Category: Biz Tech

A sign of Alibaba Group is seen at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2016 in Shanghai, China, May 12, 2016. Reuters/Aly Song/File Photo HONG KONG Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is offering to help international technology firms such as SAP SE to enter China, a market where foreign tech companies face increased government scrutiny. Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, said in a statement on Tuesday it aims to assist technology firms overcoming business obstacles in China. It

A man uses a mobile phone in front of an advertisement board bearing the image of Pokemon Go at an electronic shop in Tokyo, Japan, July 27, 2016. Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO Top video game companies, caught off-guard by the runaway success of Pokemon Go, are wrestling with how to play catch-up to the augmented reality app that has become a worldwide phenomenon. Nearly a dozen executives at companies from Sony Corp (6758.T) to Angry Birds-creator Rovio said Pokemon Go would

A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski/Illustration/File Photo SYDNEY Australia has set up a cyber-intelligence unit to identify terrorism financing, money laundering and financial fraud online, the government said on Tuesday, because of "unprecedented" threats to national security. The measure expands on a major platform of conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who narrowly won re-election last month after promising to improve Australia's cybersecurity and transform the economy

A general view of a Wal-Mart store in Mexico City, April 24, 2012. Reuters/Edgard Garrido/Files Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), vying to better challenge Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), will pay about $3 billion for internet retailer Jet.com and its innovative pricing software in the largest-ever deal for an e-commerce startup. The deal disclosed on Monday follows a five-year e-commerce acquisition spree in which Wal-Mart, the world's biggest traditional retailer, has already bought 15 startups, seeking the talent and technology to make it a dominant

TOKYO Nick Johnson, who claims to be the first person to capture all 145 creatures now available in the "Pokemon Go" mobile gaming phenomenon, says he is not ready to put away his smartphone just yet and hopes for new features. The 28-year-old tech employee from Brooklyn, New York, who refers to himself as the "world-first Pokemon Go master" on his Twitter account, announced last week he had completed his quest after travelling across the globe for the smartphone game. "I'll definitely

A security guard stands guard outside a branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in Paranaque city, Metro Manila, Philippines August 2, 2016. Reuters/Erik De Castro MANILA A Bangladesh central bank team visiting Manila to recover $81 million stolen from its account in New York said it was close to getting back $15 million of the loot frozen by the Philippines, but first has to prove ownership of the cash to its hosts. Cyber criminals tried to steal nearly $1 billion from

A security guard stands beside a logo of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines) posted at the main gate in Manila, Philippines April 28, 2016. Reuters/Romeo Ranoco/File Photo MANILA The Philippine central bank said on Friday it would fine Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCB.PS) (RCBC) a record 1 billion pesos ($21 million), after the bank was used by cyber criminals to channel $81 million stolen from Bangladesh Bank in February. The central bank said in a statement that

LAS VEGAS Apple Inc (AAPL.O) said it plans to offer rewards of up to $200,000 (£152,433) to researchers who find critical security bugs in its products, joining dozens of firms that already offer payments for help uncovering flaws in their products. The maker of iPhones and iPads provided Reuters with details of the plan, which includes some of the biggest bounties offered to date, ahead of unveiling it on Thursday afternoon at the Black Hat cyber security conference in Las

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, July 28, 2016. Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji/Files SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Wednesday unveiled a new Galaxy Note smartphone with a curved screen and iris-recognition technology, seeking to build on the sales momentum that has helped it roar back to surging profit growth. Samsung, the world's top smartphone maker, saw its January-June mobile profit jump 49 percent from a year earlier, thanks to robust sales of its flagship Galaxy

SolarCity Corp (SCTY.O) agreed to Tesla Motors Inc's (TSLA.O) $2.6 billion offer to buy the solar panel installer, the companies said on Monday, clearing one obstacle in the way of Elon Musk's ambitious plans for a carbon-free energy and transportation company. Tesla's offer represented about half of SolarCity's value a year ago, a tumble reflecting the solar company's slowing growth, complex financial structure and the increased scrutiny of government incentives for rooftop solar. For Tesla, acquiring SolarCity offers the promise of

Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, talks with his legal team before Terry Bollea, also known as Hulk Hogan, testifies in court, in St Petersburg, Florida, United States, March 8, 2016. Reuters/John Pendygraft/Pool/File Photo NEW YORK Gawker Media Chief Executive Nick Denton filed for personal bankruptcy protection on Monday, according to court documents that name his largest creditor as Hulk Hogan, a former professional wrestler who won a $140 million court judgement against the news website over a sex tape it posted. Denton

Jack Ma, founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group speaks during the inaugural ''Xin'' Philanthropy Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, July 9, 2016. China Daily/via Reuters A Chinese consortium that includes game developer Shanghai Giant Network Technology Co Ltd and e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd founder Jack Ma has agreed to acquire Caesars Interactive Entertainment Inc's online games unit for $4.4 billion in cash, the companies said. Caesars Interactive Entertainment is currently owned by Caesars Acquisition Co (CAC) and Caesars

A general view shows the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB) (L) in central Moscow, Russia, November 10, 2015. Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin MOSCOW Russia's intelligence service said on Saturday that the computer networks of 20 organizations, including state agencies and defense companies, have been infected with spyware in what it described as a targeted and coordinated attack. The Federal Security Service, the FSB, said the malware and the way the networks were infected were similar to those used in previous cases of cyber

|Mary-Ann Russon|IBNTimes|The President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has issued a series of new federal laws relating to IT crimes, including a regulation that forbids anyone in the UAE from making use of virtual private networks (VPN) to secure their web traffic from prying eyes. The new law states that anyone who uses a VPN or proxy server can be imprisoned and fined between Dh500,000-Dh2,000,000 ($136,000-$545,000, £415,000, €495,000) if they are found to use VPNs fraudulently. Previously, the law was restricted

A Yahoo logo is pictured in front of a building in Rolle, 30 km (19 miles) east of Geneva, December 12, 2012. Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File photo Verizon Communications Inc will announce an agreement on Monday to buy Yahoo Inc for about $5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The announcement will come before the start of New York trading hours, the source added. The deal will end months of uncertainty about Yahoo's future after the company announced plans to review strategic alternatives

A Tesla logo adorns a 'Model S' car in the dealership in Berlin, Germany, November 18, 2015. Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke/File Photo Tesla Motors Inc and SolarCity Corp have made progress in putting together a deal that will merge the electric car maker and the solar panel installer, people familiar with the matter said. The two companies, which count billionaire Elon Musk as a major shareholder, are in the final stages of carrying out due diligence on each other, and could agree on the

A worker climbs outside an Apple store in Hong Kong April 10, 2013. Reuters/Bobby Yip/File Photo HONG KONG Apple Inc found itself on the receiving end of a small, short-lived anti-U.S. protest this week in China, the tech firm's biggest overseas market and a country where foreign firms have suffered damaging boycotts following international spats. A handful of unofficial Apple stores were picketed and social media users encouraged each other to destroy their Apple goods, in a rare instance of the tech firm

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk attends a forum on startups in Hong Kong, China January 26, 2016. Reuters/Bobby Yip/File Photo Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O) chief Elon Musk's ambitious new "master plan" provided a vision of the company as a leader in sustainable energy, but lacked details on how the plan would be funded and executed. Musk sketched out a plan on Wednesday for an integrated carbon-free energy enterprise offering a wider range of vehicles, including a commercial truck and a public bus, as

Commuters pass by the front of the Bangladesh central bank building in Dhaka March 8, 2016. Reuters/Ashikur Rahman/Files DHAKA/NEW YORK When the Federal Reserve Bank of New York cleared five transactions made by the Bangladesh Bank hackers, the money went in two directions. On Thursday, February 4, the Fed's system sent $20 million to Sri Lanka and $81 million to the Philippines. The Sri Lankan transaction contained a small but crucial error: The money was being sent to a bank account in

DHAKA/NEW YORK Jupiter. That single word, by a stroke of luck, helped stop the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from paying nearly $1 billion (£757 million) to the cyber-criminals behind a notorious bank heist earlier this year, according to sources familiar with the incident. When hackers broke into the computers of Bangladesh's central bank in February and sent fake payment orders, the Fed was tricked into paying out $101 million. But the losses could have been much higher had

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer delivers her keynote address at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada in this January 7, 2014, file photo. Reuters/Robert Galbraith/Files SAN FRANCISCO Former Yahoo executive Dan Rosensweig has not worked at the pioneering internet company in nearly a decade. But last week, as Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) prepared to sell its core internet business, he was sporting a Yahoo T-shirt and, in an interview, reveled in memories of the company's heyday, along with the deep

A Tesla logo hangs on a building outside of a Tesla dealership in New York, U.S., April 29, 2016. Reuters/Lucas Jackson/File Photo Tesla Motors Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk Wednesday unveiled an ambitious plan to expand the company into electric trucks and buses, car sharing and solar energy systems. In a blog post titled "Master Plan, Part Deux," Musk sketched a vision of an integrated carbon-free energy enterprise offering a wider range of vehicles, and products and services beyond electric cars and

People play the mobile phone game Pokemon GO in a park in Central Jakarta, Indonesia July 21, 2016. Reuters/Iqro Rinaldi JAKARTA Avid players of smash-hit mobile phone game Pokemon GO in Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, are not letting religious decrees or security warnings get in the way of their mission to catch their next cartoon creature. Nintendo's augmented reality app, in which players walk around real-life places to hunt virtual characters on their smartphone screens, has become an

A self-driving car by Google is displayed at the Viva Technology event in Paris, France, June 30, 2016. Reuters/Benoit Tessier BERLIN Germany plans new legislation to require manufacturers of cars equipped with an autopilot function to install a black box to help determine responsibility in the event of an accident, transport ministry sources told Reuters on Monday. The fatal crash of a Tesla Motors Inc Model S car in its Autopilot mode has increased the pressure on industry executives and regulators to ensure

Turkish policemen cordon up around a military vehicle in Ankara, Turkey July 16, 2016. Reuters/Stringer SAN FRANCISCO The attempted military coup in Turkey exploded across social media late on Friday despite restricted access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube during the first hours of the putsch. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, an avowed enemy of social media who has frequently made Twitter and Facebook a target, addressed the country via a FaceTime video call that was shown on TV. He also tweeted: "I call our

A virtual map of Bryant Park is displayed on the screen as a man plays the augmented reality mobile game ''Pokemon Go'' by Nintendo in New York City, U.S. July 11, 2016. Reuters/Mark Kauzlarich/File Photo MEXICO CITY A Mexican taxi driver has jumped on the Pokemon GO craze sweeping the world by driving smartphone-armed customers around in search of the augmented reality game's target creatures. The mobile phone game has become an instant hit with more users in the United States than Twitter

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice at the Diplomatic Corps Reception at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 15, 2016. Reuters/Yuri Gripas WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Friday released a legislative proposal intended to provide foreign governments with a streamlined process for asking U.S. tech companies to share email data and conduct wiretaps for criminal investigations. The framework comes one day after a federal appeals court said the U.S. government could not compel Microsoft to turn

The United Nations headquarters building is pictured though a window with the UN logo in the foreground in the Manhattan borough of New York August 15, 2014. Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Files ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - From a smartphone app delivering market prices to Guatemalan farmers to online nutrition tips in rural Colombia, the push to end hunger has entered a new era with the U.N. food agency deploying the latest technology to fight it. The World Food Programme's (WFP) new innovation hub, launched

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk attends a forum on startups in Hong Kong, China January 26, 2016. Reuters/Bobby Yip/File Photo Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted his intention to soon publish part two of his "top secret Tesla masterplan" following an embattled several weeks for the Silicon Valley heavyweight. The tweet, which read "Working on Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, Part 2. Hoping to publish later this week" comes amid inquiries into two crashes of Tesla cars, as well as

The logo of free messaging app Line is pictured on a smartphone and the company's stuffed toy in this photo illustration taken in Tokyo, Japan, September 23, 2014. Reuters/Toru Hanai/Illustration/File Photo TOKYO Japanese messaging app firm Line Corp priced its initial public offering at the top of its marketed range, putting it on track to raise as much as $1.3 billion and reflecting robust appetite for the world's biggest tech listing this year. Line set the IPO price at 3,300 yen per share,

KEFLAVIK, Iceland Marco Streng is a miner, though he does not carry a pick around his base in south-western Iceland. Instead, he keeps tens of thousands of computers running 24 hours a day in fierce competition with others across the globe to earn bitcoins. In the world of the web-based digital currency, it is not central banks that add new money to the system, but rather computers like Streng's which are awarded fresh bitcoins in return for processing blocks of

A 3D-printed logo for Twitter is seen in this picture illustration made in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina on January 26, 2016. Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Twitter Inc is in talks with the NBA, Major League Soccer and Time Warner Inc's cable network Turner Broadcasting to buy digital streaming rights for content related to major sports and events, Recode reported. This content could either be actual game footage or live interviews and analysis, the technology news website reported, citing people familiar with the talks.

The logo of Facebook is seen at the Cannes Lions Festival in Cannes, France, June 23, 2016. Reuters/Eric Gaillard Facebook Inc on Friday said it began testing end-to-end encryption on its popular Messenger application to prevent snooping on digital conversations. The limited testing on Messenger, which has more than 900 million users, comes three months after Facebook rolled out end-to-end encryption to its more popular WhatsApp, a messaging application with over 1 billion users that it acquired in October 2014. The move comes

Reuters/Tyrone Siu/File Photo SEOUL South Korea's LG Electronics Inc (066570.KS) said on Friday its second-quarter operating profit likely reached a two-year high, with analysts pointing to strong contributions from its mainstay home appliances and television set businesses. The world's second-biggest TV maker by market share, behind compatriot Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), said in a regulatory filing that April-June profit was likely 585 billion won ($504 million), compared with the 599 billion won average of 23 analyst estimates in a Thomson