Nintendo president Iwata dead of cancer at 55
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, who oversaw some of the gaming giant’s biggest successes but also painful failures in his 13-year tenure, died Saturday after battling bile duct cancer. During his long run at the Nintendo’s helm, the gaming industry transitioned from an emphasis on dedicated consoles and PCs to mobile devices, a move that the company was slow to embrace. Just four months ago, though, Iwata announced a partnership to bring iconic Nintendo characters to smart devices with Tokyo-based mobile content company DeNA.
China stays on top in latest supercomputer ranking
A supercomputer developed by China’s National Defense University remains the fastest publically known computer in the world in the latest edition of the closely followed Top 500 supercomputer ranking published on Monday. The Tianhe-2 computer, with its maximum achieved performance of 33,863 teraflops per second, is almost twice as fast as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Cray Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Facebook in talks to add music videos to feeds
Facebook may be going up against YouTube—but not Apple Music. On Friday it denied reports that it’s planning a music streaming service, but the New York Times writes that it’s in talks with record companies to license music videos so they can be included in news feeds.
While Internet voting remains too insecure, experts see a way forward
A push to allow Internet voting in elections is growing stronger along with advances in the underlying technology, but systems are not yet secure enough to use with relative certainty that the vote counts will be accurate, according to a new report commissioned by the U.S. Vote Foundation. Election officials considering Internet voting must be ready to build an end-to-end verifiable Internet voting system, that would allow voters to check that the system recorded their votes correctly, to check that it included their votes in the final tally and to double-check the announced outcome of the election.
Reddit chief Pao steps down amid protests
The interim CEO of Reddit who had tried to bring some civility to the often raucous and sometimes abusive online community has lost her battle as hundreds of thousands of site users called for her head in protests over the firing of a popular employee. Ellen Pao stepped down on Friday; Steve Huffman, Reddit’s co-founder and original chief executive, will take over for the time being.
Cable company aims new deal at cord-cutters
With the near-monopoly cable television business under threat as people increasingly choose to watch video entertainment on mobile devices and laptops, at least one of the industry’s giants is trying to extract some cash from cord-cutters. Comcast is offering its ISP customers in select U.S. market an online streaming bundle for $15 per month, that includes some broadcast channels and HBO, the New York Times reports. The deal isn’t particularly compelling, given that HBO is offering its own streaming service at the same price and broadcast channels can be streamed to mobiles using an inexpensive device.
Privacy advocates worry about ‘always on’ surveillance in the connected home
The Electronic Privacy Information Center is targeting tech vendors selling products that sense sounds and movement, asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to investigate whether devices like Amazon Echo and Google’s Nest Cam violate federal wiretap and state privacy laws. Among the questions that EPIC wants answered: Do the products store people’s communications and take measures to protect the recorded data? And where is the data held?
US trade regulator checks out Apple’s cut from rival streaming apps
With Apple’s own music streaming service now launched, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is checking into whether it’s legal for Apple to take a 30 percent cut from the in-app sales of rival music streamers that are made via its App Store platform, Reuters reports. Sources tell the news agency that a formal investigation hasn’t begun, but the question of whether Apple’s moves violate antitrust law are being explored.
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At Amazon’s AWS Summit in New York, Network World sat down with Amazon CTO Werner Vogels to discuss the latest cloud developments.
One last thing
That guy in your office who still wears his mobile phone on a belt clip? It may be a retro fashion statement, or he may know something that you don’t know about cell phone radiation.