In the News Archive

German minister: drop US sites if you fear spying

Submitted by twitterfire 2013-07-04 In the News 48 Comments

"Internet users worried about their personal information being intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies should stop using websites that send data to the United States, Germany's top security official said Wednesday." Cute, but pointless. France does it too, as does the UK. Documents from the Dutch intelligence agencies indicate that they, too, are involved in mass surveillance, the extent of which will supposedly be investigated by parliament.

Douglas C. Engelbart dies at 88

Thom Holwerda 2013-07-03 In the News 18 Comments

"Douglas C. Engelbart, a visionary scientist whose singular epiphany in 1950 about technology's potential to expand human intelligence led to a host of inventions - among them the computer mouse - that became the basis for both the Internet and the modern personal computer, died on Tuesday at his home in Atherton, Calif. He was 88." We lost one of the greatest - if not the greatest - visionaries of computing today.

Yahoo Acquiring Tumblr, Seeks Hulu

jackson 2013-05-24 In the News 7 Comments

Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?

IP rights and innovation: evidence from the human genome

Submitted by Ladislav Mecir 2013-05-03 In the News 1 Comment

"Do intellectual property rights on existing technologies hinder subsequent innovation? Using newly-collected data on the sequencing of the human genome by the public Human Genome Project and the private firm Celera, this paper estimates the impact of Celera's gene-level IP on subsequent scientific research and product development. Genes initially sequenced by Celera were held with IP for up to two years, but moved into the public domain once re-sequenced by the public effort. Across a range of empirical specifications, I find evidence that Celera's IP led to reductions in subsequent scientific research and product development on the order of 20 to 30 percent. Taken together, these results suggest that Celera's short-term IP had persistent negative effects on subsequent innovation relative to a counterfactual of Celera genes having always been in the public domain." Research by Heidi L. Williams, of the Department of Economics at MIT. Forget what companies and their advocates (i.e., politicians) say, and trust science.

Huawei: US market no longer focus for its carrier business

Thom Holwerda 2013-04-25 In the News 8 Comments

"After facing a congressional battering over security concerns, Huawei's carrier networking group is no longer focused on the U.S. market, and instead expects to find ample business in other parts of the world." Let's all not buy Chinese-made products from Huawei so we can buy Chinese-made products from every other brand ever! That totally makes sense!

Interview: Jean-Louis Gassee

Thom Holwerda 2013-04-13 In the News 48 Comments

Martin Hedberg has interviewed Jean-Louis Gassee - founder of Be, Inc. and former Apple executive. We're looking at 45 minutes (part 1, 2, 3, and 4) of talk about operating systems an their future, so sit down, relaxe, and enjoy.

X to release Y competitor

Thom Holwerda 2013-04-07 In the News 13 Comments

Sigh. First it was the Apple TV. Then it became smartwatches. Now we're moving on to Google Glass competitors. People, this is all bullshit. Made-up nonsense to get hits. Headlines like 'X to release Y competitor' score a double whammy; X blogs will get excited about it, Y blogs will complain about X being a copycat. So, with one made-up story you score double the amount of hits. It's a variant on the old but now rarely used 'X to release Y killer', where 'Y' was usually an Apple product.

An interview with computing pioneer Alan Kay

Thom Holwerda 2013-04-02 In the News 60 Comments

"Kay says that some gadgets with superficial Dynabook-like qualities, such as the iPad, have not only failed to realize the Dynabook dream, but have in some senses betrayed it. That's one of the points he makes in this interview, conducted by computer historian David Greelish, proprietor of the Classic Computing Blog and organizer of this month's Vintage Computer Festival Southeast in Atlanta (the Festival will feature a pop-up Apple museum featuring Xerox's groundbreaking Alto workstation, which Kay worked on, as well as devices which deeply reflected his influence, including the Lisa, the original Macintosh and the Newton). Kay and Greelish also discuss Kay's experiences at some of the big outfits where he's worked, including Xerox's fabled PARC labs, Apple, Disney and HP. Today, Kay continues his research about children and technology at his own organization, the Viewpoints Research Institute." A great interview with this legendary man.

Why is China’s state-run media targeting Apple?

Thom Holwerda 2013-03-31 In the News 33 Comments

"Not only has China's Central TV been running regular follow ups to its March 15 expose on Apple's iPhone repair policies, but on Thursday People's Daily - the Communist Party's official propaganda organ - attacked the company for the fourth day in a row, devoting half a page to negative articles." This isn't rocket science. The west treats Chinese technology companies like crap, so they treat western companies like crap. How exactly does this surprise anyone? And why is it okay for our governments to engage in political games to smear foreign companies, but we throw a hissy fit when a foreign nation engages in the same political games to smear western companies? It sucks for Apple to be the target right now, but had this occurred a decade ago, it would have been Microsoft.

Microsoft, Adobe, Apple defend Australian price hikes

Thom Holwerda 2013-03-22 In the News 72 Comments

If you don't live in the US, this is a pretty common source of irritation: US companies charging crazy markups on products sold in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the rest of the world. The Australian government has had enough of this practice, and started an inquiry into the matter. Yesterday (or today? Timezones confuse me) Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe had to answer questions in a public hearing.

How ‘dongle’ jokes got two people fired

Thom Holwerda 2013-03-21 In the News 59 Comments

"An incident at the annual Python developer conference has led to allegations of sexism, death threats, the firings of two people, and - apparently - multiple DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks." Absolutely bizarre.

Submitted by bowkota 2013-02-18 In the News 33 Comments

"The last time we looked at Silicon Valley's lobbying efforts, Google was the big spender and Apple the piker. That hasn't changed much in the past nine months. In fact, Google increased its political spending in 2012 - a Presidential election year - by nearly 90%, while Apple reduced its by 13%." Anti-SOPA or no, that's a hell of a lot of money. This should be illegal - it's thinly veiled corruption.

Guest post by the_randymon 2013-01-21 In the News 2 Comments

The words 'Facebook' and 'open' don't necessarily go well together, until they do. And while they may hoard your data, they've contributed to openness in other ways. "In 2011 Facebook began the Open Compute Project, an effort among technology companies to use open-source computer hardware. Tech companies similarly shared intellectual property with Linux software, which lowered costs and spurred innovation. Facebook’s project has attracted many significant participants, including Goldman Sachs, Arista Networks, Rackspace, Hewlett-Packard and Dell." An interesting read over at the New York Times.

CBS forced CNET staff to recast vote after Hopper won ‘Best in Show’

Thom Holwerda 2013-01-14 In the News 16 Comments

"Apparently, executives at CBS learned that the Hopper would win 'Best of Show' prior to the announcement. Before the winner was unveiled, CBS Interactive News senior-vice president and General Manager Mark Larkin informed CNET's staff that the Hopper could not take the top award. The Hopper would have to be removed from consideration, and the editorial team had to re-vote and pick a new winner from the remaining choices. Sources say that Larkin was distraught while delivering the news - at one point in tears - as he told the team that he had fought CBS executives who had made the decision." And this is why media owned by larger media conglomerates (or by large companies in general) should always be treated with a certain amount of scepticism. This may be an open and shut case, but more subtle interference can be felt every single day as you read the media.

Aaron Swartz commits suicide

Thom Holwerda 2013-01-12 In the News 57 Comments

"Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf, in a comment to The Tech. Swartz was 26." Swartz was one of three co-creators of Reddit, worked on the RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, and so many other things. Swartz faced decades in prison for downloading a collection of JSTOR scientific articles. JSTOR dropped charges, but the US government pursued the case anyway, demanding fifty years in jail. Lawrence Lessig, one of his close friends: "Aaron had literally done nothing in his life 'to make money'. He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don't get both, you don't deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you." Our sincere condolences to his family and friends. We've just lost one of the good guys.

CES unloads its forgettable products on the world

Thom Holwerda 2013-01-07 In the News 31 Comments

It's the beginning of the year, so the Consumer Electronics Show is currently in full swing in the awesome city of Las Vegas. The thing is though - there's so much, pardon my Dutch, crap being announced it's hard to keep up. I have yet to see a single interesting thing to come out at CES so far, and I have little hope the next few days are going to be any better. That NVIDIA mobile gaming thing is mildly interesting, but as usual - no price, no release date. The Verge is spending loads of money on CES, so it has excellent coverage going on. Let's have a contest: if three months from now any of you can name three products announced at this year's CES (without cheating), I will force myself to use iOS for a week.

Stephen Hawking pushes for pardon for Alan Turing

Thom Holwerda 2012-12-15 In the News 107 Comments

"Peers and scientists including Professor Stephen Hawking are once again pushing for an official pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing. Turing's death from cyanide poisoning in 1954 was ruled a suicide, coming after his conviction for gross indecency at a time when homosexuality was illegal." The fact that he still hasn't been pardoned is an utter disgrace.

In South Korea, the Republic of Samsung

Thom Holwerda 2012-12-10 In the News 21 Comments

"So sprawling is Samsung's modern-day empire that some South Koreans say it has become possible to live a Samsung-only life: You can use a Samsung credit card to buy a Samsung TV for the living room of your Samsung-made apartment on which you'll watch the Samsung-owned pro baseball team. Samsung is South Korea's greatest economic success, and, more recently, the subject of major controversy. Economists, owners of small- and medium-size businesses, and some politicians say Samsung no longer merely powers the country but overpowers it, wielding influence that nearly matches that of the government." Campaign contributions, moles in political offices and chambers, this Samsung stuff - this is what happens when companies are left unchecked. It's cute if you think this only happens in Korea. Much of it all is legal, but that doesn't make it right.

iPad-only newspaper The Daily shuts down

Thom Holwerda 2012-12-03 In the News 38 Comments

News Corp. has just announced its iPad-only newspaper The Daily will be closed down. What do you know, a platform-specific publication fails in the internet era. I totally did not see this coming at all. Times are changing, people. Platform-specific is so 2007.

Is Hewlett-Packard Dying?

jackson 2012-11-23 In the News 94 Comments

Hard to believe, but articles are popping up at business websites claiming that venerable Hewlett-Packard may fail. In their most recent fiasco, HP wrote off a loss of $8.8 of their $11.1 US billion acquisition of Autonomy and have alleged fraud in the deal. Revenue is down 7% from a year ago and the stock has hit a 10-year low. The company is laying off 27K employees but that may not be enough. Some speculate HP might be broken up into parts with buy-outs involved. This article from last May offers a good in-depth analysis of how all these problems came to pass.