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Selective playback to be the new default Concerned that the Chrome browser seems to be eating up your laptop's battery? Google is, too, but it says it's not all its fault – Adobe's to blame, too.…

Secret memos snaffled using Freedom-of-Info law reveal govt official talking points Edward Snowden made off with "over 900,000" highly sensitive US Department of Defense documents, according to American government officials whose private memos were published today.…

And it all depends on what you call a hacker The latest documents to be released from the Snowden archive show that the NSA was secretly authorized to carry out warrantless surveillance on US internet traffic in the name of cybersecurity.…

But seven more countries will soon be able to join the queue Apple plans to expand sales of the Apple Watch to new markets later this month, even though it will still be a couple of weeks before it can catch up with its existing backlog of orders.…

* Aka Los Angeles Schwarzenegger-sized robots that can break through walls are the staple of Hollywood, but the real thing is coming to California.…

It's in 'the fabric of everything we do,' exec says HP Discover What's the latest enterprise IT company to proclaim its love of open source? HP, that's who – or, more specifically, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of two companies that will emerge once HP splits this November.…

This one covers Western countries and telecoms, e-commerce, foreign workers Fresh from offering $100,000 to anyone that leaks the still-secret parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Wikileaks has published large chunks of the related Trade In Services Agreement (TiSA).…

But Space Invaders wasn't good enough? How about Minecraft? The Strong Museum has chosen its first six honorees for its Hall of Fame for video games – but has omitted some major names in the process.…

Security rock stars make up for the absence of booth babes Infosec 2015 Infosec, the annual IT security trade show, wheeled out the rock stars of the Infosec world for its 20th anniversary this week.…

Potential marriage partners look for scale to fight market giants, quad-play T-Mobile US and Dish Networks are in talks about joining forces. Consolidation and quad-play are all the rage between mobile networks, and mobile networks and other networks.…

CTO: We might have run your AWS or Azure setup Rackspace Solve London Speaking at the Rackspace Solve event in London, the company's CTO John Engates said an increased focus on cloud management services rather than just infrastructure might extend to running applications on third-party clouds.…

Baffling costly mobile app acquisitions don't add features or IQ Comment As strange shopping expeditions go, this has to rank alongside London Bridge being bought, dismantled, and then rebuilt in Arizona. The world’s biggest software company, Microsoft, has now spent half a billion dollars on mobile apps that are poor cousins of its own Exchange and Outlook software. Apps that, in some cases, don’t natively work with Microsoft’s server software.…

But M2M connectivity requirements give 2G network a reprieve until 2025 Norwegian telco Telenor has outlined plans for switching off 3G, which may be a model for other operators.…

£850,000 costs bill doesn't stop patent firm, though After eleven claims and seven years, Virgin has won an eleventh patent dispute with Rovi over the design of its user interface after Rovi withdrew the claim of patent infringement.…

Warring MEPs do battle over proposals to collect data for state security agencies MEPs are massively split on whether or not to hand over air passengers’ personal data to security authorities.…

Cutpurses, blackguards and scofflaws thrive due to medieval patching Zero-day threats and custom malware get all the publicity, but age-old malware strains including ZeuS and Conficker remain active in UK corporates.…

What was the pocket action about, Mike? Infosec 2015 John McAfee delivered a surprisingly non-controversial keynote speech to the London Infosec Conference on Wednesday afternoon, lauding the value of privacy, doing so – to the concern of his bewildered audience – whilst seemingly tickling himself through the cloth of his pocket.…

Maybe sooner, says bullish company chief exec Virgin Galactic will be carrying aloft its first paying customers "within 18 months to two years", according to chief executive George Whitesides.…

Submerge the servers in OIL? Are you COMPLETELY out of your mind? Every time we Tweet, procrastinate by watching an online video of a puppy with hiccups, or query a cloud, we spin up a chain reaction of hardware and electrons in some data centre somewhere. This generates heat that must be dissipated.…

Samsung and Telefónica's Thinking Things spiel comes a close second “Internet of Things”, “Cloud”, “SaaS”, “state of the art”, “great user experience”: it’s all in the latest cross-supply agreement between Microsoft and Toshiba.…

While Cisco makes its own acquisition and gets Piston champagne IBM has snatched OpenStack cloud floater Blue Box, a 12-year-old firm delivering private cloud as a service.…

We don't need geoblocking, shrieks party's sole MEP The EU's sole Pirate Party MEP has welcomed rumours that the European Commission is to get tough with big Hollywood firms’ geo-blocking activities.…

Life lessons from medical science I admit, I tend to the slightly conservative when it comes to publishing in peer-reviewed journals – a title such as ‘Li Fraumeni syndrome, cancer and senescence: a new hypothesis’ is as racy as it gets.…

Removable battery, micro SD expansion? Walk this way... Review Despite some lovely work, LG has been a perennial bridesmaid at the smartphone wedding. LG’s rival giant Samsung has walked off with all the only profits being made in the Android business. But this year LG senses a chance to be the bride.…

Schneier: Sony hack ‘high skill, high focused’ We are in the early years of a cyber war arms race, security guru Bruce Schneier warned delegates at the Infosecurity Europe exhibition on Wednesday.…

Source code gives the game away, Comrades Russia is the chief suspect in the recent hack of the Bundestag, according to esteemed German daily Der Spiegel.…

New API seeks to let admins conduct infrastructure like a symphony HP Discover HP has a grand plan for when it morphs into Hewlett Packard Enterprise later this year, and the key to it is a concept it's calling "composable infrastructure."…

Big Red looks to be in custom Xeons for the long haul Oracle looks like it's committed to custom Xeons for the long haul.…

Hashes to stop sly CDN tampering Scripting will in the next few months become safer with Mozilla and Google adopting a validation mechanism to prevent against man-in-the-middle attacks.…

Musk seeks FCC license for antenna tests Elon Musk's SpaceX has filed its long-anticipated application to test a satellite-based broadband service with the Federal Communications Commission.…

That's enough crowdfunding, marketing and texting, I'm off for some cervezing They not be able to pronounce WhatsApp for love nor money, but the Spaniards have no trouble whatsoever getting their tongues around the English -ing suffix, as evidenced by a recent agreeable/alarming (according to your opinion on foreignisms) rise in xxxings here in Spain.…

Giant Magellan 'scope a 'venture into the unknown' The planned largest optical telescope in the world, the Giant Magellan Telescope looks to go ahead, with its consortium signing off on the US$500 million build cost.…

M2M? Lots of things with not much to say Here comes 5G, except for one thing: most of the world will still be on pre-4G by 2020.…

How smart is your road? Cisco's scored a win for its Internet of Everything approach to running cities, with Hamburg Port Authority deciding to try out a “smart road”.…

Borg goes shopping, again Cisco is either dipping another tentative toe in the open cloud business, or about to Borg a potential competitor, announcing that it wants to buy cloud operating system company Piston Cloud Technologies.…

Thing that was never announced won't be announced for a bit longer Next week's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) will not include the release of a new Apple TV.…

DBAs and hackers, you can learn to get along Databases remain a security nightmare, says Datacom TSS hacker David Litchfield, so he's built an application to give admins a hand.…

And you wanted to call this pile a planet? Astronomy fans are still split over whether it was right to declassify Pluto as a planet in 2006 and call it a dwarf. Now the latest data from the Hubble Space telescope shows that the distant rock-ball is far weirder than we first thought.…

NZ court says Megaulpload defendants can fight forfeiture The US has suffered a setback in the interminable case of Kim Dotcom, with a New Zealand court ruling against the seizure of his assets, for now.…

Sentencing likely in August following guilty plea A former officer of the Australian Federal Police's counter-terrorism unit has entered guilty pleas to two charges of stalking using restricted databases.…

We understand why you did it, Mr Liptak, but it's still a Federal crime A high school teacher in Tampa Bay, Florida, has been suspended without pay for using a jamming device to keep students off their cellphones.…

Politicians still won’t reveal super-hush-hush trade treaty For the last ten years, politicians and business leaders have been hammering out the largest trade deal in US history. Very few people have actually seen what's in it, and WikiLeaks wants to change that.…

Prototype version won't be quite what's promised HP Discover HP is still hard at work at the futuristic computing platform it has dubbed the Machine, and staffers from HP Labs were on hand at the HP Discover conference in Las Vegas this week to give an update on its progress.…

Bug-fixed version in limbo, upstart gripes The makers of the Pebble smartwatch are moaning that Apple is taking its sweet time to approve the latest bug-fixed version of the Pebble Time iOS app. Completely coincidentally, Apple just recently launched its own smartwatch.…

Telco will submit to regulations, so long as it gets its way AT&T will give in to net neutrality rules in the US – provided it is allowed to buy DirecTV.…

Rap for yap app in crap chat flap Adding a single colon to a web link is enough to kill Skype on your PC, Android and iOS device.…

Befreshenings will help your car to talk to the web and your phone to talk to itself BlackBerry has updated its mature IoT platform based on real-time OS QNX – which can be found in everything from cars to Cisco routers to nuclear power stations – and announced a new partnership with Intel.…

Hoping to find the right balance between safety and innovation The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) — the financial regulator for Wall Street — has released its final regulations for Bitcoins.…