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Ad giant can turn everyone into ads – a friendly reminder Netizens who have been scrambling to upload their photo libraries into Google's new cloud-hosted Photos service could find themselves sharing more than they wanted to with the Mountain View advertising giant.…

Someone's been watching too much Terminator Vid Robot builders at MIT have created a cyber-creature that can run and jump over objects without human control.…

SCREW YOU, DARWIN Pic An ardent believer in creationism has dug up fish fossils that boffins say are 60 million years old. That's somewhat further back in time than the genesis of life described in the Good Book.…

Coming over here, taking our secrets, giving them to the NSA Belgium and the Netherlands have joined Austria and Luxembourg in getting really rather upset that German spies, er, spied on them.…

Apple publishes a workaround – but no real fix for iMessage bomb bug Apple has published a temporary workaround for iPhones plagued by incoming text messages that cause them to crash and restart – and it involves asking Siri for help.…

And pushes out first gateway for $500 Dell has created a new "Internet of Things" division, and launched its first product: a $500 gateway designed for industry.…

Put it away, Macesin! Do you have a solicitor, Macesin? Jeffrey Macesin, a self-described "gadget lover", has been slapped with a $120 fine and four points on his licence for enjoying his wristjob while operating a vehicle.…

Selling something to you, or selling you to something? The VPN service Hola, which claims to have more than 9.7 million users, is now selling its access to users' machines as exit-nodes under the Luminati brand.…

Revenues fall, losses continue, and law suits... Comment Crossroads Systems, which makes StrongBox archiving and Sphinx virtual tape systems, as well as the smaller RVA tape verification product, is looking poverty-stricken as it goes for a rights issue to replenish its coffers.…

Fox ready to bite bad developers Mozilla developer Jorge Villalobos claims the web king has begun signing vetted add-ons in a bid to improve security.…

Usual suspects also in the running for business worth £200m The government has lifted the lid on its £200m Technology Services framework, with more than half of the 85 suppliers awarded a place being SMEs.…

IOCCO head quits to recover from car accident injuries Sir Anthony May, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, has decided to stand down from the role at the end of July, short of the end of his three-year term which would have expired in December this year.…

Overall sales down 12 per cent on year, but better than estimates The unfavourable forex rate leaving US vendors with a damp patch on their financial results in Europe ironically might have helped Tech Data in its opening quarter of fiscal 2016.…

Redmond's time-bending cloud adopts its own local leap-second answer Exclusive Servers running Microsoft’s cloud will be briefly out of sync with each other and official time standards on June 30, as they implement the leap second.…

SpaceX likely to get second ISS crew contract later this year NASA is progressing towards what it describes as "returning America’s ability to launch crew missions to the International Space Station from the United States in 2017" by handing aerospace and defense contractor Boeing the first of its commercial crew rotation missions.…

Water way to fight a war Game Theory Nintendo might be incapable of depicting any kind of violence in its games (beyond a fat plumber stamping on turtles), but that doesn't mean it can't do team warfare. Splatoon navigates the narrow path between too much violence and too little by furnishing its combatants with water pistols filled with coloured ink.…

Interxion left weeping as UK firm is swept off by hunky US suitor Data centre outfit Equinix is enlarging its presence in Europe by gobbling up UK-based Telecity for £2.3bn, with the deal adding a further 39 European data centres to the US-based company's existing empire of 100.…

Wrong in 2006, 2010 and 2014, but it's now fine Once a fierce opponent of data retention, Germany’s back in slurping mode. The Federal Cabinet yesterday approved a new draft law that would force telcos to store call and email records for 10 weeks.…

Glider pilot Martin Gregorie enjoys a quick spaceplane livener We like to take the opportunity this fine May morning to once again thank all of those who backed our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) Kickstarter campaign, and in particular the discerning backers who opted for a tankard as a reward.…

Do health trackers really keep you in good shape? Breaking Fad Fitness trackers, sleep trackers and more are all the rage these days. How many of you have a Fitbit, Jawbone, or other device that’s intended to either incentivise or depress you by reminding you of how far you’ve walked, or how long you’ve been sat down? Apple’s Watch will even remind you to stand up from time to time, as long you’re not too heavily tattooed.…

Update introduces SMART support and some Veeam va-va-voom DataCore has updated its virtual SAN SANsymphony product, adding OpenStack and Veeam support and making it go faster.…

Commission Prez hopes handful of dusty change will keep boffins happy Fears that European Union funding for scientific research would be drastically cut have been somewhat allayed.…

Someone forget to renew their DNS name server domain Some of MegaUpload's file-sharing websites, once seized by the Feds, are now serving up porn and allegedly malware – after Uncle Sam's finest failed to renew one of its own domains.…

Vienna's annual gathering to explore future technology and sell bright idea Pioneers Festival 2015 is under way in Vienna – the event where hundreds of breathless startups go in search of funding or to publicize their bright ideas.…

A simple but TOXic attack emerges from the onion Threat Research head Jim Walter says a virus writer has created a ransomware-as-a-service offering which allows luddite criminals to fleece users.…

What’s good for the IT goose is good for the business gander When it comes to providing efficient services, can the IT department teach the rest of the business a thing or two?…

Should have used the brain depository Cops were called in to solve the mystery of nine abandoned BRAINS found near a railway line in New York last week.…

Punters will take the upgrade, trouser the cash and buy an Apple Watch, says IDC Windows 10 won't give PC sales a fillip, because punters don't think an upgrade is enough reason to buy a new computer.…

Look out LastPass: Devs can shunt creds into OS vault Google I/O Android users will be able to store passwords in Google's native Smart Lock manager, in a security boon for the masses.…

Education ministers decide the time is right to drink the techno-Kool-Aid Australia's Education Council met today and decided the nation needs a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) plan.…

Read all you want, but editing's a science project The Document Foundation has released a version of Libre Office for Android.…

'Grabit' malware isn't subtle or clever, but it's working Kaspersky researcher Ido Noar says attackers have hit hundreds of small and medium businesses, stealing credentials and documents in a noisy smash-and-grab campaign.…

Prove us wrong, nerds, prove us wrong Google I/O Google has unveiled a new photo service that, it hopes, will mean that images from your past can be organized by computers so you don't have to.…

A C++ IDE, cloud-based app testing, Polymer 1.0, and more Google I/O For a developer event, this year's Google I/O conference in San Francisco sure spent a lot of time focusing on such consumer-oriented toys as personal assistants, photo apps, and budget VR. But there were actually a few legitimate developer tools on display, too.…

Take that, Apple! Now they'll fly off the shelves Google I/O Apple is winning the PR war with its Watch, but Google thinks an open platform, and some nifty Android Wear software, can give it the edge in the smartwatch world.…

Yet the ad giant is taking it VERY seriously Google I/O To many, Google's Cardboard VR headset is just a novel paper-and-plastic toy, but the Chocolate Factory is taking it seriously enough that it has given it a revamp and is pushing to have it more widely adopted.…

You know what sucks? Your attitude The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has responded to questions over the legality of .sucks domain pricing with a three-page "I told you so" letter to domain name overseer ICANN.…

Plus: Android Pay, fingerprint tech ... but for now, only if you're a developer Google I/O Google today showed off the latest build of Android, version M, at its annual developer conference Google I/O in San Francisco.…

But softcore is fine, so long as the ESRB approves Gameplay broadcaster Twitch has banned users from streaming racy live video from "adult only" games.…

New IoT platform to take on, well, everybody else Google I/O Google is going after the Internet of Things with Android-based software aimed at powering a broad range of connected gizmos.…

Because being penniless is no excuse to have crappy dialup Tom Wheeler, chairman of US internet watchdog the FCC, has asked the regulator's commissioners to offer broadband to poor Americans via the Lifeline program.…

17bn in greenbacks – the rest in shares As rumored this week, chip designer and supplier Avago is buying chip designer Broadcom in a cash-and-stock deal worth $37bn (£24bn). Broadcom is probably best known to Reg readers as the biz behind the BCM system-on-chips found in the Raspberry Pi and various other gizmos.…

Frustrated 'white hat' reportedly went large after being ignored Service has been suspended, and passwords reset, following a hack against Indian music streaming service Ganaa.…

SHOCKER: Watchmaker says it's building a watch 1980s fashion icon Swatch has confirmed it is working on a smartwatch.…

IT departments better pick up their game – like not leaving anon FTP open to the world When hackers swiped 32,500 patient records from Cottage Healthcare System, it was sued by its own customers for $4.1m – a bill that was settled by its insurers.…

Wave to provide salesmonkey-friendly front end for Hadoop Having sidled into the cash-rich analytics party seven months back, Salesforce is now out and proud on the hype-heavy big data field.…

Lower your shields and surrender your privacy. We will add your data to our own The ZuckerBorg collects so much data on its users that even visiting the site tags your ineffable soul for eternal tracking. But now a Harvard student's browser extension can now exploit the default location sharing setting to literally plot Facebook Messenger app users' movements on a map.…

Also bizarre peepshow watch Chinese tech giant Lenovo has been showing things it’s making and things it wants to make at Lenovo Tech World in Beijing.…