Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson asked Google to make an amendment to its governance byelaws to make a search for women and people of color a must before filling board positions, as part of his push to get higher representation for women and certain ethnic groups in tech companies.Addressing a Google shareholder meeting Wednesday, Jackson also asked the Internet giant if it would invest in early-stage Black and Latino-led tech startups.“Google reportedly has over $35 billion parked overseas,” Jackson said. “Would you consider repatriating some of this offshore money back to America to fund an Innovation Investment Development Bank? And in return, receive tax credits or a reduced tax rate on foreign profits?”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Satellite TV service provider Dish Network and wireless carrier T-Mobile US are reportedly in talks for a merger, which could be the latest in a wave of consolidation in the media and communications industry.The two sides are said to have agreed that Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, will become the chairman of the merged entity, while T-Mobile CEO John Legere will be appointed as the CEO of the combined companies, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.The talks were described to the newspaper as in “the formative stage,” with no guarantee that a deal will be finally done. Key issues such as the purchase price and the mix of cash and stock that would be used to pay for the deal are still unresolved, people familiar with the matter told the newspaper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon Web Services customers have sent a letter to the cloud services provider requesting that it disclose more information about its sustainability practices.The 19 companies, including Tumblr, Change.org and the Huffington Post, said they want to convey the information to their users, customers, employees and other stakeholders.While lauding Amazon’s commitment to get its entire cloud operation running on renewable energy, the companies wrote to AWS chief Andy Jassy last week that they want to see Amazon disclose more about its current carbon and energy footprint, its progress towards renewable energy goals, and its strategy for increasing its use of renewable energy. The letter also requests that Amazon share how it defines renewable energy and what energy sources the company will prefer going forward.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett-Packard has given a glimpse of what the company’s separation looks like from an internal IT perspective, and not surprisingly, there are some big numbers involved.The ongoing task involves dividing up or retooling 2,800 applications and 75,000 APIs (application programming interfaces) before the company becomes Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. on Nov. 1.Before the transformation began, HP had 50,000 servers in six data centers. Five thousand IT staff are working on the transition at any given time, said John Hinshaw, head of HP technology and operations, at the HP Discover conference Wednesday.HP has been preparing for the split since it was announced last October. The work is 80 percent complete, according to Hinshaw, and HP will actually start to operate as two companies on Aug. 1, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A prototype of Hewlett-Packard’s futuristic Machine computer will be ready for partners to develop software on by next year, though the finished product is still half a decade away.The single-rack prototype will have 2,500 CPU cores and an impressive 320TB of main memory, CTO and HP Labs Director Martin Fink told reporters at the HP Discover conference Wednesday. This is more than 20 times the amount of any server on the market today, he claimed.But there’s a catch: the prototype will use current DRAM memory chips, because the advanced memristor technology that HP eventually plans to use is still under development—one of the big reasons The Machine remains several years away.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Betting that demand for hybrid clouds will grow strongly, IBM has acquired Blue Box, which specializes in offering OpenStack open source cloud hosting services.IBM will use Blue Box’s technology and infrastructure to help its customers adopt hybrid cloud computing, so that their workloads can be easily moved between a public cloud and their own data centers.A private company, Blue Box gives organizations an alternative to setting up and deploying the OpenStack internally, offering the software stack as a service instead. This allows an organization to control workloads from a single console whether they run on Blue Box’s private cloud or on internal infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HP has entered into an arrangement with Arista Networks to market Arista’s data center switches along with HP converged IT infrastructure products.In accounts where Arista is the preferred networking supplier, HP will offer the switches along with its Converged Architecture portfolio, which includes HP servers and storage, including HP 3PAR StoreServ flash storage and the HP OneView management system.Speculation has it that HP will also offer Arista’s EOS operating system on its merchant silicon-based switching hardware as part of a disaggregated offering similar to HP’s arrangement with Cumulus Networks. HP is offering Cumulus Linux as an operating system option on some new Accton-based branded white box switches, which through support of the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) can run various third-party operating systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There is a lot to look forward to in Skylake PCs, if mini-PCs from Asus showed on the Computex show floor are an indicator.Lying in one corner of the Asus booth were two mini-desktops based on Intel’s upcoming sixth-generation Core processor. With the powerful processors, a host of port options and support for 4K video, the tiny computing powerhouses could be full-fledged desktop replacements.Skylake has been described by Intel as its most significant chip release in a decade. It will succeed a family of chips code-named Broadwell, which is in PCs now. Tablets, laptops and desktops based on the new chip architecture are expected in the second half of this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Gamers, buckle up—AMD will launch its highly-anticipated graphics processing unit, code-named Fiji, on June 16 at the E3 conference.Many were expecting Fiji to launch at a press event at Computex on Wednesday, but that didn’t happen. Instead, AMD did show off key technology, which will first appear in Fiji and could give significant speed and power saving gains to future graphics chips.On stage, AMD CEO Lisa Su showed a chip for technology called HBM (high-bandwidth memory), which could make graphics chips faster and more power-efficient.HBM offers 3.5 times the bandwidth per watt of GDDR5, which is currently used in memory chips. Instead of being placed next to each other, HBM stacks memory chips, which are connected through a high-speed thread. HBM is also faster due a wider bus and its closer location to graphics processors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chromebooks may be hot-ticket items, but with its sixth-generation A-series chips for mainstream laptops, AMD is placing its bets on Microsoft’s Windows 10.The new chips, code-named Carrizo, will appear in laptops priced between US$400 and $800 from Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba. The first wave of laptops will become available starting in July, initially with Windows 8, and later in the year with Windows 10.The new chips include quad-core A8 and A10 processors, which have up to six GPU cores, and the faster FX chips, which have up to eight GPU cores. Some new laptops based on the chips were shown at the Computex trade show in Taipei this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The average company has about 70 different types of third-party code on its website but is aware of only about a third of them. The rest are hidden in services like ad networks, widgets and analytics tools, and they can bog down performance, threaten security and compromise search-engine optimization.That’s according to Ghostery, which on Tuesday announced a partnership with Oracle whereby its TrackerMap Live monitoring tool is now available to users of the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Offered on the Oracle Marketing AppCloud, TrackerMap Live is designed to help reveal the interconnected ecosystem of code and third-party tags on company websites.Using TrackerMap Live, companies can pinpoint where each tag on their site comes from and see what its effects are. Along the way, they can determine whether vendors are placing unwanted or non-secure piggyback tags on their website without permission.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the problems with traditional data centers has always been that the servers create a lot of heat. And that waste heat needs to be disposed of to prevent server components, switches, and other parts from overheating and malfunctioning.Various solutions have been tried over the years, including building data centers near the sea so cold sea water can be used for cooling. Facebook built a site in Sweden near the Arctic Circle to take advantage of ambient cooing—it's cold up there.And of course, expensive grid-powered air conditioning is the default solution.Data furnaces
Dutch company Nerdalize reckons it's got a better answer. It suggests getting rid of data centers, distributing servers throughout communities, and using them to heat homes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
DARPA
A laser beam heats a metal powder to additively build a product layer by layer.
If additive manufacturing technologies like 3D printing are to become mainstream for complex engineering tasks – think building combat fighter aircraft wings or complete rocket engines – there needs to be a major uptick in the reliability and trustworthiness of such tools.+More on Network World: The hottest 3D printing projects+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Is Apple planning some variation of a 2-in-1 device that would combine the iPad with a detachable keyboard?It's not completely far-fetched.If Apple did so, it would be keeping with a growing industry trend, analysts said. Apple wouldn't comment on this story, but that hasn't kept people from speculating.Of course, the iPad already works with various Bluetooth keyboards, including Apple's own and those from some third-party manufacturers. There are also various covers that can double as a way to prop up the tablet.+ ALSO: 20 best iPhone/iPad games +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dell’s PCs largely use Intel chips, but the company is once again warming to AMD processors for its new Inspiron laptops and desktops.The Inspiron 5000 laptops with 14-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch screens contain AMD’s new A-series chips, code-named Carrizo. The laptops are now shipping worldwide even though the chips aren’t due to be announced until Wednesday.The desktop-replacement laptops start at US$449.99 for the 15-inch model, $599.99 for the 14-inch model, and $699.99 inch for the 17-inch model.Dell once used AMD chips in a range of laptops, but slowly dropped them from product lines as the chip-maker dealt with quality and production problems. Hewlett-Packard has stayed loyal to AMD, but many other PC makers have dropped AMD’s chips over the years for not standing up to Intel’s chips in performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel is giving Apple and other laptop makers a reason to put its Thunderbolt high-speed data ports back in their next ultrathin laptops: Thunderbolt 3.0 ports will use the same Type C connector as USB 3.1—but when connected to other Thunderbolt devices, will run up to four times as fast.Thunderbolt 3 can transfer data at a whopping 40G bps (bits per second), twice as fast as Thunderbolt 2, which was introduced in 2014.Found in Macs and some Windows PCs, Thunderbolt technology connects computers to peripherals such as external storage devices and even graphics cards. Laptops with Thunderbolt 3 ports will be released by the end of the year, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group, during a keynote at Computex in Taipei.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel is drumming up excitement for its upcoming chips code-named Skylake, showing the first tablet based on the architecture during a keynote at the Computex show in Taipei.The tablet had a 4K display that could display images at a resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels, and was 7.8 millimeters thick.Tablets based on Skylake will be computing powerhouses that will manage high-resolution displays, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager for the PC Client Group at Intel.Skylake will go into tablets, laptops and desktops, including some that are on track to reach the market in the second half this year.Devices based on Skylake could incorporate a number of interesting features, including wireless charging and, in some mobile devices, Thunderbolt 3.0 ports. These will be able transfer data at 40Gbps (bits per second), close to twice the transfer speed of Thunderbolt 2.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the PC industry starting to adopt USB 3.1 technology, prices for cables that can connect to these products are also expected to rapidly fall, according to manufacturers.In March, Apple was among the first to come out with a laptop built with a single USB 3.1 port that used the Type-C connector.The USB 3.1 standard promises data transfer speeds of 10Gbps (gigabits per second), two times faster than USB 3.0. But given that the technology is still new, prices for USB 3.1 cables with Type-C connectors are hovering between US$24 and $29.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Qualcomm hopes to put its chips in more low-cost Android tablets through a partnership with Chinese chip maker Allwinner.As part of the agreement, Allwinner will push Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 and 210 chips with integrated LTE into low-cost Android tablets distributed worldwide. Allwinner mainly distributes Wi-Fi-only chips for tablets under US$200, and its LTE lineup will be filled up by Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.The deal offers an opportunity for Qualcomm to grow in the Chinese market, where the company was hit with problems in recent years. Qualcomm in February paid US$975 million to settle a fine imposed by the Chinese government for monopolistic business practices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here