Corporate and legal

Hacker accused of massive Stratfor attack pleads guilty

Jeremy Hammond was arrested in a major federal sweep last year on charges of computer hacking conspiracy, computer hacking, and conspiracy to commit access device fraud.

The self-described hacktivist pled guilty to these counts in court on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

"As part of each of these hacks, I took and decimated confidential information stored on computer systems websites used by each of the entities," Hammond told a judge in federal court in Manhattan, according to the Associated Press. "For each of these hacks, I knew what I was doing was against the law."… Read more

Dish increases offer for Clearwire to edge Sprint

Dish Network has upped the ante in its bid to acquire Clearwire, an escalation of its bidding war with Sprint Nextel over the wireless broadband provider.

A week after Sprint boosted its offer to $3.40 a share for the 50 percent of the company it does not currently own, the satellite TV provider countered on Wednesday with an offer of $4.40 per share in cash, a 29 percent premium over Sprint's offer. Dish will officially tender the offer before the Clearwire shareholders meeting on Friday, where a vote on Sprint's offer is planned.

Sprint announced in … Read more

Facebook pulls pages depicting violence against women

Several Facebook pages have popped up that encourage or make a joke of violence against women, pages like Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus, Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs, and Raping your Girlfriend.

Facebook has now decided to take these pages down.

"In recent days, it has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate," Facebook's VP of Global Public Policy Marne Levine wrote in a blog post Tuesday. "We have been working over the … Read more

AT&T's LTE network blankets more than 200 million people

AT&T announced on Wednesday that 11 new markets are seeing the faster data speeds from the carrier's 4G network. What's more, another seven markets are receiving expanded LTE coverage.

The new markets are:

Dover, Del. Leonardtown, Md. Ocean City, Md. Asheville, N.C. Goldsboro, N.C. Salem, Ore. Culpeper, Va. Roanoke, Va. Longview, Wash. Port Townsend-North Whidbey Island-Camano Island, Wash. Shelton, Wash.

As for the expanded markets, the growth is spread out over a half dozen states. They include areas near Chicago, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C.

With the newly expanded 4G LTE coverage, AT&… Read more

Barry Diller: Young people will fuel Aereo's growth

RANCHO PALOS VERDE, CA -- Barry Diller is happy that the broadcast networks have sued Aereo. It has helped the startup he funded get some high visibility.

Aereo delivers local, over-the-air TV broadcasts via the Internet to subscribers. Antenna/DVR technology has caused a flurry of lawsuits from TV broadcasters, including ABC, CBS (CNET's parent company), Fox, NBC Universal, and Telemundo. The networks allege that Aereo violates their copyrights and that Aereo must pay them retransmission fees.

The court rulings so far have ruled in Aereo's favor, and the company has filed a complaint against CBS seeking to … Read more

SEC fines Nasdaq $10M over Facebook IPO

Analysts might attribute more blame with the Nasdaq now over Facebook's bungled initial public offering last year thanks to a new decision from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC is charging the American stock exchange with a $10 million penalty over poor decisions made as well as systems set up during the IPO and secondary trading scheme for shares of the world's largest social network.

According to the government agency itself, this is the largest penalty ever slapped against an exchange.

The SEC issued a memo on Wednesday detailing the rationale behind the decision. Here'… Read more

The Internet is becoming more mobile by the day

The worldwide Internet population is growing rapidly -- and that growth might have something to do with mobile devices.

Speaking today at the AllThingsD D11 Conference, Mary Meeker, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Meeker, reported that 2.4 billion people around the world are on the Internet -- an 8 percent year-over-year gain. Still, only 34 percent of the world's population is online. In the U.S., the Internet population penetration sits at 78 percent, according to Meeker.

Perhaps the biggest news from Meeker's presentation was the staggering growth in … Read more

Clearwire disparages advisory firm that panned Sprint deal

Clearwire is taking Glass Lewis to task as the proxy advisory firm continues to contest Sprint's acquisition bid, just days before a shareholder vote on the deal.

On Tuesday, Glass Lewis painted Clearwire a bit like a desperate damsel batting its eyelashes at white knight Sprint in its latest report on the offer. But Clearwire says the advisory firm doesn't know what it's talking about.

Its recommendation against the upped $3.40-per-share Sprint offer used "superficial analysis" that "contained numerous inaccuracies," the wireless broadband company said in a statement.

"The report also … Read more

Intel says it bought ST-Ericsson's GPS operations

Intel has confirmed it was the mystery buyer that acquired ST-Ericsson's global navigation satellite system (GNSS) business, after the sale was announced Tuesday.

ST-Ericsson, the joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Ericsson, said Tuesday that a "leading semiconductor company" had bought its mobile connectivity GNSS unit. This includes personal receivers that interact with GPS technology and Glonass -- a radio-based satellite navigation system operated by the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces.

Nick Jacobs, a spokesperson for Intel Asia, has confirmed with ZDNet that the U.S. chipmaker signed a definitive agreement to acquire certain assets of ST-Ericsson's GNSS … Read more

Sprint-SoftBank deal clears U.S. national security review

SoftBank's $20 billion merger with Sprint is just fine for a U.S. committee that monitors national security issues between companies.

Sprint announced Wednesday that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) has cleared its proposed merger with Japan's SoftBank, saying that there are no national security issues that would make it unacceptable to the government. The companies have also signed a National Security Agreement with the U.S. government ensuring that they won't bring any issues to the floor after their merger.

Sprint's announcement today comes just a day after a report … Read more