Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.
China Unveils World's Fastest Supercomputer
At the Annual Meeting of National High Performance Computing in Beijing, China unveiled Tianhe-1A, the world’s fastest computer with a performance record of 2.507 petaflops. The $88 million supercomputer was designed by the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in China.
Motorola Posts First Growth Quarter in Nearly Four Years
Motorola announced its first growth quarter since Q4 2006 in its third-quarter earnings report Thursday morning. The company posted a 6% increase in sales to $5.8 billion. Net income rose to $109 million -- a substantial increase from the $12 million the company tallied in the same quarter a year ago.
Facebook Lobbied to Kill Social Networking Privacy Act
Between April and June of this year, Facebook reportedly spent more than $6,600 lobbying California state officials to kill the Social Networking Privacy Act, which aimed to impose civil penalties on social networks displaying home addresses and phone numbers of users under 18 years of age.
Further News
The next major version of Firefox, originally slated for late 2010, has been delayed until early 2011.
Google introduced Place Search Wednesday, which recognizes location-based searches (say for "Austin BBQ") and arranges search results around said locations to make it easier to make comparisons.