Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Takes Over, Sony exits PCs

Ballmer still lurking on the Board of Directors though -- 

Inside the Microsoft CEO Search: How Satya Nadella Was Chosen - WSJ.com: "...On Monday, Mr. Ballmer finished moving out of his office in Building 34, the Microsoft campus home to many senior executives ... Ballmer, remains a presence in addition to his board seat. The billionaire will become Microsoft's largest individual shareholder next quarter if Mr. Gates continues selling his shares for his philanthropic activities. As of Tuesday evening, Mr. Nadella's belongings were ready for the move into his new corner office."

Sony to exit PCs, spin off TV business, eliminate 5000 positions
Los Angeles Times
Sony Corp. is exiting the PC market, announcing Thursday that it was selling its Vaio personal computer division. The Japanese company said the move came after a "comprehensive analysis of factors, including the drastic changes in the global PC industry."...

Gates Spends Entire First Day Back in Office Trying to Install Windows 8.1 : The New Yorker: "A Microsoft spokesman said only that Mr. Gates’ first day in his new job had been “a learning experience” and that, for the immediate future, he would go back to running Windows 7." (parody)

If History Is Any Lesson, Facebook's Newest App Is Doomed To Fail - Business Insider: "...Think of Paper as your News Feed, but in a gorgeous layout designed for your smartphone's screen. You can even write your own posts, view notifications, and send Facebook messages within the app. In short, it has most of the functionality as the regular Facebook app, just wrapped in a prettier package. And that means there's very little reason for someone to use Paper. It may look gorgeous, but Paper doesn't offer much more than a hint at the future of Facebook's app design. Outside of the curated story lists from Facebook's editors, Paper just shows you the same content you'd read in your News Feed anyway...."

Skilled, Cheap Russian Hackers Power American Cybercrime - NBC News.com: ".... what can the US do to curb the rise of cybercrime from Russia? The short answer is: not much. Companies are going to have to spend more and more resources to protect themselves and learn to be more open about attacks when they happen....The scale of the damage done at Target might help explain why the FBI’s new director, James Comey, told a congressional committee that cyber threats are eclipsing terrorism as the main threat we face as a nation."

Investors dump Twitter stock as results divide Wall Street | Reuters: "Twitter Inc's shares fell almost 25 percent on Thursday, wiping out about $9.8 billion in market value, after the company reported a sharp slowdown in user growth..."

HTML5 Catches Up To Apple – ReadWrite: "As Apple’s market share slips to Google's surging little green robot, developers are increasingly turning to HTML5 as a way to embrace both iOS and Android...."

Former HP stars Bradley, Donatelli on brink of exit - sources | Reuters: "...Two sources who spoke to both executives said they disagreed with aspects of Whitman's vision, which involved transforming HP into a provider of servers, storage and networking to corporations, rather than taking on Apple Inc. or Samsung in mobile computing...."

Steve Wozniak: Apple Should Make an Android Phone | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: "“There’s nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market,” said Wozniak–who, it should be noted, is no longer involved in the day-to-day workings of the company. “We could compete very well. People like the precious looks of stylings and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time.”"

Snipers took down major grid systems in California last year and it could have been a dress rehearsal — Tech News and Analysis: "According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, last April, in the middle of the night, snipers opened fire for almost 20 minutes on a substation next to a freeway south of San Jose, California, and knocked out seventeen transformers that direct power around Silicon Valley. They also cut the nearby telephone cables. It took a month to fix all the damage — the attackers are still unknown...."

Is there a place for Amazon in the gaming market?
Washington Post
Amazon has acquired gaming studio Double Helix, resparking rumors that the tech giant is looking to step more fully into the world of video games. Double Helix is best known for producing the Xbox One launch game “Killer Instinct,” and is based in Irvine, ...

Nadella's rise renews appeals for Office on iPad, Android tablets
Computerworld
Computerworld - The anointment of new CEO Satya Nadella has renewed calls by analysts that Microsoft free its profitable Office franchise from Windows and release full-featured versions for Google's Android and Apple's iOS tablets. "Nadella should focus ...

15 Years Later, Google Remembers Its First Data Center
PC Magazine
Google data centers are now sprawling high-tech meccas. But 15 years ago, they weren't nearly as impressive. 0shares. Google Data Center. These days, Google's data centers are like sprawling high-tech meccas where you'll find rows upon rows of ...

Prosthetic hand with feeling: Re-creating the brain-hand connection
Los Angeles Times
The human hand is a wonder of strength, sensitivity and discrimination — not only because of those four fingers and the opposable thumb, but also because of the human brain that controls it. No wonder, then, that for those who design hand prostheses, ...

With Its Tiny PC, Google Makes a Play for Your Conference Room
Wired
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA — Inside Google offices across the globe, company engineers and other employees have long communicated over internet video-conferencing systems developed by the tech giant itself. Googlers call it the “VC” link — a video ...

Patent trolls watch out - Apple and Google join forces to make you think twice: "Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) are today heading a group of 15 companies which have formed a rather unlikely alliance to call on the United States Supreme Court for a strong shift in litigation rules. The highly litigious companies, which frequently level charges of patent infringement against each other on a scale most “patent trolls” cannot match, want the Supreme Court justices to smooth the way for companies to more readily recover legal expenses from patent holders whose claims fail to be legally upheld against a tech company."

Facebook is 10 years old. And half of users are sick of the oversharing.: "... over half of users dislike people sharing too much information about themselves on the social network according to new survey data from Pew, with 36 percent "strongly" disliking oversharing. And the same proportion strongly dislikes when others post pictures or other things about them without asking for permission...."

PNG Image Metadata Found Leveraging iFrame Injections | Threatpost - English - Global - threatpost.com: "Researchers have discovered a relatively new way to distribute malware that relies on reading  JavaScript code stored in an obfuscated PNG file’s metadata to trigger iFrame injections...."

BBC News - Apple's Mac OSX imitated in latest North Korea system: "... devices are heavily restricted. Internet access, for instance, is locked down, with most users able to visit only a handful of sites mostly serving up state-sponsored news. The Red Star OS is peppered with North Korean propaganda, and its calendar tells users it is not 2014, but 103 - the number of years since the birth of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung."

Typo keyboard maker goes on offensive against BlackBerry | PCWorld: "Typo Products, the start-up being sued by BlackBerry over an iPhone keyboard add-on, has come out swinging against a demand that its product be taken off sale in the U.S...."

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