The exit of a key Reddit staffer, who apparently played an important role in the bustling AMA (Ask Me Anything) question-and-answer section, has created an uproar on the online discussion website.Many large communities, or subreddits in the parlance of the site, have been set to private, allowing only moderators or approved submitters to view the contents.Anger over the exit of Victoria Taylor, Reddit’s communications director, who assisted in AMAs with a variety of celebrities and other top personalities, appears to have mushroomed into a controversy over a lack of consultation between Reddit administrators and its volunteer moderators.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft and Kyocera have put an end to a patent spat that began earlier this year by expanding a patent cross-licensing deal between them.In a tersely worded, four-sentence press release Thursday, the companies said the licensing deal would enable them to use “a broader range of each other’s technologies in their respective products.” Beyond that, the terms were not disclosed.It’s another win for Microsoft’s ongoing practice of seeking patent licenses from Android manufacturers. Earlier this year, the company sued Kyocera because of components that are part of Android that Microsoft says infringe on its patents. Licensing patents related to Android is a big business for the company, which revealed last year that Samsung paid more than $1 billion from July 2012 to June 2013 as part of a patent licensing deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two U.S. Supreme Court justices owned stock in tech vendors or other companies that filed briefs in cases under review by the high court in the past year, a watchdog group said Thursday.The justices’ ownership of stock in three companies that filed amicus, or friend of the court, briefs in Supreme Court cases during the past year represent a “minefield of potential conflicts of interest and ethical problems” that could damage the court’s reputation, said Fix the Court, a group advocating for more transparency at the court.Chief Justice John Roberts owned up to US $750,000 in shares of Time Warner and its subsidiaries at the time the media giant filed a brief in ABC v. Aereo, which broadcasters won 6-3 last June, with Roberts in the majority. Aereo was a start-up offering TV service to subscribers through specialized antenna farms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel president Renée James will step down in order to pursue a CEO role at another company, the chip giant announced on Thursday.No successor has been named, but James will remain at Intel through the end of the year to help ease the transition to another executive leader.In the wake of her departure, two groups that were under her purview—Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group and HR—will report to CEO Brian Krzanich instead. The remainder of her direct reports will transition to other internal organizations.James and Krzanich assumed their respective roles in 2013 following the retirement of former CEO Paul Otellini.“When Brian and I were appointed to our current roles, I knew then that being the leader of a company was something that I desired as part of my own leadership journey,” James wrote in a letter to Intel employees. “Now is the right time for me to take that next step.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Want an IPv4 address? Get in lineCould IPv6’s day be near? The stockpile of unused IPv4 addresses in North America has fallen so low that there’s now a waiting list. On Wednesday, for the first time, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) had to tell an applicant for new Internet addresses to wait. ARIN simply didn’t have any blocks of addresses big enough to satisfy that applicant’s needs.HP makes its PC/enterprise split officialHewlett-Packard has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to register HP Enterprise as an independent company, an official step on the path to splitting itself in two. The filing shows that HP Enterprise made a profit of $1.6 billion last year on revenue of $55.1 billion, down from a profit of $2.1 billion on revenue of $57.4 billion in 2013.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The pressure on app-based companies to reclassify their contractors as employees is picking up, with more of them getting sued this week.The California Labor Commission ruled last month that a driver of Uber Technologies was an employee and not a contractor, when driving for the company, and was hence entitled to reimbursement on certain expenses. The ride-hailing company said it had appealed the decision.Postmates, Shyp, and Washio were sued by workers this week, arguing that they should be classified as employees and not independent contractors, according to Shannon Liss-Riordan who is an attorney in these cases. The actions against Shyp and Postmates were filed as “class action arbitration” demands in arbitration courts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
PayPal is acquiring Xoom, an international money transfer service, in a deal that lets PayPal break into a new market worth an estimated $600 billion a year, the companies said Wednesday.PayPal is paying $25 per share in cash for Xoom, valuing the deal at $890 million, the companies said.Xoom, founded in 2001, lets U.S. customers send money to others and pay bills in 37 countries, including Mexico, Brazil and India. Users can track their transactions with text updates, email notifications and online access from desktops and mobile devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the big problems with fiber has always been that the more power you add to a signal—to get the signal to travel further—the more distortion you get. That distortion degrades the quality of the data.
It's a problem because ideally you want fiber to travel long distances. It's cheaper to run one long cable than multiple pieces with added repeaters, as is the current process now.Deciphering data at 12,000 km
Scientists reckon they've got a solution, though.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they've been able to send data 12,000 kilometers along fiber without repeaters and still decipher the information at the end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Businesses that use Microsoft’s Skype for Business communication product have some new beta features to play with that make the enterprise messaging and calling product more useful.The features, which were first announced earlier this year when Microsoft officially rebranded its Lync service as Skype for Business, allow businesses to create large-scale meetings and better integrate Skype for Business with traditional phone lines. It’s all designed to make the service more appealing for enterprises when those features enter general availability later this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Electricity consumption has slowed while the use of natural gas, wind, and solar have become larger portions-- with coal and nuclear becoming less -- of the nation's electricity generation between 2001-2013.That was one observation of an interesting report issued by the Government Accountability Office this week that looked at the changing ways in which the US generates and uses electricity.+More on Network World: World’s hot alternative energy projects+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The head of Hewlett-Packard’s enterprise division will leave the company ahead of HP’s planned split later this year.Bill Veghte, a former Microsoft executive who joined HP five years ago, will leave the company later this summer to “pursue a new opportunity,” HP said in a statement on Tuesday. It’s not clear what he’ll do next and Veghte couldn’t be reached for comment.Veghte is executive vice president of the HP Enterprise Group, a $28 billion division that sells the company’s servers, network and storage gear. He’s been leading the effort to separate the group into a new company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An appeals court ruled against Apple’s challenge of a lower court’s decision which found the company liable for illegally conspiring with ebook publishers to jack up prices.A 3-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit voted 2 to 1 against Apple. Writing for the majority, Judge Debra Ann Livingston said that Apple illegally orchestrated a conspiracy between book publishers, upholding a district court ruling from 2013. The lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.Additionally, she said that the injunction imposed by District Court Judge Denise Cote was appropriate and left it in place. It’s the latest strike against Apple in this long-running case, which stems from agreements the company set up with publishers around the launch of its online ebook marketplace.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Worldwide IT spending is expected to decline by 5.5 percent this year, with enterprises benefitting from lower prices on communications and IT services but also having to pay higher hardware prices in some parts of the world.Market research company Gartner revised its spending forecast downward on Tuesday: In April, it said IT spending in 2015 would decline 1.3 percent compared to last year.But numbers can sometimes be deceptive; IT activity is stronger than the spending indicates, according to John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. Price declines in segments like communications and IT services, and the move to cloud-based services, mask an increase in activity, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft will be handing over its display advertising business to AOL in nine markets as part of a new partnership between the two companies that was announced Monday.Under the deal, AOL will use Bing to power search through its website, and will operate display advertising, including mobile and video ads, for Microsoft’s portfolio in Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, U.K. and the U.S. That means AOL will be powering all the display ads that run in those countries, including on MSN, Xbox, Outlook.com and Skype.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new version of Microsoft’s parental control product is ready for the Windows 10 launch, but users are complaining about a serious bug as well as features they don’t like.The free service, known previously as Family Safety, has been rebranded as Microsoft Family and redesigned. The changes are supposed to help families more easily control their kids’ activities on Windows and Windows Phone devices. However, parents are complaining on Microsoft’s support forum about a bug that loosens browsing restrictions.The bug affects accounts that should have their browsing limited to a handpicked “whitelist” of websites. Instead, children can browse beyond the walled garden their parents set up. Unsurprisingly, parents are upset, and they can’t return to the previous version.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We are being granted a leap second tomorrow so the question arises: What am I – or any of us, for that matter -- to do with the extra time? Among the necessarily brief possibilities that have occurred to me so far:
Consider buying an Apple Watch.
Slice as seen on TV (above).
Work on that novel.
Say leap second one time fast.
Hold my breath.
Drink responsibly.
Make sweet, sweet love.
Or, care about what Antonin Scalia thinks.
As you might expect, I’m open to suggestions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Cloud Application Delivery Platform (CADP) V. 15.1Key features: Avi’s Cloud Application Delivery Platform includes new and enhanced capabilities, including additional support and integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest public cloud environment for DevOps and coder segments. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
RobotsImage by National GeographicNational Geographic’s movie Robots is making its way around theaters - including 3D - this summer featuring a range of robots with skills from cleaning to dancing to acting. Here are a few of them and their talents. These copyrighted images were provided by National Geographic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A former executive vice president at Qualcomm was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison and fined US$500,000 on charges related to a three-year-long insider trading scheme.Jing Wang, 52, of Del Mar, California, also had served as president of global business operations at Qualcomm, where he worked for more than a decade. He pleaded guilty last July to insider trading, money laundering and obstruction of justice for “orchestrating” a scheme to trade confidential information about the mobile technology vendor and cover up the conduct, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release.Wang was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM’s Power Systems division – which sells servers and systems based on the Power system architecture, as opposed to the Intel-based x86 architecture used in most personal computers – had been in free-fall for some time, posting year-on-year revenue declines of up to 37% per quarter over the past couple of years. According to the conventional wisdom, Power was another victim – along with SPARC and, to a lesser extent, ARM – of the inexorable march of the commodity x86 server.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Red Hat makes its case to be THE container company + IBM, Box partner on cloud analytics technologies +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here