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Atari acquires the rights to over 100 PC and console classics
They feature 80s and 90s hits.
iOS 16 will be available on September 12th
Apple announced Wednesday that iOS 16 will be available as a free download beginning September 12th,
Quibi will transfer its video tech to another company to settle lawsuit
The Turnstyle feature let users stream short-form videos in either portrait or landscape mode.
The UK is investigating NVIDIA's acquisition of ARM
The UK’s competition regulator has launched an investigation into NVIDIA’s $40 billion acquisition of ARM.
There's some serious Cooking Mama drama going on right now
The game’s license holder and publisher have taken to the internet to squabble over exactly who has control over the title.
‘Dreams’ player forced to remove his fan-made Mario assets
Sony's long-awaited Dreams arrived earlier this year, a LittleBigPlanet-esque wonderland in which players can build almost any kind of world they can imagine -- but only if it doesn't infringe on copyright, apparently. According to Dreams content creator @Piece_of_Craft, "a big video game company" has come after him for his use of Nintendo's Super Mario character on the platform.
TiVo announces plans to merge with entertainment tech firm Xperi
TiVo is scrapping plans to split its product and licensing divisions. Instead, it's merging with the entertainment tech firm Xperi. The new, $3 billion company will take on the Xperi name, but it will continue to sell TiVo-branded products.
Apple, Amazon and Google unite to help create a universal smart home standard
Smart home devices are a godsend for the busy, the disorganized and the plain ol' lazy, but getting them up and running can still be a complicated pain in the backside. Some products work with others while others only work in specific ecosystems, so even deciding which devices to go for in the first place can be a hassle. But now, three of the biggest names in smart home tech are working together to simplify matters.
AMD will share its graphics technology with Samsung
AMD stole the spotlight at Computex 2019, where it shared details on its third generation Ryzen CPUs and first Navi GPUs. But that's not the only big news AMD has in store. Today, the company announced a multi-year partnership with Samsung, in which AMD will license its Radeon graphics IP for use in Samsung smartphones and other mobile applications.
Nine people charged with selling Samsung's curved display tech
Prosecutors in South Korea have indicted nine people and two companies for allegedly selling Samsung's curved-edge OLED display tech (which it uses in its flagship Galaxy phones) to a company in China. The CEO of Samsung supplier Toptec Co Ltd was among three people arrested over the scheme. Prosecutors say he and eight employees received about $13.8 million for the intellectual property.
Microsoft vows to let partner companies keep their patents
Microsoft has launched a new policy that means its tech customers will keep hold of any patent rights that come out of its partnerships. In a blog post, Microsoft president Brad Smith explained that the Shared Innovation Initiative is designed to reassure customers that the company won't use the knowledge gleaned from joint ventures to "enter their customer's market and compete against them."
BlackBerry sues Snap over map and messaging patents
Facebook isn't the only company facing a patent lawsuit filed by BlackBerry: the Canadian mobilemaker has also sued Snap for patent infringement. BlackBerry is accusing Snap of infringing on six of its patents issued between 2012 and 2014, two of which are also in its complaint against Facebook. According to the court documents Mashable found, those infringement claims affect Snap Map and the ephemeral app's messaging technology, which BlackBerry says copies the tech it uses for BBM. In BlackBerry's complaint against Facebook, it said it invented the core aspects of modern messaging, so it's not surprising that that particular aspect is also part of its lawsuit against Snap.
Netflix lands 'Deadpool' creator's comic universe
Netflix is pushing hard to stay relevant in the comic-based movie business, especially after Disney announced plans to shun the streaming service and make its own. Now, just a few months after Netflix's big acquisition of Mark Millar's comic publisher, Millarworld, the streaming company has landed a big splashy deal for Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld's Extreme Universe set of comic book characters.
Uber fires self-driving lead and focus of Waymo lawsuit
Uber has taken a stand in the current legal wrangling around its vice president of technology, Anthony Levandowski. According to The New York Times, the ride-sharing company has fired the former Google employee who came to Uber's own self-driving automobile division. Google sued Uber recently, claiming that Mr. Levandowski allegedly took some 14,000 documents containing research on LiDAR and other autonomous driving technology when he left Waymo.
Doppler Labs sues Bose over 'Hearphones' name and tech
When the Bose Hearphones first came out, we noted that they looked like Bose's QuietControl 30 with the technology of Doppler Labs' Here One earbuds. Apparently Doppler Labs also noticed the similarity in technology, look and name (it calls its product "Here Buds") and is taking its rival to court. As Business Insider noticed, it alleges that Bose took several meetings under the guise of forming a partnership, but instead used the secret information it learned to develop a similar product with a similar name.
Kansas duo sues IP mappers for putting them through 'digital hell'
Imagine the exact center of the United States, somewhere in the middle of rural Kansas. There lies 360 acres of farmland rented by the Arnolds, a couple and their two sons who moved there in 2011. Within the week, law enforcement showed up looking for a stolen vehicle, the first in a deluge of visits from local, state and federal forces investigating crimes. Why show up at their farm? Because the IP address mapping company MaxMind made those coordinates the default location for users when they don't know where they are in the US. Now the Arnolds have filed suit against them for all the trouble that comes with being the first place cops look when criminals try to mask their area.
Facebook hires U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal
Facebook is expanding its legal team -- perhaps just in time -- and its newest hire comes from behind the bench. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal will join the company in late June as its Deputy General Counsel, after serving in the North District of California since being appointed in December of 2010. The Recorder first reported the move, noting that Grewal pulled out of several cases involving Facebook in January. In his time on the bench he has ruled on cases involving the social network before, like this ruling on parents trying to access messages in their dead daughter's account, or another case over an outside developer's storage and use of customer data.
The After Math: Love is in the air
Scientists just confirmed the existence of gravitational waves -- actual ripples in the fabric of spacetime -- but who cares about unravelling the secrets of the universe, Valentine's Day is coming up. To pay respects to the most high holy of made-up bullshit holidays, here are seven of the most heart-string-tugging posts from the last week.
Bloomberg: Swatch is hoarding smartwatch patents
We've snarked at Swatch for waiting forever to release a smartwatch, only for the finished article to be a regular watch with an NFC chip beneath the dial. Bloomberg Business believes that the Swiss firm is playing the long game by quietly hoarding a pile of (173) patents related to the technology. The news agency has dug deep into the paperwork to learn that Swatch holds rights to plenty of useful concepts including proximity sensors and data-transmitting batteries. Sources claim that the watchmaker has enough IP in its back pocket to make a device on its own, unlike TAG Heuer, which had to partner with Intel.
Hacking Team helped Italian police to hijack internet addresses
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is used to route traffic across the Internet -- and it's a pretty old, creaky protocol that's open to abuse. Back in August 2014, an Italian web hosting company faked ownership of 256 IP addresses, under the direction of a special arm of Italy's Military Police and Hacking Team. The police were trying to use the latter's remote control system malware to monitor targets of interest, but certain IP addresses were unreachable as their true owners, Santrex, kept them locked down for criminal use. Then, when Santrex apparently went out of business, the police remained locked out of these addresses.
