Google was far closer to being dragged into court by US watchdog the FTC than anyone previously believed, documents have revealed.

Tesla Motors chief Elon Musk has claimed that an update to the software in his all-electric cars will seemingly magically turn them into self-driving autonomous vehicles.

Chinese activist site Greatfire.org which masks censored traffic into the country is under a sustained distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that is racking up $30,000 a day in server costs.

Bug hunter Laxman Muthiyah has reported a Facebook vulnerability that exposes private photos to potentially malicious applications.

After two years digesting its acquisition of LineRate, F5 Networks is now shipping one of the key outcomes of the buy, a fully-virtualised lightweight load balancing solution.

Amazon Web Services has, as promised last year, revealed a colossal new virtual cloudy solid state disk with colossal IOPS.

When the first dotcom bubble popped, the likes of EMC, Sun and Oracle didn't panic that the days of easy greenfield sales were over because the then-burgeoning economies of eastern Europe gave them new greenfields in which to romp.

Icelandic research outfit MMR's bi-monthly polling has found The Pirate Party is currently the nation's most popular political party.

The US Government threatened to starve Berlin of intelligence if it harboured fugitive document-leaker Edward Snowden, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel says.

Apple consumers are complaining that the company is ignoring their complaints about the anti-reflective MacBook coating peeling off in whacking great ugly patches.

Google's decided its Compute Engine and App Engine users need to know if their cloudy rigs are full of … bugs, by dropping a log (analyser) into the cloud.

The Rosetta orbiter has spotted molecular nitrogen, N2, on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed.

A US man charged with tax fraud and identity theft has been arrested after fleeing authorities and allegedly posting bragging selfies on Twitter.

In a massive departure from the usual big supplier merry-go-round of government IT contracts, the Cabinet Office has confirmed a £700m legacy "Crown Hosting" deal with small data centre biz Ark, as revealed by El Reg last week.

The Rural Payments Agency has frozen part of its new "digital" £154m Common Agricultural Payments IT system to provide EU subsidies to farmers and told them to go back to pen and paper.

Product RoundupPortable projectors are improving their image. What were once dim curiosities – of use principally to travelling hucksters – have evolved into surprisingly powerful display devices.

StorageBodOne of the things I have been lamenting for some time with many vendors is that there's been a lack of truly credible alternatives to EMC’s Isilon product in the scale-out NAS space.

In response to reader demands following the recent release of his "Food For a Tenner a Week" cookbook, Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team member Neil Barnes is offering the same budget nosh tome in ePub format for a mere £2.99.

The British Judo Association has temporarily shut down its online membership application system after an illegal intrusion snagged some members' details.

Taiwanese phone-maker HTC has named co-founder Cher Wang as its next CEO.

Microsoft, Dell and Facebook are among a group of vendors who have come together with data centre operators to develop software intended to abstract chunks of network silicon (switches, typically) from the network operating system that runs on them.

Ofcom has rejected a claim that Channel 4 infringed the privacy of a pregnant Southampton woman by broadcasting CCTV footage of her administering drunken oral pleasure to a chap in a tower block lift.

Next week is decision time in the Netlist-Diablo trial. A jury will rule whether Diablo unlawfully used Netlist's IP in developing technology includedin SanDisk ULLtraDIMM faster-than-PCIe-flash storage products.

Five pairs of nesting falcons have disrupted Vodafone customers' mobile phone signals in London and the south east – because the birds have set up shop on the carrier's masts.

A seemingly state-sponsored hacking crew has compromised systems in several organisations in Israel and Europe, according to new research by Trend Micro.

Despite promises to pause the hated Care.data scheme, El Reg has discovered that the architect of the plans, NHS England's National Director for Patients and Information Tim Kelsey, plans to gear up the pilot programme before the next election.

Episode 3

Lobby group Science Europe has added its voice to the growing outcry over European Commission plans to do away with a large chunk of scientific research funding.

A New York City Police Department auxiliary deputy inspector faces charges of hacking into a restricted NYPD computer and other law enforcement databases, including a system maintained by the FBI.

Pure Storage has pulled off the storage recruitment coup of the year and hired Mr FlashRay, NetApp SVP Brian Pawlowski.

On Friday its was revealed that the new "digital by default" payments system for Common Agricultural Payments has been put on ice, with farmers having to go back to a paper-based system.

Teachers, a retired magistrate, a doctor, and civil servants are among 264 suspected paedophiles charged as part of a major UK police operation targeting those accessing child abuse images online.

We know that data centres operate with a high proportion of abstraction technologies. This should come as no surprise – the cloud services they house are in and of themselves physically “abstracted” (or, perhaps, even “conceptualised”) chunks of computing and storage power.

Domain name, registration, web and mail hosting company GoDaddy is expected to be valued at $2.87bn (£1.92bn) when it floats to become a PLC with the stock ticker GDDY.

Apple has released a follow-up to last week's security update after finding a pair of flaws that are still vulnerable on patched systems.

A programmer turned drug dealer turned government informant has been sentenced to five years in prison after being caught up in the Silk Road shutdown.

Cloud software company Apigee has filed IPO documents and plans to raise $86m on a total valuation of $700m.

The video-streaming market looks set to have a blockbuster summer with new versions of both the Apple TV and the Roku expected to land.

Chinese mobe giant Xiaomi confirmed it is helping Microsoft port Windows 10 to its Mi 4 smartphones.

Dating app maker Tinder has named its new CEO nearly five months after previous boss Sean Rad revealed to Forbes he had been fired.