Earlier this week, I talked about a lawsuit involving Twitter on the grounds of gender discrimination. This comes in the wake of another major, major Silicon Valley fight over gender discrimination.
The opponents of this fight are Ellen Pao verses her former employer, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm called Kleiner Perkins Caufield. Pao and her attorneys argued she was denied lucrative deals while working as an associate at Kleiner Perkins. ?They argued it was exclusively men that were getting these deals. Pao was eventually fired. Kleiner’s defense countered this, saying Pao was an inconsistent worker and called the lawsuit opportunistic. In a five week trail filled with enough twist and turns for a John Grisham novel, the jury sided with Kleiner Perkins 9-3. The trial grabbed Silicon Valley’s ear.
Though the venture capitalist firm won this battle, Silicon Valley’s war over gender discrimination is far from over. The trial revealed disturbing obstacles and hurdles women often face in technology industries. After the verdict, Pao posted a series of tweets thanking thousands all around the world for their support. Obviously disappointed with the verdict, Pao hope this trail exposed gender issues in the technology and venture capital industries. She also calls on people around the world to help level the playing field for all women and minorities. I think, or at least hope, this will start a long, difficult dialogue on gender and race/ethnicity issues in technology. Maybe this will force some, especially those in hiring, to question their own attitudes on such issues. I don’t know who was in the right in the Pao vs Kleiner case. Obviously I wasn’t there. Maybe the jury got the verdict right. Maybe they got the verdict wrong. I hope the trial and the aftermath serves as a wake-up call to us all in the technology industry to be alert, aware and sensitive to others. Will it?
Yesterday, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This bill would give businesses the right to refuse goods and services to customers, particularly same-sex couples.If you attempt to sue the business for discrimination, they can use religion as a defense. You knew it wouldn’t take long before the backlash to start.
Take Salesforce for instance. Their CEO Marc Benioff cancelled all their events throughout Indiana, and threatened a long term boycott unless the new bill is repealed. In an interview, Benioff talked about his company’s economic contributions to the state. He’s not bragging or exaggerating. Salesforce employs as many as 3,000 people in Indiana. In 2013, he acquired an email marketing firm for around 2.5 billion dollars. The firm is based in Indianapolis, the state’s capitol and largest city. An annual event called Exact Target is being threatened. This event has gone on since 2007 and last year alone, made Indianapolis $8 million. Benioff says he’ll move it to New York this year if he has to. Benioff asked other tech CEOs to take up this cause.
But Gov. Pence sticks by this bill. He insists this bill is not to discriminate against anyone and has even reached out to Benioff. I don’t think this bill was made to deliberately discriminate against people, but perception is everything. It’s sad to say, but in 2015 America, some businesses could run with this. This bill could allow owners to reject anybody on the basis of religion, race, creed, color, ethnicity, as well as orientation. They could hide behind religion to excuse such prejudice behavior. In the 1960s, a barbecue restaurant owner in South Carolina tried this. Will history repeat itself? Plus, this bill is going to upset a lot of Americans and possibly cripple Indiana’s economy. What if other tech companies follow Mr. Benioff’s example? What if other states welcome Salesforce operations with open arms? What is Marc Benioff removes all of his Salesforce offices and employees out of Indiana? Organizers of the gaming conference Gen Con are leaving Indiana and going somewhere else. Even the NCAA is talking about stopping college basketball tournaments in Indiana because of the bill. Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act the worst bill in Indiana’s history?
Windows 10 is a very exciting operating system. With all of the upgrades from 8.1, like use of the Hololens, a personal assistant that is like Siri but way cooler. I mean she is named after the AI in Halo for god?s sakes, the ability to stream Xbox one games and much more!
Well last week an announcement was made that in the first year of Windows 10 there will be a free upgrade for everyone that has a copy of Windows 7 and 8/8.1.?? Sound good right? Well it gets better. They will be also offering the upgrade to pirates.
No not the sailors with the eye patches, hooked hands, and boats. But those who have a non-genuine copy of Windows 7 or 8/8.1 not obtained legally. So there you have all these pirate rubbing their hands together getting ready to be able to go from non-genuine to genuine in a snap or :
Well from the looks of it Microsoft isn?t trying to trap you or give you free software for that matter. In an interview with Terry Myerson, Microsoft?s operating system chief from Reuters they claim ?we are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10.?
However with Windows 10 although non-genuine PCs will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 but the upgrade will not change the state of your license. So this means non-genuine Windows is not published by Microsoft. It is not properly licenses, or supported by Microsoft or any trusted partner. If the PC was non-genuine or mislicensed before the upgrade, the PC will still be considered non-genuine or mislicensed after the upgrade.
So it looks like you will get Windows 10 but it won?t be genuine all of a sudden.
Now you may ask yourself why Microsoft wouldn?t just stick it to those people who are non-genuine. They could certainly disable non-genuine versions of the Windows OS from running altogether but it seems the company would then run some risks. They may lose people who have just not activated their software or people did pay after learning it was not legit just to get rid of the non-genuine message and black desktop.
We are all looking forward to the release of Windows 10 which is due out this summer.
The FBI is investigating a series of hacks. But these aren’t hacks to steal money or ID information. These hacks seem to come from a far more sinister nature.
The FBI and international law enforcement are investigating hacks claimed to be by ISIS; it’s logo has appeared on many a site over the past several days. Websites from a Goodwill store in St. Louis to NASCAR star Tony Stewart’s speedway in Ohio to a rape crisis center in Dublin, Ireland are among the ones hit. When someone logged on these websites, they were met with a black ISIS flag and the phrase, “hacked by ISIS, we are everywhere.” Many investigations say this is probably a hoax. Even intelligence say they have no hard evidence that the people behind these web attacks are linked to the terrorist group in any way. But as you can imagine, people are freaked out to have this symbol flash on their screens. They even got a credit union in Montana, which still remains down. In fact, a bar right here in the greater Boston area was hit with this ISIS symbol, but they took it in stride. They wrote on their Facebook post, “It’s Saturday night. Come in and have a cocktail! Don’t let ISIS win!”
I hope ISIS isn’t behind this. Because if they are, I shutter to think what their next step could be. Most cyber criminal experts don’t think they are. But until there is hard evidence to prove they’re not behind this hacking, I’m going to leave it as a real realm of possibility. If domestic hackers are trying to make a name for themselves, why would you use a group like ISIS as a cover? Don’t they know the atrocities this group has committed? Don’t they know about the murder, rape, torture, pillage and destruction they’ve caused to countless people around the world? Or are these domestic hackers just a bunch of copycats who don’t even care? Why would they even do that?
Last week, I talked about terrorist group ISIS and how they use today’s technology to help fuel their evil and madness. They’re not the only ones. Let’s look at the face off between technology vs. drug cartels.
Throughout Mexico, that nation’s most tech savvy engineers, architects, web programmers and other workers are disappearing. Years may pass before these cases are solved. It’s believed these men and women are being kidnapped and forced to work for Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels. Around 40 Mexican tech workers have vanished since the late 2000s. For example, in 2009, nine cell tower operators vanished in Nuevo Laredo. In 2011, an IBM employee was carjacked then kidnapped while driving to Laredo, Texas. Their tasks could include hacking, building radio and online networks, and interpreting chatter from law enforcement. They could be forced into a world of drug trafficking, extortion, theft, even human slave trafficking. Because the areas being searched are mountainous and rural, and because the cartels’ communication systems are often sophisticated, tracking these victims is far easier said than done. There are some waves of progress. One 2011 bust severely damaged a cartel’s network. Over 1,000 radios, 1,300 cellphones, 1,300 NexTel gadgets and 160 antennas were confiscated. This bust compromised over 500 miles of their network. But no kidnapping victim was found. No ransom has been asked for their release back to their family or friends. It’s believed victims are kept alive only because their work is valuable to the cartels’ criminal causes.
There’s another reason these innocent woman and men may never be founded: corruption. These illegal cartels make billions a year. It’s easy for any law enforcement agent, political leader, journalist or clergyman to get tempted. In this link is one story that made me sick. Here’s another thing to think about: brainwashing techniques. What if these kidnapped victims have been so seduced by the money and power that they don’t want to come home, but continue in these awful deeds? Technology can break down networks and track bad guys. But can technology transform human minds and hearts?
With Hulu, Netflix, Sling TV, and more, it is becoming more and more likely that cable will soon be out the window and devices that can stream this type of media will become more of the norm. Well with that being said, Nvidia, a company best known for their video cards are now getting into the set top box game.
The co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Jen-Hsun Huang made some serious announcements. One of the biggest announcements is the plan to go into the user hardware game by selling a $199 Shield, which is a set-top box that will be running Android TV which is going to be launching around May of this year.
This will also be a gaming console which Nvidia has been known for, as it already has made Android gaming handhelds and high end tablets.
With this announcement the company actually put a strong focus on the non-gaming aspect of the shield. From the demo they showed at a post GDC keynote they saw how fluid it was to navigate the interface just like with an Amazon Fire TV or even a Roku box. The shield will also be capable of putting out 4k images, which is making it future proof.
Moving from the media aspect to the gaming aspect we are looking at some decent specs for the price. The Shield will come with a Tegra X1 chip was just unveiled at CES in January. To give a comparison for all you gamers the X1?s GPU has more than twice the power of an Xbox 360 and consumes between 1/20th and 1/5th as much electricity as the 360.
However many of the Android games will not be pushing that chip very hard but another item they showed off with the shield is the Nvidia Shield Store which is a collection of high end games that has been specially brought over to that platform. This is includes some previous Shield games such as Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Metal Gear Rising: ReVengeance, and Half-Life 2 just to name a few.
So what do you think about this upcoming set top box? Part gaming console part media stream and at just $199 could it be the next big thing??Comment below and join the debate!
