From DailyTech: It's been a year and a half since anything remotely resembling a high end Windows smartphone was released. And Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) spent much of 2014 and 2015 committing to two waves of massive layoffs, which culled nearly two in three employees from its newly acquired smartphone...

From PC World: Panasonic will soon begin selling in Japan a Blu-ray Disc player compatible with 4K UltraHD discs, the first such player in the world.

UltraHD, also called 4K, has four times the resolution than conventional high definition and is being promoted hard by major consumer electronics...

From CNET: The operations of Facebook and many other US-based Web companies in Europe could be disrupted after a 5-year-old pact between the two regions was declared illegal.

The agreement that Facebook and others use to allow transfer of data about European citizens back to the US on Tuesday was...

From CRN: IBM is making a big play for bringing object storage technology to the cloud and to on-premise data centers with its planned acquisition of Cleversafe.

IBM on Monday said it plans to acquire Chicago-based Cleversafe, one of the leaders in the object-based storage software market. Terms of...

From ComputerWorld: Google has issued patches for two new Stagefright-related vulnerabilities, one of which affects Android versions going back to 2008 and puts millions of users at risk.

The flaws were found by security company Zimperium, which also unearthed the original Stagefright flaws in...

From InfoWorld: Microsoft has acknowledged that users of its Office for Mac 2016 application suite are encountering frequent crashes and implied that it's working on a fix, but offered no timeline for delivering an update.

In an emailed statement, a Microsoft spokeswoman said the company is looking...

From PC World: Consumers rely on flash memory cards in phones, tablets and cameras every day. But put those same cards in security cams, cellular base stations or the electrical grid and you'll have a problem.

Industrial devices need flash that can work harder and withstand more extreme...

From CNET: A new species of malware that shows fullscreen ads is flourishing on Apple devices in China and Taiwan. It follows reports last month that apps loaded with malware had to be purged from the company's App Store.

The malicious software, dubbed YiSpecter, is reportedly able to "install and...

From ComputerWorld: Sprint will likely cut its 31,000-person workforce as part of up to $2.5 billion in cost reductions in the next six months, a company spokesman said Friday.

"It's likely some jobs will be impacted by this [cost-cutting] process, but it's premature to talk about details," said...