Category: Biz Tech

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook speaks during a event for students to learn to write computer code at the Apple store in the Manhattan borough of New York December 9, 2015.Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Files Apple Inc said on Thursday it has invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, a move that Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said would help the company better understand the critical Chinese market. The tech giant's rare investment gives it a stake in two burgeoning waves of

The SWIFT logo is pictured in this photo illustration taken April 26, 2016. Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo SWIFT, the global financial messaging network that banks use to move billions of dollars every day, warned on Thursday of a second malware attack similar to the one that led to February's $81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank.The second case targeted a commercial bank, SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha de Teran said, without naming it. It was not immediately clear how much money, if

The sun rises behind the entrance sign to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park before the company's IPO launch, May 18, 2012. Reuters/Beck Diefenbach/File Photo Facebook (FB.O) on Thursday emphasized that it does not permit its employees to block news stories from its "Trending Topics" list based on political bias, amid a controversy over how the social media superpower selects what news it displays.Technology news website Gizmodo on Monday reported that a former Facebook employee said workers "routinely suppressed news stories of

 Reuters/Ralph Orlowski/Files FRANKFURT The European Central Bank will set up a database to register incidents of cyber crime at commercial banks, aiming to create an early warning and analysis system for big lenders, it told a German newspaper on Thursday. Attackers earlier this year stole $81 million from a Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Fed in one of the biggest-ever cyber heists, heightening global concerns over cyber security. The ECB has been running a pilot project since February with 18

The SWIFT logo is pictured in this photo illustration taken April 26, 2016. Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo FRANKFURT SWIFT's payment network was not hacked in the $81 million heist on the Bangladesh central bank earlier this year, SWIFT's chief executive said on Thursday, adding it was unlikely to be the last such attack on a bank.Gottfried Leibbrandt said SWIFT's network, used by firms and institutions across the world to exchange information about financial transactions, had not been violated during the cyber attack,

A man is seen next to a Firefox logo at a Mozilla stand during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 28, 2013. Reuters/Albert Gea Mozilla Corp has asked a federal judge to order the U.S. government to disclose a vulnerability in its Firefox web browser that the company says the FBI exploited to investigate users of a large and secretive child pornography website.Mozilla filed papers in federal court in Tacoma, Washington, on Wednesday seeking information on a vulnerability in a

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, California April 12, 2016.Reuters/Stephen Lam A U.S. Senate committee launched an inquiry on Tuesday into how social media website Facebook selects its news stories after a report that company employees blocked news about conservative issues from its "trending" list. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation asked Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in a letter to answer questions about the company's news curation practices

A 3D printed Android logo is seen in front of a displayed cyber code in this illustration taken March 22, 2016. Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Files SAN FRANCISCO Oracle Corp and Google faced off on Tuesday in a $9 billion intellectual property retrial, with Oracle accusing Google of stealing programming to become the world’s leading smartphone player and Google saying it acted legally as a true innovator.Oracle claims Google's Android smartphone operating system violated its copyright on parts of the Java programming language, while

Amazon boxes are seen stacked for delivery in the Manhattan borough of New York City, January 29, 2016. Reuters/Mike Segar/File Photo Amazon.com Inc launched a service on Tuesday that allows users to post videos and earn royalties from them, setting up the world's biggest online retailer to compete directly with Alphabet Inc's YouTube.The service, called Amazon Video Direct, will make the uploaded videos available to rent or own, to view free with ads, or be packaged together and offered as an

An Uber car is seen parked with the driver's lunch left on the dashboard in Venice, Los Angeles, California, United States July 15, 2015.Reuters/Lucy Nicholson SAN FRANCISCO Drivers who worked for ride-hailing service Uber [UBER.UL] in California and Massachusetts over the past seven years would have been entitled to an estimated $730 million in expense reimbursements had they been employees rather than contractors, according to court documents made public on Monday. The figure was calculated by attorneys for drivers in a class

The SWIFT logo is pictured in this photo illustration taken April 26, 2016. Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo SWIFT on Monday rejected allegations by officials in Bangladesh that technicians with the global messaging system made the nation's central bank more vulnerable to hacking before an $81 million cyber heist in February.The comments were in response to a Reuters story that cited Bangladeshi police and a central bank official as saying that SWIFT technicians introduced security holes into the bank's network while connecting SWIFT

A Facebook logo is pictured on an Apple's Ipad in Bordeaux, southwestern France, March 10, 2016. Reuters/Regis Duvignau/Illustration Facebook (FB.O) workers have often omitted conservative political stories from the website’s "trending" list, the technology news site Gizmodo said on Monday in a report that sparked widespread comment on social media.An unnamed former Facebook employee told Gizmodo that workers "routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers," according to Gizmodo, while "artificially" adding other stories into the trending list.Facebook told Reuters

Taxi drivers protest against transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft along with Assembly Bill 2293 at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California, June 25, 2014.Reuters/Max Whittaker/Files AUSTIN, Texas On-demand ride companies Uber and Lyft suffered an embarrassing defeat in a Saturday election in Austin as voters backed a measure requiring fingerprint background checks for drivers. The two companies spent more than $8 million to repeal a city ordinance requiring the fingerprint-based criminal checks and launched what turned into the most

Security analyst Rachit Sood (R) registers for the Black Hat USA 2015 cyber security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada August 4, 2015. Reuters/ STEVE MARCUS/Files SAN FRANCISCO A number of young technology security companies are losing access to the largest collection of industry analysis of computer viruses, a setback industry experts say will increase exposure to hackers.The policy change at the information-sharing pioneer VirusTotal takes aim mainly at a new generation of security companies, some with valuations of $1 billion or

The Uber logo is seen on a vehicle near Union Square in San Francisco, California, U.S. May 7, 2015. Reuters/Robert Galbraith/File PhotoFRANKFURT Ride-hailing service Uber aims to launch its UberX service, which uses licensed professional drivers, in the German capital Berlin after failing to find enough drivers in some of the country's other cities, Uber's Germany chief Christian Freese told a newspaper."We are planning to start UberX in Berlin in June," weekly Welt am Sonntag quoted Freese as saying in an

An Apple iphone 6 with Apple Pay is shown in this photo illustration in Encinitas , California June 3, 2015. Reuters/Mike Blake SAN FRANCISCO Apple Inc's first-ever drop in quarterly iPhone sales has spurred Chief Executive Tim Cook to turn the spotlight on prospects for its services business, but the field is rife with competition and may prove challenging for a brand based on gadgets.Second-quarter earnings saw services emerge as Apple's second-largest business after the iPhone for the first time, topping

A man is seen near cyber code and the U.S. National Security Agency logo in this photo illustration taken in Sarajevo March 11, 2015. Reuters/Dado Ruvic SAN FRANCISCO Internet traffic to Wikipedia pages summarizing knowledge about terror groups and their tools plunged nearly 30 percent after revelations of widespread Web monitoring by the U.S. National Security Agency, suggesting that concerns about government snooping are hurting the ordinary pursuit of information.A forthcoming paper in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal analyzes the fall

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) on Tuesday posted its first-ever decline in iPhone sales and its first revenue drop in 13 years as the company credited with inventing the smartphone struggles with an increasingly saturated market.The company's sales dropped by more than a quarter in China, its most important market after the United States, and it also forecast another disappointing quarter for global revenues.Its shares fell about 8 percent, dropping below $100 for the first time since February. A hike in

A 3D plastic representation of the Facebook logo is seen in this illustration in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 13, 2015. Reuters/Dado RuvicFacebook Inc (FB.O) is developing a stand-alone camera app, similar to disappearing photo app Snapchat, to increase user engagement, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.The app, being developed by Facebook's "friend-sharing" team in London, is in its early stages and may never come to fruition, according to the report. (on.wsj.com/24fDRxN)The company is also planning a

A generic picture of a Xerox logo on a photocopier. TECOM Reuters/Catherine Benson/Files Xerox Corp reported a 4.2 percent fall in quarterly revenue, hurt by a strong dollar and lower sales of printers and copiers, sending its shares down 12 percent in morning trade.The company is focusing on its services business, which offers business process outsourcing and document outsourcing, as sales of printers and copiers, its mainstay for over half a century, have fallen for more than four years.Rival printer maker

A Toshiba Corp logo displayed on one of its television sets is seen through a vehicle in Tokyo, Japan, November 26, 2015. Reuters/Toru Hanai/Files TOKYO Toshiba Corp, in a hurry to raise cash before closing its books for the business year that ended at the end of last month, was able to structure the sale of its medical equipment business to Canon Inc in an unorthodox way so that it could book the 665.5 billion yen ($5.95 billion) proceeds before the

BANGKOK After more than two years of riding high on growing demand for cloud data storage, Thailand's hard disk drive exporters are bracing for a fall from grace.Data due later on Monday will likely show Thai exports of hard disk drives (HDDs) in March extended a run of double-digit growth after jumping 45 percent in the first two months of 2016 to $1.1 billion. The rise has been a rare bright spot in Thai tech manufacturing, beset by cheaper

A Volkswagen logo is pictured at Volkswagen's headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, April 22, 2016. Reuters/Hannibal HanschkeBEIJING Volkswagen AG is optimistic that its positive sales trend from the two previous quarters will continue in China, the world's biggest auto market, its China chief Jochem Heizmann said on Sunday.Volkswagen also plans to invest 4 billion euros ($4.49 billion) with its joint venture partners in China this year, and is prepared for any recalls in China on any diesel-related issues, Heizmann told reporters ahead

TORONTO Canada's Liberal government is prepared to overhaul the country's laws governing broadcasting, media and cultural industries to support local content, Heritage Minister Melanie Joly told the Globe and Mail in a report on Saturday, announcing a new policy direction in what she called a broken system.Canada's broadcast regulator has long had requirements for networks to carry certain amounts of local content. But it cut that quota drastically last year under the Conservative government, after the industry was shaken up

Details are pictured on the backside of an Apple Iphone 6 on a table in a restaurant in Hanau, Germany, April 10, 2016. Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach NEW YORK The U.S. Justice Department on Friday dropped its effort to force Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to help unlock an iPhone in a drug case in New York after someone provided authorities the passcode to access the device.In a letter filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, prosecutors said that investigators late on Thursday used

NEW YORK The hashtag #RIPTwitter became the top trending U.S. item on Twitter on Saturday, after a report from BuzzFeed said the company is planning to change how it displays users’ tweets.The BuzzFeed report, which went live on Friday night and did not disclose the source of its information, said the social media platform will reorder tweets to prioritize those it believes more users will want to see. Currently, Twitter (TWTR.N) arranges tweets in chronological order.The response to the

A general view shows the building 'Gorod Stolits' (Capital City) (C), which houses an office of 25 Floor Film Company, at the Moscow International Business Center also known as ''Moskva-City'', in Moscow, Russia, February 3, 2016. Reuters/Maxim Zmeyev WASHINGTON Russian authorities in November raided offices associated with a Moscow film distribution and production company as part of a crackdown on one of the world’s most notorious financial hacking operations, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.Cybersecurity experts said a

A 3D printed Twitter logo is seen in this illustration picture made in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, February 3, 2016. Reuters/Dado Ruvic WASHINGTON Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) has shut down more than 125,000 terrorism-related accounts since the middle of 2015, most of them linked to the Islamic State group, the company said in a blog post on Friday.Twitter has said it only takes down accounts when they are reported by other users, but said that it has increased the size of teams

Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search at Google, speaks at the garage where the company was founded on Google's 15th anniversary in Menlo Park, California September 26, 2013. Reuters/Stephen Lam As one of Google's earliest search pioneers steps down and the company's leader in artificial intelligence takes his place, analysts say the move signals the company's desire to make its search engine more sophisticated.Google parent Alphabet Inc said Wednesday that Amit Singhal, the longtime chief of its Internet search business,

An Apple logo hangs above the entrance to the Apple store on 5th Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City, July 21, 2015. Reuters/Mike Segar NEW YORK Apple Inc (AAPL.O) must pay VirnetX Holding Corp (VHC.A) more than $625 million for using the patent licensing company's Internet security technology without permission in its FaceTime and iMessage features, a federal jury in Texas said on Wednesday.The award was more than the $532 million VirnetX had sought before the trial began

A GoPro Hero 3+ camera is seen at the Nasdaq Market Site before before GoPro Inc's IPO in New York City, June 26, 2014. Reuters/Mike SegarGoPro Inc (GPRO.O) forecast current-quarter revenue well below analysts' estimates on weak demand for its wearable cameras and the company named Brian McGee as its new chief financial officer.GoPro said McGee, who joined the company from Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) in 2015, would succeed Jack Lazar as CFO on March 11.The camera maker's shares fell 10 percent

Reuters/ DEBORAH M. TODD AND ANYA GEORGE THARAKAN/Alphabet Inc easily beat Wall Street's quarterly profit forecasts on Monday, helped by strong mobile advertising sales, sending the shares of Google's parent higher in after-hours trading to surpass Apple Inc as the most valuable U.S. company.For the first time, the company disclosed the profitability of Google's search engine and its other online services, and how much it is spending on ambitious technology projects such as self-driving cars.The numbers were lapped up by

The Nokia headquarters is seen in Espoo, Finland, July 28, 2015. Nokia Corporation published the interim report for Q2 2015 and January-June 2015 on July 30, 2015. Reuters/Mikko Stig/Lethikuva/FilesHELSINKI Finland's Nokia on Monday settled its patent dispute with Korea's Samsung, saying the arbitration verdict will boost its patent sales by hundreds of millions of euros.Nokia said including the verdict, the sales of its patent unit Nokia Technologies increased to around 1,02 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in 2015 from 578 million euros

Letters spell the word ''Alpahbet'' as they are seen on a computer screen with a Google search page in this photo illustration taken in Paris, France, August 11, 2015. Reuters/Pascal Rossignol How much is Google-parent Alphabet Inc spending on "moonshots" – self-driving cars, glucose-monitoring contact lenses, Internet balloons and other ambitious projects?Investors will get their long-awaited answer when Alphabet reports fourth-quarter results after markets close on Monday.The report will be the first time Alphabet will break out results for what it