Facebook and other tech companies aren’t changing the racial mix or the percentage of women in their workforce fast enough, which has become a matter of concern to civil rights activists.Blacks, for example, accounted for 2 percent of Facebook’s U.S. workforce as of May 31 this year, according to diversity data released by the company on Thursday. The corresponding figure for June last year was again 2 percent.The figure for Hispanics also remained at 4 percent of the U.S. workforce, while people of two or more races accounted for 3 percent.A positive but minute change was that the percentage of female employees increased from 31 percent in June 2014 to 32 percent in May 2015. The figures for participation by women are calculated by the company on a worldwide basis.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella laid out his new mission for the company in an email sent out Thursday to all employees.“Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” he wrote.It’s a much briefer mission statement than the one he unveiled when he took over the top job last year, and indicative of the changes Nadella has made since he took Microsoft’s helm. During his tenure, Microsoft has focused on broadening the reach of its services and applications across platforms and has pushed ahead with a new version of its Windows operating system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft announced a private beta for a pair of new services Wednesday aimed at making its Office 365 service work better in schools.The new Classroom Hub is a website that brings together content from different Office applications into a single, central location that teachers and students can use to stay on top of what’s going on in their classes. The service can pull in notes, assignments, calendars and class materials to provide a digital home for all of the information that students need to know. Teachers will also be able to track progress on assignments and provide students with feedback and grades through the site.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft announced a private beta for a pair of new services Wednesday aimed at making its Office 365 service work better in schools.The new Class Dashboard is a website that brings together content from different Office applications into a single, central location that teachers and students can use to stay on top of what’s going on in their classes. The service can pull in notes, assignments, calendars and class materials to provide a digital home for all of the information that students need to know. Teachers will also be able to track progress on assignments and provide students with feedback and grades through the site.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As the sad and sometimes scary examples of the scam known as ransomware propagates, the FBI this week said the CryptoWall variant is rapidly becoming the swindle of choice by criminals.The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center said between April 2014 and June 2015, it received 992 CryptoWall-related complaints, with victims reporting losses totaling over $18 million. And its not just user PCs that are being targeted, a growing number of victims are being hit with ransomware that locks down mobile phones and demands payments to unlock them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
China’s largest chip foundry is entering into a joint venture with Qualcomm to develop chips, at a time when the country is looking for technology to emerge as a semiconductor producing powerhouse.The foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has partnered with Qualcomm, Huawei Technologies and Belgian firm Imec to establish the joint venture, the companies said Tuesday.In terms of chip technology, SMIC is still two generations behind its rivals including Intel, Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). But the new joint venture hopes to help the Chinese foundry streamline its research operations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Snowflake Computing announced Tuesday that its cloud-based data warehouse service is available to all users.Called the Snowflake Elastic Data Warehouse, the service allows companies to pool all their data and workloads in a single warehouse that can be accessed by all their users. The warehouse is designed to handle administrative tasks for many of its users, like automatically scaling to match a company’s demands and handling hardware provisioning by itself so that administrators don’t need to spend as much time managing it.In addition, Snowflake’s service is capable of taking in both structured and semi-structured data, without requiring users to ensure that it’s all in one format before uploading to the warehouse. The data warehouse will also automatically optimize itself based on data usage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The alliance between Juniper Networks and Ruckus Wireless announced on Tuesday underscores the importance of Wi-Fi in enterprises, where employees increasingly work and access cloud applications on mobile devices.Juniper and Ruckus say they’re joining forces to build integrated wired and wireless infrastructures while keeping their technologies open and standards-based. The companies focused on enterprises in announcing the partnership, but they will also integrate technologies for service-provider networks, Ruckus Vice President of Corporate Marketing David Callisch said.As Wi-Fi gets faster and more workers use laptops and other portable devices, more enterprises see wireless as a real alternative to traditional ethernet LANs, said Gartner analyst Tim Zimmerman. Some networks based on IEEE 802.11ac theoretically can deliver more speed than Gigabit ethernet, and the second wave of that technology now emerging will offer more than 6Gbps on the top end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple will be playing a larger role in the development of Bluetooth as the company pushes into wearable technology, home automation and more.The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, which oversees the development of the wireless communication standard, announced Tuesday that Apple has become a “promoter member” of the group, giving the company new power to guide Bluetooth’s development. Promoter members are given a continual seat on the group’s board of directors, and are also the only membership class that can vote on its corporate matters.Apple has been an associate board member of the group since 2011, and the company’s senior wireless architect, Joakim Linde. currently serves as the board’s secretary. In the past, Apple’s board membership was term limited. The current promoter members—Ericsson, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nokia, and Toshiba—voted unanimously to have Apple join their ranks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Alibaba Group has decided to sell off its 11Main e-commerce site in the U.S., as part of its focus on attracting foreign brands to its China business.OpenSky, a U.S.-based online retail company, will be taking over 11Main. “This joining of forces will help drive sales worldwide,” Alibaba said on Tuesday.As part of the deal, Alibaba has also sold its Auctiva and Vendio properties to OpenSky, in exchange for a minority stake of 37.6 percent in the U.S. company.11Main, which launched last year, represented an Alibaba foray into the U.S. market. The site was, however, a small operation and offered goods from boutique merchants, rather than competing head-on with Amazon or eBay.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A week and a half after Dick Costolo announced that he would be stepping down from the CEO role at Twitter, the company’s board of directors has sent a shot across the bow of one of the expected front-runner candidates to take the social network’s top job.The social micro-blogging company’s search committee will only consider CEO candidates “who are in a position to make a full-time commitment to Twitter,” the board said.That would seem to rule out Jack Dorsey, the company’s co-founder who currently works as the CEO of Square and will be filling in as interim CEO of Twitter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's another use for graphene—wrap transistor wires with it and boost computer chip speeds.Scientists have discovered that replacing tantalum nitride, the existing wire sheathing material between transistors, with graphene allows chips to exchange data faster.It's yet another use for this super-material. I've written about graphene before in a post titled "Materials breakthrough promises smaller chips."Thin graphite material
If you're unfamiliar with this breakthrough material, graphene is the world's most conductive substance. It's better than copper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One thing that's cool about my job as a tech business publication editor is getting to meet industry pioneers, as I did by phone this past week with Mohit Aron, widely considered to be the Father of Hyperconvergence as a co-founder of Nutanix and now the founder and CEO of startup Cohesity (you can read my Q&A with Aron here). Over the years I've met a bunch of industry Fathers, including Bob Metcalfe of Ethernet fame and Vint Cerf of Internet fame, as well as industry Mothers, like Radia Perlman of Spanning Tree fame.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marketers now face tougher restrictions on their use of “robocalls” and other automated telemarketing techniques thanks to a new set of declaratory rulings issued by the FCC on Thursday.Although the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 requires prior consent for autodialed, prerecorded or artificial voice calls to wireless and residential wireline numbers, marketers have still been able to exploit numerous loopholes to make questionable calls anyway.Now, in response to thousands of consumer complaints and nearly two dozen petitions, the FCC has affirmed consumers’ rights to control the calls they receive and made it clear that telephone companies can use robocall-blocking technology to help them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
EBay has sold its 28.4 percent ownership stake in Craigslist as part of an agreement between the companies announced Friday .The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but eBay said the companies have also agreed to end the outstanding litigation between them. The online auction house paid $32 million in 2004 for the stake in Craigslist, which turned the classified ad market on its head.Since then, the relationship between the two firms could best be described as contentious. In 2008, eBay sued Craigslist alleging it had diluted eBay’s stake in the business and taken eBay’s board seat away. Craigslist fired back that eBay had used its position on the board to gain an unfair competitive advantage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google’s autonomous car fleet is undergoing a major expansion. In the last month, the number of cars it is permitted to drive on public streets has more than doubled, and Google now accounts for more than half of the driverless cars that are legal in California.As of Wednesday, the company has been issued 48 permits for driverless vehicles, according to records at California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. About a month earlier, on May 15, Google held just 23 permits.The additional 25 permits are for a new fleet of prototype cars that are undergoing testing on private roads, the company said. The cars, tiny two-seaters, are designed for neighborhood driving and have a top speed of 25 miles per hour. They’ll be hitting public streets some time over the summer near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
China’s Tsinghua University has teamed up with the University of Washington and Microsoft to launch the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX)—a tech-focused graduate school that’s the first of its kind.The program, which was announced Thursday afternoon, will bring people from around the world to a new facility in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle, to learn and work together. The launch marks the first time a Chinese research institution has opened a physical presence in the U.S., the backers said.Tsinghua is a prestigious, Beijing-based institution that counts current Chinese President Xi Jinping and his predecessor Hu Jintao as alumni. UW is a key player in the tech industry with alumni including U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Ed Felten and Apple Vice President Bud Tribble.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Confirming rumors dating back to as early as March, Oracle announced on Thursday it has appointed former Hewlett-Packard executive David Donatelli as executive vice president for converged infrastructure.Donatelli will report directly to Oracle CEO Mark Hurd and will be responsible for infrastructure offerings including the company’s engineered systems, server, storage, networking and tape products. He will also help oversee Oracle hardware products designed for hybrid cloud environments.Donatelli joined HP in 2009 and served as executive vice president and general manager of HP’s Enterprise Group, with responsibility for the enterprise hardware business, including storage, server, networking and converged infrastructure products. He reportedly was considered a contender for HP’s CEO role before the appointment of Meg Whitman.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has been building its own software-defined data-center networks for 10 years because traditional gear can’t handle the scale of what are essentially warehouse-sized computers.The company hasn’t said much before about that homegrown infrastructure, but one of its networking chiefs provided some details on Wednesday at Open Network Summit and in a blog post.The current network design, which powers all of Google’s data centers, has a maximum capacity of 1.13 petabits per second. That’s more than 100 times as much as the first data-center network Google developed 10 years ago. The network is a hierarchical design with three tiers of switches, but they all use the same commodity chips. And it’s not controlled by standard protocols but by software that treats all the switches as one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Skype Translator beta app now can help people say “guten tag” to their friends in Germany, thanks to an update it received on Thursday.Microsoft’s real-time translation app can now provide live voice and text translations for conversations involving people who speak German and French, in addition to English, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish.For example, someone who speaks English can call up another Skype Translator user who speaks German, and each will have their side of the conversation translated into the other’s native language in real time. The app will provide both a computerized voice translation and a running text transcript that allows users to read what’s being said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here