yahoo 'won't screw Tumblr'? Then Tumblr will screw its balance sheet

   Comment Mayer attempts to saddle up the web-ad unicorn

   Famously, Yahoo! has promised during its $1.1bn buy of hipster blog site Tumblr not to "screw it up". If I was a Yahoo! shareholder, I should hope not - given the head-spinning number of dollars. But not screwing up is like Google’s promise to “not do Evil” – impossible to comply with, and something people throw back at you. …

   Slim Shady wannabe Zuck's Facebook 'STOLE' MY SONG - Eminem

   Rap star's publisher slaps copyright claim on Home ad

   Rapper Eminem's song publisher Eight Mile Style is accusing Facebook and its ad agency of (slim) shady dealings with one of his songs. Eminem ... laugh all you want, but this man is worth millions The publisher filed a copyright lawsuit this week alleging that a short Facebook advert broadcast during the social network's …

   Stand back, everyone! Dragons' Den ace HAS FOUND THE CLOUD

   Outsourcery lost £10m, floats for £34m. For that reason, I'm out

   The wait is almost over for any Brit wanting to take a punt on a homegrown cloud services firm: the UK-based Outsourcery is poised to list on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM)* this Friday. The Manchester-headquartered business is placing a little more than 11.5 million Ordinary Shares at 110 pence giving it a market …

   Blue Coat gobbles CCTV-for-network-traffic maker Solera

   Packet inspector to aisle two, please

   Web security outfit Blue Coat Systems is buying Big Data security, intelligence and analytics firm Solera Networks. Solera's DeepSee platform offers security analytics and forensic capabilities to help defend against advanced persistent threats (APTs) and targeted malware attacks. Solera has created a type of CCTV system for …

   Word 2 to Office 365 and beyond: The good, the bad and the Ribbon

   Live Chat Discuss Microsoft's past and future here, Friday, 24 May, 14:00

   Since the pioneering work of Word and Excel daddy Charles Simonyi, Microsoft has set the gold standard on productivity applications on the PC. With the Office software suite, Microsoft built a moneymaker worth billions of dollars that has been further sustained by a network of devs who’ve reinforced the cash machine with add- …

   If you've bought DRM'd film files from Acetrax, here's the bad news

   We hope you have plenty of spare time, you'll need it

   Sky will next month shut down Acetrax, a website that streams movies and offers downloads of DRM-encrypted films to paying punters. The closure has highlighted yet again one of the many flaws inherent in Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. In this case, users must go through the hassle of downloading all of their …

   New Big Blue UK, Ireland exec to give kiss o' life to server sales

   Q1 down by more than 40 per cent, claim sources

   It's all change in the upper echelons of IBM's UK and Ireland Systems Technology Group: its vice-president Shaun Coulson has handed control of the unit to Tosca Colangeli amid channel talk of collapsing server sales. Colangeli is a ten-year-plus IBM veteran who most recently served as veep for Big Blue's Computer Services …

   Smartwatch face off: Pebble, MetaWatch and new hi-tech timepieces

   Product Round-up Tick, tock, Tweet

   If the rumours are to be believed, Apple and Microsoft are both developing "smartwatches" - wrist-worn gadgets that do rather more than simply display the time. The Apple rumours kicked off after smartwatch-pioneer Pebble’s Kickstarter campaign generated kilometres of column-inches, and with Cupertino on the case, it wasn’t …

   EU boffins in plan for 'more nutritious' horsemeat ice cream

   'Disused' animal products ideal for sick, elderly

   Brussels-funded boffins say they have hit upon a brilliant method of creating "enriched" ice-cream, fortified with "disused" animal products which are normally thrown away by the meat industry as being unfit for human consumption. A press release issued by an EU-funded "research media centre" breaks the news of the stunning …

   The bunker at the end of the world - in Essex

   Geek's Guide to Britain Open for 40 years, pointless for 39 of them...

   Kelvedon Hatch is a superb example of absurdist geek life. Not only is the site technically very impressive, it is also completely useless and frequently prompts the question “what on earth were they thinking?”... A tour reinforces this view as the experience now is as enjoyably peculiar as the history behind the place. The …

   Camby cash crypto-coders Cronto chomped on pronto by Vasco

   Anti-banking-malware Brit biz gobbled in £15m deal

   Swiss software firm Vasco has bought Cambridge-based banking security specialist Cronto in a deal valued at up to £14.5m. Vasco will pay $19.3m (€15m, £12.7m), and a further $2.6m (€2m, £1.8m) depending on future earnings, to get its hands on the British upstart's malware-defeating technology. Its software attempts to shield …

   Facebook teens' kimonos - basically never closed

   Adolescents overshare, astonishing survey finds

   Teenaged kids are handing out more private information on social media than ever before, with little thought for the consequences, a not-so-surprising survey has found. Teens are carelessly giving away phone numbers, pictures and other sensitive data using their Facebook accounts, the report by the Pew Foundation pointed out …

   HTC woes prompts 'leave now' tweet from former staffer

   Chief product officer latest to bail from sinking mobe-maker

   Life just got even harder for struggling Taiwanese mobe-maker HTC, with chief product officer Kouji Kodera walking out the door and another former staffer posting nasties to Twitter. Kodera, who held a similar position at previous employer Sony Ericsson, joins recent departees VP of global comms Jason Gordon, global retail …

   Japan uses big data to map cultural climate change

   Cool Japannica learns where Manga and Anime are hot

   Big data boffins at Tokyo University have found a novel way to help Japan’s faltering economy: by producing an interactive trending map for manga, gaming and other content producers to see where in Asia their products are most popular. The Asia Trend Map was developed by Tokyo University associate professor Matsuo Yutaka with …

   WW II U-boat attacks prompt new US response

   Rusting wrecks poised to pollute

   May 1943 is held by many to have been the turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic. “Black May”, as it has come to be known, saw 43 U-boats destroyed by allied forces. That number that reduced the size of the German submarine fleet to levels that meant later convoys stood a far better chance of successful Atlantic crossings …

   Garden fertilised by Twitter output wins Gold at Chelsea

   Larger than the hashtag of my aunt

   A garden conceived by an alliance of trick-cyclists, architects and professors of "social computing" - and enabled by the wondrous power of Twitter - has won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show. This is how the garden goes: The garden is divided diagonally by an autonomous-panelled screen which separates the planting of …

   Aurora attack tried to pinch secret list of Chinese spies

   Oops...looks like another US intelligence FAIL

   The Chinese hackers involved in the Operation Aurora attacks revealed by Google in 2010 may have accessed top secret information on US surveillance targets in the country including suspected foreign spies and terrorists, it has emerged. Speaking anonymously to the Washington Post, “US officials” familiar with the infamous data …

   Embedded systems vendors careless says Metasploit author

   AusCERT 2013 'Own five percent of the Internet without even blinking'

   One of the reasons we can't have nice things like a secure Internet is that vendors of consumer kit can't be bothered. That's the conclusion The Register reaches after listening to a presentation by HD Moore, author of Metasploit and now chief research officer at Rapid7, at the AusCERT 2013 security conference today. Moore …

   Stand aside, Wi-Fi - these boffins are doing 40Gbps over the air

   Wildly fast on the 240GHz band

   It won't make fibre-optic networking obsolete anytime soon, but it's still an impressive achievement: German researchers have demonstrated a one-kilometre point-to-point wireless transmission at 40Gbps. The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics and the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology researchers used 240GHz …

   Anonymous threat shutters Gitmo WiFi

   Legal black hole becomes internet black hole

   Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the enclave of Cuban territory leased by the US government, has switched off its WiFi service and cut access to social networks for fear of attack by Anonymous. The hacktivist group recently set #OpGTMO in train, pledging to “shut down Guantanamo”. That's probably not a reference to the whole of the …

   Dev writes comments as limericks and other coding secrets

   Coders confess their crimes, like the spam-bots they write in spare moments

   An anonymous developer has admitted to writing comments in code as limericks. The confession can be found at codingconfessional.com, a site devoted entirely to divulgements of developers' depravities. Here, for example, is the limerick chap's work: “I write most comments in limerick It makes all my coworkers sick My …

   Opera rewrite comes to Android

   Fat lady singing

   Norway's gift to the world of technology, the Opera browser, is now available for Android in an entirely new version. This cut of Opera for Android has been in beta for a while and has apparently done sufficiently well to be pushed out of the door and into the cold, hard world that is Google Play. There it will find itself in …

   James Bond inspires US bill to require smart guns for all

   Second Amendment meets 007

   American gun manufacturers will have to fit smart technology to their products if a new bill from US Representative John Tierney (D-MA) comes into force. The Personalized Handgun Safety Act of 2013 would give gun manufacturers two years to fit all guns with technology that would allow only the owner (or an authorized user) to …

   COLD FUSION is BACK with 'anomalous heat' claim

   Andrea Rossi's E-Cat rig tested by boffins

   Italian entrepreneur Andrea Rossi has surfaced again to restate his claim that his E-Cat low energy nuclear reaction kit puts out more energy than goes in. And so it is that the “cold fusion” debate will be re-ignited – this time with new voices in Rossi's corner. Giuseppe Levi and Evelyn Foschi (Bologna University, Italy); …

   Startup hires 'cyborg' Mann for Google Glass–killer project

   3D augmented reality specs coming your way this year

   Watch out, Sergey! A new startup is hard at work on a device that's far more ambitious than Google Glass, and it has just signed on wearable-computing maven Steve Mann as its chief scientist. Meta, founded by Columbia University computer and neurological science student Meron Gribetz, has developed a prototype of a wearable …

2. Tuesday, 21 May 2013

   Soylent Corporation prepares to DEFEAT FOOD

   Geeks order over $100,000 of startup's 'default meal' powder

   Credulous geeks have poured over $130,000 into a fantastic food replacement named "Soylent," a substance whose creators aim to "free your body" from the need to eat solids ever again. The ludicrously ambitious and suspiciously under-skilled Soylent Corporation announced its crowdfunding campaign on Tuesday and within hours had …

   VMware public cloud aims at ESXi customers, not AWS

   And the prices will reflect that, don't doubt it

   A few months back, when VMware let the cat out of the bag that it would be building its own public cloud, it said that it had 480,000 customers with an estimated 36 million virtual machines running in their data centers. On Tuesday it officially launched the the Hybrid Cloud Service at its Palo Alto headquarters and explained …

   Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

   Upgrades Live service – and no always-on requirement

   Microsoft has shown off its next-generation gaming console, the Xbox One, with an upgraded Kinect and voice-recognition system, Skype integration, seamless switching between viewing modes, and a massive ramp-up in server support for the Live online community. One console to rule them all "We've designed an all-in-one system …

   New Intel CEO Krzanich takes reins of core product groups

   Management shakeup, new devices division launched

   Newly minted Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has hit the ground running, having already begun a sweeping reorganization that reshuffles Chipzilla's leadership and sees the launch of a new mobile devices division. Reuters was first to report the shakeup on Tuesday, based on details of a leaked companywide email that an Intel spokesman …

   CSIRO scales up solar cell printing

   Five yards of electricity, please

   One of the big problems in the world of printed solar cells is scale: it's much easier to print a cell the size of a fingernail than one of useful size. Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) believes a process announced last week changes all that. Doing the hard work is a $AUD200,000 …

   Cook: Apple has 'no current plan' to pull profits out of Ireland

   Tells Senate he'd need a single-digit tax rate for that

   Apple CEO Tim Cook has doubled down on his earlier defense of Cupertino's accounting practices in testimony before a US Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, describing the company as "America's largest corporate income taxpayer." "Apple complies fully with both the laws and spirit of the laws," Cook said in his prepared remarks, …

   AWS cloud gains critical federal security certification

   Beats off Rackspace, Microsoft, Google, for government jobs

   The more people you have to go through to get approval for an IT project, the less likely it is to happen, so when Amazon announces another security certification it's not just about compliance, it's about releasing pent-up cloud demand. With the company's announcement on Tuesday that both its US West and East data center hubs …

   IBM puts supercomputer Watson to work in ROBOT CALL CENTRE

   AI goes to war with angry customers human staffers

   It's clever enough to beat humans on quiz shows and diagnose illnesses, but is IBM's artificially intelligent supercomputer tough enough to cope with angry consumers who've been on hold for three hours? IBM certainly seems to think so, as it has just given Watson a new job as a customer service manager. Rather than phoning a …

   Irish deputy PM: You want more tax from Apple? Your problem, not ours

   Póg mo thóin, you crazy Yanks

   Ireland has denied its liberal tax laws helped Apple avoid dropping dollars into the American taxpayers' purse by funnelling billions through subsidiaries based in the country. Eamon Gilmore, Ireland's Tánaiste (deputy prime minister), said that Apple's legal tax-dodging was down to rules in other countries. A US Senate …

   Private equity firm coughs £1bn for Websense

   Almost as much as Yahoo! spent on Tumblr

   NASDAQ-listed web content filtering player Websense is going private again after the board approved a deal with venture capitalist Vista Equity Partners (VEP). Under the terms of the transaction, VEP will cough $24.75 per share valuing the online security business at close to $1bn. This equates to a 29 per cent premium on the …

   Recession? Pah! Check out our swollen digits - CCS Media

   Reports massive profit rise in midst of economic gloom... sales growth not bad either

   CCS Media is laughing all the way to the bank after reporting soaring profits for calendar 2012 in spite of rocketing costs and biting economic conditions. The Chesterfield-headquartered reseller reported operating profit of £1.38m compared to £669,000 in the previous year, and net profit moved up to £1.07m from £468,000. …

   Violin welcomes new grand master flash flogger

   Steven Rose to help shift upstart's arrays in EMEA, Latin America

   Flash array startup Violin Memory has hired Steven Rose to head up both the EMEA and Latin America operations. Rose's appointment was announced on 16 May, and he will, Violin said, "lead regional market awareness [and] go-to-market strategies". Rose comes to Violin from Informatica, where he was the SVP for EMEA and LATAM. …

   O2 brushed off outsourcing 'rumour' - but it's happening ... to THOUSANDS

   Plus 600 call-centre bods face 'voluntary redundancies', says union

   More than 3,000 helpdesk staff at mobile network O2 will be transferred to outsourcing giant Capita and around 600 made redundant by August, according to the Communications Workers Union. The trade union described the move as "a betrayal". O2 owner Telefonica, meanwhile, told the Telegraph that only 2,000 positions would be …

   David Cameron asks UK biz to pay their low, low taxes

   Oi, Dave, less of this 'political point-scoring'

   UK Prime Minister David Cameron has told a quarterly meeting of the government's business advisory group that in return for lower taxes, companies should really pay the tax they do owe, while business leaders have accused the government of "political point-scoring". A government source whispered to Reuters that Cameron had …

   Syrian hacktivists hijack Telegraph's Facebook, Twitter accounts

   Why social media needs 2-factor authentication... part VIII

   Twitter accounts run by the Daily Telegraph were hijacked by pro-Assad hacktivists from the Syrian Electronic Army briefly on Monday evening. The UK broadsheet's Facebook account was also purloined by group in the latest in a growing line of similar attacks against high-profile media outlets including the FT, The Guardian, …

   Review: Sony Xperia SP

   The new mid-range marvel? Oh yes.

   Sony’s flagship Android smartphones have been a bit of a disappointment to me. But if the Xperia S and Xperia T didn’t quite cut the Colman’s, the cheaper follow-ups, the Xperias P and V, were more convincing. Sony, it seems, is better in the middle than at the top. Now the new Xperia Z - another high-end Sony that didn't …

   BT Tower is just a relic? Wrong: It relays 18,000hrs of telly daily

   Geek's Guide to Britain Reg goes inside and up Blighty's telecoms spire

   The Post Office Tower in London, adorned with microwave dishes and resembling a gigantic Star Trek gadget, symbolised the UK's white heat for technology in the 1960s. The tower in 2009 before the dishes were removed (Credit: David Castor) In an era of transistor radios as a fashion accessory, the space race, and the …

   Curiosity plunges its drill into Mars AGAIN, seeks life-giving sample

   Crew hopes results from second stone will back up wet Mars theory

   Intrepid Mars rover Curiosity has bored into its second stone on the surface of the Red Planet, taking a sample from the interior of a rock called "Cumberland". The Martian nuclear truck drilled into Cumberland on Sunday, making an impression 1.6cm in diameter and 6.6cm deep, and is expected to deliver the resulting powder …

   Our new 1.5TB lappie drive isn't thick, it's just the densest - HGST

   WD biz stakes claim on highest megabytes per mm cube

   Western Digital subsidiary HGST is touting a 1.5TB notebook drive with three platters inside a standard 9.5mm-thick 2.5in form factor. HGST claims the drive has the highest storage density of any hard disk drive available, in terms of megabytes per cubic millimetre. Generally 9.5mm-tall, 2.5in drives have two platters, not …

   A backdoor into Skype for the Feds? You're joking...

   Gov-enhanced hacking capability is bad, says PGP dude

   Heavyweights of the cryptographic world have lined up behind a campaign against proposed US wiretapping laws that could require IT vendors to place new backdoors in digital communications services. Technical details are vague at present, but the planned law could mandate putting wiretap capabilities in endpoints to cover …

   BYOD beyond the noise

   Webcast Don’t think about it, build it

   A lot has been said about the strategic advantages (and problems) of BYOD, but much less about how to build a wireless infrastructure for it. Good job we're here to put that right. Join Trevor Kelly and Andy Cooper from HP, and Dale Vile from Freeform Dynamics, as they set out the essentials of what will make BYOD work: the …

   Six things you should know before you roll out Office 365

   It's all in the planning

   Let’s discuss some of the reasons for embarking on an Office 365 project. You might have found yourself at that particular point in your Microsoft upgrade cycle. Or maybe you want to allow staff to work just as efficiently away from the office as at their desks and like the collaboration tools offered by SharePoint. …

   Vodafone revenues hit as customers in Europe hang onto their cash

   Verizon buy in the US saved it from posting even more dire results

   The end of Vodafone's financial year saw the company writing down £7.7bn in assets, leaving it with a profit of only £673m based on annual revenue which declined 4.4 per cent to £44.4bn. The revenue drop was the largest ever for the telecommunications giant, it said. The bright spot in the Vodafone numbers was again Verizon, …

   Space dogs and Dragons: A brief history of reentry tech

   How a flying Frenchman paved the way for space exploration

   In August 1960, Soviet dogs Belka and Strelka1 - accompanied by several mice - became the first animals to travel into space and return alive. Belka and Strelka seen inside the Vostok capsule Packed into their Vostok spacecraft, the space canines relied on some venerable technology to return to terra firma - technology …

   Your hot peer-on-peer code wrestling could net $800k from Samsung

   App beauty contest encourages gizmos to hook up

   Samsung's annual round of carrot-on-a-stick waving at developers has been extended this year with an additional $800,000 to push the electronics giant's peer-to-peer networking. The Samsung Smart App Challenge has the usual categories for Smart TV, Mobile and Convergence software, each dishing out $55,000 in prizes to the …

   Win a Nexus 7 with reed.co.uk and The Register

   Competition And kick-start your career too...

   reed.co.uk and The Register have teamed again up to offer Reg readers in the UK another opportunity to win a shiny Nexus 7 tablet. To enter, all you need to do is sign up for reed.co.uk’s jobs by email service using the short form below. reed.co.uk will then send you only the jobs you're interested in as and when new …

   WTF is... LTE Advanced?

   Feature Data download speeds up to 1Gbps and 500Mbps uploads - but how is it done...

   Britain now has a 4G network, run by EE, and others are being rolled out. We’re behind the curve, though. The world’s first 4G network, based on the LTE (Long-Term Evolution) specification defined by mobile telecommunications standards-setter 3GPP (Third-Generation Partnership Project), went live at the very end of 2009, and …

   'Lab-smashing' Stuxnet HELPED Iran's nuke effort, says brainiac

   'No, it didn't' says former Foreign Secretary

   The Stuxnet worm may have actually pushed forward Iran's controversial nuclear programme over the long term. That's according to a report published by the Royal United Services Institute, an influential defence think tank in the UK. The infamous worm infected systems at Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in 2009 and …

   MYSTERY Nokia Lumia with gazillion-pixel camera 'spotted'

   With 20Mp sensor - NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?

   Nokia will plug the boffinry behind the 41-megapixel camera in its 808 PureView phone into a new Lumia smartmobe, it is rumoured. The technology involves a gigantic sensor capable of taking gazillion-pixel photographs and clever software to refine the image into a sharp 3MP, 5MP or 8MP shot. The results can match the output of …

   Machine learning climbs atop Hadoop

   Pattern hoists machine-learning models onto HDFS

   Hadoop whisperer Concurrent has released a free tool for porting machine-learning models over to Hadoop. The Pattern tool lets you run machine-learning models on top of the Hadoop compute and storage framework via either exported Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) files or a Pattern Java API. Designing machine-learning …

   New 4TB drive spaffs half a telly season into your eyes AT ONCE

   You like porn Game of Thrones, right? How about 16 eps simultaneously?

   Seagate has a new 4TB 3.5in hard disk for digital video recorders, TV set-top boxes and other such entertainment gear. The Video 3.5 HDD can operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with an initial 0.55 per cent chance of drive failure per year. It has a wide range of capacity points - 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and …

   Buff American beauties keen to dominate Euro youth in tech tussle

   HPC blog High-performance cluster battle goes global

   Competition at the ISC’13 Student Cluster Challenge will be the fiercest yet. Nine university teams from five continents are building, testing and optimising their own multi-node HPC clusters in preparation for the live face-off that will take place on the ISC’13 show floor in mid-June. During the show, the students will be …

   Indian 'attacks' Norwegian telco to get at Pakistan, China

   A tale of twisted IP tracks

   Security researchers have uncovered what appears to be a sophisticated targeted attack launched from India and designed to steal information from a range of government and private enterprise victims in Pakistan, China and elsewhere. What began as an investigation into an attack on Norwegian operator Telenor soon uncovered …

   German robots sent to Oz to make GPS millimetre-perfect

   Auto-builders get a home in the great outdoors

   Industrial robots from Germany will be spending their life in Australia's great outdoors, helping to improve the accuracy of the country's Global Navigation Satellite System positioning knowledge. The project, a GNSS robotic calibration facility, has been switched on in Canberra, and will ultimately be part of a nationwide …

   Dell's PC-on-a-stick landing in July: report

   Wyse up, suckers, could this be a new set-side-stick?

   Dell's project Ophelia, an Android-PC-on-a-stick effort revealed at CES last January, is apparently set to debut in July. PC World brings us news that Dell will bring the product to the world in a few short weeks at around $US100. The idea behind the device is to offer user a very lightweight client device that users can …

   Global perils of dirt, glaciers and lizardocalypse overblown, say boffins

   Another three ways the world isn't ending right now

   A trio of new studies out this week have undermined three of the basic ideas underpinning the belief that the world is facing imminent doom as a result of human carbon emissions and perhaps-associated global warming in past decades. It would seem that the menaces of a runaway feedback loop driven by carbon belching from …

   Infosys vows to fight Indian tax claim

   Domestic bill lands with a thud

   It’s not just Western technology giants that are being targeted by the Indian government, now local IT services behemoth Infosys has been forced to challenge a Rs.5.77 billion (£68.7m) tax demand by the authorities. India’s second biggest outsourcer was hit with the tax bill for the 2009-10 year last month. The demand relates …

   Blogger better be a billionaire, says 'open access' publisher lawsuit

   OMICS offended by 'Beall's List'

   Blogger Jeffrey Beall, who tries to separate the wheat from the chaff in the world of academic publishing, is being threatened with a billion-dollar lawsuit from OMICS Publishing Group in India. According to this report from The Chronicle of Higher Education, at issue is Beall's list identifying his assessment of the worth of …

   Computer use irrelevant to education outcomes, says US study

   Reading, writing and redundancy

   The accepted wisdom that computers are an indispensable tool of modern education is under challenge in a study conducted for Germany's Centre for Economic Studies IFO (CESifo). The study, published by the University of California Santa Cruz's Robert Fairlie and Johnathan Robertson, detected no difference between computer- …

   Chocolate Factory chucks out Checkout

   Stick your stuff in our Wallet

   Google Checkout is the latest product to check into the Chocolate Factory's hospice, with merchants told it will be farewelled in six months. Merchants using the service are being encouraged to switch to Google Wallet Instant Buy or find another payment processor – a move which involves a lot more disruption to the small …

   AT&T to relax restrictions on FaceTime, video chat

   New contractual shenanigans to arrive in June?

   AT&T Wireless plans to lift some of its restrictions on the use of mobile video chat apps by the end of this year, according to a statement the carrier released on Monday. AT&T started limiting its customers' access to bandwidth-heavy chat apps in 2012, when Apple first enabled the use of its FaceTime video chat over mobile …

   China breaks ceasefire, restarts hacking US government

   Officials say it's time to move beyond 'jaw jaw'

   After a three-month hiatus, Chinese hackers are once again targeting US government sites, according to government officials and the security firm that first uncovered the attacks. "They dialed it back for a little while, though other groups that also wear uniforms didn't even bother to do that," Kevin Mandia, the chief …

   Alteryx grabs cash to simplify analytics

   Lets pointy-haired bosses think they're 'data artisans'

   Analytics startup Alteryx has grabbed another round of funding to help it get its big-data analysis tools in front of more non-techies at more enterprises with tangled data. The $12m in cash will be used to add sales and marketing roles, fund international expansion, and make further investments into its Strategic Analytics …

   VMware taps ex-Ciscoer as channel chief

   The channel is the key to Virtzilla's impending vCloud Hybrid Service

   Just ahead of the formal launch of VMware's "Project Zephyr" vCloud Hybrid Service public cloud on Tuesday, the company has appointed a new channel chief. And the timing is not accidental, with VMware's channel being a key component of its hybrid cloud strategy. It's easy to see why VMware wants to build its own public cloud …

3. Monday, 20 May 2013

   Amazon cloud soars far above Google and Microsoft

   Analysis Bezos & Co's feature-rich cloud casts long shadow

   With last week's gale of Google cloud announcements, it'd be easy to think that the Chocolate Factory has a competitive offering compared with Amazon Web Services. But when you look at the number of services Google fields versus Amazon, that is simply not the case. For all the announcements last week – and there were several …

   Supreme Court sides with FCC in NIMBY wireless tower spat

   Local governments must follow agency's rules

   The US Supreme Court has sided with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that local governments must act within a "reasonable period" – as defined by the FCC – to approve or deny requests by telcos to build new wireless towers. The ruling upholds an earlier decision by the Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which …

   Yahoo! adds 1TB of free storage to Flickr in site revamp

   Enough space to store every photo ever taken, apparently

   Not content with its $1.1bn acquisition of Tumblr, Marissa Mayer took to a New York stage on Monday evening to debut a redesigned Flickr photo site that includes 1TB free storage for each user – enough room to store 537,731 photos in "full original quality," meaning 6.5 megapixels. "If you took all the photos ever shot in the …

   US Congress excoriates Apple's tax-avoidance shenanigans

   Cook to defend 'an American success story' – and billions in unpaid taxes – on Tuesday

   A US Senate investigation has found that Apple avoided billions of dollars in taxes through a complex scheme of subsidiaries scattered around the globe, some with no employees and run by top execs back in its Cupertino headquarters. "Apple wasn't satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven," said …

   Stephen Hawking nixes Intel voice upgrade plan

   Physics luminary 'quite upset'

   Stephen Hawking scuppered an Intel plan to upgrade his voice, sending researchers at the chip giant into a desperate effort to emulate a defunct speech-synthesis chip. The A Brief History of Time author's nixing of Intel efforts to bring his robotic voice up-to-date was revealed at an innovation awards ceremony hosted by the …

   Azure hops into Australia

   Redmond promises a 'major region' real soon now

   Microsoft has announced "the planned expansion of a new Windows Azure major region for Australia" Details are scanty: Redmond is saying only that the "Windows Azure major region in Australia will consist of two sub-regions located in New South Wales and Victoria. These two locations will be geo-redundant, offering our …

   UTS Business School bakes SAP into courses

   Standalone and Masters units at Oz uni get SAP's take on accounting

   The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is poised to offer courses in SAP. The courses will be offered as either standalone subjects or as part of a Master of Business in Accounting. Bean-counting is the focus on the new courses, two of which are “foundation” level affairs consisting of a “Certificate 1 in Accounting with …

   Don't Panic! Google FCC filing reveals mystery media device

   Nexus Q replacement, or something more Guide-y?

   Google has filed paperwork with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a mysterious new media player device, leading to widespread speculation that a successor to the ill-fated Nexus Q may be forthcoming. But if that's true, what's with the Douglas Adams references? The paperwork, published on the FCC's site on …

   The iWatch is coming! The iWatch is coming!

   Reports: Apple's wrister to have 1.5-inch OLED, test units being built

   The Apple iWatch rumor mill has rumbled to life yet again, with one report that Apple is sampling 1.5-inch OLED displays for the li'l fellow, and a second that long-time iKit assembler Foxconn has received orders for a test batch of the "wearable computing" device. On Monday, MacRumors spotted an article in the Japanese Apple- …

   Dell JUNKS public cloud in favor of partner tech

   'Freedom from lock-in' through product cancellation

   Dell is discontinuing its infrastructure-as-a-service cloud and instead dealing tech to partners as it looks to make some money in the cut-throat world of cloud computing. The Round Rock, Texas, company announced on Monday that it was discontinuing sales of its multi-tenant public cloud IaaS "in favor of best-in-class partner …

   WordPress warns of mass Tumblr defections after Yahoo! deal

   Hipster smut is safe for now, says Mayer

   News of Tumblr's purchase by Yahoo! has prompted a flood of established users to flee that social-media site, according to WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. In a blog post, Mullenweg said that around 400 to 600 Tumblr users typically import their content into WordPress every hour, with 67 exports per hour exiting the blogging …

   Flailing QLogic's boss gives up CEO, president gigs

   That seat on the board? You can have that too...

   Simon Biddiscombe, server adapter maker QLogic's CEO and the driver of its Mount Rainier flash-enhanced HBA program, has resigned "to pursue other opportunities," with a search for a new CEO underway. Biddiscombe's departure comes after two years of falling revenue and a decline in profitability. He has also left his position …

   Rogue Nokia splinter cell drops its Jolla phone A-BOMB

   Ota tuo, vihreä robotti Google!

   Smartphone upstart Jolla - founded by a bunch of ex-Nokia engineers - has finally unveiled a device. The gadget's technical details are few and far between at this moment. The handset itself won't be available until the end of the year, but anyone willing to plonk down €100 can get get in line early for the €399 phone and bag …

   They WANT to EAT YOUR COMPUTER - welcome your ANT overlords

   Whole corner of America faces life without computers

   A massive horde of computer-killing "crazy ants" are invading the southeastern US, killing other species as they go. New research released today in the journal Biological Invasions warns the aliens have wiped out at least one other ant invader, the exotic fire ant, but are also targeting local ants with deadly precision. More …

   Canadian regulators welcome US Bitcoin refugees with open arms

   Money laundering not a problem here, eh

   Canadian Bitcoin traders will not be clobbered by laws similar to those being used to target virtual currency exchanges in America, according to a leaked letter from the country's financial investigations unit. The Register has seen a letter from the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) which …

   Securo-boffins uncover new GLOBAL cyber-espionage operation

   Two-pronged attack hits victims in 100 countries

   Government ministries, technology firms, media outlets, academic research institutions and non-governmental organisations have all fallen victim to an ongoing cyberespionage operation with tendrils all over the world, according to researchers. Infosec researchers have uncovered SafeNet in as many as 100 countries. SafeNet …

   It! Started! With! A! GIF!... Yahoo! Actually! Buys! Tumblr! for! $1bn!

   Mayer gets animated, 'promises not to screw it up'

   Yahoo! has "promised not to screw it up" after agreeing to acquire cat'n'porn blogging site Tumblr for about $1.1bn. The Purple Palace is sticking to a hands-off approach to try to keep its square taint off the cool vibe of GIF-heavy Tumblr and stop users abandoning it in droves. Yahoo! said the blogging site would continue …

   Petshop iPad fanboi charged with filming up young model's skirt

   LAPD throws book at fondleslabber

   A Los Angeles fanboi has been charged (PDF) with using an iPad to take upskirt footage of an underwear model. Julio Mario Medal, 38, stands accused of using his big shiny fondleslab to gaze up 22-year-old Brittanie Weaver's skirt and shoot a film about her naughty bits. Brittanie Weaver The blonde beauty claimed he had …

   Microsoft: We need a pro to flog our Surface slabs in UK

   New bod to tackle Apple, Samsung, twitchy channel partners, skint consumers...

   Microsoft UK is seeking a captain to steer the good ship Surface. The candidate will need a sturdy pair of sea legs to navigate potentially choppy waters and prevent it from running aground. Ten-year Microsoft veteran and senior Windows consumer marketing man Rob Epstein is currently moonlighting as Microsoft's lead on the UK …

   Amazon cloud-watcher shows some love for Microsoft's Azure

   Cloudy beancounter Newvem: 'We're not trying to do 50 clouds ... half-way'

   Newvem has been peddling its Cloud Care monitoring and costing tools for virty public infrastructure since it uncloaked last November for Amazon Web Services. Now the company is expanding Cloud Care so it can control-freak Microsoft's Windows Azure heavenly server and storage slices. Support for Cloud Care plugging into …

   Crack Army pilot to be first PROPER British astronaut IN SPAAAACE

   Ground control to Major Tim, countdown commencing, engines on

   Ex-Apache helicopter pilot Tim Peake will become the first bona fide British astronaut in space - and live and work on the International Space Station. Peake performance ... Tim trains in a Soyuz simulator (Credit: ESA) The former army major, and a serving member of the European Space Agency's astronaut corps, said today …

   UK.gov STILL wants to tout pupil data - don't use the word 'product'

   Is that a screeching U-turn we hear from Gove? Oh, no

   At the end of 2012, Education Secretary Michael Gove told Parliament that he wanted "to share extracts of data held in the National Pupil Database for a wider range of purposes than possible in order to maximise the value of this rich dataset". Ultimately, the government wants the private sector to tout "tools and services …

   Marks & Sparks accused of silently bonking punters over the tills

   Analysis Bank cards bought stuff ALL BY THEMSELVES, say shoppers

   High-street socks'n'frocks chain Marks and Spencer is accused of quietly taking money from shoppers' contactless bank cards at the tills. The accusations come from Radio 4's Money Box listeners, who called in to report that M&S had billed cards in purses and handbags over the air, unbeknownst to customers who had intended to …

   Schmidt: Don't like our tiny tax bills? Google this... 'Change the law'

   Ad biz chairman says he can't wait for reform

   Google chief Eric Schmidt has once more defended his advertising giant for its pitiful UK tax bills: the search supremo said his biz abides by the rules, and claims he can't wait for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to reform those rules. Schmidt said in an op-ed for The Observer that Google "has …

   Biz bods: Tile-tastic Windows 8? NOOO. We lust after 'mature' Win 7

   Tired corporates prefer predecessor, says analyst

   Windows 8 won't become an enterprise IT standard as customers dump Microsoft's legacy PC operating system XP. Instead, corporate IT departments will stick to what they know and install Windows 7. That’s according to technology analyst Forrester, which reckoned Windows 7 is fast becoming the de-facto PC operating system for big …

   So you want to be a contractor? Well, here's how it works

   Free advice from Reg headhunter Dominic Connor

   Back in the heady days of 1984, working on the development of Microsoft Unix (yes, that was a real product, AKA Xenix), we needed to write an Ethernet driver, but none of us really felt up to that. We needed to hire an expensive specialist. And so I met my first contractor, who turned up in a far better car than anyone else …

   Give porno danger classes to Brit kids as young as FIVE - parents

   Sex ed must cover web smut, families tell heads

   Schoolteachers should warn British children as young as five about the "dangers" of finding pornography online, say families. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) asked parents to suggest what schools should be doing to protect kids from smutty websites: nearly half (42 per cent) of 1,009 respondents believed …

   Bumbling fraudsters fail to dupe 'Westcost' customers

   But channel warned of spike in more sophisticated scams

   Fraudsters masquerading as British distie giant Westcoast failed in their attempts to convince resellers to redirect their payments for products and services to a dodgy bank account, the company has confirmed. The scam was initially spotted by some of Westcoast's customers, who then contacted the distributor. The company has …

   Cameron's Tech City: Desks? Yes. Cash? Yes. Coders? Nope

   Silicon Roundabout's stovepipe-hat-wearers can't find the staff

   Lack of skilled staff is hampering the growth of almost half of all tech businesses based around East London's Silicon Roundabout, a survey has found. Research firm GfK asked top-ranking staff from than a hundred companies based within Shoreditch's Tech City cluster about the problems faced by their businesses. 77 per cent of …

   Gay marriage? We'll put a stop to that 'human BUG', says Nintendo

   Sayōnara, Mr and Mr Robotto

   A bug that permitted same-sex marriage in a Nintendo game was a mistake by the developer rather than a victory for equality, we're told. Gamers playing Tomodachi Collection: New Life - the latest version of The Sims-like role-playing game for the 3DS handheld - noticed they had the option of allowing male characters to marry …

   Hello, Goodbye ... to $408,000: John Lennon axe under the hammer

   Not much Vox for an awful lot of bucks

   A guitar played by both John Lennon and George Harrison has sold at auction for a cool $408k. One Vox, yours for $408k The custom Vox was build for Lennon in 1966 by Mike Bennett and Dick Denney, who handled the instrument's mahogany body and electronics, respectively. In September 1967, it appeared in Harrison's hands …

   Intel's answer to ARM: Customisable x86 chips with HIDDEN POWERS

   Let's all play find the secret hardware register

   With new CEO Brian Krzanich and new president Renée James in control of Intel, all kinds of changes are very likely in store: the chip giant wants to expand beyond its dominance in PCs (a declining market) and servers (one that is profitable but not growing very much) to other aspects of the computing landscape. And one such …

   NetApp boffins first to go in 'WORKFORCE DECIMATION' plan

   300 R&D bods out the door in proposed cull of 1,300, say insiders

   Storage array biz NetApp has laid off 300 people at a research and development centre in India and “hundreds” more in the US, according to industry sources. The Times of India reports that anonymous insiders at NetApp's Bangalore operation - which is the company's largest R&D facility outside of the US - have been given their …

   'Untidy' Shoreditch just CONFUSES American techies - Olympic hub team

   Come join the tech mall in Stratford instead, US firms told

   A leading American tech incubator is considering opening a British outpost on the site of the Stratford Olympics, The Register can reveal. Cambridge Innovations Center, once home to part of the Google team that designed Android, is in top-secret preliminary discussions with iCity, the company building a digital hub in a …

   Is it time for the great Jihad against networked storage?

   Blocks and Files Big boys look wide open with eyes wide shut

   Dheeraj Pandy is running Nutanix as if the company is on a crusade against networked storage. Data delivery latency from networked storage is plain unacceptable, it seems, and clustered virtualised servers should run and present their local storage as part of a pool. There's more of course with big-iron converged systems being …

   Streaming music works for us, say US and UK indie labels

   Analysis Not clear it does for the musician, however

   Are legal music streaming services just Kim Dotcom on a diet, with a lawyer? The debate has raged amongst musicians for years now, and really ignited when Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery took issue with the “new music economy” two years ago. In what became known as the “Letter to Emily” storm last year, …

   Look behind you, NetApp: Angry investor is coming for YOU

   First Xyratex, then Emulex and Brocade... now Elliot's stalking a storage giant

   Activist investor Eliott Management, of Emulex fame, always pushes to have its voice heard - especially when it thinks bosses of its "investment companies" don't put shareholders first. Now the fund has actually taken on storage giant NetApp. According to a Bloomberg report, Elliott is pushing NetApp to change its board. We …

   Last time CO2 was this high, the world was underwater? NO, actually

   Ice sheets DIDN'T melt 3 million years B.C., say boffins

   OK, so levels of atmospheric CO2 are rising through 0.0004 (or 400 parts per million) at the moment. Disaster, right? The last time the world saw carbon levels like this, some three million years ago, the mighty ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic had melted from the heat and the seas were 35 metres higher than they are …

   Boffins find 'scary radio attack'^* against pacemakers

   *Attack is actually 'very difficult in real world'

   It's a little difficult to credit as a discovery the fact that analogue receivers – whether they be on a bluetooth device or a pacemaker – are vulnerable to radio interference. That, however, is what's going to be presented at an IEEE conference later this week. Here's an excerpt of a story from America's Institution of …

   Pakistan signs up for China's GPS rival

   Doesn't want no steenking US military tech

   China’s home-grown sat-nav system Beidou (BDS) is expected to add yet another customer after Pakistan signed up to host ground stations for the service. Pakistan will follow Thailand, Laos and Brunei in becoming a Beidou customer later this month, according to China Daily. Huang Lei, international business director of Beijing …

   Intel releases 'Beacon Mountain' Android-on-Atom dev tool

   Indroid Inside

   Indroid Inside Intel has released “Beacon Mountain” a development environment for Android apps on both its own Atom silicon and ARM chippery. Beacon Mountain emerged over the weekend, promising “productivity-oriented design, coding, and debugging tools for apps targeting … smartphones and tablets.” The software's in version 0 …

   US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster

   Beowulf cluster built for the price of a single PC

   Boise University PhD candidate Joshua Kiepert has built a 32-way Beowulf cluster from Raspberry Pis. Kiepert says his research focuses on “developing a novel data sharing system for wireless sensor networks to facilitate in-network collaborative processing of sensor data.” To study that field Kipert figured he would need a …

   Massive EXPLOSION visible to naked eye SEEN ON MOON

   Vid 'Equivalent to 5 TONNES of TNT going off', says NASA

   Sensational news today from the Moon, as skywatchers say a huge explosion - as bright as a star, and visible from Earth with the naked eye - has been seen on the lunar surface. "It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before," splutters Bill Cooke, a top NASA boffin. According to NASA, …

   Yahoo! Japan says 22 MEELLION User IDs may have been nabbed

   Suspected breach didn't nab passwords but resets nonetheless recommended

   Yahoo! Japan has told its 200 million customers to change their passwords after revealing that 22 million user IDs may have been exposed in a suspected intrusion last week. The attack was detected at around 9:00 PM local time on Thursday night, with the internet giant apparently cutting access while it checked what had …

   Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans

   All your walk-through vid revenue are belong to us

   Nintendo has contacted fans who post walk-through videos of its games to YouTube, claiming all revenue from their efforts. Gamer Zack Scott brought the practice to light in a Facebook post. Scott is a member of Let's Play, a community in which folks post "videos in which the author records the complete gameplay of a video game …

   Optus outlines its 4G future

   Canberra first for TD-LTE rollout

   Optus is hoping to shed its bridesmaid status, unveiling plans for a major rollout across four frequency bands, announcing its first TD-LTE deployment, and adding a bunch of cities and regional centres to its rollout. Managing director of Optus Networks Guenther Ottendorfer told a press conference today that the aim is to use …

   Hold our tiny silicon spheres, say gravity wave detection scientists

   Nano-sensors in optical trap for more sensitive instrument

   A group of scientists from the University of Nevada at Reno says tiny sensors – small enough to be suspended in an optical trap – could pave the way for a new kind of ultra-sensitive gravity wave sensor. That is, of course, if gravity waves exist: predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, gravity waves have proven …

4. Sunday, 19 May 2013

   EMC vuln gives mere sysadmins the power of storage admins

   Time to patch VNX and Celerra software before non-experts do something silly

   EMC has warned a flaw in the Control Station software for its VNX and Celerra arrays could allow just about anyone logged into them to do just about anything. EMC's described the fault as stemming from “Script files in affected products exist with ownership permissions for the nasadmin group account.” The nasadmin group is …

   Four Anons cuffed in Italy

   Postal Police go postal

   Four individuals accused of being members of Anonymous and participating in “Operation Tango Down” have been arrested in Italy. According to AFP, the four are being accused of various attacks in Italy, including a DDoS against the Vatican and the parliamentary Website. The Postal Police – responsible for enforcement of …

   IBM gives a cloudy outlook for COBOL

   Zombie language gets XML, Java support

   IBM is giving its COBOL environment a cloudy flavour with an update to the ancient venerable and unkillable language. To the cool kids, COBOL probably looks like a zombie, complete with loose bits of decaying flesh. However it still accounts for a vast amount of operational enterprise code that's too expensive to replace all …

   Bureau of Stats releases educational SimClone game

   Hey kids! Why bother with Minecraft when you could play an evidence-based policy sim?

   Australia's Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released a game, Run That Town, that borrows heavily form SimCity to give players the chance to learn about the way statistics are used to shape policy. The iOS-only game, offers the chance to pick an Australian postcode, then assume a quasi-mayoral role and juggle competing fiscal …

   I know identity of Bitcoin's SECRET mastermind, says Ted Nelson

   Coiner of 'hypertext' claims to identify the links

   Sociologist, philosopher, computer industry pioneer and inventor of the term “hypertext” Ted Nelson is claiming that he knows the identity of Bitcoin inventor “Satoshi Nakamoto”. In a rambling – and, let's face it, odd – 12-minute post on YouTube, Nelson spins out the suspense, throws in a dialogue with himself as Sherlock …

5. Saturday, 18 May 2013

   Google builds crowdsourcing into new Maps code stack

   Google I/O Wants a unique map for every user

   Google has been giving more details about how it has redesigned its Maps software by adding in crowd-sourced photographic and driving directions to its coding scheme. The new Maps package is a ground-up rewrite of the code and the algorithms it uses, with the aim of generating personalized maps for each user that are suitable …

   Google's Native Code browser tech goes cross-platform

   Google I/O Write web modules in C/C++ that run on both Intel and ARM

   At its annual I/O conference in San Francisco this week, Google unveiled a new version of its Native Client technology that allows developers to deploy binary code for web applications in an architecture-independent way. With the original version of Native Client (NaCl), developers could write modules in C or C++ and compile …

6. Friday, 17 May 2013

   Yahoo! to 'share something special' in New York on Monday

   Is hastily called event related to Tumblr rumblings?

   Yahoo! will hold a "product-related news event" this upcoming Monday with CEO Marissa Mayer in attendance to "share something special." Did you get your invitation yet? That's the word first tweeted by CNBC on Friday afternoon. Yahoo! later confirmed that it was holding a 5pm press event in New York City – "by invitation …

   Adobe's Creative Cloud fails at being a cloud

   Sync feature suspended by Adobe FOR TWO WEEKS

   The file-syncing part of Adobe's new Creative Cloud family of technologies has been intermittently broken for a week, taking the "cloud" part out of Adobe's "Creative Cloud" redesign of its products. Now Adobe is suspending it "for the next couple of weeks" to make updates. The sync feature, which means files being fiddled …

   NASA signs off on sampling mission to Earth-threatening asteroid

   2016 launch date set for OSIRIS-REx mission

   NASA has given final approval for a billion-dollar mission to visit one of the most potentially dangerous asteroids to Earth, collect samples and bring them back home for analysis. Asteroid sampler to set off in 2016 The OSIRIS-REx* mission, proposed by the University of Arizona, will blast off in 2016 and visit 101955 …

   US military welcomes Apple iOS 6 kit onto its networks

   The battle with BlackBerry, Samsung marches into the cloud

   The US Department of Defense has welcomed Apple's iDevices into its secure networks, and has announced that that it is "taking bold steps to provide sound information and proper analysis as it fortifies its cloud computing, acquisition and data processes." On Friday, the DoD set the stage for a three-way smackdown among Apple …

   Jailed Romanian hacker repents, invents ATM security scheme

   Add-on device blocks card skimmers

   A Romanian man serving a five-year jail sentence for bank-machine fraud says he's come up with a device that can be attached to any ATM to make the machine invulnerable to card skimmers. Valentin Boanta was arrested in 2009 and charged with supplying ATM skimmers – devices that can be attached to ATMs to surreptitiously copy …

   Climate scientists agree: Humans cause global warming

   Of those who have an opinion, over 97% say we're to blame

   A major study of nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed papers in the climate-science literature has – again – proven that among climate scientists, an overwhelming percentage agree with the consensus view that human activity causes global warming. The study was led by John Cook, a post-doctoral fellow in the Global Change Institute at …

   MIT takes battery-powered robot cheetah for a gallop

   Video Biomimetic big cat needs no power cord, just a walker

   Fast, agile robots for reconnaissance and rescue have been under development for half a decade or more, but they all have needed to be tethered to a power cable. Now MIT thinks it has cut the leash with a battery powered "cheetah" capable of outrunning a human. The design, showed off at the International Conference on Robotics …

   Google research chief: 'Emergent artificial intelligence? Hogwash!'

   Google I/O 'We have to make it happen'

   If there's any company in the world that can bring true artificial intelligence into being, it's Google. But the advertising giant admits a SkyNet-like electronic overlord is unlikely to create itself even within the Google network without some help from clever humans. Though many science fiction writers and even some …

   Nvidia opens pre-orders for handheld Shield console three days early

   Let the feeding frenzy commence

   Nvidia is now taking orders for its Shield handheld gaming console, three days early, though the Android-running Tegra-powered gadget won’t make its way into punters’ hands before the end of next month at the earliest. Shield, which incorporates a clamshell design to hold a flip-up 5-inch, 1280 x 720 “retinal quality” screen, …

   Yahoo! triumphs! in! $2.75bn! Mexican! standoff!

   Mighty award against it abruptly slashed to $172,500

   Yahoo! has said that a Mexican appeals court threw out a $2.75bn ruling against it and Yahoo! Mexico over contracts in the country. Worldwide Directories and Ideas Interactivas won the "non-final judgement" at the end of last year after alleging breach of contract, breach of promise and lost profits from a deal on a yellow …

   Tablet? Laptop? HP does the splits with Tegra-based SlateBook x2

   Netbook with removable screen, anyone?

   HP is to follow its Windows 8-based tablet keyboard combo, the Envy x2, with an Android Jelly Bean version - the computer giant’s take on Asus’ popular Transformer series. Set to ship in August - in the US at least; the UK release is less certain - the SlateBook x2 will be built around a 10.1-inch, 1920 x 1200 IPS LCD screen …

   Lonely-heart Maltese techie vs Bonnie Tyler for Eurovision crown

   Eurovision 2013 32 years since that Bucks Fizz feelin'

   A hopelessly sweet song about a ruthlessly organised techie who gets the girl will fight with the ballad from rock vixen Bonnie Tyler and 24 other acts to lift the Eurovision Song Contest crown Saturday night. Gianluca Bezzina will represent not just his home land of Malta but carry the misty eyed wishes of girl-shy geeks …

   Breaking news, LITERALLY: Financial Times vandalized by hackers

   Stiff Pink 'Un left swinging in the wind

   The Financial Times website and its Twitter accounts were this afternoon hijacked by pro-government hackers from the "Syrian Electronic Army". The posh broadsheet's Tech Blog - at http://blogs.FT.com/beyond-brics - was compromised to run stories headlined "Syrian Electronic Army Was Here" and "Hacked by the Syrian Electronic …

   Hey, Teflon Ballmer. Look, isn't it time? You know, time to quit?

   Analysis Microsoft chief defies pundits by hanging on - we reveal how

   Those who upgraded to Windows 8 aren't the only ones unhappy with the new touch-driven operating system - Wall Street is too. Just don't expect any of the criticism hurled at Steve "Teflon" Ballmer, Microsoft's shy and retiring boss, to stick. The chief executive is under fire from money men who responded to tech reporters …

   Tech Data suspends four amid accountancy probe

   Channel shocked as auditors rummage through books

   Four middle managers in the finance function at Computer 2000 have been suspended as the distributor continues to investigate improprieties into vendor accounting errors. Back in March Tech Data, parent of UK arm C2000, revealed it would restate results for fiscal 2011, '12 and some or all of '13 that could wipe out between $ …

   Who is the mystery sixth member of LulzSec?

   Analysis And, hang on, what happened to all the loot...

   Thursday's sentencing of three core members of hacktivist crew LulzSec and an accomplice hacker who gave them access to a botnet closes an important chapter in the history of activism. But it also leaves a number of questions unanswered. One of the most interesting of these puzzlers is the identity of the mysterious sixth …

   Murdoch Facebook gloat: You're like my $580m, 'CRAPPY' MySpace

   Billionaire media tyrant has a Ratner moment

   Rupert Murdoch had a Gerald Ratner moment on Twitter earlier today when, in a warning to Facebook, he labelled MySpace - a website he once owned - as "crappy". The media tycoon, who bought MySpace in 2005 for $580m and then copped a $254m loss when he sold the drain-circling website six years later, was responding to reports …

   CSI coughs for K3's SAP biz

   Roll up, roll up

   Private-equity-backed Computer Systems Integration (CSI) has acquired the customer list of K3 BTG's SAP Business Objects Maintenance division for an undisclosed sum. Venture capitalist Blackhawk Capital, one-time owner of Microsoft LAR Teksys - which it sold to Di Data in 2009, bought CSI last October as the first in a roll-up …

   That $1,000 the lad in Lagos needed? Just email it with Google Wallet

   Be afraid, PayPal - be very afraid

   Google has integrated its payment Wallet with Gmail, enabling PayPal-style transactions from within the Gmail interface, and to any over-18 American with an email address and a Google Wallet account. Google Wallet has also spread to another couple of handsets, including the Samsung flagships (S4 & Note II) and the HTC One, all …

   El Reg drills in Office 365: See the evidence

   Vid Trevor goes visual

   This week, Trevor Pott kicked off his exploration of Office 365 with this overview. Trevor and his team-mate Josh Folland have also produced four hands-on videos for Office 365. We will broadcast these over the next week or so – all free, all on demand. Here is the first, an Office 365 tutorial. Watch Video ®

   I said ‘no’ to a million-pound Tech City empire

   Something for the Weekend, Sir? Handed on a plate, thrown back in your face

   I have been propositioned in a toilet by a 72-year-old man. He wants me to move in with him and do the business. Ah, it’s possible that I may have phrased this poorly. What I really meant to say is that he is looking to me to arise and provide him with a youthful injection to keep him in the game. No, no, you’re getting the …

   Apple chief Cook: You - senators. Get in here and redo this tax law

   Listen up, Popeye, fix it if you don't like it

   Apple supremo Tim Cook will dare US senators to rewrite tax laws seeing as the politicians are so upset about tech giants' tiny contributions to America's public coffers. At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, the chief exec will suggest ways to persuade firms to bank their profits at home rather than in offshore accounts, a move …

   Congress: It's not the Glass that's scary - It's the GOOGLE

   Comment On-head TV, fine - but you can't skip the ads on this one

   Google Glass is wrapped around the faces of only a few thousand people right now. The company says the device is in very early beta mode. And yet lawmakers in the US have already pounced on the company demanding answers about how the privacy of netizens using the gizmo will be protected. But it would seem that Congress has …

   Hunt: I'll barcode sick Brits and rip up NHS's paper prescriptions

   'Fell asleep in the hospital and woke up as a one-armed woman!'

   UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants to tear up the NHS's clumsy system of printed prescriptions - and instead use "unique barcodes" to dish out medication straight to the poorly. Under the proposals to hopefully reduce human error, paperwork listing medicines and drugs will be sent directly from doctors' surgeries to …

   IT bloke publishes comprehensive maps of CALL CENTRE menu HELL

   Seven year mission in the touch-tone catacombs

   Most people can't bear to use automated call centre phone lines for even a few minutes. But one former IT manager has spent seven years on the phone in a bid to produce a map of Britain's phone menus. Nigel Clarke, a self-confessed "call centre menu enthusiast", released details of his project today on a site called www. …

   Trying to kill undead Pushdo zombies? Hard luck, Trojan is EVOLVING

   Malware remains undead, adds double-sneaky stealth mode

   The crooks behind the Pushdo botnet agent have developed variants of the malware that are more resistant to take-down attempts or hijacking by rival hackers. Dell SecureWorks and Damballa warned (PDF) on Wednesday that the latest variant of Pushdo comes packed with a fallback mechanism for cases where zombie clients are unable …

   TOO GOOD! Groupon ex-boss to drop, er, 'motivational business album'

   Andrew Mason to share 'wisdom' through music

   Ex-Groupon chief Andrew Mason is moving to San Francisco to start a new company, after of course, he releases an album of "motivational business music". Mason has been keeping himself busy since he was ousted from the voucher bazaar he helped found, doing all those things that (really, really rich) people do when they're …

   Half of youngsters would swap PRIVACY for... cheaper insurance

   Only old fogies care who knows where they were last summer

   More than half of UK youngsters think being tracked is a small price to pay for cheaper car insurance, and 26 per cent will be actively seeking a pay-by-the-mile policy in the hope  of saving a few quid. The numbers come from by YouGov and O2, who asked 2,000 drivers how they felt about being spied on every day - only to …

   'I think you DO do evil, using smoke and mirrors to avoid tax'

   Quotw Plus: 'What's next? Will they ask for my inside leg measurement?'

   This was the week when someone kicked Blighty's tax ant-hill and sent MPs and multinationals scurrying in all directions. The Public Accounts Committee called Google and its auditor Ernst & Young back to give more evidence about their British tax dealings, after a Reuters report suggested there might be "inconsistencies" in …

   What IS the difference between Virt and Cloud?

   Pin your ears back and we'll tell you

   There's a lot of talk – some might say hot air – about cloud computing, what it is and what it is not. Ask 10 people and you will probably get 15 answers. Take the formal definition of cloud put forward by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the section of the US Department of Commerce that for more than …

   Prankster 'Superhero' takes on robot traffic warden AND WINS

   'We are unable to accept your claim of super powers'

   A blogger claiming to have superpowers has exposed a flaw in a parking company's vehicle recognition system which could see innocent drivers wrongly hit with fines. Going under the name Parking Prankster, the activist set out to discover whether he could trick automated systems used by private parking companies into issuing …

   The quest continues for a fondleslab that fondles you back

   British vibro pioneers say: Anything can be a speaker

   HiWave, the haptics company which emerged from Brit hi-fi consortium NXT with a mission to make our fondleslabs fondle us back, has fragmented into a part which makes money and the more-interesting Redux. HiWave owned, and still owns, the technology developed by NXT to drive flat-panel speakers, but the executives were always …

   Surface Pro to hit Blighty priced 25% up on top-o-the-range iPad

   'That's cos it replaces your current laptop+iPad combo'

   Microsoft has confirmed prices for the Surface Pro: the 128GB model will cost punters 25 per cent more than a top of the range iPad. The laptop-cum-tablet, which Redmond says is "designed to showcase Windows 8 Pro", will land in the UK on 23 May, Microsoft revealed today. The estimated retail price for the 64GB version is £ …

   Microsoft conceals job ad in Bing homepage

   Use Internet Explorer with debug on? You're our kinda guy

   Microsoft are looking for a new Bing developer - but you'll need to be pretty smart to apply. Oh, and you can only use Internet Explorer, which rules a fair number of applicants out. Visitors to the Bing homepage are currently greeted with a weird blue environment of some sort as the background to the search bar. But rich …

   Have your users managed to force iOS devices on you?

   Check this, it might stop them losing all the data

   NetApp has used its acquired IonGrid technology to provide iOS mobile devices with access to file data stored on its FAS arrays, along with browser access to business apps. Apple iPad and iPhone users will have an App Store app they can use to log into their corporate system, using Active Directory or a multi-factor …

   US government wants security research on car-to-car nets

   Car crashed? Have you topped up its anti-virus or turned it off and on again?

   David Strickland, Administrator of the USA's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has told that nation's Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that he plans to research the security requirements of automated cars and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) networks. Strickland appeared before the …

   Foxconn still flogging iWorkers, but more lightly

   Fair Labor Association finds better safety, more loos, but also overwork

   The Fair Labor Association's (FLA's) latest report on workers at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn, Apple's preferred source for many iThings, has found many staff are still working longer hours than is allowed under Chinese law. The report (PDF) is based on audits of Foxconn plants in Guanlan, Longhua and Chengdu. The report was …

   Honey, I BLEW UP the International SPACE STATION - in full 3D

   CTO's radical rig blasts Sandra Bullock into Spaaace

   A few years ago the idea of accelerating a BlueArc filer would have seemed bizarre; it's got its own hardware acceleration. But now media special effects processing can be so mind-blowingly intensive that the hardware accelerated filer itself needs accelerating. The case that's illustrating this point is the new George Clooney …

   Yahoo! May! Buy! Tumblr! For! One! BEELLION! Bucks!

   Hipster favourite could make Yahoo! cool again

   Yahoo! has reportedly opened its chequebook, pencilled in nine zeroes with a one in front, and waved it around in the general direction of blogging site Tumblr. Adweek says Yahoo! is willing to write the billion-dollar cheque because Tumblr is so cool it will excite advertisers. The Wall Street Journal quotes Yahoo! officials …

   Australia's net filter sneaks into operation through back door

   Regulator's ban on dodgy shares site wipes out hundreds, exposes censorship mechanism

   Australia's national internet filter has re-emerged as an incompetence-powered zombie, after the nation's corporate regulator mistakenly blocked access to hundreds of sites. The regulator in question is the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), which says its role is “ensuring that Australia’s financial …

   Nine-year-old Opportunity Mars rover sets NASA distance record

   All-time champ, however, remains 40-year-old Russki

   The never-say-die little rover that could, Opportunity, has set a new distance record for extraterrestrial NASA vehicles. Opportunity has bested larger and faster rovers (click to enlarge) On Thursday, Opportunity's handlers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, received confirmation that the li'l …

   Congress asks Google to explain Glass privacy policies

   Pesky laws and governments interfering yet again

   The pilot phase of Google Glass is barely off the ground, but the Chocolate Factory's high-tech specs have already drawn the scrutiny of the US Congress over concerns that they could infringe individual privacy. In a letter addressed to Google CEO Larry Page, eight members of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus called …

   Mac malware found with valid developer ID at freedom conference

   Angolan activist targeted for screenshot spying

   The annual Oslo Freedom Conference, where activists meet to share tips on advancing human rights, has thrown up an unusual piece of Apple OS X malware. At a workshop covering how to secure your hardware against government intrusion, security researcher Jacob Applebaum discovered the code on a laptop owned by an Angolan human …

7. Thursday, 16 May 2013

   Dell's server, net bizzes do well, but PCs slammed as expected

   Wannabe software unit loses money in fiscal Q1

   If Michael Dell and his partners had hoped to turn in a bad quarter to help justify the relatively low price the Dell & Friends consortium wants to pay to take the IT giant private, Dell's sales force in the enterprise server, networking, and services units did not do their part to help. The PC business did – but not as much as …

   Boffins find world's oldest virgin water trapped in Earth's crust

   Billion-plus-year discovery gives hope for life on Mars

   A team of British and Canadian scientists think they've found the oldest water sealed off from the Earth's atmosphere hidden deep in the Earth's crust, and estimate it is between 1.5 and 2.67 billion years old. How long before Perrier tries to flog this? The researchers analyzed water welling up from boreholes drilled 1.5 …

   Google may chuck Spanner into Datastore

   Google I/O Needs to pretty it up or 'people would freak out'

   Google may make its globally-distributed Spanner database available as a cloud service as the company tries to let developers fiddle with its innards. The Spanner database* is the successor to the BigTable/Megastore architecture on which Google's just-announced Cloud Datastore is built, and has some more-advanced features, …

   Dell uncloaks novel workstation trio, plops one into cloud

   Versatile rack mount, entry-level minitower, itsy-bitsy cutie

   Dell has filled out its workstation line with three new machines: a versatile, virtualizable 2U rack-mountable big boy, an entry-level minitower, and the minitower's little brother – which, if a workstation could ever be called "cute", would be a leading candidate for that designation. Speaking at a pre-briefing earlier this …

   Pirate Bay cofounder to run for European Parliament

   Seeks freetard vote for 'solutions we're in dire need of'

   Peter Sunde, one of four cofounders of notorious BitTorrent search site The Pirate Bay, says he plans to run in next year's European Parliament elections, despite his impending incarceration for copyright violation. Sunde, along with partners Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, were convicted of " …

   NASA and Google team up to buy into quantumish computing

   Hoping to crack machine-learning conundrum

   A consortium of researchers from Google and NASA are planning to crack the issue of machine learning with a $15m quantum computer that will form the basis of a new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. The new facility, which will be sited at Silicon Valley's NASA Ames Research Center, will host a 10 square meter shielded room …

   Amazon slashes DynamoDB cost to counter Google Datastore

   'Datastore? Cute. Here's a 4X price reduction on big reads.'

   Amazon has overhauled its DynamoDB NoSQL datastore following Google's unveiling of a price-competitive service. The changes to the row-based DynamoDB were announced on Wednesday, hours after Google launched its Cloud Datastore – a standalone version of App Engine's columnar storage underlay. The Amazon changes let users scan …

   London Olympics site to become digital mega-hub

   'Gizmos that I barely understand' will power my city, says mayor

   Flamboyant London mayor Boris Johnson has formally inked a deal which will see the enormous press centre built for the 2012 Olympics turned into a "colossal super hangar" crammed with thousands of "digital and creative" workers who won't have needed to be "brilliant at school". The London Legacy Development Corporation and …

   HP preps Project Kraken for monster HANA in-memory jobs

   Sixteen Ivy Bridge-EX sockets and 12TB in a single image

   HP has revealed a little more about its "Project Kraken" in-memory system that it is cooking up in conjunction with the engineers at SAP. It's talking about a future in which there are lots of scale-out servers like its Project Moonshot systems and big-memory systems like Kraken on the other end of the spectrum – with not as …

   BlackBerry Messenger unleashed: Look out Twitter and Facebook

   Analysis Ignorant tech pundits just aren't down with the kids

   BlackBerry announced this week that its flagship messenger service, BBM, will no longer be tied to its proprietary handsets, potentially opening up a lucrative licensing stream which could rescue the beleaguered mobe-maker. Fan forums have been in meltdown after the announcement. From some, the pain appears to be personal. Odd …

   British LulzSec hackers hear jail doors slam shut for years

   'Latter day pirates' cop hefty servings of porridge

   Three British members of the notorious LulzSec hacktivist crew and a hacker affiliate were sentenced today for a series of attacks against targets including Sony, News International, the CIA and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency. The youngest of the four accused avoided jail with a suspended sentence while the other three …

   Google 'DOES DO EVIL', thunders British politician

   Parliamentary tax probe has leaked documents, say MPs

   Even as its I/O shindig in San Francisco dominated the headlines, Google was today accused of lying over its claims last year that it makes no sales in the UK - in order to justify its tiny UK corporation tax bill. The web giant keeps its vast UK ad revenues out of reach of Blighty's taxmen by insisting that a team in Ireland …

   Software AG attempts to barge aboard crowded Cloud bandwagon

   Vorsprung durch folgende, nicht wahr?

   Software AG is late to the cloud computing party - but Europe’s second largest maker of on-premises enterprise software has vowed to “get it right”. Daren Roos, chief operating officer at the German giant, told The Reg: “We will deliver something that works. We are committed to doing a proper cloud.” And to prove it, he …

   Things that cost the same as coffee with Tim Cook - and are WAY more fun

   A force of heavily armed au pairs, for instance

   A coffee date with Tim Cook has sold for the whopping price of $610,000 to an anonymous bidder. The spendthrift Apple fan* will get half an hour with the fruity firm's CEO, during which tête-à-tête he or she will no doubt want to ask Mr Cook why Cupertino charges 65 quid for a Macbook power charger or perhaps explore the …

   Mobile tech destroys the case for the HS2 £multi-beellion train set

   Comment And robot cars will mean no need for new roads, too

   Finally people seem to be waking up to the dog's breakfast which is the economic case for the proposed High Speed Two London-Birmingham rail link. You know, this lovely train set that the politicians want to plonk down in the middle of England. I've never quite been sure why it is that politicians love such train sets: most of …

   Biz email slinger Mimecast tumbles over

   'Makes me look a tool for recommending them' sniffs bloke

   Mimecast, which touts webmail for businesses, has toppled over in Blighty, leaving its customers unable to send or receive emails. Our readers told us the service wasn't delivering mails, and the web portal was inaccessible for users. And peeps on Twitter reckoned the service went down sometime around 11am this morning. …

   Senators: You - Cook. Apple guy. Get in here and bring your tax books

   No, don't sit down. Where's all our damn money?

   Apple head honcho Tim Cook looks set to be hauled in front of a Senate committee to explain why his firm dodges taxes by keeping its cash overseas. Cook is expected to appear in front of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to explain why Apple has failed to repatriate up to $100bn in cash stashed in foreign …

   Reg careers Live Chat: Upgrade or go home with Dominic Connor

   Live Chat Doors open 1.30pm tomorrow, for 2pm kickoff

   Are you looking to switch jobs, skill-up or go back to college - then join The Register’s Careers’ Live Chat on May 23, at 2pm UK time. City headhunter and Reg contributor Dominic Connor and the Reg’s group editor Joe Fay will host an hour's worth of career-enhancing discussion to help your next steps. We'll be throwing open …

   Steve JOBS finally DEFEATS the PC - from BEYOND THE GRAVE

   Slablets hurtle off UK shelves as PC mountains moulder

   So it's official - the lifelong battle of legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs is finally won, now that he has toppled the PC platform from beyond the grave: well, in the UK, at least. During Q1 this year more slablets were shipped into consumer and business channels than PCs - that's notebooks AND desktops COMBINED. Beancounting …

   Life on Mars means subsisting on grim diet of turd-garden spinach

   Space yokel shit-kickers needed to colonise Red Planet

   Farmers are often heard singing about their desire for a brand new combine harvester, but they might not even need one if they fancy going to Mars. NASA bods have said the valuable skills of growing veggies and nurturing plantlife are vital to any Mars colonisation. Indeed, according to a talk given at the Human 2 Mars …

   Copyright minister: Google has better access to No. 10 than me

   Downing Street overrun with whispering Oompa-Loompas

   Google has greater access to No. 10 Downing Street than the government's own ministers, one such minister has admitted. Viscount Younger of Leckie, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Intellectual Property - the third copyright minister in a year - made the candid confession before the Media, Culture and Sport …

   'Momentous year' for TalkTalk as it surges from 3rd place to, er, 4th

   This is 'fundamentally better', insists Harding

   TalkTalk has reported a slight fall in revenue and pre-tax profit for the full financial year. The budget telco told the City that sales for the 12 months to 31 March had slipped by one per cent to £1.67bn compared with £1.68bn a year earlier. Profit before tax dipped four per cent to £122m, the company added. TalkTalk CEO …

   Dixons feasts on corpse of Comet, chortles over 'slab bonanza

   Pixmania and southern EU remain sore boils on bottom line

   PC World and Currys helped steer sales growth at Dixons Retail in fiscal '13 ended 28 April against the background of a land grab for fallen Comet's trade and a boom in slablets. In a trading statement today - preliminary numbers are filed on 20 June - the retail mammoth said like-for-like Q4 sales climbed seven per cent on a …

   Fusion-io turns up wick on its product development cycle

   Something new to drool over every year

   Take note competitors; under new management Fusion-io is going to introduce major product developments every 12-14 months with mid-life kickers every 6-7 months. This is a bit like Intel's tick-tock cadence, with a Fusion tick being a basic product architecture change, and a tock being a mid-life kicker or refresh. In the …

   Wannabe hacker, you're hired: Brit bosses mull cyber-apprenticeships

   Just put on this white hat

   Britain's biggest businesses are draughting up cyber-security apprenticeships to train the online samurais of the future. According to digital knowhow spreader e-Skills, just seven per cent of all computer security professionals are aged between 20 and 29. The employer-led quango sees apprenticeships as a vital way of …

   Quantum lurches Starboard: Vigorous investor comes aboard

   Blocks and Files Tape-slinger invites 3 new directors to boardroom table

   Struggling storage biz Quantum has been in a quandary about how to react to aggressive shareholder Starboard Value. Now the tape and disk data protection vendor has decided to play nice and invite three Starboard nominees onto its board. It works like this: the board goes up from eight seats to nine. Jeffrey Smith, Starboard' …

   Dark blue side of the Force used to quell Star Wars nerd clash

   Dr Who are you looking at, mate?

   It was a conflict that didn't take place in a galaxy far, far away, but a little known corner of Norwich University. Organisers of a sci-fi convention held in Alan Partridge's home town had to use the power of the (police) force after a barney erupted between two groups of furious nerds. Officers were called after the …

   Acorn founder: SIXTH WAVE of tech will wash away Apple, Intel

   'Violent event' to finally dethrone dead genius overlord Jobs

   Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser has claimed the world is entering a new "sixth wave" of computing, driven by the arrival of omnipresent computers and machine-learning. Speaking at a Software East event this week, the celebrated computer whiz said we are entering an era where computers are everywhere and often undetectable - …

   Telly apocalypse foretold for 4G arrival fails to hit London: Brighton next

   Good frequency fences make good neighbours, seemingly

   Freeview-watching Londoners are safe from 4G interference, with trials failing to elicit even a single complaint - thanks to the capital's comprehensive coverage and its use of a Freeview band well clear of invading 4G signals. The tests were carried out by at800, the body charged with spending £180m in mobile-network cash to …

   Australian Gartner chap slams gov-funded IT education boost

   IT is not a beautiful or unique snowflake and does not deserve help

   Government spending to develop folks with the IT skills business wants is a waste of time and money, according to Gartner analyst Rolf Jester. Australia-based Jester popped out a blog post carrying that opinion today, in response to the release of Australia's annual federal Budget. The release of that document is always a cue …

   Verizon starts selling VMware's split personality phones

   Bring your own device provided it's one of these two Androids

   VMware has notched up a significant achievement in its quest to reduce its dependence on server virtualisation - by striking a partnership with Verizon Enterprise that gives its BYOD-ware Horizon Suite a better chance of finding its way into users' hands. VMware is mad for what it calls end-user computing, largely because …

   My god, what's that STENCH belching from your iPhone?

   I love the smell of freshly squashed pig in the mornin'

   A new prototype iPhone peripheral pumps out smells based on user interaction, allowing devs to add an aromatic dimension to games and messaging as long as users keep their reservoir stocked. ChatPerf slips onto the bottom of an iPhone and comes with an SDK allowing anyone to scent-enable their application. Some variation in …

   TUANZ: don't risk mobile competition

   New Zealand plots spectrum future

   New Zealand has kicked off the consultation period for its planned 700 MHz spectrum auction, to take place in 2013. That country's Radio Spectrum Management Agency has adopted the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) band plan, in which 45 MHz of paired spectrum will be made available in nine 5 MHz blocks. The government is …

   Hemp used to make graphene-like supercapacitors

   Pass de battery on de left-hand-side

   A group of scientists from the University of Alberta have created a process that makes graphene-like nanomaterials out of hemp waste, suitable for use in supercapacitors. While graphene is already known to be a good energy store, it's also expensive, so commercial supercapacitors use activated carbon electrodes. According to …

   Tech startups, Silicon Valley, not all they're cracked up to be

   Business think tank finds $100m companies more likely to emerge in other places, sectors

   Technology startups are not quite the growth engine they're assumed to be, according to a 30-year study by economic think-tank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The Kaufmann Foundation, to give the organisation its commonly-used short name, happily describes itself as “the world's largest foundation devoted to …

   Google forges BigTable-based NoSQL datastore

   Google I/O Takes out BigTable, thwacks Amazon DynamoDB over the head

   If you're Google, building cloud services for the public must be frustrating – after spending a decade crafting and stitching together software systems for use internally, when you try and sell them to the outside world you need to unpick them from one another. It seems more like butchery than creation, but that's the name of …

   Google tells Microsoft to yank its new WinPhone YouTube app

   Says it's deliberately ripping off content creators

   No sooner has Microsoft managed to get a full-featured YouTube app running on Windows Phone 8 – something it long maintained was impossible – than an irate Google has asked it to immediately remove the app from the Windows Phone Store. The Verge, which editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky has described as "a news site which covers …

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