But if Oculus is so great, then why do people seem so surprised that Facebook has acquired it?
Partly it’s that Oculus, despite its popularity among gamers and its buy-in from the tech community, is still a small start-up. (It got its start on Kickstarter, where, in a 2012 campaign that sought $250,000 in funding, it raised more than $2 million. It remains one of Kickstarter’s most successful campaigns.) And, furthermore, Oculus has been focused on what many have seen as a niche technology for a niche demographic—hard-core gamers
Category Archives: Business
‘What does ISP mean?’ – how government officials are flunking security challenges
Singer added that another US official about to negotiate cybersecurity with China asked him to explain what “ISP” meant. “That’s like going to negotiate with the Soviets and not knowing what ‘ICBM’ means. And I’ve had similar experiences with officials from the UK, China and Abu Dhabi.
At the G20 conference diplomats were spearfished by an email with a link to nude photos of former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and many clicked – downloading spyware onto their computers.
Is FirstNet Stalled?
I suspect there is an epic struggle going on within the Beltway for the control of FirstNet and its $7 billion in funding.
via Is FirstNet Stalled?.
How to prevent hidden cost of open source software
Following list contains criteria we use to evaluate whether we use an open source or not
- Is product sponsored by a company? It is a critical criterion if a product plays a critical role in your application and you do not have an alternative choice for it.
- Is open source license suitable for your product? It is illegal for you to deliver a commercial and closed source product include an open source library has a license is GPL
- Does open source product has good quality?
- Is open source product still be supported by adding new features, bug fix?
via How to prevent hidden cost of open source software – VietNam Software Outsourcing Service Company.
Grammar a bit bad but advice seems well grounded. All the above answers should be Yes.
WhatsApp, Bought by Facebook for $19 Billion, Promotes a Radical Anti-Corporate Message
The eye-popping price tag—about one-tenth the entire value of Facebook—is the shocker that’s drawn much media notice. But there’s another element to the story that is astounding: Koum and Acton have published a manifesto that radically critiques the foundation of modern capitalism—advertising—and denounces materialism. Facebook’s business model, of course, depends upon both.
Will Koum and Acton become part of the Borg they so eloquently decried? The first rule of Fight Club was “You do not talk about fight club.” The second rule was “You do not talk about fight club.” Now that Koum and Acton are billionaires and über-players on the tech scene, will they continue to spread their anti-consumerism, tech-is-for-the-people gospel? Will they change Facebook, or will Facebook change them?
Carrier WiFi’s Not Winning in Sports Arenas
Sports venues used to be a prime market for carrier WiFi deployments, until the business case started to get murky. Whereas carriers used to write off stadium deployments as the cost of doing business, now they are losing interest. And, if they are involved, most are opting for tried-and-true distributed antenna systems (DAS), rather than WiFi or small cell deployments.
via Carrier WiFi’s Not Winning in Sports Arenas | Light Reading.
Bitcoin Miners Building 10 Megawatt Data Center in Sweden
Bitcoin mining equipment company KnC Miner has begun construction on its new facility in Boden, about 10 miles down the road from Facebook’s server farm in Lulea. The data center is being built in a facility previously used as a helicopter hangar for the Swedish armed forces. It will be retrofitted to house thousands of custom Bitcoin mining rigs built by KnC Miner, one of a host of new vendors that has emerged to serve the growing market for Bitcoin hardware.
KnC Miner is based in Stockholm, Sweden and has established a leadership position in Bitcoin mining rigs powered by ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) to crunch data for creating and tracking bitcoins. The company says it has sold $75 million in hardware since June, with customers in 120 countries.
via Bitcoin Miners Building 10 Megawatt Data Center in Sweden.
Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M
This is in large part an artificial intelligence talent acquisition, and Google CEO Larry Page led the deal himself, sources said. According to online bios, Hassabis in particular is quite a talent, a child prodigy in chess who was later called “probably the best games player in history” by the Mind Sports Olympiad.
via Exclusive: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M | Re/code.
How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages
These secret conversations and agreements between some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley were first exposed in a Department of Justice antitrust investigation launched by the Obama Administration in 2010. That DOJ suit became the basis of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of over 100,000 tech employees whose wages were artificially lowered — an estimated $9 billion effectively stolen by the high-flying companies from their workers to pad company earnings — in the second half of the 2000s. Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied attempts by Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe to have the lawsuit tossed, and gave final approval for the class action suit to go forward. A jury trial date has been set for May 27 in San Jose, before US District Court judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the Samsung-Apple patent suit..
Ad blockers: A solution or a problem?
Existing users of ad blocking software may be a lost cause. Once consumers decide to block ads and experience the cleaner Web pages and faster load times that ad blocking delivers as it filters out bandwidth-hungry animations, video and other advertising content, they’re less likely to want to give it up.
But will mainstream consumers in the U.S. turn to ad blockers in a big way? “The numbers have not reached the point where publishers are panicked,” says Chapell. “But if those products were on 80% of computers, we’d be having a very different conversation.”