Apple poaches staff to get new tech

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

How-to-Poach-Eggs_725x408After years of enforcing an illegal cartel which forced staff to stay with it, Apple is now going the other way and poaching staff in a way to get new technology, a court was told.

Electric-car battery maker A123 Systems has sued Apple for poaching top engineers to build a large-scale battery division.

The Tame Apple Press does not question the legality of the move, but just has become all moist about the fact that the iPhone maker may be developing a car.

The court heart how around June 2014, Apple began aggressively poaching A123 engineers tasked with leading some of the company’s most critical projects, the lawsuit said. The engineers jumped ship to pursue similar programs at Apple, in violation of their employment agreements.

These agreements are in place to stop big companies like Apple from gaining access to technology they have not developed.

“Apple is currently developing a large-scale battery division to compete in the very same field as A123,” the lawsuit read.

A123 Systems has not been doing very well. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and has been selling off assets.

The engineers who left were of such calibre that the projects they had been working on had to be abandoned. One of the five defendants, Mujeeb Ijaz, of helping Apple recruit among its ranks.

“It appears that Apple, with the assistance of defendant Ijaz, is systematically hiring away A123’s high-tech PhD and engineering employees, thereby effectively shutting down various projects/programs at A123,” according to the lawsuit.

They are doing so in an effort to support Apple’s apparent plans to establish a battery division that is similar if not identical to A123’s, in competition with A123.”

Apple has been carrying out similar programmes at LG Chem, Samsung SDI, Panasonic, Toshiba  and Johnson Controls Inc.

A123 presented evidence from one of its partners SiNode Systems that “confirms that his work on behalf of Apple is at least substantially similar (if not identical) to his work at A123.”

 

 

Samsung starts mobile payments

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

Samsung advertising in TaipeiSamsung has bought US mobile wallet startup LoopPay, which is seen as an  intention to launch a smartphone payments service.

Mobile payments have been slow to catch on in the United States and elsewhere, despite strong backing. Apple, Google, and eBay PayPal have all launched services to allow users to pay in stores via smartphones and the stores themselves are expected to release a new standard of their own.

Most of the problem is that retailers have been reluctant to adopt the hardware and software infrastructure required for these new mobile payment options to work before a standard is sorted out.  There was no point in investing in BetaMax when VHS kills it.

LoopPay’s technology differs because it works off existing magnetic stripe card readers at checkout, changing them into contactless receivers, they said. About 90 percent of checkout counters already support magnetic swiping.

“If you can’t solve the problem of merchant acceptance…, of being able to use the vast majority of your cards, then it can’t really be your wallet,” said David Eun, head of Samsung’s Global Innovation Center.

Injong Rhee, who is leading Samsung’s as-yet-unannounced payments project, said the Asian giant will soon reveal more details of its envisioned service. He would not be drawn on speculation the company may do so during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

He said new phones such as the new Galaxy would support the service.

Samsung had invested in LoopPay, along with Visa and Synchrony Financial, before its acquisition.

Rhee said in an interview that the company intends to roll out accompanying services that go beyond merely turning the smartphone into a wallet, such as by allowing users access to information such as spending.

Lockheed Martin jets into cyber security

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

DF-SC-82-10542US defence contractor Lockheed Martin sees cyber security as its number one growth area over the next three to five years.

Although it is better known for its jet aircraft, Lockheed Martin is the main provider of IT technology to the US government, said expects double-digit growth in its overall cybersecurity business over the next three to five years.

Lockheed said it was making strong inroads in the commercial market by using its experience and intelligence gathered while guarding its own networks and those of government agencies.
Chief Executive Officer Marillyn Hewson said Lockheed was providing cyber security services for more than 200 customers around the world in the energy, oil and gas, chemical, financial services and pharmaceuticals business.

Hewson told the company’s annual media day that Lockheed had faced 50 “coordinated, sophisticated campaign” attacks by hackers in 2014 alone, and she expected those threats to continue growing.

Lockheed now represented a large number of companies on the Fortune 500 list, including 79 percent of utilities, 35 percent of oil and gas companies, 46 percent of chemical firms, and 46 percent of financial firms.

It has been helped by the fact that other weapons makers, including Boeing and Harris have largely exited the cyber security business after finding it difficult to generate any real cash.

Sony trims its sails

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

Sony buildingsThe CEO of Sony said that the company will boost investment in its PlayStation and camera sensors business over the next three years.

But Kazuo Hirai said today that it may well exit the smartphone business and divest itself of its TV unit too.

Sony has already got out of PCs and is engaged in restructuring which have seen thousands of people made redundant.

Hirai told reporters in a briefing that his goal was to make Sony profitable – it expects to turn in an operating loss for its financial year, which ends on the 31st of March.

Earlier this week, Sony released its intelligent glasses – which have no guarantee of making returns following Google’s decision to go back to basics on its own version of the devices.

Video games, camera sensors and entertainment are all areas which are profitable, but Hirai is tacitly saying that Sony isn’t the giant it once was, when whatever it launched set the scene for others to follow.

It’s little surprise that Sony is getting out of smartphones. Samsung and Apple rule the roost but manufacturers in mainland China are selling smartphones at knock down prices with razor thin margins – that’s already had an effect on Samsung’s profits.

 

ARM offers entrepreneurs prizes

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 11.53.01British chip company ARM said it is offering £10,000 in prizes in a contest to create smart devices based on its Cortex-M4 microprocessor.

The competition runs from March to June this year with the goal to create devices in the home automation, measurement, the internet of things or system control.

Registration for the contest starts today and finishes on March 31, 2015. Competitors will receive software development tools, a debug unit, hardware containing the M4 chip and peripheral components.

Competitors can choose from platforms provided by Freescale, Infineon, NXP or ST Microelectronics.

Final prototype designs need to be submitted by the 30th of June 2015, with winners announced in October 2015. There will be five prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000.

Reinhard Kell, director of micro controller tools at ARM said: “New technology invention was previously the domain of those with advanced processor knowledge and access to funding. That has changed now.”

Competitors get a complementary licence for the ARM Keil Microcontroller Development Kit, professional edition.

You can register for the competition by clicking here.

 

IBM makes big data push

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

ibm-officeBig Blue said it has introduced data analytics with the introduction of IBM BigInsights for Apache Hadoop.

The offering provides machine learning, R, and other features that can tackle big data.

IBM claimed that while many think Apache Hadoop is powerful for collecting and storing large sets of variable data, companies are failing to realise its potential.

It’s offering has a broad data science toolset for querying data, visualising, and provide scaleable distributed machine learning.

The offering includes Analyst, which includes IBM’s SQL engine, Data Scientist that provides a machine learning engine that ranges over big data to find patterns.

Enterprise Management includes tools to optimise workflows, and management software to give faster results.

IBM also said it has joined the Open Data Platform (ODP) association which is aiming to provide standardisation over Hadoop and big data technologies.

Man says he didn’t hack 160 million credit cards

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 10.53.04A Russian extradited to the US for allegedly hacking into major corporations has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Vladimir Drinkman, who was extradited from the Netherlands, said he didn’t conspire with other people to hack into major financial networks and sell data to other crooks.

Reuters said the attacks, which started in 2005, meant 160 million credit card numbers and hundreds of millions of dollars were extracted from corporations and individual people.

Networks hacked included a Visa licensee, 7-Eleven, JC Penney and Carrefour.

He faces a trial in Newark at the end of his April and if convicted could spend 30 years in jail.

He fought against extradition after being arrested in 2012. Three alleged co-conspirators have so far not been caught, while a fourth Dmitriy Smilianets was also extradited from the Netherlands and is in jail in the USA.

Netgear has a nasty bug in the soap

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

original_bug-soapSome Netgear wireless routers have a vulnerability which turns over all the data a hacker needs to break into the network.

The vulnerability is found in the embedded SOAP service, which is a service that interacts with the Netgear Genie application that allows users to control their routers via their smartphones or computers.

Network engineer Peter Adkins said that at first glance, this service appears to be filtered and authenticated, but an HTTP request “with a blank form and a ‘SOAPAction’ header is sufficient to execute certain requests and query information from the device,” he explained in a post on the Full Disclosure mailing list.

As the SOAP service is implemented by the built-in HTTP / CGI daemon, unauthenticated queries will also be answered over the internet if remote management has been enabled on the device. As a result, affected devices can be interrogated and hijacked with as little as a well placed HTTP query, Adkins said.

If this is true then the vulnerability can be exploited both by attackers that have already gained access to the local network and by remote attackers.

All this applies to Netgear WNDR3700v4 – V1.0.0.4SH, Netgear WNDR3700v4 – V1.0.1.52, Netgear WNR2200 – V1.0.1.88 and Netgear WNR2500 – V1.0.0.24.

Netgear was told of the flaw and it replied that any network should still stay secure due to a number of built-in security features, said Adkins.

“Attempts to clarify the nature of this vulnerability with support were unsuccessful. This ticket has since been auto-closed while waiting for a follow up. A subsequent email sent to the Netgear ‘OpenSource’ contact has also gone unanswered.”

 

Obama blows hot and cold on encryption

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

thewhitehouseWhile his security spooks are complaining that company moves to use strong encryption is making their life difficult, President Barack Obama said he likes the technology, other than when he doesn’t.

Talking to Recode, Obama appears to have jumped on the side of the big tech corporations against the NSA and when asked if American citizens should be entitled to control their data, just as the president controls his own private conversations through encrypted email, he said yes.

Obama replied that he’s “a strong believer in strong encryption …. I lean probably further on side of strong encryption than some in law enforcement.” He maintained that he is as firm on the topic as he ever has been.

However the matter, claimed Obama was hypothetical. If the FBI had a good case against someone involved in a terrorist plot and wants to know who that person was communicating with? Traditionally, they could get a court order for a wire tap. Today, a company might tell the FBI they can’t technically comply.

He warned that the first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn’t follow up on it, because the data was encrypted the public’s going to demand answers.

“Ultimately everybody, and certainly this is true for me and my family, we all want to know that if we’re using a smartphone for transactions, sending messages, having private conversations, that we don’t have a bunch of people compromising that process. There’s no scenario in which we don’t want really strong encryption,” he said.

So, in other words, everyone should have strong encryption which should turn itself off when the security services want to have a look at it.

Top hedge funds trim Apple

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

hedge

Despite claims by the Tame Apple Press that the fruity cargo cult is at the top of its game after the launch of its new bendy iphone 6, Wall Street hedge funds do not agree.

David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital and Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management, have been selling their stakes in Apple during the last few months in a sign that they are predicting a slump.

To be fair, Apple did well in 2014 with its shares rising nearly 38 percent. This year the company’s stock is up more than 16 percent year to date and reached an intraday record high of $129.45 per share.

Yet Wall Street’s cleverest money men do not think it is going to get much better. Although Apple is the biggest position in Coatue Management’s portfolio, the firm sold 1.7 million shares at the end of the quarter, or more than 15 percent of its stake, leaving it with 8.9 million shares.

Greenlight said it cut Apple holdings by 6.2 percent to 8.6 million shares during the quarter.
Eric Mandelblatt’s Soroban Capital Partners sold 4.3 million Apple call options, liquidating the fund’s position. And David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management hedge fund said it had dissolved its stake in Apple, while Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors sold 808,000 Apple shares to own 383,790 shares at the end of the fourth quarter.

Last week, billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn tried to talk up his technology company’s shares claiming that they should be trading at $216 apiece.

It seems that few others agree.

 

Intel’s Skylake is delayed

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

menunggu-godot-samuel-beckettIt is starting to look like we will not see Intel’s new Skylake CPU until the Intel Developer Forum on August 15.

It had been expected that the sixth-gen announcements and corresponding 100-series chipsets would start to appear in the second quarter. But it appears that Intel was just talking about the lowest-end, Core M-branded members of the family.

A plausible recently leaked product roadmap puts both the mobile Skylake-U and desktop Skylake-S on the fast track to third quarter debuts between July and September.

This would suggest that everything is gearing up for a big IDF event.

This is bad news for the likes of Microsoft and hardware manufacturers who look to the release of a new chip to boost PC sales. There is some evidence that some buyers are refusing to upgrade until Skylake is out.

VR-Zone has its paws on a document that not just corroborates the August unveil deadline, but also hints at the aggressive TDPs of some of the roster’s members. The top-of-the-line quad-core K CPU will blow 95 watts of maximum heat, but there will be more energy-efficient 65 and 35W variants.

Of course there are some fears that Intel will make the same mistake that it did with Broadwell which was so late some of us dubbed it the Godot chip.

Texas jury awards Bluetooth to patent troll

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

trollA Texas jury which was told by a patent troll that a plaintiff did not invent Bluetooth 2.0, has told him that he really did.

Gordon Bremer is connected to a patent trolling outfit called Rembrandt which takes on big companies with wide patents before East Texas juries.

East Texas juries are famous for handing down patent rulings in favour of plaintiffs.

Bremer told the court he didn’t invent Bluetooth 2.0. In fact he hadn’t even read the specification for it until it had been in the market for three years.

The jury found in Rembrandt’s favour after a week-long trial, finding that Samsung’s Bluetooth-enabled products, including its most popular mobile phones, tablets, and televisions, infringe Bremer’s patents, numbered 8,023,580 and 8,457,228. The patents relate to compatibility between different types of modems, and connect to a string of applications going back to 1997.

This means that without doing anything Bremer may be being paid a hefty royalty by Samsung, after a jury ruled that the Korean electronics company infringed Bremer’s patents. He stands to get 2.5 percent of the $15.7 million verdict.

The first version of Bluetooth was invented by Swedish cell phone company Ericsson in 1994 and Rembrandt made the same complaint against Blackberry .

Now Rembrandt’s lawyers have made clear they believe the Bremer patents apply to all products using Bluetooth 2.0.

Rembrandt lawyer Demetrios Anaipakos said that “justice had been done” and that  the Rembrandt inventions are at the heart of Samsung Bluetooth capabilities.

Bremer told Rembrandt higher-ups that his patents, originally applied to work he did on modems back in 1997, could be applied to Bluetooth products.

“I had a kind of ‘aha’ moment. I came up with an (eloquent) solution… I realised if I put an indicator at the beginning of each communication that said change the modulation, this communication could happen instantly.”

Bremer continues to create more patents for Rembrandt. He has more than 100 to his name. It’s a symbiotic relationship—he creates the patents, testifies and gets deposed, while Rembrandt provides the legal muscle

On cross-examination, he acknowledged that it was the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, or BSIG, that came up with the 2.0 version, including the Enhanced Data Rate or EDR technology and he made no contributions to the standards body.

Samsung lawyer Jeff Sherwood appeared to face an uphill battle focusing on the non-infringement argument. That was because the defence was heavily technical and the jury preferred that he talked about the wording in the patents.

Bremer had never created a product based on his patents, Sherwood noted. He tried to sell his patents to other parties, but “no one wanted them” until they were bought by Rembrandt.

Samsung hired as its expert a man who was deeply involved in the technology—Steven Hall, now a technical director of Broadcom, who was vice-chair of the Bluetooth SIG “Core Specification Working Group.”

Hall had never heard of Bremer.

It took the jury less than an hour before it returned a verdict that Samsung should pay up.

 

Cloud casts shadow over videoconferencing

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

ciscologoCisco, Polycom and Avaya make hardware to let enterprises to video conference, but the arrival of cloud computing means they’re likely to see flat growth.

That’s the conclusion of Eric Abbruzzese, research analyst at ABI Research, whose video conference hardware doesn’t quite cut the ice.

He said: “With the current market focus on cloud computing and hardware virtualisation, dedicated hardware sales will see little growth in all video delivery markets, including videoconferencing telepresence hardware.”

He said hardware revenues are likely to be more or less flat up to 2020 but the Ciscos of this world will have little luck selling kit if products don’t adopt to a virtualisation model.

He said the three firms in question have already begun to move to cloud based systems and using their existing products as a foundation for the cloud services.

Aside from the enterprise, video conferencing for us plebs will show strong growth. Skype, ooVoo and Google Hangouts will all have their place in the sun.

The paperless office is far from dead

Posted on February 17, 2015 by - News

Tiertime 3D printerA report said that European sales of dedicated and multifunction printers (MFP) in Europe fell by 0.8 percent in terms of units in the fourth quarter of last year.

But that’s only a small decline, and IDC said the hardcopy market in Western Europe recovered in 2014 with shipments overall growing.

MFP products represented 82.4 percent of all shipments, colour devices grew year on year by 17.3 percent.

Most of this growth came from MFP A4 products.

And in the fourth quarter of last year, business inlets grew by 51 percent, while high speed colour laser equipment showed “excellent” growth, said IDC.

However, in the UK, things weren’t as bright as other Western Europe countries. IDC said that the UK showed an 8.6 percent overall decline with decreases in sales of both laser and inkjet devices.

Sony starts to sell smart glasses

Posted on February 17, 2015 by - News

glassesWhile Google is sitting back and having a think about the smart glass project it initiated, it appears that Sony is pressing ahead with its SmartEyeglass, a product that will set you back a not so very cool £600 or so.

The glasses come with a software development kit (SDK) so you can sit down and code away to your hearts content, and supports the Android operating system.

The glass include a three megapixel camera, a microphone, weigh 77 grammes, and include a number of features familiar to smartphone users such as gyroscopes, compass, image and brightness sensors, according to the BBC, which adds they come with a controller, to be worn on the body, with loudspeaker, a touch sensor and a battery.

You’ll also be able to see text on the lenses in green.

The CEO of Apple doesn’t think much of smart glasses, according to the New Yorker. He told that magazine that people wouldn’t want to wear them.