Qualcomm hit with antitrust probe in Europe
Qualcomm is under investigation by the European Union’s antitrust authority, which suspects the company of abusing its dominant position in the market for 3G and 4G chipsets used in smartphones and tablets. The company settled similar charges in China earlier this year. In this case, the European Commission is looking into whether the company broke antitrust rules by offering financial incentives to phone manufacturers if they made it their primary chipset supplier, and whether it sold below cost to force competitors out of the market.
Intel’s latest plans slow down Moore’s Law
The brisk pace of chip performance improvements that’s been codified as Moore’s Law is slowing down, as Intel revealed on Wednesday that it won’t move to a 10-nanometer manufacturing process until 2017. To make up for the delay in introducing significantly smaller, faster chips, Intel has added a new chip design to its roadmap that will appear in the second half of next year, manufactured on its current 14-nanometer process.
International law enforcement effort shuts down hacking forum
Law enforcement agencies from 20 countries working together shut down a major computer hacking forum, and U.S. officials filed criminal charges against a dozen people associated with the website. Darkode.com on Wednesday displayed a message saying the site and domain had been seized by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies; it allowed hackers and other cybercriminals to sell, trade and share information and tools related to illegal computer hacking, the agencies alleged.
Peeved over poor sound quality, Neil Young pulls music from streaming services
Veteran rocker Neil Young has had it with poor quality audio compression on online music streaming services, and is taking his tunes off the services, he told fans via his Facebook page on Wednesday. “I don’t need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution. I don’t feel right allowing this to be sold to my fans,” he wrote.
All the online world’s a mall—or soon will be, thanks to Google and Facebook
It’s all about shopping. Google finally shared some details about its much-rumored “buy” button on Wednesday, which makes it easy for online searchers to make a purchase directly from a Google search results page. And Facebook said it’s testing e-commerce within its business-oriented Facebook Pages, turning what had been a way for brands to connect with customers on the social network into online storefronts.
Uber running up fines as it fails to comply with California deal
Uber isn’t just running into trouble in countries where there’s no sympathy for its disruptive business model: It can’t seem to get along with government on its home turf in California either. State regulators have fined it more than US$7 million for failing to hand over complete data on its operations, as competitors have done, so that the public utilities commission can assess the impact of the companies’ operations.
SAP gives SQL Anywhere a new IoT injection
SAP’s SQL Anywhere has long served as an embeddable database option for mobile devices, and now the company has given it a refresh that will help it play a role in the Internet of Things ecosystem. On Wednesday SAP unveiled a new version of the software that includes new remote data-synchronization capabilities and other features designed to help securely move data between the enterprise and remote locations such as retail stores, restaurants, vending machines and mines.
Patch Tuesday marked the end of the road for Windows Server 2003
Anyone still running applications on Windows Server 2003 had better make plans to isolate them while migrating them to another platform: With this month’s Patch Tuesday round of security fixes, Microsoft has ended its support for the operating system. “For anyone who still runs Windows 2003, I hope it is where no one can access it, and they are working on a project to replace those servers,” said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer for IT security firm Qualys.
Watch now
NASA unveiled the most detailed image ever of Pluto at a news conference on Wednesday, when it showed off the first close-up picture taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.
One last thing
Is BYOD fading away? A new study says that the trend is slowing in U.S. corporations.