The Register

Cofounder boss Trevor Smith off 'to pursue other opportunities' +Comment Mangstor quietly changed its CEO and no one noticed.…

Biz settles to end alleged illegal web stalking gripe Advertising biz Turn Inc, which allegedly illegally tracked people online, has settled with US trade watchdog the FTC.…

Mount Wycheproof pinpoints mistakes in software libraries Google has unleashed Project Wycheproof, a set of security tests to check cryptographic libraries for susceptibility to known weaknesses.…

Cyber-crim nabbed after he used home IP address to empty victims' accounts A villain at the heart of an organized crime network that stole £840k ($1m) from victims' online bank accounts has been jailed.…

RUAG bags its own cyber protection play thing Swiss aerospace and defence firm RUAG has slurped UK cyber security outfit Clearswift from private equity owner Lyceum Capital, the financial terms of which were not disclosed.…

Posts loss, but has $1bn in cash BlackBerry, finally able to describe itself as a “a software company and the market leader in mobile security”, posted a $117m GAAP net loss on revenue of $289m today.…

First Faketoken stole credentials, now it holds data to ransom Cybercrooks have outfitted ransomware functionality onto an already dangerous mobile banking Trojan.…

Saddos only? Nope, happily married dudes just as keen apparently Well over two-thirds of men would happily splash out on a humanoid sex robot in the near future, academics have found - despite there being no viable product on the market right now.…

Behold! The Miracle of Jarvis Guess what task the goal-driven nerd billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, the world’s fifth richest man, set himself this year. Solving the Kashmir crisis? Eradicating polio? Choosing and solving one of the problems in the Millennium Prize?…

Says ability to match FB IDs with WhatsApp ones was there in '14 Facebook has been accused of providing incorrect information regarding its $22bn (£17.8bn) acquisition of WhatsApp to the European Commission.…

Pricier than its last, but still undercuts Apple and co Hands On It may seem reckless for a manufacturer to replace its flagship after only five months with one that’s more expensive, but few buyers of the new OnePlus 3T will care very much. At £399, this phone scoops the prize for the best value top-end Android. And it’s even more ludicrously good value at £429 for a 128GB model.…

In-flight entertainment systems create hacker risk, say researchers Vulnerabilities in Panasonic in-flight entertainment systems create a possible mechanism for attackers to control in-flight displays, PA systems and lighting, say researchers.…

BT and Plusnet have once again topped Ofcom's quarterly whinge list for the most complained about broadband providers between July to September.…

Latest Windows updates borks Backup Exec console Data security biz Veritas says that some users are unable to log on to its Backup Exec console" after installing the November or December Windows 2016 updates. It has patch removal workarounds to fix this.…

Just the start of £20m IT separation plans Plans to raise income tax paid by Scottish earners have got off to a rocky start, after a database scan failed to identify 420,000 people who should be paying tax.…

Time for a more inspirational approach? IT departments can do a lot to improve performance by optimising the infrastructure and the way they work internally, but the level of success ultimately depends on the prevailing business culture. Recognising this is important to achieving the best results. It is also key to understanding how the smart and creative use of technology can inspire business stakeholders and give any organisation a cultural boost.…

Data backup Domain shrinks as market looks to the sw-defined and public cloud Glory days... not really. IDC sees the purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) market shrinking in the third 2016 quarter, by almost 8 per cent on an annual basis, to $737.5mn.…

Software nasty is packed with exploits for vulnerabilities in home broadband boxes Malware that spreads via evil web ads and menaces broadband routers has been discovered – and it's going to be particularly horrible for small business and home internet users, which it targets.…

Plus: The story of the mysterious 'Internet Fan' that sped up the web On-Call Welcome again to a special festive On-Call, in which we dredge worthy tales from the On-Call inbox and give them a spin to compensate for the lack of pre-Christmas news. And also because lots of people write in and we should give lots of you a go.…

Ethereum, Bleacher Report spill beans on security breaches Two more websites say they have had user accounts sniffed by hackers.…

Drift experiments and new modelling suggests we've been looking in the wrong places The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is in charge of the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, has recommended an extra 25,000kmof the Indian Ocean be searched in an effort to find the plane.…

Network-builder updates 'when will I get NBN' service to explain when services will be available nbn™, the organisation building and operating Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN), has updated the online “check your address” service that offers information on when the network will reach your street.…

And comes right out and says why: it wants more ARM-powered servers and clouds Qualcomm has joined the Xen Project's Advisory Board, the group of companies “committed to the market and technical success of the Xen Project” and who “provide financial support, technical contributions, and set high-level policy decisions.”…

Call for Big Blue to double down on diversity, avoid Trump hotels and generally do no evil IBM staff have petitioned the company to – among other things – express concern that “IBM CEO Ginni Rometty's open letter to President-elect Donald Trump does not affirm IBMers' core values of diversity, inclusiveness, and ethical business conduct.”…

Australian case will rumble on as CSC chases its former employee in the USA A former IT executive from Australia's Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has been jailed for taking bribes from software company ServiceMesh.…

Flash for Linux gets first upgrade in four years Back in August Adobe reversed its decision to stop offering an NPAPI Flash plugin for Linux and promised that version 23 would come Penguinistas' way real soon now.…

Hey so, uh, any chance this is constitutional? American crimefighters spend huge amounts of cash on Stingray-like devices that impersonate cellphone towers to snoop on people – and with little or no oversight.…

Daddy, I want an internet-connected pony ... that someone else can look after Canonical, maker of Ubuntu Linux and its Internet of Things variant, has discovered the obvious – that people cannot be trusted to secure their connected devices.…

Now the developer apologizes for customer support fiasco A US ham radio software developer has admitted a support staffer disabled a customer's copy of its application after he posted a negative review online.…

Hmm.. our software breaks the law? Ah, well, just ship it Uber's claim that its self-driving cars don't qualify as self-driving cars, a stance challenged on Friday by California Attorney General Kamala Harris, becomes more complicated in light of findings that the vehicles, while under software control, can't follow the law when it comes to cyclists.…

County claims chap tried to infiltrate medical, social services Los Angeles wants to extradite a Nigerian man accused of swiping the passwords of more than 100 workers in 15 city and county departments via a phishing attack.…

And it's only Monday Lawmakers in South Carolina are mulling over banning the sale of computers, tablets and phones unless they have a device that automatically blocks pornography from popping up on-screen.…

Ireland, desperate to keep iGiant onside, adamant US mega-corp paid its fair share Apple and the Irish government are to appeal a European Union ruling that it should pay up to €13bn (£11bn) in back taxes in Ireland – in a decision that will surprise no one.…

Overland and Tandberg could be headed for new ownership +Comment Sphere 3D, the Canadian company which owns Overland Storage and Tandberg Data, has had two offers for parts of its business.…

Time to check your models, stats nerds Insurers are handling "hundreds" of breach claims, according to figures from CFC Underwriting.…

Product, meet devs and distro... right? +Comment SK Hynix has revealed it is thinking about creating a joint venture with Seagate focused on flash memory.…

We’ll kill the consent requirement – so no more Exits, please Beleaguered Brussels bureaucrats have come up with a cunning plan to make us love the European Union again. They might relax the world’s most hated internet regulation.…

Credential-stuffing mitigator snapped up Akamai Technologies has beefed up its existing bot management and mitigation services with the acquisition of US startup Cyberfend. Financial terms of the deal, announced Monday, were undisclosed.…

Ban wanted on sites that encourage self-harm, discuss suicide methods MPs have suggested restricting access to sites which encourage self-harm or give detailed advice on methods for committing suicide as a means of tackling the "unacceptable" level of suicide in the nation.…

Ethics expert has built ladybird-sparing vacuum cleaner The possibility of sex robots over-exerting their human lovers to the point of collapse is just one of the ethical conundrums academics and society need to get their head round, a Swiss academic told a conference on Sex Robots today.…

At cash-soaked Wikimedia, enough is never enough The Wikimedia Foundation won’t honour a promise made by Jimmy Wales to halt its aggressive fundraising drive, even though it reached its fundraising target last week.…

Firm wipes down password DB after hackers muscle in Fitness website PayAsUGym has been breached in a hack that may have exposed up to 400K emails and passwords.…

And no, it won't be possible to take pay in lieu Exclusive 'Tis the season to be jolly at King's College London, where staff have been offered extra holiday in recognition of their response to the university's IT disaster.…

Contract extended to 2022... that'll be two decades and well over ONE BEELION spent El Reg can confirm that two things Brits love will be paired together for another couple of years - the Beeb has again extended Capita's telly tax collection contract.…

Going, going ... Three suspected cybercriminals have been arrested and extradited from Romania to the US over a multi-million dollar malware-facilitated scams.…

Might sound crazy but it ain't no lie... they need 'em to buy buy buy Analysis Startups arrive with fanfares of new tech and product surprise and then face the long grind to grow their business to newsworthy market status while adding bells and whistles to the basic product.…

What happens when Few things are more divisive than ideas that are perceived as radical; ideas that push against what we consider to be normal, against the social or political boundaries that we have grown up and lived within.…

Get real – it's not all about developers and DevOps Listen to some DevOps evangelists talk, and you would get the impression that IT operations teams exist only to serve the needs of developers. Don't get me wrong, software development is a good competence to have in-house if your organisation depends on custom applications and services to differentiate its business.…

Object storage networked drive JBOD with direct access OpenIO has launched its SLS-4U96 product, a box of 96 directly addressed drives offering an object-storage interface and per-drive scale-out granularity.…

Another recount in America: Cockup sends publishers back to their abacuses Amid its efforts to get out of the business of fake news distribution and to identify the fake accounts said to represent 2 per cent of its 1.79 billion monthly active users, Facebook for the fourth time in recent months is correcting erroneous advertising metrics.…