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As expected, Microsoft announced a round of layoffs today although the number was well beyond all expectations.

New CEO Satya Nadella announced the company will eliminate up to 18,000 jobs, far and away the largest in its history at 14 percent of the total workforce.

Most of the layoffs will come from the newly acquired Nokia, at 12,500 factory and professional positions being released. At Microsoft itself, all the layoffs will come from sales, marketing and engineering. Microsoft says it will take up to a $1.6 billion charge for the layoffs in the 2015 fiscal year.

13,000 of the cuts were made today and the rest will be done before June 30th, 2015. Additionally, Microsoft's infamous layers of management will be reduced, allowing for quicker decisions.

Reads Nadella's post: "The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce...It's important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas. My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company."

The media industry went berserk today when it was discovered that Rupert Murdoch and 21st Century Fox had bid $80 billion for Time Warner and its prized possession: HBO.

Time Warner turned down the proposal but many say the saga is nowhere near over. Murdoch is said to be determined and higher bids are likely coming.

A merger of the two companies would create a behemoth. Besides HBO, the companies would control Fox broadcasting, Warner Bros. studios, and 20th Century Fox. One notable takeaway from the reports is that Fox planned to sell CNN if it acquired Time Warner, which it hopes would allay some anti-trust fears.

The industry is ripe for mergers, especially as cable companies head towards mergers and better leverage in content negotiations. Before the Time Warner bid, Fox had been considering buying Scripps, the owner of HGTV and Food Network, and Univision, the largest Spanish language cable network.

In addition, the takeover would give Fox major broadcasting rights for NBA, NCAA and MLB sports, on top of their current NASCAR and other rights.

In their rejection of the offer, CEO Jeff Bewkes says "our business plans will create significantly more value for the company and our shareholders, and that's superior to any proposal that Fox is in a position to offer." Also, other potential partners like Comcast and AT&T are in the middle of consolidations that may or may not go through, so Time Warner believes it is not a great time to take a takeover offer.

Amazon has begun testing a new "Kindle Unlimited" subscription service for $9.99, allowing users to read or listen to over 600,000 ebooks and audiobooks at a flat price.

While the test is not public, some pages popped up on the Kindle message boards and were promptly taken down after users noticed.

Such a service would compete directly with Scribd and Oyster, although neither of those companies offer audiobooks.

From what can be surmised from the pages, Algonquin, Bloomsbury, Harvard University Press, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Open Road Media, W.W. Norton and Workman are all publishers that are participating. The majors do not appear to be participating yet. Many of the titles were also older titles already available in the Kindle Owners Lending Library, which gives $99/year Prime subscribers one free book per month.

In the audiobook section, Amazon says there are 7351 "Whispersync for Voice" titles available.

Apple has conditionally agreed to pay $450 million to settle claims that it fixed e-book prices in conspiracy with the major book publishers.

$400 million will go to consumers, with the rest going to state and federal agencies.

The settlement is conditioned on an appeal in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York where the settlement could be entirely reversed. "While we cannot predict the outcome of the appeal with certainty, we are confident in the case we made against Apple at trial," Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said.

Apple reached the settlement last month, but the terms were not disclosed. The tech giant avoided a trial in which they were facing over $800 million in claims.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple and five of the largest book publishers claiming that the companies conspired to break Amazon's dominance of the ebook market and its wholesale pricing. At the time, Amazon would buy the rights to the books at wholesale prices and then priced them at whatever they chose, often times underpricing hit books to get traffic to their site and get more people to buy the Kindle hardware. Apple, who was launching its own bookstore with the launch of the iPad, changed the game to the "agency model" in which Apple sells the books at the prices dictated by the publisher but takes a 30 percent cut. This pushed the average price of ebooks from $9.99 to $12-14 or even higher in many cases.

The Senate has passed bill S. 517, allowing consumers to unlock their phones when it is time to switch carriers.

S. 517 aka the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, will make it once again legal to unlock your phones when your contract is up. The right had been an exemption in the DMCA, but it was revoked when the Library of Congress ruled phone software is protected by copyright and that unlocking could potentially be a copyright violation.

"This straightforward restoring bill is about promoting consumer rights," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) "When consumers finish the terms of their contract, they should be able to keep their phones and make their own decision about which wireless provider to use."

The Senate passed the bill unanimously and it now goes to the House.

It appears the console makers are now looking into ways to let gamers, devs test out unfinished games before their final launch, similar to how some PC game publishers do.

PlayStation VP of Publisher and Developer Relations Adam Boyes says that putting out PS4 games before final release is "one of the massive conversations we have internally."

"We're figuring out what's ok," Boyes continued. "We obviously have our tech requirement checklist that people have to adhere to. So we're internally discussing, what does that list look like this? What are the caveats? Stuff like this. So it's still a project that a lot of minds are considering. No details yet, but it's something on the top of my mind every day."

Microsoft is also looking into giving developers early access to Xbox One titles. ID@Xbox director Chris Charla noted: "Right now on Xbox One and Xbox 360, you can do betas. When we talk about early access, it typically means a game that you buy and it evolves over time to become 1.0, so you're buying it before it's 1.0 – Minecraft on PC is a perfect example."

Giant semi Intel announced their quarterly earnings last night, reporting another strong quarter thanks to an 'improved' PC market.

The company earned $2.8 billion on revenue of $13.8 billion and even raised their fiscal year revenue outlook. The company will buyback up to $20 billion in stock, which will increase the value of the company's share.

"This change in our capital structure is the continuation of a multi-year focus on creating value and returning cash to our shareholders, and reinforces our confidence in the business," CFO Stacy J. Smith said during the report.

Most impressively, gross margins remained flat at 66 percent and revenue for the upcoming quarter should improve to $14.4 billion.

Intel continues its foray into the mobile world and has set a lofty goal of powering 40 million tablets by the end of the year, despite missing out on the first three years, literally, of tablet growth enjoyed by Qualcomm and to a lesser extent, Nvidia. Intel powers both Windows and Android tablets.

Earlier today we reported on Apple's partnership with IBM to control the enterprise market.

The deal is groundbreaking in that two giants have teamed up their resources to make industry specific apps that work flawlessly for iOS and include Apple's AppleCare support into the future.

Read more that story here.

CEO Tim Cook sent a memo to employees today about the deal, which emphasizes the synergies. The memo in its entirety:

Team,

Today, we announced a groundbreaking new partnership with IBM that will enable enterprises to put the power of big data analytics at their employees' fingertips on their iOS device. This exclusive global partnership brings together Apple's legendary ease-of-use and integrated hardware and software with IBM's unmatched industry depth, enterprise software and expertise in big data analytics.

It also builds on the incredible momentum in Apple's enterprise business. iPhone and iPad can be found in 98% of the Fortune 500. People love to use iOS devices and Apple delivers the things companies need most--security and scalable deployment along with a powerful platform for apps. With this announcement, we're now putting IBM's renowned big data analytics at iOS users' fingertips, which opens up a large market opportunity for Apple. This is a radical step for enterprise and something only Apple and IBM can deliver.

Last night, tech giants Apple and IBM announced a partnership in which IBM will build enterprise applications for the iPhone and iPad as the companies aim to entirely control the business market for mobiles.

The over 100 business apps will run exclusively on iOS and IBM will also sell Apple products with industry-specific apps to its massive network of clients around the globe.

"iPhone and iPad are the best mobile devices in the world and have transformed the way people work with over 98 percent of the Fortune 500 and over 92 percent of the Global 500 using iOS devices in their business today," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "For the first time ever we're putting IBM's renowned big data analytics at iOS users' fingertips, which opens up a large market opportunity for Apple. This is a radical step for enterprise and something that only Apple and IBM can deliver."

Among the applications being built include analytics, device management, security, consulting and cloud services. Apple's AppleCare will cover support of the apps.

In 2011, when Google launched its Google+ social network, the search giant angered many users by requiring that the page include their real name.

Google had the novel idea that if your real name was attached to a comment you were making, you were less likely to be belligerent (or violent). It turns out, more than a few people are still willing to make awful comments, even with their real name attached.

The restriction hurt users that had to use other names for safety reasons, and many commentators, especially on YouTube, just stopped commenting. Google has heard the complaints for years and has now decided to drop any name restrictions for Google+.

Reads the Google+ post:

When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile. This helped create a community made up of real people, but it also excluded a number of people who wanted to be part of it without using their real names.

Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+. Today, we are taking the last step: there are no more restrictions on what name you can use.

Giant e-commerce site Alibaba has signed a new licensing deal with U.S. entertainment company Lionsgate in which Alibaba will stream the company's movie and TV content in mainland China.

Alibaba will offer the content through their own set-top boxes, which are expected to add the content next month. Among Lionsgate's more popular content is "The Hunger Games" series, the "Twilight" series and the "Saw" series. On the TV side, Lionsgate is home to "Mad Men" and "Nurse Jackie" among others.

It is unclear if all that content will make it through Chinese censors, but Lionsgate catalog is quite large, regardless.

"This cooperation signals our ongoing commitment to advance our vision of making digital media entertainment available to our customers anywhere, anytime," said Patrick Liu, president of Alibaba Group's digital entertainment business unit.

Alibaba's Wasu Rainbow set-tops currently offer local and foreign TV on-demand.

According to a Chinese daily, the Apple iWatch will come in three different models when it launches this year.

The first model will sport a 1.6-inch display while the other two will be higher end 1.8-inch models with one featuring a sapphire crystal display.

It is unclear what other differences the models will have but the sapphire version will assuredly be the most expensive.

Rumors have been flying for years about the watch, but have picked up in recent months with all types of news outlets reporting on leaked specs. The WSJ reported there would three different models, as well, while Reuters reported the iWatch would have a massive 2.5-inch display.

As always, the time frame is the same, with Apple expected to announce the watch in September or early October.

Box has declared an end to the "storage wars" this week, offering unlimited storage space to business customers.

While the company offered unlimited storage to "Enterprise" subscribers, it has now been extended to all corporate clients.

"Storage only matters when it's a roadblock, and we're excited to make these limits a thing of the past for our Business customers as well," said CEO Aaron Levie. "This may seem like the escalation of a storage war, but we're actually approaching the end of one."

Box was on the ropes in recent weeks as the startup faced increased competition from giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon. Amazon, for example, just started their own enterprise cloud storage and collaboration service Zocalo.

In addition, the company has announced new beta integration features with Microsoft Office 365, (Box for Office 2013 and Box for Outlook 2013) which allows users to open, edit, save, and share any file from Box within Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Taiwanese semi MediaTek has officially announced the world's first octa-core 64-bit SoC.

The chip can support a 2K display, and the company says it truly has eight cores, unlike other "octa-core" devices. The MT6795 chipset has 4G LTE radio support, and is clocked at 2.2GHz using the company's proprietary CorePilot technology for "multi-processor performance and thermal control."

Among the other high-end specs are dual-channel LPDDR3 DRAM at 933MHz, the highest bandwidth we've seen yet.

Full feature set:

Does movie piracy hurt sales and cost jobs? The MPAA and other trade groups would certainly have you believe that it does but at least on economist believes that notion is bunk.

Economist Koleman Strumpf, professor at the University of Kansas School of Business, released data and his conclusion based on data from 150 of the largest movies released between the years of 2003 and 2009. The data came via a "popular BitTorrent tracker" and revenue projections from the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) to see what impact piracy really had on movies.

"There is no evidence in my empirical results of file-sharing having a significant impact on theatrical revenue," Strumpf says. "My best guess estimate is that file sharing reduced the first month box office by $200 million over 2003-2009, which is only three tenths of a percent of what movies actually earned. I am unable to reject the hypothesis that there is no impact at all of file-sharing on revenues."