Tag: golf

HP splits again, as Hewlett Packard Enterprise spins off IT services

In 2014, Hewlett-Packard announced that it was splitting into two separate companies: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, selling servers and enterprise services, and HP Inc, selling PCs and printers. That split completed last year at the cost of more than 30,000 jobs . In a surprise announcement today, the company is about to embark on a second split: Hewlett Packard Enterprise is spinning off its IT services business. The low-margin outsourced IT services business, which HP got into with its $14 billion acquisition of EDS in 2008, is to be merged with Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) to create a new company currently known only as SpinCo. HPE will own half of the new company, HPE CEO Meg Whitman will be on the new company’s board, and HPE and CSC will each nominate half of the board members. CSC’s current CEO, Mike Lawrie, will become CEO of the new company. HPE says that the deal will save around $1 billion in operating costs. HPE shareholders will own shares in both companies, owning half of the combined company, with their stake valued at around $4.5 billion. They’ll also receive a $1.5 billion cash dividend. Additionally, the merger will see some $2.5 billion in debt moved to SpinCo’s books. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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HP splits again, as Hewlett Packard Enterprise spins off IT services

1.5 billion-year-old fossils reveal organisms of unusual size

Just a couple of 1.56 billion-year-old fossils from southern China. (credit: Maoyan Zhu) The Cambrian “explosion” of life around 540 million years ago is one heck of a story, in which a huge variety of animal body plans first appear in the fossil record. But the harder we look, the more interesting and incredible the Cambrian prequels become. Now, there’s a report of organisms big enough to be easily visible yet dating back to more than 1.5 billion years ago. The fuse to the Cambrian bomb was quite long and, at the very least, had some firecrackers tied to it. Single-celled eukaryotes, organisms with a nucleus and other complex internal structures, joined the bacteria and archaea around 1.5 billion years before the Cambrian. About 60 million years before the start of the Cambrian, a considerable batch of complex organisms appeared, although their relationships to Cambrian life are contentious. The history of multi-cellular eukaryotes in between is hard to piece together, as extraordinary luck is needed to preserve evidence of their soft cell bodies for us to find. We have a couple examples of tiny multi-cellular organisms that may have been eukaryotes, but a new discovery from a team led by Shixing Zhu of the China Geological survey adds a big one to the family. The long, flat fossils they found in 1.56 billion-year-old rocks were up to a whopping 30 centimeters long and 8 centimeters wide. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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1.5 billion-year-old fossils reveal organisms of unusual size

This 1996 Sega training video is the most ‘90s thing you’ll see this week

This internal Sega video for testers is a wonderful snapshot of the ’90s. If you’ve ever wondered what Sega was like at the height of its game-making powers, wonder no more. A staff video from the Sega vaults—made in 1996, the same year that the Sony PlayStation would begin to take over the world—has been released by the production company behind it, Green Mill Filmworks . Not only is the video a fascinating behind-the scenes look at game development and game testing, it is also, without doubt, the most ’90s thing I’ve ever seen. Even excluding the baggy clothes, questionable hair cuts, and horrifying denim, the desks of game testers interviewed—many of whom said they worked up to 90 hours a week squashing bugs—are littered with ’90s paraphernalia. My personal favourite, aside from the multiple appearances of the obligatory (for the ’90s at least) Jurassic Park merchandise, is the spinning holographic disk that appears 13 minutes in. I had one of those as a kid, and while I still don’t quite understand what the appeal was, they were all the rage at school, even over here in the UK. Of course, there’s lots of Sega tech on show too, with testers having access to the Mega Drive (Genesis to our US friends), 32X, Sega CD, Game Gear, Saturn, and even the short-lived Sega Pico, a laptop-like educational system for kids that was powered by Genesis hardware. Each tester was also issued with development cartridges—which you can see being loaded up with memory chips by hand around 18 minutes in—before having to sit and play the game relentlessly, using a VHS recorder (yes really) to record gameplay and identify when and how bugs appeared. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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This 1996 Sega training video is the most ‘90s thing you’ll see this week

Uber to begin testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh

(credit: Uber) One day, the Uber that comes to fetch you might not have anyone in the driver’s seat. On Thursday, Uber announced that it will begin testing an autonomous Ford Fusion hybrid on the streets of Pittsburgh, home to Uber’s Advanced Technology Center. Drivers in Pittsburgh should have no problem spotting the research vehicle—it’s carrying an array of sensors on its roof that includes a radar, lidar, and cameras. The Uber test car will actually be mapping its surroundings in addition to testing out autonomous driving—although there will be a human operator in the driver’s seat at all times to take over at a moment’s notice. We’ve known for some time that Uber has had an interest in autonomous vehicles. In the past, the company had been working with Google, but that relationship apparently deteriorated last year . It’s not the only ride-sharing service looking to ditch the human aspect, either. In January, we reported that General Motors invested $500 million in Lyft with the goal of developing a network of self-driving taxis. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Uber to begin testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh

Verizon’s corrupt data to blame for weeks-long outages, Frontier says

It’s been seven weeks since Frontier completed a purchase  of Verizon’s fiber and copper networks in California, Florida, and Texas, and the company is finally explaining why so many former Verizon customers have been hit by service outages. Bad data from Verizon is the culprit, Frontier West Region President Melinda White told lawmakers in California yesterday during a nearly-two-hour hearing held by the State Assembly’s Utilities & Commerce Committee. Corrupted data prevented Frontier’s network from communicating properly with equipment at customers’ homes, making it impossible to provision service to everyone, she said. Frontier is providing bill credits to customers who lost service. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon’s corrupt data to blame for weeks-long outages, Frontier says

“Mega Cable” is here, as Charter finalizes purchase of TWC

(credit: Cole Marshall ) Charter Communications today said it has closed its acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks following approvals from the Federal Communications Commission and regulators in California , the final state that had to sign off on the deal. Charter has nearly quadrupled in size as a result of the transactions, going from 6.8 million customers to about 25.4 million in 41 states, second in the US after Comcast’s 28 million. The merger drew opposition from some advocacy groups, including one that took to calling the new Charter ” Mega Cable .” The cost of the acquisitions was originally expected to be about $67.1 billion, though Charter will reportedly  end up paying a bit more than that. Charter’s announcement today  said, “The completion of the transactions will drive investment into the combined entity’s advanced broadband network, resulting in faster broadband speeds, better video products, more affordable phone service, and more competition for consumers and businesses.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Mega Cable” is here, as Charter finalizes purchase of TWC

Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)

This should become a thing of the past. (credit: Microsoft ) Anyone who’s installed Windows 7 any time in the last, oh, five years or so probably didn’t enjoy the experience very much. Service Pack 1 for the operating system was released in 2011, meaning that a fresh install has five years of individual patches to download and install. Typically, this means multiple trips to Windows Update and multiple reboots in order to get the system fully up-to-date, and it is a process that is at best tedious, typically leading one to wonder why, at the very least, it cannot pull down all the updates at once and apply them with just a single reboot. The answer to that particular question will, unfortunately, remain a mystery, but Microsoft did today announce a change that will greatly reduce the pain of this process. The company has published a “convenience rollup” for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (and Windows Server 2008 R2), which in a single package contains all the updates, both security and non-security, released since the Service Pack, up through April 2016. Installing the rollup will perform five years of patching in one shot. In other words, it performs a very similar role to what Windows 7 Service Pack 2 would have done, if only Windows 7 Service Pack 2 were to exist. It’s not quite the same as a Service Pack—it still requires Service Pack 1 to be installed, and the system will still report that it is running Service Pack 1—but for most intents and purposes, that won’t matter. Microsoft will also support injecting this rollup into Windows 7 Service Pack 1 system images and install media. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)

iOS 9.3.2 is here, fixes iPhone SE Bluetooth problems and other bugs

(credit: Andrew Cunningham) Apple has just released iOS 9.3.2, a minor update to iOS 9 that fixes a handful of minor bugs. The most significant fix is related to the iPhone SE, which ” could experience audio quality issues ” when paired to Bluetooth headsets. The full release notes are below: Fixes an issue where some Bluetooth accessories could experience audio quality issues when paired to the iPhone SE Fixes an issue where looking up dictionary definitions could fail Addresses an issue that prevented typing email addresses when using the Japanese Kana keyboard in Mail and Messages Fixes an issue for VoiceOver users using the Alex voice, where the device switches to a different voice to announce punctuation or spaces Fixes an issue that prevented MDM servers from installing Custom B2B apps All of these fixes are for minor edge cases that affect only small fractions of the iOS userbase—major development on iOS 9 stopped with iOS 9.3 , at which point Apple presumably shifted its focus to the new version of iOS that we’ll see at WWDC next month. The update is available for all devices that support iOS 9, including the iPhone 4S and newer; iPad 2 and newer; all iPad Minis and iPad Pros; and the fifth- and sixth-generation iPod Touches. Apple also released minor updates for its other iOS-derived platforms, the Apple Watch and the fourth-generation Apple TV. The release notes for watchOS 2.2.1 and tvOS 9.2.1 don’t name any specific fixes, but if you want the latest “bug fixes and security updates” you can download both of them now. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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iOS 9.3.2 is here, fixes iPhone SE Bluetooth problems and other bugs

OS X 10.11.5 and iTunes 12.4 updates bring security and usability fixes

Enlarge / iTunes 12.4. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Apple today released OS X 10.11.5, the fifth major update to OS X El Capitan since it was released last September. The company also released iTunes 12.4, a minor update that tweaks the user interface in an effort to simplify it. The El Capitan update doesn’t change much. There are quite a few security fixes  and a few tweaks related to enterprise usage , but little in the way of user-visible changes. iTunes 12.4 is more noticeable change. It doesn’t fix the core problem with iTunes—that having one program to handle local music, streamed music from Apple Music, TV and movie purchases, podcasts, and iOS device backups and administration makes for lots of clutter and confusion—but it does present a marginally more streamlined version of the app everyone loves to hate. The top navigation bar has had several buttons removed, and the app uses a persistent sidebar instead of multiple drop-down menus to let you view your media. iTunes versions of yore also made heavier use of sidebars for navigation—sometimes the old ways really are best. Finally, the back and forward buttons now let you “navigate between your Library, Apple Music, iTunes Store, and more.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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OS X 10.11.5 and iTunes 12.4 updates bring security and usability fixes

Tummy problems? Just swallow this stomach-repairing origami robot made of meat

(credit: Melanie Gonick/MIT ) A chunk of meat that bursts open once eaten and unleashes a robot that crawls around inside of your stomach sounds like something from a horror movie. But the real-life stomach-roaming meat robot actually means no harm—on the contrary, it was designed to doctor your stomach troubles from the inside. On Thursday, researchers at MIT revealed the origami meat robot that they designed to patch stomach wounds, deliver medicine, and remove dangerous foreign objects that patients may have accidentally swallowed. In early simulations with pig esophagus and gut tissue, the robot traveled down to the stomach in an ice capsule that melted along the way. Once there, the robot unfolded and could be steered around the stomach using external magnets. In a demonstration video provided by MIT News , the researchers show that the robot can move a button battery in their simulation stomach. The researchers presented their robot this week at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation. “It’s really exciting to see our small origami robots doing something with potential important applications to health care,” said Daniela Rus, lead researcher on the study and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tummy problems? Just swallow this stomach-repairing origami robot made of meat