Looks like Apple bought the company behind software synth Alchemy, and more for Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Looks like Apple bought the company behind software synth Alchemy Kif Leswing Feb 24 2015, 6:41am PDT Apple doesn’t make a big splash when it acquires a company. Usually, there isn’t an announcement or even an acknowledgment except for CEO Tim Cook’s periodic updates (earlier this month, Cook said Apple acquired 17 companies in the previous calendar year.) It appears that one of those […] Read More » What to expect in the Chromebook Pixel 2 Kevin C. Tofel Feb 24 2015, 6:10am PDT Google confirmed what we noted two weeks ago on our Chrome Show podcast: There is a successor to the Chromebook Pixel after all. OMGChrome caught the confirmation on a YouTube video, which was subsequently marked private to mask the news. Luckily the site transcribed the part […] Read More » Snowden: “I should have leaked sooner” Barb Darrow Feb 24 2015, 5:55am PDT A day after Citizenfour, a documentary in which he stars, won an Academy Award, Edward Snowden along with director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald sat down for a Reddit AMA. Snowden, the former NSA-hand turned whistleblower, basically blew the lid off the National Security Agency’s intelligence-gathering […] Read More » Sponsored post: Think big. Solve tomorrow Teradata Feb 24 2015, 5:55am PDT Are you a Data Engineer that has mentored and led software teams to victory? Can you manage clients to success? Do you want a bigger platform to speak from? Or are you a Data Scientist that thrives by helping your team execute data science solutions that […] Read More » Twilio buys two-factor authentication shop to boost security Jonathan Vanian Feb 24 2015, 5:00am PDT Twilio, the cloud-based communication service provider that lets developers craft messaging applications, is buying security startup Authy for an undisclosed price. As part of the deal, announced Tuesday, Authy’s entire twelve-person team will move over to Twilio. Authy focusses on two-factor authentication, which adds a second step to the password […] Read More » UPDATED: Mozilla, Deutsche Telekom won’t release “privacy phone” David Meyer Feb 24 2015, 4:43am PDT UPDATE: Mozilla has told Techcrunch that the WSJ’s framing of this as a partnership around an actual phone was inaccurate. In other words, there’s absolutely no news here beyond the more general Firefox OS collaboration that we reported on one year ago to the day. For […] Read More » Sense analyzes your sleep as well as the bedroom it takes place in Kif Leswing Feb 24 2015, 4:00am PDT Last spring, a Kickstarter project raised more than $2.4 million by promising a gadget that not only tracks how well you slept, but also the environmental condition of the room you slept in. On Tuesday, Sense, the sleep tracker from Hello, will go on sale to the […] Read More » Artemis is building a 4G network in SF to prove its pCell tech works Kevin Fitchard Feb 23 2015, 9:16pm PDT For the last year WebTV creator Steve Perlman has been trying to convince a skeptical wireless industry that his most recent startup Artemis Networks has developed an LTE technology that solves the mobile data capacity crunch, and now he aims to prove it. Artemis is building […] Read More » In the age of niche media, everyone still really wants to be mass Mathew Ingram Feb 23 2015, 1:59pm PDT As doctoral student Frederik De Boer pointed out in a recent blog post on some of the new-media sites like BuzzFeed and Fusion, if you don't focus on a specific market or target a specific kind of reader, you run the risk of blending in with everyone else Read More » HP reorgs cloud biz as Marten Mickos cedes key responsibilities Barb Darrow Feb 23 2015, 1:45pm PDT Marten Mickos, the former Eucalyptus CEO who became HP’s top cloud guy in September when HP bought Eucalyptus, is turning over key responsibilities to three other HP executives, according to an internal email message viewed by Gigaom. Mickos, who carried the title of senior vice president and general manager […] Read More » Autocomplete fail: Gmail is suggesting the wrong email addresses Kif Leswing Feb 23 2015, 1:20pm PDT Better check twice before firing off that email today: You could be sending it to the wrong person, thanks to a Gmail bug that is suggesting email addresses you rarely communicate with, instead of the people you correspond with most often. The bug has been widely spotted by […] Read More » My Little Pony remains on Netflix, for now Janko Roettgers Feb 23 2015, 12:38pm PDT Good news for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fans: The cult show remains on Netflix for at least another three weeks, despite the fact that the original contract between Pony franchise owner Hasbro and Netflix reportedly expired earlier this month. In January, told its viewers that […] Read More » eBay’s new Pulsar framework will analyze your data in real time Jonathan Vanian Feb 23 2015, 12:34pm PDT eBay has a new open-source, real-time analytics and stream-processing framework called Pulsar that the company claims is in production and is available for others to download, according to an eBay blog post on Monday. The online auction site is now using Pulsar to gather and process […] Read More » Microsoft improves its Band and launches Health website Kevin C. Tofel Feb 23 2015, 12:18pm PDT Microsoft’s health tracking device is getting its first big update since launching in October. CNET says the Microsoft Band now has an activity tile specifically for cycling and a small keyboard for responding to messages from your wrist. The company also debuted data on its Microsoft […] Read More » Amazon Prime Instant gets Selma,James Bond and Star Trek Janko Roettgers Feb 23 2015, 10:33am PDT Amazon Prime customers will get access to a bunch of big Hollywood movies over the next couple of months via Prime Instant, thanks to an extended agreement between the e-commerce giant and premium cable network Epix. The deal includes rights to new releases like Selma, Transformers: Age […] Read More » Microsoft is building fast, low-power neural networks with FPGAs Derrick Harris Feb 23 2015, 9:28am PDT Microsoft on Monday released a white paper explaining a current effort to run convolutional neural networks — the deep learning technique responsible for record-setting computer vision algorithms — on FPGAs rather than GPUs. Microsoft claims that new FPGA designs provide greatly improved processing speed over earlier […] Read More » Before Windows 10, Microsoft offers Lumia 635 with more memory Kevin C. Tofel Feb 23 2015, 8:57am PDT In a somewhat surprising twist, Microsoft has added a new version of its Lumia 635 handset in some regions. Don’t get too excited though; it appears there’s only one change: A doubling of the phone’s system memory. ‘s official Lumia 635 page confirms the change, which was […] Read More » Check out this ambitious modular laptop–tablet hybrid for kids Kif Leswing Feb 23 2015, 8:21am PDT An Australian offshoot of the One Laptop Per Child project is developing a new device for children that will convert from a tablet into a laptop and can be upgraded through hardware modules. The new OLPC device, named XO-infinity, aims for a “lifespan of 10 years, not […] Read More » Vivek Wadhwa steps back from the women-in-tech debate Barb Darrow Feb 23 2015, 6:52am PDT Vivek Wadhwa, the academic and researcher who has been a vocal critic of high-tech’s male-dominated culture and a proponent of women’s role in technology,  is stepping back from that fight, according to a post he wrote for the Washington Post. Wadhwa, who is affiliated with Duke and Stanford, as […] Read More » Leaked image may show Pebble’s new colorful watch Kevin C. Tofel Feb 23 2015, 6:35am PDT Last week we saw a countdown timer on Pebble’s website, suggesting the company may introduce its next smartwatch Tuesday morning. On Monday, an image from Pebble’s own servers shows what the new device may look like. 9to5 Google found the image, which shows a wider but […] Read More »