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US$3.5 beellion takes WAN-furtler private Riverbed is no longer a publicly-traded company, as the buyout of its stock by private equiteer Thoma Bravo and Teachers’ Private Capital concluded late last week.…

Microsoftie Troy Hunt unpicks privacy invasion and unencrypted passwords Security expert Troy Hunt has taken a look at what mobile apps collect to send home to their owners, and isn't impressed: even PayPal is still addicted to invasive habits, he says.…

The National Broadband Network is now brought to you by NBN, not by NBN Co NBN Co, the entity charged with building and operating Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN), has changed its name to NBN.…

The day the illegally shared music died Copy-shop Grooveshark's prospects in the latest round of its lawsuit are looking bleak: remarks made by the judge hearing the case have opened up the possibility of damages close to three quarters of a billion dollars against the song-share site.…

Dan Fredinburg suffers fatal head injury in avalanche set off by Nepal earthquake One of Google's top privacy wonks was killed by an avalanche on Mount Everest on Saturday. The snowslide was triggered by a massive Nepal earthquake that has reportedly claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people in the region.…

Talk to the buried handset, cos the face don't give a damn ... currently Nokia has dismissed claims that suggested the company was "currently" planning a big, splashy return to the smartphone business next year.…

This ain't no Morph, dear readers Theatre Review Golem, coming straight from a critically acclaimed run at London's Young Vic, presents us with a modernist cautionary tale of mass media manipulation and conspicuous consumerism.…

Toby Sibley back on board, and already tightening his belt The El Reg Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse has attracted two last minute members for the 2015 Live Below the Line challenge, and we're delighted to welcome back on board 2014 participant Toby Sibley, who's joined by his better half Ros Griffin.…

Plus: 'Old kit dumps are an urban gold mine that can KILL YOU' QuoTW This week, Moore's Law turned 50, Microsoft lost a pile of cash and Comcast gave up on its dream of buying Time Warner Cable.…

A reader catches a colleague going at it with a cold spoon On-call +NSFW Welcome back to On-call, our planned-to-be-fortnightly look at the things readers have been asked to do in the course of their employment, often at odd hours.…

But this car is more style than substance Vulture at the Wheel Concept cars are great. I love them. As bold, inventive declarations of intent by car makers they are gorgeous to look at. Of course, the vast majority of concepts are for just that. Looking at. Build the thing and you run the risk of the styling writing cheques the engineering can’t cash.…

In which our man comes out as pretty much a lefty Worstall @ the Weekend To break with tradition: this week let's see if we can propose something sensible rather than doing our usual liverish snarling at whatever it is that grips my goat this week. So, let's see if we can work out how we should actually be taxing capital and the returns to it.…

Just as well, perhaps, after Lollipop lick froze some older tabs Fandroids may be mourning the sudden death of Google's Nexus 7 slab today, after the world's largest ad broker yanked the device from its online shopfront.…

Stellar systems exiled from Main Street Astronomers have observed no less than 11 runaway galaxies wandering aimlessly around in spaaace.…

Purple Palace fails to explain what's gone wrong ... Updated Yahoo!'s email service tumbled off the interwebs in the past hour when it began spewing out a "temporary error" message to an unknown number of users in the UK.…

Slava Rubin explains what you really need to know "We have the ability to be an entrepreneur beaten out of us," explained the CEO of funding site Indiegogo Slava Rubin, in front of a big picture of a kettle.…

A quarter century of observing the universe Pics On 24 April, 1990, the space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida carrying a very special cargo: 24,490lbs (11,110kg) of advanced optics, electronics, and antennas that made up the Hubble Space Telescope.…

Time to Marvel as director Joss Whedon delivers pure entertainment Film Review Marvel’s Avengers franchise is such a massive, behemoth of a marketing machine, such a merchandise-heavy, almost decade-long suction of talent, time and money that I want to hate it. I want to say, why don’t we spend all that money on independent films? Original stories? Something new, for God’s sake! But there’s just no denying the fact that nine films later (if one counts the standalone Iron Mans, Thors and Captain Americas) it’s still a whole lot of cinema fun.…

A trio of crime thrillers that are suitable beach companions Page File El Reg bookworm Mark Diston takes a look at the new releases in crime fiction with the latest from David Baldacci that introduces a new character series. Philip Kerr wheels outs Bernie Gunther for another wartime adventure and we've some Scandi noir from Jo Nesbo.…

Crowdfunded classic reissues and more +Vids The trend of re-releasing or updating classic synths, which we saw at NAMM in January, continued apace at the biggest musical instrument fair in the world in Frankfurt last week. But for once there was a strong British presence, with innovative new products, as well.…

Otherwise I might go 'full Clarkson' Something for the Weekend, Sir? "Never heard of them."…

Our security is that good, honest RSA 2015 Google takes a lot of stick from Apple and others over malware on the Android platform, but the company thinks the OS is now so secure that users don't need antivirus software.…

Source code, blueprints swiped by gang A 22-year-old member of a games-hacking ring that sold counterfeit Microsoft's Xbox One consoles could spend the next year and a half behind bars in America.…

Sane IANA plan released for public comment Five months after the release of a bloated, ego–driven mess of a plan to shift control of the top level of the internet from the US government to the internet community, a greatly improved version 2.0 has been offered for public comment.…

A 'don't make me come over there' moment in infosec The Pentagon has published an outline of its cyber-warfare strategy for the first time, revealing the conditions under which it will hack enemy nations.…

Big Red 'not protecting anything,' says co-CEO Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd has said the database giant plans to make substantially all of its software products available as cloud services, and that it will be ready to start signing up subscriptions come this October.…

Techno-goggles comeback does actually appear to be in the works Italian eyewear manufacturer Luxottica says it is working with Google engineers to come up with a new version of Glass – adding further weight to the suggestion the project isn't truly dead.…

Thing we all knew was going to happen has officially happened Comcast has admitted it has given up on its $45bn acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC).…

Cloud storage company launches Developer Edition with app-specific users BoxDEV Box announced a Developer Edition of its cloudy storage service at its developer conference in San Francisco this week.…

FTC tsks at startup promising an opt-out that was invisible to millions of citizens The FTC has now settled with a New York startup that stealthily tracks the movements of Americans around stores using their smartphones' Wi-Fi signals.…

Super-stealthy Iranian nuke lab bothering malware almost blew its mission RSA 2015 Super-worm Stuxnet could have blown its cover and failed its sabotage mission due to a bug that allowed it to spread to ancient Windows boxes, malware analysts reckon.…

'We don't need any more photo-sharing apps' It's rare that the politician is the most blunt person in the room, but Oakland's Mayor Libby Schaaf pulled it off on Thursday afternoon at the Vator Splash tech conference in the city.…

Loss of two patents cripples case against Trend Micro, could slash Symantec payout A US district court has torn the heart out of two patents wielded by Intellectual Ventures against two antivirus makers.…

Lickspittles may have leaked military secrets to America Germany's BND spy agency spied on European politicians and enterprises at the behest of the NSA for over a decade.…

‘Enhancing competitiveness’ also probably a good idea Losses at mainframe maker Unisys plunged deeper into the red in the company's first quarter of 2015, falling a further $10 million (£6.6 million) to $27.4 million (£18.1 million).…

Blighty bonking tech updated – although not a lot Four years ago, your reporter paid for cookies with a mobile phone. Now, with Apple poised to bring some wrist action to bonking cash, we thought we’d take a look at how the competition has evolved.…

Golden shower for fruit-bitten icon A classic green Android robot urinates on the Apple logo in Google Maps – neatly illustrating the rivalry between Google and Apple.…

Folk don't want to do mega deals these days, it seems The number of mega outsourcing deals shrank by 25 per cent in Europe for the first quarter of 2015, with just 128 contracts, valued at €1.9 billion (£1.4 billion), according to outsourcing analysts Information Services Group (ISG).…

Could fill the Grand Canyon 11 times over Geoboffins have discovered a huge lake of magma under the Yellowstone National Park's supervolcano that could fill the Grand Canyon 11 times over.…

He's also flogging anti-hack tech. Make of that what you will The rollout of a next generation train signalling system across the UK could leave the network at greater risk of hack attacks, a university professor has claimed.…

A tight squeeze in the cloud Don’t be fooled: Microsoft’s cloud business is not bigger than that of Amazon’s AWS, although that’s the immediate implication.…

Selling to your mum and dad doesn't make it OK The European Court of Justice has said the EU Commission was right to fine LG €210 million for its LCD panel cartel involvement.…

And top notch beer and vittles... Reg Events If you want to get ahead of the on-beach reading lists this year, you need to get down to our next series of Register Lectures.…

Ten. The first one explores how to wait for delivery A mini-series of tutorial videos has appeared on the Apple website, giving step-by-tap instructions on how to use the new shiny Wristjob.…

It benefits Hortonworks, not us Hadoop disty MapR has kicked the Open Data Platform into touch, saying it only benefits competitor Hortonworks and provides a way for Pivotal to get out of a hole.…

Gaze upon Cook's wristjob, ye fanbois, & despair Teardown The Apple Watch's innards have been bared, and they're not so dissimilar from those one might expect of a teeny tiny iPhone.…

Mixing and matching the party manifesto promises Election 2015 Five years after its first coalition government for decades, Britain again looks likely to refuse to elect a single party to government.…

Mysterious hire has NetApp experience All-flash array maker Violin has finally got over chief marketeer Eric Herzog's abrupt departure on the eve of a massive product announcement, and has appointed a new CMO, Amy Love.…

Out of the wheelchair at least, slowly walking around The sickly software-defined storage child that was FalconStor is not yet a strapping adolescent, but is at least on the way back to full health.…

Lest I unleash a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ on you Lying lobbyists will be kicked out of the EU Commission, vowed veep Frans Timmermans, who has been promising to create a mandatory lobby register since he took office.…