In today’s Bulldog tech roundup: Charlotte Motor Speedway site hacked; New books says Steve Jobs considered buying Yahoo; Lyft funding increases ride-sharing competition; NC Senator Burr on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, Valeant ups Salix offer.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals ups offer for Salix
Blomber reports that Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. will increase its offer for Raleigh-based Salix Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:SLXP) to bring it closer to that of Endo International (Nasdaq:ENDP). Bloomberg says Valeant will offer more than $160 in cash a share, up from $158.
Endo’s offer is for more than $170 a share in cash and stock.
Charlotte Motor Speedway site hacked!
Local news reports in Charlotte say that its social media posts “went from racing to racy” and included images of nude women and links to sexually explicit sites. See Jen Wilson’s story at the Charlotte Business Journal: http://tinyurl.com/oczoz6g
New book says Steve Jobs considered buying Yahoo
The new biography Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution Of A Reckless Upstart Into A Visionary Leader by longtime Apple reporter Brent Schlender and Fast Company executive editor Rick Tetzeli is due in bookstore on March 24th. It’s a vivid new picture of Jobs.
Among the revelations Fast Company reports: Jobs considered buying Yahoo with the Walt Disney Company’s Bob Iger. The book also says Apple CEO Tim Cook wanted to donate his liver to Jobs, but Jobs refused. In addition, it says Jobs hated TV and said Apple would never make a TV again. Read the whole story here: http://tinyurl.com/m8b5f2n
Lyft raises $530M, boosting the competition to Uber
Lyft, Uber’s largest ride-sharing competitor in the U.S., has raised $530 million in a round led by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten. The deal values Lyft at $2.5 billion.
It only one of the challenges to what the New York Times calls “Uber’s $40-billion juggernaut.” Others include Kuaidi Dache and Did Dache in China. On the other hand, Uber raised $5 billion in private capital, more than the valuation of Lyft.
Read the whole story at the New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/nnz4uos
NC’s Sen. Richard Burr: cybersecurity bill bars sending some info to the government
The Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by NC Sen. Richard Burr passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) by a 14-to-1 vote Thursday. The bill is designed to encourage the sharing of data between private firms and the government in an effort to prevent and respond to cybersecurity threats.
The bill has raised privacy concerns. But Sen. Burr, in an interview on Bloomberg TV (http://tinyurl.com/pqsyeuq) said some amendments not yet publicly released are actually aimed at preventing user information from being shared with government agencies.
He said,
“We don’t want them to send personal data to the federal government, unless it’s absolutely crucial to show the cyberattack. So we bar them from providing that data to the federal government,” Burr said. “If it finds its way to the federal government, though, once we distribute it in real time and we realize there’s personal information, any company that discovers it has to remove it or minimize it in a way that it can’t be shared anywhere else.”
