November 4, 2013

BlackBerry CEO steps down as company secures $1 billion funding from investors

Chen, BlackBerry’s new interim leader, comes with strong credentials. He most recently played an instrumental role in turning around the fortunes of Sybase, a company that was once in a similarly distressed state to BlackBerry’s current plight. His experience in the mobile enterprise business will be an asset and could potentially point to the future direction of the company. John Chen is also taking up the role of Executive Chair of BlackBerry’s board, immediately taking on a great deal of both power and responsibility.

Mr. Chen seems like a fantastic choice for the company. He definitely has the leadership background that Thorsten Heins lacked. Hopefully, this new CEO can turn the company around ASAP.

Google Employees Confess The Worst Things About Working At Google

Google may understand engineering, but not design.

“There is not enough focus on product and visual design.  This has led to many aborted/semi-successful products, like Wave, Google Video, Buzz, Dodgeball, Orkut, Knol, and Friend Connect.  There is probably too much focus on pure engineering.”

Now it all makes sense. Kind of.

Western Digital enlists helium for 6TB energy-efficient drives

The lower turbulence also increases the drive’s capacity because more platters can be squeezed into the 3.5-inch housing. Today’s 4-terabyte models use five platters and top out at 4TB, but the Ultrastar He6 has seven platters and reaches 6TB of capacity. That’s also useful for data centers where space is at a premium.

These would be amazing in my 5-bay RAID 5 array.

Usain Bolt Ate 100 Chicken McNuggets a Day in Beijing and Somehow Won Three Gold Medals

In the ten days Bolt spent in Beijing, he downed approximately 1,000 nuggets, averaging 100 a day. At 940 calories per 20-piece box, that means that Usain ate about 4,700 calories worth of Chicken McNuggets a day and 47,000 calories over the course of his stay in China. (And that’s without Sweet ‘N Sour Sauce, which, let’s face it, only a fool would pass up.)

There must be something in the nuggets. Or he just didn’t want to eat anything else China cuisine had to offer.