TechEye |  |
- Private equity eyes up AMD – report
- A homemade laser can kill a self-driving car
- John McAfee could be president
- Buffet backs Big Blue
- Amazon and Microsoft clouds get Disney
- Samsung cuts 10 percent of staff
- Google to start delivering fresh food
- Warehouses packed with unsold notebooks in Europe
- Mediatek makes strategic acquisition
- Flexible displays bend the market
| Private equity eyes up AMD – report Posted: 09 Sep 2015 02:03 AM PDT
Fudzilla reports that multiple industry sources have leaked the news to Fuad Abazovic, the master mind of the independent web site. AMD's shares sell at less than $2 so Silver Lake wouldn't have to shell out very much money to acquire a fifth of the company. AMD has struggled in recent years to be competitive both with chip giant Intel and its graphics rival Nvidia. It needs the money. Fudzilla also reports that AMD is set to lay off more people in the very near future. AMD could not be reached for comment at press time. |
| A homemade laser can kill a self-driving car Posted: 09 Sep 2015 01:50 AM PDT
According to security expert Jonathan Petit a modified, low-cost laser could create ghostlike objects in the path of autonomous cars which causes the cars to slowed down to avoid hitting them. If enough phantom objects were created, the car would stop completely. Petit, principal boffin at software company Security Innovation, used a laser, similar to a mass-market laser pen and added a pulse generator – something that can be created using a low-cost computer such as the Raspberry Pi. It cost $60 and created phantom cars, walls and pedestrians to fool the “eyes” of self-drive cars – known as lidars. Lidars are a combination of light and radar and illuminate a target with a laser and analysing the reflected light, to measure distance and map out where objects are. Petit claimed he could spoof thousands of objects and basically carry out a denial of service attack on the tracking system so it’s not able to track real objects. He could also take echoes of fake cars and put them at any location I want,” he added. Petit targeted the lidars produced by IBEO Lux but was keen to point out that it is not a problem just for them. He said that none of the lidar manufacturers thought about the problem. His paper, written while he was a research fellow at the University of Cork’s computer security group, will be presented at the Black Hat Europe conference in November.
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| John McAfee could be president Posted: 09 Sep 2015 01:49 AM PDT
The founder of the anti-virus software company McAfee, and who once played Russian roulette with a loaded gun says he is considering joining the 2016 presidential race. That is unless he can find someone who is "smarter and more charismatic" than he is to run with his backing. McAfee told Wired that he is personally in a quandary about whether to run himself or find someone else for his party. His advisors are pressing him to run. McAfee, won't name his advisors and we suspect that they might be dragons, but he's been mulling a run for some time at the urging of his online followers. "I have many thousands of emails saying please run for President," he says. "It's not something I would just choose to do on my own." McAfee believes the government is broken, largely because its leaders do not understand technology as well as, well, he does. He points to the recent hacks of the US Office of Personnel Management and Homeland Security as proof. "Things like this cannot happen or should not happen. It's clear that the leadership of our country is illiterate on the fundamental technology that supports everything in life for us now, that is cyber science, our smartphones, our military hardware, our communications." McAfee said that the government urging tech companies to create "backdoors" into their systems that would allow the government to collect information on users is another sign that public servants just do not get it. Of course the US election has already a batshit crazy candidate in the form of the Bouffant and McAfee might be too colourful for US politics and besides his standing on an issue of Internet privacy might not be an answer for a country that really has many things it needs to sort out. Still it would make the US's token show of democracy a little more interesting.
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| Posted: 09 Sep 2015 01:48 AM PDT
Buffett, who is the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway has been buying IBM shares, because they are pretty cheap at the moment. That said the amount of money he invested in the first quarter took a hammering. IT has been estimated that Buffet lost $700 million on IBM so far. Buffett’s Berkshire owned a more than eight percent stake in IBM as of June 30. IBM shares have slumped nearly 12 percent so far in the third quarter. He has also been buying shares in Phillips. He made a mistake when he alluded to buying more IBM. He thought he had bought shares in the second quarter but it appears he forgot. Still it means that Buffett will be part of IBM's life for a while. He famously said that you have to buy shares when they are cheap and play a ten year game with them. Buffett also said that the US economy was not growing at a “booming” rate but remained on the path it has been on for six years of growing at a rate of two percent or a little better annually. He said he would “be a little careful” about getting too excited about quarterly statistics.
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| Amazon and Microsoft clouds get Disney Posted: 09 Sep 2015 01:47 AM PDT
The deals expand the number of ways in which people can watch Disney films. The company already has agreements in place with Vudu, Google Play and iTunes. The service includes more than 450 digital movies. The Walt Disney said that US customers of Amazon Video and Microsoft Movies & TV will now be able to connect to Disney Movies Anywhere. The service will let users access Disney, Pixar, Marvel and “Star Wars” movies in various ways, including through the Disney Movies Anywhere app for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and for Amazon Fire tablets, Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. Customers can access and watch movies using the Amazon Video app for televisions, connected devices and mobile devices and through the Microsoft Movies and TV service on Windows and Microsoft Xbox devices, as well as online. The app will be available on Roku and Android TV starting September 15 |
| Samsung cuts 10 percent of staff Posted: 08 Sep 2015 08:36 AM PDT
Samsung has suffered serious setbacks in its effort to attain market supremacy with their new high-end Galaxy smartphones to the tune of $40 billion in the company's market value over the last five months. Samsung's share of global smartphone shipments fell by more than three percent in Q2 and is no longer the top seller in China, the world's biggest market for mobile phones. TechEye Take Samsung has been bleeding on all fronts except the semiconductor division's memory products. The glut of unsold TV's backing up in warehouses and now "unmovable" smartphones adding to the woes has forced the company into cutting "non-essential" employees from headquarters staff. The coming Christmas season is expected to give some relief though market conditions in China, Samsung's biggest market, continue to deteriorate. Apples annual product announcements tomorrow in San Francisco will most likely add to the company's list of worries. |
| Google to start delivering fresh food Posted: 08 Sep 2015 07:50 AM PDT
According to Bloomberg, that will put it up against Amazon which has a lready introduced a service called AmazonFresh in a number of American cities. Amazon has been rumoured to be interested in launching a fresh food service in the UK, which would put it up against grocery giants Tesco, Sainsburys and others. And today Amazon extended its own service in the USA by introducing deliveries to restaurants. It can only be a matter of time before Amazon and Google experiment with similar services in the UK. A division of Google called Google Express already deliver dry food to customers in the USA. |
| Warehouses packed with unsold notebooks in Europe Posted: 08 Sep 2015 06:39 AM PDT
That's according to Taiwanese wire Digitimes, which said that some of them are offering deals including buy two and get one free. But it looks like people don't even want to buy one, never mind two. The wire said that the retailers are suffering so much stock indigestion that they've asked major brand vendors to give them longer to pay their bills. The problem has been partly caused by vendors offering big commissions to sell notebooks but that hasn't worked despite the best of the retailers' efforts. And Acer and Asustek, which have resisted pressure from the bigger vendors to offer higher commissions are suffering because they can't compete on pricing and the commissions offered by HP and Lenovo. Acer made a profit in its last financial quarter but it was a small profit. Windows 10 may be popular for existing notebook users who can upgrade for free, but that's not enough to make people buy new machines, Digitimes said. |
| Mediatek makes strategic acquisition Posted: 08 Sep 2015 06:30 AM PDT
Mediatek is a key player in the global smartphone and tablet market and wants Richtek because of its power management semiconductors. The chairman and CEO of Mediatek, Ming-Kai Tsai said in a prepared statement that he thinks the merger will strengthen his company in the internet of things segment and put it in a better competitive position in the global semiconductor market. Mediatek will pay $5.94 for each share of Richtek with options to buy 51 percent and eventually take over the entire company. That's expected to happen in the second quarter of next year. Richtek chairman Kenneth Tai said that the two companies have complementary products and expand its analogue integrated circuits to grow its business in the future. |
| Flexible displays bend the market Posted: 08 Sep 2015 06:23 AM PDT
IHS Technology said that 312 patents for flexible displays were filed with the US patent office in last year, accounting for 62 percent of applications. Samsung is the leader of the pack – it filed half of the flexible display paents in the USA, with fellow Korean company LG Electronics filing 17 percent of the patents. Ian Lim, a senior analyst at IHS, said: "Patents for flexible display device technologies outnumber those for flexible display parts and manufacturing technologies in recent patents, indicating that the flexible display market is entering a period of maturing growth," he said. Lim said many of the applications for patents are connected to reducing device distortion and introducing user interfaces for bendable and foldable displays. The key materials patents were related to organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and polylmide flexible substrates. |
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