65655357
submission
pacopico writes:
A few years ago, Steve Ballmer was describing Linux as a "cancer." Now, in an interview with Businessweek, he's admitting for the first time that Microsoft's nasty FUD campaign against Linux and open-source software was misplaced. "Linux didn’t end up being the broadside we expected," Ballmer says. The statement discounts the effect Linux had on Microsoft's server business but is at least part of a series of mea culpas Ballmer is making as he tries to figure out what to do next. Ballmer has been discussing his takes on other topics like Apple and Microsoft's marketing campaigns while teaching an MBA course at Stanford.
64600643
submission
pacopico writes:
Things have gotten downright nasty between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin, Bezos's rocket company, has partnered with United Launch Alliance to make engines for future rockets. The deal, as combines the two mortal enemies of SpaceX and heats up the race to build reusable rockets. NBC has a story in which Musk welcomes the coming battle while talking to the author of his upcoming biography. "Competitors ganging up against you is the sincerest form of flattery," Musk said.
64600475
submission
pacopico writes:
What appears to be the first production ARM server in the wild has come from an unexpected place. According to Businessweek, a start-up called Cynny has built its own ARM-based server from scratch using a chip from Marvell. The server is smaller than a credit card, and Cynny is using the hardware to run its own file-sharing service. Cynny has filled three data centers in the U.S. and Europe with its systems but does not seem to be selling the hardware on its own.
64149815
submission
pacopico writes:
Intellectual Ventures, the world's most infamous patent troll, has changed its tune — maybe. According to a story in Businessweek, the company has started turning a number of its ideas into products, ranging from hydration sensors to waterless washing machines and self-healing concrete. The story reveals some new tidbits about IV, including that it pays inventors $17,000 per idea, has a new start-up fund and that one of its cofounders got tossed out of school for hacking. IV is obvisouly trying to improve its reputation, but plenty of skeptics remain who think this is just a ruse meant to draw attention away from its patent lawsuits.
61396295
submission
pacopico writes:
Founded in 2009, Andreessen Horowitz has ended up as the most well regarded venture captial firm in all the land in record time. Its founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz took start-up marketing and engineering and sales help to a new level. The other big VC shops have since moved to copy it. But, as Businessweek reports, the firm is facing a backlash for the first time based largely on the tweetstorms of Andreessen. Slate, Valleyway, the Awl and others have been critical of Andreessen's technology cheerleading at a time when Silicon Valley is rubbing people in San Francisco and elsewhere the wrong way. In the story, Andreessen makes no apologies and says his message continues to resonate with the true believers.
61081097
submission
pacopico writes:
HP Labs is trying to make a comeback. According to Businessweek, HP is building something called The Machine. It's a type of server that will use memristors for memory and silicon photonics for interconnects and ship possibly by 2017 (good luck). As for The Machine's software, HP plans to build three open source operating systems, including a new one from scratch and its own versions of Linux and Android. The new computer is meant to solve a coming crisis due to limitations around DRAM and Flash. About three-quarters of HP Labs personnel are working on this project.
61049097
submission
pacopico writes:
The start-up Fatdoor launched this week with a remarkably ambitious mission. As Businessweek reports, it's combining a social network for neighborhoods with a smartphone app, a quadcopter drone and an autonomous food delivery bot. It's like all of Silicon Valley's favored things rolled up into one. The story questions whether the company has any real chance of creating unifying ties between all these products, but it should be fun watching it try.
61017355
submission
pacopico writes:
Russ Rive owns a company called SuperUber that builds all manner of crazy tech installations. As it happens, he's Elon Musk's cousin, and Musk has commissioned Rive to build a type of world projector at SpaceX that will reside in the company's lobby. According to a story in Businessweek, there will be a real-time projection of the Earth complete with live weather patterns and satellites going around it. Visitors will also be able to call up rocket launches and watch the rockets' flight path into space.
57550813
submission
pacopico writes:
Silicon Valley venture capitalists have not always been the first to back Elon Musk's super risky ideas. In fact, as Businessweek reports, a firm in Chicago called Valor Equity run by Antonio Gracias has been the quiet, major investor behind Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity. With Tesla and SolarCity's shares soaring, Valor is doing very well and has capitalized big time on Musk's success. Oddly, its next major move has nothing to do with technology but will be instead to take Dunkin' Donuts and Little Caesars to Mexico and China. The firm is looking to become the Auto Nation of food.
57300721
submission
pacopico writes:
Tesla's stock is up about 600 percent over the past year, and there's one guy in Chicago who is making a killing on the bull run. His name is Antonio Gracias, and he runs a private equity firm called Valor. It put some of the first money into Tesla and then SpaceX and was more willing than Silicon Valley venture capitalists to back Elon Musk's risky companies. Now, Valor has gotten deep into restaurants and is buying a ton of Dunkin' Donuts in California, Mexico and China. It's your typical rockets to donuts tale.
57120189
submission
pacopico writes:
Spikes Security has just come out with something it's calling the AirGap browser. According a report in Businessweek, it's basically a browser that runs in the data center with people getting compressed video streams of their activity sent to their computers. Click on something nasty, and nothing happens to your machine. The guy who started the company was Elon Musk's personal tech guru for about a decade and ran SpaceX's network.
57026973
submission
pacopico writes:
About 24 years ago, a tiny chip company came to life in a Cambridge, England barn. It was called ARM, and it looked quite unlike any other chip company that had come before it. Businessweek has just published something of an oral history on the weird things that took place to let ARM end up dominating the mobile revolution and rivaling Coke and McDonald's as the most prolific consumer product company on the planet. The story also looks at what ARM's new CEO needs to do not to mess things up.
55446569
submission
pacopico writes:
Since about 2006 or so, scientists have been talking up the idea of a $1,000 human genome. It was thought that would be the price that could make gene sequencing truly mainstream. Companies have tried and failed to hit this milestone in the past. But now Illumina says it has the equivalent of a DNA supercomputer that can pump out tens of thousands of $1,000 genomes per year. The company just unveiled the machine called the HiSeq X.
51817661
submission
pacopico writes:
A series of robberies in Silicon Valley have start-ups feeling nervous. According to this report in Businessweek, a couple of networking companies were burgled recently with attempts made to steal their source code. The fear is that virtual attacks have now turned physical and that espionage in the area is on the rise. As a result, companies are now doing more physical penetration testing, including one case in which a guy was mailed in a FedEx box in a bid to try and break into a start-up.
51677201
submission
pacopico writes:
With a new PUE score of 1.04, Facebook's Swedish data center has officially become the world's most efficient computing center. As Businessweek reports, the iron inside is made up of all Open Compute designs — including servers, storage and top of rack switches — that come from Asian ODMs. According to the venture capitalist Peter Levine hundreds of billions of dollars in data center purchases could swing toward the Facebook-style designs and put a world of hurt on companies like IBM, Dell, HP and Cisco — all of which are fighting back to varying degrees.
