In today’s Bulldog tech wrapup:

  • Cree is expanding in Wisconsin
  • Lenovo sells another property asset
  • Snap stock to debut Thursday after better-than-expected IPO
  • IBM gets Out-Of-Office email system patent
  • Facebook’s Oculus cuts price for Rift’s VR headset by $100
  • Yahoo punishes CEO in latest fallout from security breakdown

The details:

  • Cree to expand in Pleasant Prairie, Wis.

That’s the news as reported by the Milwaukee Business Journal.

Read details at:

http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2017/03/01/cree-to-expand-in-pleasant-prairie.html

  • Lenovo sells more property

“Lenovo Sells Another Property Asset as Smartphone Sales Tank,” reports Bloomberg.

Read the details at:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-02/lenovo-sells-another-property-asset-as-smartphone-sales-tank

  • Snap stock to debut Thursday after better-than-expected IPO

The company behind the popular messaging app Snapchat is expected to start trading Thursday after a better-than-expected stock offering.

Snap Inc. passed its first major test on Wall Street on Wednesday as it priced its initial public offering of 200 million shares at $17 each. That is above the expected range of $14 to $16 and values the Los Angeles company at $24 billion.

Snap’s IPO is one of the most anticipated for a technology company since Twitter’s stock market debut in 2013. Co-founders Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy will retain controlling power over all matters at Snap; the Class A stock being sold in the IPO has no voting power. Snap is getting the ticker symbol “SNAP” on the New York Stock Exchange.

  • IBM’s email patent

Some media are raising questions about an IBM patent.

“IBM somehow got a patent for an Out-Of-Office email system,” says Engadget.

Read details at:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/01/ibm-somehow-got-a-patent-for-an-out-of-office-email-system/

  • Facebook’s Oculus cuts price for Rift’s VR headset by $100

It has gotten cheaper to explore virtual reality on the Oculus Rift headset.

The device, made by a company owned by Facebook, now sells for $499. That’s a 17 percent markdown from its previous price of $599. The Rift’s touch controllers are also being reduced by $100 to $99.

Those costs don’t include a high-powered computer that needs to be connected to the Rift.

The discounts mark the latest effort to lure more people into trying out virtual reality, the artificial worlds that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes will eventually reshape technology and culture. Facebook bought Oculus for about $2 billion as part of Zuckerberg’s effort to realize his vision.

The Rift remains more expensive than Sony’s Playstation VR headset that sells for $399. HTC’s Vive headset costs $799.

  • Yahoo punishes CEO in latest fallout from security breakdown

Yahoo is punishing CEO Marissa Mayer and parting ways with its top lawyer for the mishandling of two security breaches that exposed the personal information of more than 1 billion users and already have cost the company $350 million.

Mayer won’t be paid her annual bonus nor receive a potentially lucrative stock award because a Yahoo investigation concluded her management team reacted too slowly to one breach discovered in 2014.

Yahoo’s general counsel, Ronald Bell, resigned without severance pay for his department’s lackadaisical response to the security lapses.

Alex Stamos, Yahoo’s top security officer at the time of the 2014 breach, left the company in 2015.