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Kubuntu chief’s head placed on cloud-based, open source spike A storm of accusations, claims, and furious counterclaims has hit the Ubuntu penguins, with a community cleaved of its head following allegations of unsavory behavior.…

Red in the face, red on the financials Hybrid array storage start-up minnow Nimble Storage saw revenues grow strongly in its latest quarter, though not enough to trouble mainstream storage vendors.…

NASA plans mission to probe warm alien globe NASA has today announced the nine scientific instruments which will ride on a Europa-bound probe to examine the icy moon for signs of life.…

Can't you kids play nice and just share the APIs like mature adults? The Obama administration is backing Oracle in its long-running legal battle against Google over the Chocolate Factory's alleged infringement of Java copyrights.…

Mutant bods join the $100m-plus startup club Tegile has landed itself a massive $70m D-round of funding to pay for global expansion of its hybrid/all-flash array business.…

We'll definitely destroy freedom to save it, mutter Tories The first session of the new Parliament was opened by the Queen today and, as expected, a renewed push for a Snoopers' Charter was high on the agenda.…

Monopoly-busting move paves the way for private enterprise After an extended spat between Elon Musk and the US Air Force, SpaceX has finally been certified for military space missions, muscling into what had been a cosy monopoly held by a Lockheed Martin-Boeing joint venture.…

M'learned friends' sysadmins forgot to renew their security cert UK.gov's judiciary website has had its security compromised after bungling administrators failed to renew a security certificate.…

We also lack procurement skills, say central govt departments Government departments are unenthusiastic about funneling more of their IT biz through SMEs, according to a survey of nearly 1,000 central government IT bods.…

It's all about the spectrum imbalance (maybe) Ofcom wants to hold onto the 60MHz of the 190MHz of spectrum it had announced would be for sale, and is floating the idea of scaling things back, citing a change in market conditions for the sale, slated for the end of this year or the beginning of next.…

If movies are using more VFX, why aren't they coining it. To infinity? Worstall on Wednesday An interesting read popped up on Motherboard recently: if all and every movie now uses ever more visual effects, then why the heck are all the visual effects (VFX) studios going bust?…

Cylons, Daleks or Skynet to enslave humanity: you choose Internet of Lawnmowers Last time I explored the concept of geofencing, and how low-power technologies are used both to create "virtual walls" and to create beacons. This time, I’m going to take a look at the individual technologies that Internet of Things (IoT) devices will use to communicate for the next several years.…

I have no enforcement powers, so pretty, pretty please The Surveillance Camera Commissioner has written to local authority chief executives, reminding them of their duty to "pay regard" to the surveillance camera code of practice.…

Forget passwords; Japanese users can buy online with their EYEBALLS Japanese users will be able to log in and make online purchases using iris recognition biometrics after telco giant DOCOMO begins shipping Fujitsu ARROWS phones.…

British devs are quids in with purchase Oculus Rift, the big dog in virtual reality headsets, has snapped up British startup Surreal Vision for an undisclosed sum.…

Between now and 2019 we'll make one mobe for just about every human on Earth Abacus-wielder IDC has issued a new set of prognostications about the mobile phone market, predicting that 1.447 billion of them will ship this year.…

Wilma!!!! Ken Ham, an Australian young-Earth creationist, says he is on the verge of proving that dinosaurs and humans coexisted only a couple of thousand years ago.…

InterPlanetary Networking Special Interest Group gets a reality check Boffins that want to see Internet protocols extend to outer space – the so-called “Interplanetary Internet” – need to prove they're offering something useful, according to one of the father-figures of the Earth-bound Internet.…

Contain myself? Don't mind if I do says hacker-whacker Linux distro Penetration testing gurus Offensive Security have made their popular Kali operating system available for Docker-addicted system administrators.…

Better search and indexing for space stuff DARPA's Memex “deep Web” search research has a new high-profile supporter: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is looking for new ways to catalogue the flood of data arriving from spacecraft.…

Free photo peep for hacker creeps Securify co-founder Cengiz Han Sahin says Synology has patched a remote vulnerability that allowed attackers to compromise its storage devices.…

Iron ore state splurges on Big Iron Scientific HPC fans in Australia will be breathing a sigh of relief that the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre has secured state government funding through to 2020-21.…

OpenNFV partner becomes virty carrier biz unit HP is looking to beef up its service provider software-defined networking (SDN) footprint, with the acquisition of Comcast and Verizon-backed ConteXtream.…

Revenue and connection rates up, but we're yet to see any 'multi' in the technology mix Australia's national broadband network continues apace with nbn announcing that it's adding more than 12,000 premises per week to its serviceable footprint.…

Mandriva goes into liquidation Mandriva, a French purveyor of desktop Linux, is being wound up, after becoming totally incapable of supporting usual performance (TITSUP), financially at least.…

Files petition arguing opposite of last petition Lobbying group USTelecom – AT&T, Verizon etc – has filed a petition against itself in an effort to prevent new net neutrality rules from taking effect.…

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat A presentation given at a conference on high-performance computing (HPC) in Poland earlier this month appears to have yielded new insight into Intel's Xeon server chip roadmap.…

Tesla unlikely to be quaking in its boots Nearly a year after Google announced it was adapting Android to act as a car operating system, the first vehicle using the software has gone on sale from South Korean carmaker Hyundai.…

A new low for the Feds – or cyber-journalism? The latter The US Internal Revenue Service said on Tuesday that info including tax returns and income forms for some 100,000 people were illegally accessed this year.…

Underdog may win rights to coveted internet extension In what could prove to be an extraordinary David versus Goliath story, an independent musician may walk away with the highly coveted .music top-level domain, beating off competition from Google, Amazon, and the music industry itself.…

Tap that and ride the ripples The latest crop of iPhones will reportedly come equipped with touch-sensing haptic displays that push back on your fingertips.…

Swinging digital assistant to pal around with Redmond rivals Cortana, Microsoft's personal digital assistant that will be built into Windows 10, will also be available on Android and iOS devices, the software giant confirmed on Tuesday following rumors that have been swirling around since March.…

Public comments on revised IANA transition plan The plan to move control of the top-level of the internet from the US government to California non-profit ICANN has received broad approval following a month-long public comment period.…

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti ESET researchers Olivier Bilodeau and Thomas Dupuy have found malware capable of compromising routers and embedded devices, seizing control of social networking accounts, and booting out competitors.…

Twitter movie tool comes to the majority of world's smartphones Popular live video-broadcasting app Periscope has been released as an Android app via the Google Play store.…

Dual-controller hybrid array tech set to extend and expand +Comment Hybrid and all-flash array startup Tegile has got itself an interesting roadmap to extend its hybrid array tech and expand sideways into adjacent storage markets.…

Comply with us voluntarily, citizen - or we'll force you Skype has been called to appear before a court in Belgium after refusing to hand over customer data following a request for assistance in a criminal investigation.…

And uses data harvesting to shoot itself in the, er, foot A company selling floor tiles which extract tiny, pointless amounts of energy from crowds walking across them is seeking fresh investment through the medium of crowdfunding.…

The ‘Gefällt mir’ button — nein danke Five German companies have removed Facebook’s “like” button from their websites following pressure from the niftily-named Consumer Advice Center of North Rhine-Westphalia (Verbraucherzentrale NRW).…

Unbe-LAVA-ble dest-ROCK-tion Erupting for the first time in 33 years, the Volcán Wolf is hurling fire, lava and ash over the Galápagos Islands.…

Virtusteam veritable IaaS gold mine for backers EMC is buying Virtustream in a seemingly billion-dollar-level transaction, as part of an effort to build a managed cloud services business.…

Plus: Why your phone's (sometimes) crap at wireless Forged nearly 20 years ago, the 802.11 wireless networking standard was responsible for cutting the cord and letting us roam. During that time, 802.11 has evolved as devices using it have both proliferated and got smaller – while the data they swallow has grown in quantity and in size.…

Luke, you were right about me Sammy has announced a merger with fashion, leisure and construction biz Cheil Industries, a company in which the tech giant already owns a sizable stake, in a move designed to bolster the South Korean conglomerate as power passes from current leader to probable heir apparent Lee Jae-yong.…

‘AWS is to the era of cloud what Microsoft is to client/server’ As domination goes, it’s hard to surpass Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to recent Gartner data, AWS now offers 10X the utilised cloud capacity of the next 14 IaaS and PaaS providers... combined.…

Call the cops! Erm, actually don't Cybercrooks have launched a new wave of Android ransomware that poses as a pretty convincing FBI-imposed porn-surfing warning.…

Dedicated retail POS storage will ensure no-sleep tills in Brooklyn SanDisk has built an SSD for point-of-sale terminals, digital signage and surveillance gear, saying it’s better than disk drive use. Tablet, notebook and PC OEMs could use it too, so long as they don’t need more than 256GB.…

Proposes $78.7 BEELLION cash'n'shares deal Charter Communications has confirmed plans to merge with Time Warner Cable in a cash and shares deal worth $78.7bn.…

Since privatisation, investment ‘somewhat less than had been planned overall’ The National Air Traffic Services failed to implement recommendations to mitigate IT risks, according to an independent report into the mega systems failure in December which left thousands of passengers stranded in Blighty.…