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New Commish learning lessons from the US, say insiders Europe’s Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, looks like breaking with a five-year tradition of sucking up to Google by issuing the search giant with a Statement of Objections – the first step on a path to punitive measures.…

Ssssssh. Israeli storage start-up is staying stealthy to start with Say hello to E8 Storage, a stealthy Israeli start-up founded by two XIV veterans.…

Certificate dodginess leads to Chrome banhammer Google has announced it will no longer recognise the Chinese Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) as a Root Certificate Authority, following an investigation into unauthorised certificates issued for several Google domains.…

And mobile prices might fall as well. Still wanna vote for it? BT has warned its shareholders that a tumble in mobile prices is a factor that has to be considered ahead of voting to agree the £12.5bn purchase of EE.…

High-speed fibre? All right, my lover The City of Bristol claims it will be the world’s first programmable city, after launching a software-defined network that will deliver ultra-fast fibre and a wireless canopy across the city.…

LTO-6 pricing drops below one cent per GB Shipped tape capacity passed 6.6 exabytes in the third 2014 quarter, a record.…

Confiscation hearing says he has six months to pay up A cybercriminal from Thamesmead has been given six months to turn up £1m, or he'll be spending another four years behind bars.…

Kickstarter campaign to get engineering journal online The UK's Women's Engineering Society (WES) is indulging in some light tin-rattling aimed at digitising almost 100 years of the Women Engineer Journal.…

Sihua Tech has also opened a Cupertino office. Can't imagine why Permabit says it has a new Albireo dedupe software OEM, and in so doing has revealed a brand new all-flash array vendor, this one from China.…

Rozzers play fast and loose with concerned citizens' security The Metropolitan Police has allowed its SSL certificate to expire, possibly exposing users of its website to criminal snooping – and leaving victims and witnesses of crime vulnerable to exploitation.…

Receptacles blackened as dumper rams pole Hundreds of smart electricity meters exploded in California after a truck crashed into a utility pole and caused a power surge on Monday.…

Firm puts gun to customer's head over charges run up by fraudsters Sony has told a victim of fraud he must either pay the outstanding charge caused by his Playstation account being hacked, or remain locked out – effectively rendering his console unusable.…

Ride-share app turns to EU for help in battles with legal hordes of France, Spain Uber has filed three official complaints with the European Commission, a spokesman confirmed.…

That's, like, totally meta-legal, man A lawsuit against Google over alleged search manipulation has been adjourned, after a judge ruled it was "inappropriate" to hold the trial while the European Commission was pursuing its anti-trust case.…

Silent sentinel will DoS eavesdroppers Mohamed Idris has created a tool to help network administrators discover and DoS rogue access points.…

A quarter of CIOs bail from US clouds, but only a third of those leave for fear of spooks Analyst outfit Forrester has asked the question “Did PRISM Cause An Exodus From US Clouds?” and found the answer is yes. At least a bit.…

Abandoned OS takes deepest market share dip for ages It's the first of the month (US time), so off we go to Netmarketshare and Statcounter to see what operating systems are getting a run on the world's desktop computers.…

Unremarkable trashed laptop brings hint of spy caper buffoonery to privacy exhibition The remains of computer hardware which had contained the Guardian's London trove of Snowden documents – and which was destroyed on the rather spiteful demands of GCHQ personnel – have gone on display at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum.…

Yet another reason Excel is evil, and yet another reason to get up to date on patches Malware writers are targeting international energy utilities with a new trojan that creates beachheads to enable subsequent more advanced attacks.…

Mobile catching up fast … no, actually it's NOT By now it must be obvious that Australia's mobile data allowances are laughable: in the last quarter of 2014, year-on-year growth in fixed broadband downloads outpaced total mobile downloads by nearly 3:1.…

Almost as good as a battery, says graphene-burning boffin A hybrid supercapacitor out of UCLA Berkeley has got the uni's boffins excited, since they claim they've achieved high energy density but in a thinner-than-paper package.…

Gov throws cash at devs to rid nation of ancient Microsoft tech South Korea may have the world's best broadband, a vivid gaming culture and, in Samsung and LG, two very influential technology giants. But it also has one the world's weirdest online payment regimes because of its decision to mandate the obscure SEED cipher to secure online transactions.…

Membership increases, but some big names are scaling back their commitment A couple of OpenDaylight's platinum members, VMWare and Juniper Networks, are scaling down their involvement with the Linux Foundation's SDN controller project.…

Virtzilla wants mobile devices to figure out when to put windows in your face on small screens Delivering a virtual desktop to a mobile device is easy to do these days, but once it lands in a mobile device the experience can be horrid. Touch screens make poor substitutes for mice and the smaller screen of a fondleslab or smartphone makes user interfaces designed for monitors unpleasant.…

SDN platform heads for Insieme unit The Borg has followed up on its 2014 $US14 million investment in virtualisation business Embrane by announcing it intends to buy the business.…

Nearly 200 browser extensions blocked in Chrome clean-up More than 100,000 Chrome users have complained to Google about extensions injecting ads into their browser windows since January 1, 2015 alone, and now The Chocolate Factory is moving to block the worst offenders.…

Group sought to nab unreleased games from industry giants A man from Indiana has pleaded guilty for his role in a hacking ring that targeted major games developers.…

Cloudy firm goes poof, citing 'immature market' Nebula, one of the earliest OpenStack-based cloud computing startups, has closed its doors, effective immediately.…

Plaintiffs claim chipmaker misled investors about supply-chain woes A US federal judge has given the green light for a class-action lawsuit accusing AMD of securities fraud over the chipmaker's alleged failure to inform investors of problems with its manufacturing.…

FTC approves settlement for false advertising, 3G claims Sony and the FTC have agreed on a settlement deal that will include payouts to PlayStation Vita owners.…

New exec order authorizes sanctions for cyber-crime US President Barack Obama has signed a new executive order authorizing economic sanctions against overseas individuals who are believed to have participated in online attacks or espionage.…

Judge declines to make throttling charges go away AT&T will be forced to go to court with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over its handling of unlimited data plans.…

Thor-like ZS4-4 soars, knocks SPC-2 score for four Oracle's ZFS filer array has virtually matched an all-flash array in the SPC-2 streaming storage benchmark and set a new SPC-2 streaming/price/performance record [PDF].…

2,000 people evacuated as electrical blaze rages Some of the UK's ISPs may want to rethink their routing schemes after a massive fire near Holborn tube station in London knocked out power and internet access across several regions of the capital.…

So why are people warning against buying in? GoDaddy has had a successful launch at the New Stock Exchange on Wednesday morning with shares jumping more than 30 per cent, valuing the company at around $6bn.…

Please take note Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon It's not a surprise for us, in economics, to find that we've got two (or more) different processes going on, each working in opposite directions. The final result will come from the interaction of the two and we're never really sure which is going to win out.…

Cortana integration looks good but it's still rough and ready First look Microsoft has released the first public preview build of Windows 10 to include Project Spartan, its new web browser.…

Hedge funds pile in to a (so far) almost Uber-free market A coalition of US hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, and the largest of China's technology companies have invested in a merger of the country's largest taxi-hailing apps, bringing the combined company's valuation up to almost $9bn.…

Let them speak as the oracles of Lord GO'D once did Boris Johnson and the FDA trade union are calling for the government to lift new restrictions on civil servants' contact with the media, which was quietly implemented following an update to the Civil Service Code slipped through earlier this month.…

Pirated pirate site springs 'You've been iFramed' drive-by surprise Multiple WordPress sites are being redirected to a Pirate Bay copycat which in turn was being used to sling malware, anti-malware firm Malwarebytes warns.…

Never meant as a get-out-of-jail-free card for tech giants, says report The Prime Minister’s outgoing IP advisor has said the shift in the balance of power to now-dominant tech multinationals means “Safe Harbour” provisions devised in the 1990s should be modernised and made fit for purpose.…

New workflow system covers app deployment as well as server config ChefConf Chef Software has announced a new product for automating software deployment and the workflow of change management. Called Chef Delivery, it extends the company’s existing infrastructure automation product.…

Thanks Linux, Linus Review Ubuntu 15.04, Vivid Vervet, just might be one of the biggest Ubuntu releases in several years. It might be more remarkable, though, for what you don’t see.…

Bungling Bradley may have botched it An Illinois university's sysadmins have seemingly handed data burglars a year-long subscription to LifeLock, an identity alert and credit monitoring system, following a data breach at the US institution which left thousands vulnerable to identity theft.…

Less PCs, more devices, even more security threats Reg Events If you're a tech boss looking to increase your profile, the one sure-fire way to make the headlines is to have a major security breach on your watch.…

Round up the unusual suspects, you know the drill A nation-state cyber-attack campaign running since 2012 has been traced back to a somewhat unlikely launchpad in Lebanon.…

Bank: Er, has it? Bugger, we'll, um, 'ring you back' Updated The Halifax's online banking systems, advertised as being available 24/7, 365 days a year, are down for the fourth time in four weeks.…