The Register

Web TuneUp extension blocked from automatically installing with antivirus package Google has banned AVG from automatically installing its Web TuneUp Chrome extension – after the widget wrecked the online security of nine million people.…

Terrifying contraption sent to a farm in the country to chase rabbits all day Vids The US military's flirtation with robotic pack animals looks set to end: the Marine Corps has halted further testing of the BigDog contrivance from Google stablemate Boston Dynamics.…

And punters aren't happy about the downtime Virtual server host Linode has been on and offline since Christmas Day as it weathers an ongoing denial-of-service attack. Four days in, its customers are getting grumpy.…

While Microsoft engineers work on a new version of 7.17 If you're using Skype on a Windows desktop and your messages are appearing out of order, there's a solution: downgrade to an earlier version.…

From Ashley Madison to hackable Jeeps Year in review Tensions have been building for a while on the back of revelations from NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden but 2015 marked the outbreak of full-on hostilities between tech firms in Silicon Valley and Western governments.…

Possibly more noble intentions, but awful execution Looking Ahead Microsoft has never had to deal with a grumpy activist shareholder criticising the leadership – a grump activist who just happens to be its biggest shareholder ... and its former CEO.…

‘The law is clear on what’s allowed’ The UK's Information Commissioner's Office is planning a further crackdown against nuisance call companies, with massive fines coming next year for transgressors.…

Spetsnaz or squirrels? Which poses the greatest threat? The Ukrainian government is blaming power outages in the Western Ukraine on “hacker attacks by Russia[n] special services”.…

Ed Vaizey: 'We're all out of ideas, so do you have any?' The Minister for Culture, Media and Sport* Ed Vaizey today opened a consultation seeking ideas for gov.uk's next digital strategy over the next five years.…

Further digging unveils more privacy-destroying features in Red Star OS 32c3 Fresh light has been shed on North Korea's Red Star OS, which – we're told – silently tracks the exchange of files between computers.…

Chipzilla likely desperate to dump ailing PC market Intel has closed its mega $16.7bn (£11.2bn) deal to acquire programmable chip maker Altera, likely in a bid to move away from the declining PC market.…

Excess of Xmas Eve spirit suspected in alleged goat sex shocker An Oklahoma City man was detained at gunpoint on Christmas Eve by a goat owner who claimed he'd discovered the alleged zoophile in flagrante delicto with one of his animals.…

Three billion miles to get there, but so worth it More than a thousand times farther from Earth than the moon, farther even than the sun, an extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition is taking place. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is exploring dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter.…

Getting public records a chore? Not any more, claims bloke A database with personal information on 191,337,174 US voters has apparently been found unprotected online by a security researcher in Texas.…

FBI dreams wistfully of Middle Kingdom's new antiterror law China has passed its first antiterrorism law – and it is a worrying development for companies looking to do business securely in the Middle Kingdom.…

Adobe squeezes out one last batch of security fixes for 2015 Adobe has issued new versions of Flash to patch a load of security flaws – one of which is being exploited in the wild.…

Will the end of cheap money cast a cloud over 2016? 2015 Year Review One star eclipsed all others in the enterprise in 2015: Amazon. Or, rather, its cloud division, AWS.…

'Tis not the season to be Jolla Roundup When a blind chimp with a shopping strategy based around a pack of darts can come out of Carphone Warehouse with a decent phone - is there any point giving out awards? I've seen dozens of shiny new things this year - and I do wonder why reviews need to be longer than a few words. Maybe they don't need words at all. Perhaps everyone could do one-line reviews, only using emoji.…

You’ve read the book, now meet the guy who wrote it Reg Events If you want to hear a bona fide DevOps view from the top you’ll be be as pleased as we are that Jez Humble will be taking to the stage to deliver a keynote speech at the Continuous Lifecycle London conference next May.…

Mainstream arrays go away, other appear Storage year in review, part 2 The foundation-shaking changes in storage media in 2015 were paralleled, if not exceeded, by the massive perturbations at all levels in the systems, suppliers and applications areas. EMC is fleeing into the arms of Dell, there were acquisitions and splits, activist investors, startups galore, and death and near-death experiences, as well as a miraculous recovery.…

Despite numerous troubles, Osbo gives it the green light The Year in Review For the Government Digital Service, 2015 has been a year of challenge and uncertainty. Many issues have dogged the body, but some of the most high profile included the £215m IT fiasco for farmers' rural payment allowances and the departure of Mike Bracken, the man whose name has become synonymous with the body, amid rumours that the GDS was for the chop.…

Options for those lacking a Linux render farm When it comes to video editing, Windows and Mac rule the screen. Professional apps by the likes of Adobe, Avid and Apple only run in the Win/Mac world and Apple even throws in a pretty sophisticated video editor (iMovie) for free.…

Taking a closer look at the curiously intertwined worlds of three tech giants Sysadmin's 2015 review part 2 With 2015 drawing to a close and 2016 about to begin it's time to reflect on the fact that the world never stops changing. The tech industry certainly changes constantly, and so here's one sysadmin's view of the industry's movers and shakers.…

Who deploys code changes on Dec 25th? Updated Video game marketplace Steam is leaking people's personal information – including their payment details and billing addresses – to strangers.…

Everything is changing and we don't store the same Storage year in review, part 1 The storage market in 2015 went through strategic foundation-shaking turmoil as the external shared disk array storage playbook was torn to shreds.…

Just as well Azure and Office 365 are growing The last twelve months have been pivotal for Microsoft, the company which once promised to put a PC on every desk but now settles for a vague mission statement about “achieve more”.…

El Reg's virtualisation desk casts its eye over VMware and pals' prospects for the new year Server virtualisation just works, so most IT shops do it. And in the decade since it rose to prominence VMware has ruled the roost.…

Calls for additional attention to impact on human rights EU controls on the export of technologies that can be used for communications surveillance and interception should be enhanced, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has said.…

It's a terabit-a-second Christmas miracle! Christmas is a time of miracles, to paraphrase Hans Gruber, and US researchers claim to have pulled off one in silicon photonics: they say they've mainlined super-fast optic communications into a RISC CPU using cheap, bog-standard manufacturing techniques.…

Hey, leave remote-controlled aircraft invading other people's airspace to the professionals After unwrapping your new drone on Christmas Day, do us a massive solid and don't fly it near our bases, the US military seems to be saying.…

Who ordered an asteroid? Pics Unfortunate-looking Asteroid 2003 SD220 will shoot past Earth on Christmas Eve, say scientists tracking the mysterious speeding rock.…

You're fired, K-9 Texas cops have hired a four-legged super-sleuth to sniff out hidden hard drives.…

Reported to be looking for $1bn in funding Kingdom Holding, the investment firm of billionaire Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, said it had led a group of investors to buy a piece of Uber peer-to-peer ride-share app rival Lyft for $247.7m (£166m).…

The light and the dark side of the gaming Force explored Nothing quite says games like Christmas time, so Electronic Arts was therefore in like a shot with the latest telling of its Battlefront epic.…

Private's the word SAP’s software is to be offered as a private cloud service, says Hitachi Consulting, the services wing of the Japanese tech giant.…

Might need to wait until Easter to open it though Salesforce has bought itself an early Christmas present in the form of a $360m (£241m) acquisition of subscription billing apps biz SteelBrick. The acquisition is expected to be wrapped up by April 2016.…

That'll be 10,000 password resets then Broadcasting service Livestream has admitted it may have been hacked, informing customers that an "unauthorized person may have accessed our customer account database."…

Moved to tears, laughter...but not off SQL Reg Lecture It’s rare that the Register has to give a “trigger warning”, but it was necessary when former Iraq hostage Peter Moore brought our Winter Lecture series to a close this month with a 60-minute account of his two-and-a-half years in captivity.…

Another amazing year for Amazon Sysadmin's 2015 review part 1 With 2015 drawing to a close and 2016 about to begin, it is time to reflect on the fact that the world never stops changing. The tech industry certainly changes, and so here's one sysadmin's view of the industry's movers and shakers.…

Cornwall's win over BT should be a cautionary relationship tale Comment Here's a cheerful factoid that gets gleefully wheeled out by family lawyers each year: the first Monday after Christmas is the busiest day for divorces.…

Last one out the data centre, don't switch off the lights! Banks, building societies and investment firms must ensure that technology companies providing critical shared services have "sufficient financial resources" to overcome financial problems, a UK regulator has said.…

In which a reader learns why you should never do tech support for neighbours On-Call Welcome to 2015's final edition of On-Call, our regular feature in which readers share tales of technological tedium, tantrums and terror, often in weird places at unsociable times.…

WMF 5.0 has 'bug which resets the PowerShell module environment during installation' The revolution has been postponed: the long-awaited update to PowerShell that yesterday we reported as having launched, has now been pulled by Microsoft.…

Report says local regulators aren't happy with Zuckerberg's mission to civilise Facebook's “Free Basics” program, which sees its Indian telecoms partner Reliance Communications offer free internet access to a select group of sites, has reportedly earned the ire of India's telecoms regulator.…

Hotel chain says malware infected its payment processing systems Hyatt Hotels Corporation says it “recently identified malware on computers that operate the payment processing systems for Hyatt-managed locations.”…

Extra holidays added after 'major power outage' takes out critical apps The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has suffered a “major power outage” that has led it to effectively declare and extended, early, Christmas.…

Don't worry, they're for medical purposes … and cyborg farmers Rise of the machines The robotic exoskeleton market is set to score 39.6 per cent compound annual growth between now and 2025, emerging as a US$1.8bn industry.…

37 US states could have been scammed by rogue security guy Federal investigators in the US are widening a probe into fraud by the former IT security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MSLA).…

Washington governor apologizes for 13-year-old flaw Washington State Department of Corrections is facing an investigation after it released more than 3,200 prisoners too early due to a software bug.…

Bahamian man faces 10 years in US prison if convicted A Bahamian bloke is accused of stealing scripts and raunchy private videos from celebrities – and selling them to an undercover agent.…