Maria Deutscher
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Mozilla launches its WebThings smart home platform from incubation
In addition to developing Firefox and Thunderbird, the Mozilla Foundation runs a raft of other, lesser-known technology projects. Among the more technically ambitious of these is WebThings, an open-source smart home platform that launched from incubation on Thursday. WebThings provides software modules for building and managing internet-connected devices. It consists of two components that serve ...
Microsoft acquires IoT operating system maker Express Logic
Microsoft Corp. has acquired Express Logic Inc., a relatively low-profile but influential software maker whose technology helps power a big chunk of the world’s internet-connected devices. The terms of the deal, which the companies announced today, weren’t disclosed. But it’s reasonable to assume that the price tag was quite substantial given Express Logic’s prominent role in ...
Facebook says it ‘unintentionally’ harvested 1.5M users’ email contacts
Another month, another Facebook Inc. privacy scandal. Following an exposé from Business Insider, the social networking giant today said that it has “unintentionally uploaded” the email contacts of 1.5 million users to its systems. The affected group includes people who signed up for Facebook from May 2016 to March 2019 and shared their email passwords with ...
Report: Facebook is developing an AI voice assistant
Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa and Google LLC’s Home voice assistants may soon face some new competition. CNBC reported today that Facebook Inc. has been quietly working on a rival voice assistant since early 2018. The network’s sources said that development is being carried out by Facebook Reality Labs, the division behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality ...
Stripe picks up biometric authentication startup Touchtech
The highly publicized online copyright and privacy laws currently being implemented by the European Union are only part of the regulatory changes facing the tech industry in the region. There’s also PSD2, an upcoming directive that will enforce increased security for e-commerce purchases. In preparation for the new regulation, online payments giant Stripe Inc. today ...
Harvard spinoff Zapata Computing raises $21M to develop quantum software
A consortium of venture investors is making a moonshot bet on Zapata Computing Inc., a startup developing software for quantum computers. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zapata today said that it has raised a $21 million funding round co-led by the startup investment division of Comcast Corp. and Prelude Ventures. Several other institutional backers took part as well, ...
Surprise! Apple and Qualcomm settle multibillion-dollar legal dispute
Taking the industry completely off-guard, Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. today announced that they have settled their cross-border, multibillion-dollar legal dispute over mobile modem chip technology. The agreement will see the companies drop all legal action against one another in the numerous jurisdictions where they’ve been pursuing litigation. This will first and foremost end the original Apple ...
Samsung advances Moore’s Law with new 5-nanometer chips
New engineering challenges are making it difficult for chipmakers to keep up with Moore’s Law, the prediction that the density of transistors in processors will double every two years. But Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is pressing ahead nonetheless. The company, which not only sells consumer electronics but is also among the world’s largest semiconductor makers, ...
Google supercharges its Kubernetes service with new security, automation features
Google LLC today introduced GKE Advanced, a heavily upgraded version of its cloud Kubernetes service with security and automation features aimed at the enterprise crowd. Kubernetes is the leading open-source framework for running software container deployments. Containers, in turn, are emerging as enterprises’ tool of choice for building and deploying applications. The technology makes cloud services portable, ...
Intel unleashes eighth-generation Core vPro chips for business laptops
Intel Corp. today unveiled a new generation of its Core vPro processor series, an upgrade that brings with it speed and power efficiency improvements along with enhanced security. Core vPro chips most commonly ship with business laptops. The vPro in the name denotes their compatibility with Intel’s vPro suite of firmware tools, which enable information technology departments to manage employee ...