Sony under attack

Sony is being targeted by hacktivist group Anonymous, a collection of politically-motivated hackers, says Computing.co.uk.

Several Sony sites, including PlayStation Network, were offline at the time of writing.

The electronics giant angered Anonymous with its legal action against hackers George “Geohot” Hotz and Graf Chokolo after they released the private key required to develop firmware for Sony's PlayStation 3 console. The proceedings were described by Anonymous as “wholly unforgivable”.

Larry Page took over as Google chief executive yesterday, and his first day on the job saw another significant change to the Google management team, writes The Register.

The company's head of product management, Jonathan Rosenberg, revealed he will leave the company.

Speaking with The San Jose Mercury News, Rosenberg said he would step down “in the coming months”.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini received a 2010 pay package worth $15.5 million, up 8% from 2009, as the chipmaker grew its profit and revenue thanks largely to a rebound in corporate demand, states the Associated Press.

Intel is the world's biggest maker of microprocessors, the “brains” of computers. The company got a boost from an increase in business spending, but consumer demand for PCs has been sluggish.

The bulk of the increase in Otellini's compensation package came from his performance-based cash bonus of $6.8 million, up 29% from $5.3 million in 2009, according to a proxy filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mozilla has improved the way Firefox handles add-ons in an attempt to reduce start-up times, reveals V3.co.uk.

The firm said the plethora of add-ons available for Firefox, many of which are from third parties, is having an adverse effect on performance.

“[Customisation is] extremely important and, while most add-ons cause only a tiny performance impact, others can significantly slow down Firefox. Many users don't realise add-ons can cause these delays, and that's why we're committed to improving performance in a big way,” wrote Mozilla in a blog post.