Week 10: March 5, 2018 - March 11, 2018
Intel fights to enter the mobile game
While Broadcom was trying to buy Qualcomm, it seems like Intel will be trying to acquire Broadcom if the first deal comes through. Spending around $10 billion to enter and compete in the mobile SoC market, Intel gave up trying in 2016.
Qualcomm said it will consider a $160 billion from Broadcom for a buyout but this is no longer an option as President Trump with an executive order blocked the hostile takeover, claiming it might threaten the national security of the nation. Broadcom stated that they disagree with the decision and Qualcomm didn't respond to the order.
Alexa was laughing at you
In a not so serious news, a bug in Amazon's Alexa caused some Amazon Echo to start laughing without woken up by the user. Some users reported this bug back in February.
https://twitter.com/GavinHightower/status/967999257398702083
- GavinHightower
The fix involved change the command for Alexa to laugh from "Alexa laugh" to "Alexa can you laugh?" which will not so likely to bring false positives.
A new material to help with waste
A student from the University of Maryland, managed to create a type o wood without lignin which is the ingredient in wood that makes it brown and rigid. They named it Nanowood and it can be developed from fast-growing trees and be used as a cost-efficient insulation or replacement for other items such as styrofoam cups which takes hundreds of years to biodegrade. Other properties that make it a better material for some items is that it is much stronger (for example up to 30x stronger than styrofoam).
Coinbase stealing talents for expansion
Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange hired 2 talents this week to help them grow and expand.
First, they hired Emilie Choi who worked on LinkedIn for 8 years for the same position she had there. Vice president of corporate and business development. This is considered a move that will help Coinbase expand and maybe buy small companies to help them grow even faster.
Then, 3 days after this hire they also hired a former New York Stock Exchange executive, Eric Scro. His role will be strategic partnerships and enterprise clients. He will serve as Vice president of finance.
Binance posts bounty to help catch hackers
Binance is offering a $250,000 USD bounty to anyone that can provide information that will help with the arrest of the attempted hackers on March 7. They also allocated a sum of $10,000,000 USD in crypto for further bounty rewards in the future.
Binance reversed all transaction from the group that attempted to hack and seized all their founds. A clear and professional response to a threat can only help increase the trust in systems and cryptoexchanges that work without hiding security problems from their customers.
Mt. Gox sold almost half a billion worth of bitcoins
Mt. Gox, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange sold almost half a billion worth of bitcoins between December 2017 and February 2018. Mt. Gox trustee has sold 35,841 BTC and 34,008 BCH via a bitcoin exchange speculated to be Kraken. Reddit user riverflop mapped the exact times those sums were sold and how they affected the overall price of Bitcoin.
It has now enough to pay the amount owed to claimants ($414M) and since February 5th no coins from these addresses have been moved.
That is all for this week's Bits in Technology. Feel free to comment any of the news in the comments. See you all next week.
Have a great week! - Chris Myll
