Qualcomm is reportedly in talks to buy NXP Semiconductor for about $30 billion in what could be a transformative deal for the San Diego wireless company. Citing unnamed sources familiar with talks, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the two companies are in discussions. A Qualcomm spokeswoman...
One is an entertainment giant famous for exacting tight control over its content. The other is a tech firm whose commitment to free speech has earned it a reputation as a hub for news and a haven for online harassment. Together, they make for a brow-raising pairing. But stranger things have happened...
The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit accusing a fast-growing Silicon Valley software company of systematically discriminating against Asian job applicants. Palantir Technologies was co-founded by prominent tech financier Peter Thiel, with backing from an investment arm of the CIA, and...
When Yahoo reported Thursday that hackers had breached its databases and gained access to users’ emails, dates of births, encrypted passwords and security answers, cybersecurity experts weren’t surprised. Cyberattacks are, after all, now par for the course, and no company is immune. But what struck...
Yahoo confirmed Thursday that at least 500 million user accounts had been affected by a massive breach. Here are some answers to basic questions that you may have about the breach. What information has been hacked? Yahoo's chief information security officer, Bob Lord, said in a blog post that account...
Yahoo Inc. suffered a data breach in 2014 that affected at least 500 million Yahoo user accounts, the company announced Thursday. The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet firm said the hacker is believed to be a “state-sponsored actor” and may have gained access to user information such as names, email...
LinkedIn has long been the social network of choice for people looking for a job. Now the strait-laced cousin of Facebook also wants to be the social network for people looking to keep the jobs they already have. On Thursday, the San Francisco firm announced LinkedIn Learning, a feature that offers...
An environmental group is accusing three major television manufacturers of misleading consumers and regulators about how much energy their high-definition screens devour and that sets from two of the companies are designed to draw less power during government testing than in ordinary use. The report...
After investing millions of dollars in education and opening their own private K-12 school this year, pediatrician Priscilla Chan and her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, announced Wednesday that they will invest $3 billion over the next decade to fight diseases. The funds will come...
Early on Monday, it seemed Samsung Electronics Co.’s smartphone problems had expanded to China, the world’s largest mobile market: Two people posted accounts on Chinese social media saying their Galaxy Note 7 handsets exploded over the weekend. But Samsung said its investigation into the first...
Good news for people who like funny dogs, sexy NFL quarterbacks and innovations pertaining to macaroni and cheese. Online publisher Defy Media, which attracts millions of young adults and teenagers to such goofy information, announced last week that it picked up $70 million from investors. And...
Long lines are already forming outside several Apple stores Friday morning as customers vie to be one of the first to get their hands on an iPhone 7. Photos on Twitter show crowds queuing inside malls in Orlando, Fla., outside stores in New York and a line forming in front of a San Francisco store...
The gig: Jacob Jaber, 29, is chief executive of Philz Coffee. Jaber took over the coffee business from his father — the “Phil” in Philz Coffee — in 2005, and expanded its footprint from the original coffee shop in San Francisco’s Mission District to more than 30 locations across California and...
U .S. regulators issued an official recall of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phone Thursday because of a risk of fire. Samsung Electronics Co. already voluntarily recalled the devices after a few dozen of them exploded or caught fire. That was out of about 2.5 million phones sold. Now the U.S. Consumer...
Parked outside a warehouse by the Allegheny River was Uber’s vision of the future: 14 Ford Fusions, each mounted with conspicuous cameras, antennae and sensors. A lumpy lidar unit, which uses light to map its surroundings, spun atop each car’s roof like a high-tech propeller hat. Stylish? Not...
Swipe, click, food. The ability to order food with the tap of a few buttons on a smartphone is becoming widespread — even fast-food companies are getting in on the action. But the technology — which in some cases tracks a customer's location and times food preparation accordingly — can vary widely....
Pandora Media Inc. will soon take on Spotify, Apple Music and others in an extremely competitive field by launching a $10 monthly streaming music service, and a cheaper version as well. The Oakland-based Internet radio company did not release details about the actual cost for the lower-priced service...
Samsung Electronics Co. plans to issue a software update for its recalled Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that will prevent them from overheating by limiting battery recharges to 60%. The front page of the Seoul Shinmun, a South Korean newspaper, carried a Samsung advertisement Tuesday announcing the...
More than 100 million people play “League of Legends” each month, making it the world's top PC game. But the milestone, reached sometime in the last year and announced Tuesday, does little to settle questions about developer Riot Games’ growth pace and when it might finally launch a second game....
Samsung Electronics Co. Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, the only son of its ailing chairman, was nominated Monday to join its board of directors. The announcement comes as the South Korean company grapples with a smartphone recall that has wiped out billions of dollars from its market value. Samsung...
Yelp Inc.'s star rating system does not make the San Francisco company liable for negative reviews posted on its site because it relies on material posted by users, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, dismissing a libel lawsuit filed against Yelp by the owner of a Washington state locksmith company....
HP Inc. is buying Samsung Electronics Co.’s printer business in a deal worth $1.05 billion. HP said Monday that it is the largest print acquisition in the Palo Alto company's history and that it will help it go from traditional copiers to multifunction printers. HP also said the deal will strengthen...
If you have a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, stop using it, federal safety regulators say. Samsung Electronics Co. halted sales of the phones last week after lithium-ion batteries in some of them exploded or caught fire, and on Friday, the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission urged owners...
Facebook Inc. has reversed its decision to remove posts featuring an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam. The change comes after the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph emerged at the center of a free speech fight in Norway. Protests started last month...
Two years ago, Apple Inc. executives made the case that anyone with an iPhone would be better off also owning the company’s new smartwatch. But as many gadget buyers remain unsure about the usefulness of high-tech timepieces, Apple this week pitched its second-edition watch to a much narrower audience....
Accused of doing too little to thwart discrimination on its short-term home rental platform, Airbnb announced policy changes Thursday that are intended to educate and punish hosts who don’t follow its rules and protect guests. In a 32-page report written by former American Civil Liberties Union...
Apple didn’t wow at its annual product event in San Francisco on Wednesday. No groundbreaking products, no last-minute surprises and nothing the rumor mill hadn’t already predicted. But what it did announce was enough to tide over investors and consumers, according to technology industry analysts....
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. will spin off software units in an $8.8-billion deal that it says will help it focus on faster-growing businesses. The Palo Alto, Calif., company said Wednesday that the spun-off software businesses — they include big data, security for big companies and IT operations...
When the Sony Walkman went on sale in 1979, music was stored on a cassette tape, power came from AA batteries and sound traveled through headphones plugged into a 3.5-mm audio jack. Nearly 40 years later, smartphones double as personal audio players, music is stored in the cloud and rechargeable...
Uber drivers who have banded together to take the ride-hailing company to court now may have to shift strategies and settle for smaller payouts than they had sought. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Wednesday that drivers who signed up with Uber in 2013 and 2014 must...
When the Sony Walkman went on sale in 1979, music was stored on a cassette tape, power came from AA batteries and sound traveled through headphones plugged into a 3.5-mm audio jack. Nearly 40 years later, smartphones double as personal audio players, music is stored in the cloud and rechargeable...
There’s nothing a new iPhone can’t fix. At least that’s been true in the past for Apple Inc., which has for years used its marquee product to smash sales records, renew consumer excitement and reinforce its place as the most valuable company in the world. But as Apple sales slumped this year for...
The gig: Jess Lee, 33, is the chief executive of the social e-commerce site, Polyvore. Unlike most CEOs, who are usually part of a company’s founding team or brought in specifically for the job, Lee was hired as Polyvore’s first product manager before being promoted to the top. In her eight years...
The rumor mill is in full swing for Apple’s impending iPhone announcement. The company’s phone releases have followed the same pattern since the release of the iPhone 3G in 2008: a new model one year, and a slightly modified version of that model — the “S” version — the following year. This year,...
Hyperloop One hurled another missive Wednesday at four former employees involved in a legal battle over the direction of a start-up that has pledged to reinvent high-speed transit. The accusations add further details to the company’s countersuit against the employees it dubs the Gang of Four, who...
Uber Technologies Inc. and Google were seen as allies after the search giant invested $258 million in the ride-hailing firm in 2013. But the companies are starting to act more like competitors. A top Google executive who held a seat on Uber’s board announced his resignation this week after Uber...
A judge has dismissed the key claims in a lawsuit alleging that headphone maker Beats Electronics duped one of its early partners before negotiating its $3-billion sale to Apple Inc. two years ago. The summary judgment issued late Monday by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Fahey...
Uber and Lyft spent the last four years cornering the millennial market. Now they’re going after a new demographic: senior citizens. Both ride-hailing companies recently announced partnerships with service providers that allow older customers to book rides through a phone operator, bypassing...
The U.S. television industry continues to grapple with the flight of customers who are ditching their pay-TV service at a rapid clip. In a grim reminder of the challenges facing media companies, an estimated 812,000 subscribers pulled the plug on their pay-television service in the second quarter,...
William Wang, founder and chairman of TV maker Vizio Inc., had receded into the background at the Irvine company in recent years. So even though it was him at a media event announcing LeEco’s acquisition of Vizio for $2 billion last month, he quickly turned the attention to a group seated directly...
Pope Francis met with Facebook Inc. founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, at the Vatican on Monday. One topic of discussion at the meeting was “how to use communication technologies to alleviate poverty, encourage a culture of encounter, and make a message...
West Hollywood firm Engage:BDR Inc. uses its technology to place ads in front of half a billion people each month. But none of those ads appear on websites it owns. Though that's common for ad technology companies, Engage Chief Executive Ted Dhanik no longer sees that as a viable strategy. On Monday,...
When graphic designers at children’s tablet and app maker Fuhu Inc. put up a Christmas tree with wacky ornaments for the holidays, an executive ripped them off and trashed them. They couldn’t get a whiteboard for brainstorming or leave colored pencils or markers on their desk. Former employees...
A botched attempt to break into an activist's iPhone using hitherto unknown espionage software has triggered a global upgrade of Apple's mobile operating system, researchers said Thursday. The spyware took advantage of three previously undisclosed weaknesses in Apple's mobile operating system to...
Uber may be gaining riders. It may be on the cutting edge of developing self-driving car technology. But it's a money-loser. That's according to details given by Gautam Gupta, Uber Technologies Inc.'s finance head, who in a recent conference call with Uber investors said the ride-hailing giant...
Uber has a new tool in its arsenal to attract and retain drivers: retirement savings accounts. The San Francisco ride-hailing company announced Wednesday that it teamed up with automated investor service Betterment to offer its drivers a way to set up retirement accounts through the ride-hailing...
Most Bay Area venture capital firms keep an eye on local colleges so they can fund campus start-ups before they take off. The House, a new “start-up institute,” wants to get in even earlier. Cal alumni Cameron Baradar and Jeremy Fiance set up shop this week in a 7,000-square-foot space across...
Millions of consumers treat Weedmaps like the Yelp for pot, relying on the Irvine company as their definitive guide to marijuana dispensaries, varieties and doctors. But a key feature — user reviews of pot businesses — may be tainted by thousands of potentially fraudulent comments, a flaw in the...