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Along with the news that Reddit was spinning out into an independent company last September, the community-curated site also said it was searching for a new CEO.

That new CEO started the job today. Yishan Wong comes to Reddit with an engineering and management background; his last position was Director of Engineering for Facebook.

In a blog post, Wong writes that he was shocked to learn he got the position because even though he had worked at startups and managed large teams of engineers, he didn't have previous CEO experience.

"At first, I didn't really quite believe … Read more

NAVAJO RESERVATION, N.M.--Power transmission lines run a few hundred yards behind the Johnson family home here, but it took an off-grid solar and wind generator to finally bring them electricity service.

The Johnsons, who live on a remote stretch of land on the Navajo Reservation west of Farmington, N.M., are among about 200 families on the Navajo Reservation who rent an off-grid renewable-energy system from the rural utility. They opened their home to visitors last week during a fellowship organized by Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources.

The hybrid power generator, which was installed in February, combines … Read more

Shoppers may need to be careful when hunting for a deal on a tablet online, as they are at risk of picking up a knockoff, a new report says.

San Francisco-based enterprise brand protection company MarkMonitor today released results from its latest Brandjacking Index, a report that looks at how brands being "abused" online. It found more than 23,000 listings "for clones, suspected counterfeits, or gray market" tablet computers in a single day earlier this year.

The firm says it spent a day in July tracking the brands of five tablet makers in 23 online … Read more

Cinemas dim the lights during showings to help eliminate distractions, making it easier for you to focus on what you came to see. With media sites like YouTube, it's easy to become distracted by the other content on the page like the recommended videos or comments sections. And let's face it, not all videos look good in full-screen mode due to low resolutions. Wouldn't it be nice if you could dim the lights on the rest of the page to cut out the distractions? Well, there happens to be an add-on for Firefox and Chrome that does … Read more

It's no secret that as we age, our vision deteriorates. Over time, our eyes tend to lose their ability to focus on nearby objects. I know what that's like. I'm farsighted.

I've always been told my poor eyesight is unavoidable and unfixable. So I felt hopeful at hearing that an iPhone app called GlassesOff promises to "help you achieve over 80 percent improvement in vision acuity" by training your brain to more efficiently process the blurred images that result from near-vision deterioration.… Read more

There's some good news for those of you who are considering buying one of the new "subsidized" Kindles With Special Offers but are worried the ads might be too irritating: you can easily upgrade to the ad-free Kindle if you don't like it.

That's right, once you buy a Special Offers version, you can easily shut off the ads by simply paying a fee--the difference between what a Kindle Special Offers costs and what an ad-free version costs. In the case of the currently available non-touch Kindle 2011, which goes for $79 for the Special … Read more

Earlier this week, Hewlett-Packard Chairman Ray Lane said to a trade publication that he favors using "HP" in the name of a spun off PC business. He also explained that investors don't necessarily like innovation.

In a CRN interview, Lane said he's "lobbying, and I don't have to lobby very hard" to call it the "HP PC Business. Call it HP." It would be a "sister company" like Agilent, which HP spun off in 1999, he said to CRN.

Lane also re-emphasized that a final decision has not yet … Read more

Two privately owned stores in Queens, N.Y., accused of peddling unauthorized Apple accessories have agreed to surrender any fake Apple products in their inventories, according to a proposed settlement registered today in federal court in Brooklyn.

The settlement, if approved, would resolve a trademark-infringement lawsuit filed in July against defendants including Apple Story Inc and FunZone Inc, two shops in the Chinatown section of Flushing, Queens. The shops--which sell cases, headsets, and other accessories for Apple products--still say they haven't violated any Apple trademarks.

According to the trademark infringement suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York, Apple frowned upon the news that there were "Apple stores" in New York that the company didn't know about back in Cupertino. And it was probably a less-than-Lex Luthor/evil genius move for the owners of said stores to name one of them "The Apple Story." That may have been a bit of a giveaway, unless we were supposed to think the shop was a museum dedicated to the history of Granny Smiths. … Read more

The top executive at Hewlett-Packard's personal computer division is hoping to see a spin-off as soon as possible, according to a report today in The Wall Street Journal.

Todd Bradley, who heads the Personal Systems Group, told the newspaper that he wants to see HP make the spin-off happen "as soon as they can." But he added that it may not happen before the end of the year.

Bradley told the Journal that the absence of a clear plan for the PC business is causing "some uncertainty" among customers.

In related news, HP distributed an … Read more