Yahoo will cut 15 percent of its workforce and close some online services in a major turnaround plan announced Tuesday. The company plans to double down on search, Mail and Tumblr in hopes of attracting new users, and at the same time close some digital magazines as well as services like Games and Smart TV. After the job cuts, Yahoo will have a global workforce of about 9,000 employees -- 40 percent smaller than it was in 2012, it said. "This is a strong plan calling for bold shifts in products and in resources," CEO Marissa Mayer said in a statement. The goal is to cut $400 million from Yahoo's expenses by the end of 2016. Yahoo will also explore selling off "non-strategic assets" that it said could raise it $1 billion in cash.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has seized tens of thousands of hoverboards in the last month in a crack down on a former hot holiday gift that’s been held responsible for several home fires. The seizures have happened at border crossings and customs warehouses across the U.S. and mirror a high-profile raid on the booth of a Chinese hoverboard manufacturer at January’s CES in Las Vegas. The devices, which don’t hover but transport a rider balanced on two wheels, are generally being held on charges of trademark infringement. One of the biggest seizures so far happened in January in the Chicago area, when CBP agents intercepted over 16,000 of the devices worth millions of dollars.
Microsoft stepped up efforts to expand the reach of its Yammer work social network—and better compete with other workplace collaboration tools— The service will start rolling out to users in waves. The automatic activation will allow businesses to quickly spin up online communities for their workers. Microsoft will also let people sign in to Yammer with the same username and password they use to access all of their other Office 365 apps and services. System administrators will however have the ability to prevent users from accessing Yammer should they wish.
The potential for the power cords on some Microsoft Surface Pro tablets to cause fire and electric shock has led to a recall. The AC power cords being recalled were sold with the Microsoft Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2 and Surface Pro 3 computers before March 15, 2015, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said on its The recall also covers the power supply units with AC power cords sold as accessories before March 15, 2015. Close to 2.25 million AC power cords in the U.S. are being recalled by Microsoft. The company will issue a free replacement. The CPSC noted that close to 190,000 power cords were also sold in Canada.
Seagate is facing a class action lawsuit over its 3TB consumer hard drives, which by some accounts have suffered unusually high failure rates. The
Some of the more popular sports wearables don’t just let you track your fitness, they let other people track you. That’s what Canadian researchers found when they studied fitness-tracking devices from eight manufacturers, along with their companion mobile apps. All the devices studied except for the Apple Watch transmitted a persistent, unique Bluetooth identifier, allowing them to be tracked by the beacons increasingly being used by retail stores and shopping malls to recognize and profile their customers. The revealing devices, the Basis Peak, Fitbit Charge HR, Garmin Vivosmart, Jawbone Up 2, Mio Fuse, Withings Pulse O2 and Xiaomi Mi Band, all make it possible for their wearers to be tracked using Bluetooth even when the device is not paired with or connected to a smartphone, the researchers said. Only the Apple device used a feature of the Bluetooth LE standard to generate changing MAC addresses to prevent tracking.
Verizon is still the LTE king among U.S. mobile carriers, but T-Mobile wants to be the heir apparent. That’s the main takeaway from the latest OpenSignal’s report pulls data from 180,000 people nationwide who have the company’s mobile app installed on their smartphone. OpenSignal’s data says that T-Mobile’s 4G coverage is now at 81 percent. That means that whenever users were connected, T-Mobile’s 4G customers received a 4G signal 81.2 percent of the time. Verizon is still further ahead of T-Mobile at 86.7 percent, but AT&T’s coverage is just within reach at 82.6 percent.
Dish Network is ready to save its subscribers from scheduling conflicts with the new Hopper 3 DVR, which supports up to 16 recordings at once. After The Hopper 3 has 16 tuners and can support video on up to seven TVs at the same time through wired or wireless “Joey” companion boxes. (Each of those boxes costs an additional $7 per month, including a new 4K Joey that’s also launching now.)
I’ve fought an assassin. I’ve saved an orcish princess. I’ve clambered through overflowing sewers. I’ve died from drinking too much river water, and died again from contracting plague. I’ve fought monsters, eaten rations, and rested at more inns than I’d care to recall. I’ve even—don’t tell anyone—thrown rocks at a little girl in exchange for an apple. (It wasn’t one of my prouder moments.) This is
Google has patched thirteen new vulnerabilities in Android, two of which could allow attackers to take control of Android devices located on the same Wi-Fi network, if the devices have Broadcom chips. The two critical vulnerabilities are located in the Broadcom Wi-Fi driver and can be exploited by sending specially crafted wireless control packets to the affected devices. These messages could corrupt the kernel’s memory and allow for the execution of arbitrary code in the kernel—the highest privileged area of the operating system. These flaws are critical because the attack doesn’t require any user interaction, can be exploited remotely and can lead to a complete device compromise.
Windows 10’s
If you want to stream the big game to your Android phone, tablet, TV, or Chromecast, here's what you need to do.
If Microsoft’s Lumia smartphone line died, the company wouldn’t despair. By all indications, it’s already preparing for a future where Windows phones could be reborn as business productivity devices, or even just as a collection of mobile apps. Let’s be clear: Microsoft does not
Moving a TV from your living room to your patio to watch the big game is one thing; installing it there permanently—unprotected from rain, snow, insect infestation, and other hazards—is something few of us would risk. But that’s just what Sunbrite’s SB-4670HD is designed for. This 46-inch, 1080p display can be installed and operated in outdoor locations where it’s completely exposed to the elements. Sunbrite starts with a third-party public information display (PID), an LED-backlit LCD panel that delivers a higher level of brightness to compensate for the fact that it will be installed outdoors, where it will compete with the much stronger ambient light of the sun during daylight hours. The company says it sources its panels from a variety of manufacturers. It then wraps the panel in an outer skin that gives the finished product an IP55 rating. IP stands for ingress prevention, and the first digit indicates how strong the enclosure is at preventing solid objects from getting inside. The second digit rates the level of protection against liquids.
Nokia is taking the principle of "united we stand" to the Internet of Things with a platform that can harness systems from multiple vendors for network-wide security. The company's NetGuard Security Management Center is designed to monitor and control all the security components on a network. This will help carriers and other IoT service providers take a more holistic approach to preventing and responding to attacks. Nokia will sell it to users of any brand of network. The company, once heavily invested in handsets, is now overwhelmingly a mobile infrastructure maker and is in the process of
Microsoft released cumulative update 10586.71 for Windows 10 Mobile beta testers on Monday, which Microsoft executives said prepares the OS for a broad deployment to older phones. Officially, Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview Build 10586.71 contains nothing but bug fixes, including performance and reliability improvements, upgrades to the Edge browser, and power improvements as well, said Gabe Aul, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Engineering Systems Team, in a