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Submission + - MA Governor Wants Non-Compete Agreements Outlawed. Will it Matter?

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: Entrepreneurs in Massachusetts say the state's legal enforcement of non-competition agreements hurts innovation — if you're going to get sued by Big Company X, you're probably not going to leave for a startup in the same industry. But those contracts have powerful supporters, including EMC, which is by far the state's largest tech company. Gov. Deval Patrick is finally picking a side in the debate by introducing his own bill to outlaw non-competes and adopt trade-secrets protections instead. Just one catch: he's a lame duck, and will be out of office in January.

Submission + - Coming Soon to a Restaurant Near You...Things You'd Rather Not See (nypost.com)

Submitted by TchrBabe
TchrBabe writes: So NYC is now considering equipping it's Health Department inspectors with Google Glass to provide a record of restaurant inspections. Will we now have FOIL access to these behind the scenes videos of our favorite restaurants? Do we even want to see what goes on behind the scenes? "Oh look Mabel, isn't that your cat that went missing?"

Submission + - Cuba: U.S. using new weapon against us -- spam (cnn.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Cuban officials have accused the U.S. government of bizarre plots over the years, such as trying to kill Fidel Castro with exploding cigars. On Wednesday, they said Washington is using a new weapon against the island: spam.

"It's overloading the networks, which creates bad service and affects our customers," said Daniel Ramos Fernandez, chief of security operations at the Cuban government-run telecommunications company ETECSA.

At a news conference Wednesday, Cuban officials said text messaging platforms run by the U.S. government threatened to overwhelm Cuba's creaky communications system and violated international conventions against junk messages.

The spam, officials claim, comes in the form of a barrage of unwanted text messages, some political in nature.

Ramos said that during a 2009 concert in Havana performed by the Colombian pop-star Juanes, a U.S. government program blanketed Cuban cell phone networks with around 300,000 text messages over about five hours.

Submission + - Hewlett-Packard Admits to International Bribery and Money Laundering Schemes (vice.com)

Submitted by ClownPenis
ClownPenis writes: Hewlett-Packard has admitted to creating and using slush funds for bribes, money laundering, and clandestine “bag of cash” handoffs in order to profiteer off of lucrative government contracts in Russia, Poland, and Mexico, according to court documents.

HP’s guilty plea carries with it a $108 million penalty — a combination of SEC penalties, as well as criminal fines and forfeitures paid out to the Department of Justice. Thus far no criminal charges have been brought against American HP executives. The multi-agency investigation, which was conducted by multi-national law enforcement partners, the FBI, IRS, and SEC, has revealed kleptocracies in the three foreign governments and corruption and dishonesty among HP corporate fat cats.

Submission + - Settlement details you're not supposed to see from Boston U's patent lawsuits

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: In January, Boston University settled lawsuits against two dozen big technology companies for allegedly using its patented blue LED technology without permission. But apparently, the school's lawyers were a little too forthcoming for everyone's tastes — they recently asked a federal judge to delete a court filing that spelled out all of the companies who settled. Luckily, we still had the unredacted version, which shows that Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Motorola and many more are on the list, even if they don't want you to know it.

Comment Re:What is it with curtwoodward? (Score 1) 66

Headline came from the submitter, which was me. It's also the headline on the main article linked, which I also wrote, so I'm your source of nefarious clickbait for the day. I'm really sorry if the headline brought up traumatic associations with 9/11 for you. Clearly I was not anticipating that, and wasn't intending it. In general I try not to go over the top with headlines, promise! But their function is to make a (hopefully) nuanced, detailed article enticing in as few words as possible. And I actually do agree that war metaphors are used too often in the business, sports, and political press. Guess I should remind myself of that next time. :)

Comment Re:What is it with curtwoodward? (Score 1) 66

Suppose I can take a crack at this one! I not only posted this article, I am its author. (I'm using the singular because I can't tell which is the second main-page posting in the past few days that touches this topic). **TL;DR I'm great! Nothing's "with me," how are you tho you seem mad :(** While I can't quibble with the way you felt the article was constructed or intended - your experience is authentically yours and I respect that - I certainly don't agree with the analysis that this rental-car startup piece was highly biased and driven by an agenda that seeks to make government into an evil, illegitimate actor. The narrative of the piece roughly flows this way: One rental car startup broke the rules, and got shut down. They decided to run and fight. Another startup doing something similar decided to play by the rules and get the proper approvals. These two companies are part of a trendy sector, which has seen a lot of this battling with local regulators. But now, as they grow up, some of them appear to be playing nice and acting as reasoned, pragmatic businesses rather than striking the libertarian hero pose. The Uber mention therein is mostly a side note. This article doesn't really have much to do with Uber specifically.

Submission + - How Airports Became Ground Zero in the Battle for Peer-to-Peer Car Rentals

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: Even in libertarian-infused Silicon Valley, playing nice with the government can be a smart move. That's the attitude at RelayRides, a peer-to-peer car rental service that plans to expand at airports by getting permission first. On the other side is FlightCar, a competitor that would rather fight the power in court. The next couple of years should tell us which approach is smarter.

Submission + - A New Frontier for the Sharing Economy, Hiding in 170M New York Cab Rides

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: Wanna share a cab? Despite all of the powerful communications devices in millions of pockets and purses, that's still the quickest way to split a fare in a big city. Researchers at MIT's Sensable City Lab say the system's overdue for an upgrade. They mapped all of the taxi rides in New York City in 2011, more than 170 million trips made by more than 13,500 cabs. By comparing the GPS coordinates of the pickup and drop-off locations with the timestamps of those rides, they figured it's possible to reduce cab miles by 40 percent if just a fraction of cab passengers were willing to add a few minutes to their trip and double up with someone else. You can play with the data yourself at HubCab.

Submission + - How the Carriers Tried, and Failed, to Build WhatsApp Competitors

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: One day after Facebook announced it was dropping up to $19 billion on WhatsApp, wireless carriers were busy trumpeting their own plans to build Internet-based communication apps. There's just one problem with that me-too chorus: Network operators have already tried to build their own "over the top" messaging apps, and those efforts haven't really gone anywhere. Just ask the guy who ran T-Mobile's Bobsled, the only serious attempt by a U.S. carrier to build a competing app. It gained about 3 million active users, but was quietly sold last year.

Submission + - Merlin's Magic: The Inside Story of the First, Best Mobile Game

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: Long before Steve Jobs kicked off the modern mobile gaming revolution with the iPhone, a Harvard astrophysicist got kids obsessed with chasing electronic lights and sounds with their fingers. Bob Doyle was the inventor behind Merlin, and built the early versions with his wife and brother-in-law. As the more sophisticated cousin of raw memory game Simon, Merlin offered games like blackjack, tic-tac-toe, and even an early music program. Doyle, now 77, got 5 percent royalties on each sale, money that paid for the rest of his projects over the years.

Submission + - What Was Behind the Sudden Spike in Indonesian Internet Attacks?

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: In the second quarter of 2013, Internet traffic-routing specialists at Akamai noticed something unusual: The amount of attack traffic originating from Indonesian IP addresses had jumped significantly, making that country the world's top source of attack traffic. But three months later, it dropped off just as quick, putting Indonesia back at No. 2 behind usual leader China. Akamai doesn't offer any speculation why this might have happened, but it's interesting to note that Indonesian attacks target the WWW and SSL ports far more than malicious traffic routed from other countries.

Submission + - Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft & More Settle Patent Lawsuits with Boston

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: Boston University hadn't been very aggressive with intellectual property lawsuits in the past. But that changed in 2012, when the school began suing the biggest names in consumer tech, alleging infringement of a patent on blue LEDs — a patent that, no coincidence, is set to expire at the end of 2014. As of today, about 25 big tech names have now settled the lawsuits, using "defensive" patent firm RPX. A dozen or so more defendants are probably headed that way. And BU is no longer a quiet patent holder.

Submission + - Inside Tony Hsieh's quiet plan to bankroll hardware startups

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: Tony Hsieh made a fortune turning Zappos into a customer service-obsessed online shoe store. But as an investor, his newest obsession is ... robots? Welcome to the hardware boom, where startups making connected gadgets, smart vehicles, and drones are catching investors' eyes. A combination of cheaper components and crowdfunded pre-orders are behind the surge. But as the woman running Hsieh's hardware investments can tell you, getting those grand plans actually built overseas is the hard part.

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