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Read the small print Move to the cloud, they said, everything will be better, they said. Security, reliability, scale. We take the work and the worry off your hands. Except nothing is that simple or straight forward – and that includes cloud.…

Takes stealthy startup job with ex-XtremIO big data-sorter A storage marketing guru has left security-focused, file services cloud storage gateway CTERA for a mysterious big data startup led by an ex-XtremIO techie.…

Scale-out and tape firm knows how to adapt Analysis Pot plant cams in a Colorado marijuana farm feeding Quantum’s StorNext multi-tiered and scale-out, file virtualisation and data services software with surveillance camera footage show the substantial market changes to which Quantum is having to adapt.…

Client loved new lighting and focus, but this story does not have a happy ending ON-CALL Welcome again to a festive edition of On-Call, the column in which readers send stories of jobs gone bad and we sanitise them for general consumption.…

GoldenDrive, The Spy Who Defragged Me, Die Another Bay... we could go on Analysis You wait for a bus for ages, and then two come along at once. Two data-transfer buses. Something like that.…

'IRIS' plans to replace spoken instructions, works on four test flights The European Space Agency has successfully trialled its air-traffic-control-over-IP-and-satellite plan that it is hoped will one day reduce the amount of spoken instructions delivered to aircraft.…

Web giant fends off lawsuits from all corners this week Families of the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, earlier this year are suing Google for failing to take down online materials they say influenced the killer.…

Left-aligned chap says Big Red should not be 'with' president-elect's divisive policies An Oracle employee and anti-Donald-Trump activist has quit the company over co-CEO Safra Catz's decision to join president-elect Donald Trump's transition team and her expression of Oracle's intention to support his policies.…

Keep your wig on, Ziggy. This is about erosion features. Not our new arachnid overlords NASA thinks it has found an explanation for the “spiders” it's spotted on Mars.…

Virtzilla fixes known password for vSphere Data Protection, XSS SNAFU in ESX and buys bits of SDN outfit PLUMgrid too Bah humbug! VMware's just revealed two nasty bugs that it recommends you fix at your earliest convenience.…

The Social Network™ revoked its SHA-1 certs in November, but promised to stop serving traffic with the algo last year Facebook's quietly taken its SHA-1 certificates out behind the data centre with an electrified degaussing machine.…

We want to have our cake and stuff our faces with it A bipartisan House working group on encryption has today come to the conclusion that encryption is vital to US national interests, even as it seeks to mitigate the problem the technology can pose for law enforcement.…

Some progress, but it's glacial Security researchers face continued uncertainty after talks broke down between US negotiators and 40 other countries over the state of exploit exports.…

Crack team trying to figure out what went wrong at the tax office Hewlett Packard Enterprise says the 3PAR Storage SNAFU that took the Australian Taxation Office offline for a week does not appear to be a systemic problem.…

Should have thrown in a dictionary, too, for Trump The Chinese government has handed back to America the US Navy underwater drone it stole last week.…

Toilet pebbledashing not our fault, says TerraVia If you were planning to leave out cookies and a generous glass of Solyent for Santa, you should forget all that and hoard your stocks for yourself. A key supplier has announced it is cutting off the super-gruel maker.…

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.…