IBM’s decision to get out of the semiconductor manufacturing business may be of little consequence in a post-silicon world. In a deal announced today, GlobalFoundries is getting IBM’s semiconductor manufacturing business and IBM is paying the company $1.5 billion to take it. In exchange, IBM gets access to manufacturing scale …
One of Samsung’s most affordable consumer solid-state drives is experiencing read slowdowns with older data, a problem the company has now addressed with a firmware upgrade and installation guide. Samsung’s 840 EVO SSD is the company’s second-generation 3-bit multi-level cell (MLC) SSD, and it’s one of the most affordable drives …
IBM may have sold off its chip manufacturing business, but don’t count it out as a hardware force to be reckoned with. It still plans to fight on, developing faster computers and cognitive computing systems like Watson. IBM will pay $1.5 billion to GlobalFoundries to take over its chip-making factories, …
When it comes to big data projects, the biggest challenge most organizations face, regardless of size, is staffing, says Peter Guerra, a principal in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategic Innovation Group. Organizations struggle to find trained data scientists, or to find the money to retrain staff, Guerra says. To address that …
In 1966, some Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers reckoned that they could develop computer vision as a summer project, perhaps even get a few smart undergrads to complete the task. The world has been working on the problem ever since. Computer vision is where computers recognize objects like people do. …
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is moving quickly to quell concerns about the company’s sinking earnings and defend a deal to pay more than a billion dollars to hand off its money-losing microelectronics business to GlobalFoundries. In a conference call held Monday after IBM issued its earnings report, Rometty firmly asserted …
It isn’t every day that a Chromebook manages to grab my attention. We see tons of new models, sure, but let’s be honest: Most of them are pretty ho-hum, with nothing much to set them apart and more than a few major compromises. And the louder the hype, it seems, …
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Marc Wyatt has been named Deputy Director of the agency’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE). Mr. Wyatt joined the SEC in December 2012 as a senior specialized examiner focused on examinations of advisers to hedge funds and private equity funds. …
The FBI, via Director James Comey’s latest speech, is not the only authority worried about encryption enabled on Apple’s new iPhones. The iPhone 6 launched in China last week and the new encryption capabilities may be behind Chinese authorities launching a man-in-the-middle attack on Apple’s iCloud. This is not a …
Forget minor updates like iOS 8.01 and 8.02. We were waiting for 8.1, which is packed with major features like Apple Pay, iCloud Photo Library, and support for Continuity so your phone and your Mac will work in perfect harmony. Now it’s ready to install. So far, there have been …
The overall mobile phone market in the U.S. will decline this year by 1% even as many emerging countries around the world see robust growth, an IDC analyst said Monday. After several years of accelerated growth, the U.S. market is feeling the effects of market saturation and smartphone ownership that’s …
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is moving quickly to quell concerns about the company’s sinking earnings and defend a deal to pay more than a billion dollars to hand off its money-losing microelectronics business to GlobalFoundries. In a conference call held Monday after IBM issued its earnings report, Rometty firmly asserted …
Network-attached storage (NAS) devices are riddled with vulnerabilities that can put the security of sensitive data and networks at risk, a researcher has found. To prove his point, he has created a proof-of-concept worm that can infect devices from three different manufacturers. Earlier this year, Jacob Holcomb, a security analyst …
Using your new iPhone’s barometer This week’s roundup of apps includes one offering that turns iPhone 6 users into an army of weather data collectors—who needs TV meteorologists when you can create your own weather forecasts? Angry Birds Transformers An-gry Birds! More than meets the eye! An-gry Birds! Robots in …
Like most technology executives, Jon Bischke worries about attracting and retaining top talent and the ever-widening skills gap that’s plagued the IT industry for years. But Bischke, CEO of Entelo, a talent search, recruitment, hiring and staffing solution, is also troubled by the lack of women in the industry, and …
IBM is hitting a rough patch financially as it shifts its strategy from hardware to cloud, mobile and analytics technology. The company, considered a technology bellwether for the scope of its product portfolio and geographical breadth, reported Monday that profit and revenue declined in the third quarter. “We are disappointed …
Roughly one month after we first saw a demo of Tim Cook scanning an iPhone at a cash register to buy stuff, Apple Pay has arrived for the rest of us to check out. But before you go blowing your entire paycheck on everything from big handbags to Big Macs, there …
Following the iPhone 6 launch in China, Apple’s iCloud service began facing a “man-in-the-middle” style attack in the country, in an apparent attempt to steal username and password information, according to an anti-censorship watchdog group. As of Monday, the attack was still ongoing, said GreatFire.org, which began noticing two days …
Just as NASA’s Mars orbiters took shelter from a debris-spewing comet behind the Red Planet on Sunday, they also took the opportunity to study the flyby’s effect on Mars. Scientists also are hoping to use the orbiters’ observations to gain new clues about the origin of our solar system. “We’re …
China claimed on Sunday the U.S. has derailed cybersecurity cooperation between the two countries and that it doesn’t tolerate hacking. The statement came a day after Yang Jiechi, a state councilor who deals with foreign affairs, held discussions on Saturday in Boston with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on …
A Japanese court on Monday sentenced a man to two years in prison for making firearms with a 3D printer. The Yokohama District Court handed down the sentence to Yoshitomo Imura, a 28-year-old former employee of Shonan Institute of Technology who made a number of guns with a 3D printer …
Ethernet’s future is now about much more than the next top speed: The engineers charting a path for the ubiquitous networking protocol are looking at several new versions to serve a variety of applications. At a meeting last Thursday of the Ethernet Alliance, an industry group that promotes IEEE Ethernet …
Dropbox’s file storage service was used for a tricky phishing attack, although the service was quick to shut down it down, according to Symantec. The security vendor said it detected a batch of phishing emails advising recipients that they’ve been sent a large file and included a link to Dropbox-hosted …
Anonabox, a piece of home networking equipment designed to allow you to connect to the Internet anonymously, had raised nearly $600,000 in pledges on Kickstarter—blowing its $7500 goal out of the water. But on Friday, Kickstarter suspended the project, according to Ars Technica. To read this article in full or …
Jason Zack, Wikimedia Commons I was having dinner recently at the home of a friend, a doctor with extremely impressive diagnostic skills. Since I spent many years in the high-tech business, as an engineer and as a manager, he said to me, “Steve, my computer backups aren’t running. Would you …
President Barack Obama issued an executive order on Friday to have secure chip-and-PIN technology embedded into government-issued credit and debit cards as part of a broader move aimed at stemming payment data breaches. Under the order, government-issued cards that transmit federal benefits such as Social Security will have microchips embedded …