Google extends remote work option due to pandemic

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Google on Tuesday extended the option for its employees to work from home into next year due to the pandemic.

Returning to Google campuses will remain voluntary globally through January 10, with local offices given the discretion to decide when to require employees to return to their desks, according to chief executive Sundar Pichai.

"I’m happy to say that a large number of offices globally are already open for business, and we are welcoming back tens of thousands of Googlers on a voluntary basis," Pichai said.

"The road ahead may be a little longer and bumpier than we hoped, yet I remain optimistic that we will get through it together."

He promised Google workers 30 days' notice before they would have to return to their offices, and announced they would be able to take off an extra day in October and December as "reset days" to "rest and recharge."

Google, Facebook and other tech giants have delayed plans for workers to return to the campuses that were abandoned early in the pandemic in an effort to limit the spread of Covid-19. 

Tech firms have also instituted vaccine and mask requirements to make offices safer as the Delta variant surges in the US and other countries.

Agence France-Presse 

Facebook buys animated graphics startup GIPHY

Facebook said Friday it had acquired the animated graphics startup GIPHY and would integrate the company in its Instagram visual social network.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the news site Axios said the California-based tech giant was paying $400 million (P20.29 billion).


GIPHY is a platform and search engine for “stickers” and other products using the graphics interchange format or GIFs.

“GIPHY, a leader in visual expression and creation, is joining the Facebook company today as part of the Instagram team,” Facebook said in a statement.

“GIPHY makes everyday conversations more entertaining, and so we plan to further integrate their GIF library into Instagram and our other apps so that people can find just the right way to express themselves.”

GIPHY was created in 2013 “with a simple goal in mind: to make communication more fun,” a blog from the GIPHY team said.


“That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that GIPHY has been acquired by Facebook and is joining the team at Instagram.


“Instagram has revolutionized self-expression. More than one billion people use Instagram to communicate how they’re feeling and what they’re passionate about—we can’t wait to help those people become even more animated.”

The news comes with social networks seeing usage grow as a result of billions of people sheltering in place due to coronavirus lockdowns.

At the same time, tech critics have warned about the pandemic boosting the power of top Silicon Valley firms, and some lawmakers have called for a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions involving the large companies.

Facebook said it has partnered with GIPHY for years and that the company would continue to operate its library.


“We’re looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content,” said Instagram vice president of product Vishal Shah.

“GIFs and stickers give people meaningful and creative ways to express themselves. We see the positivity in how people use GIPHY in our products today, and we know that bringing the GIPHY team’s creativity and talent together with ours will only accelerate how people use visual communication to connect with each other.”

Associated Press

Google employees to walk out to protest treatment of women

SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of Google engineers and other workers are expected to walk off the job Thursday morning to protest the internet company’s lenient treatment of executives accused of sexual misconduct.

It is the latest expression of a backlash against men’s exploitation of female subordinates in a business, entertainment and politics. In Silicon Valley, women also are becoming fed up with the male-dominated composition of the technology industry’s workforce — a glaring imbalance that critics say fosters unsavory behavior akin to a college fraternity house.


The Google protest, billed “Walkout For Real Change,” is unfolding a week after a New York Times story detailed allegations of sexual misconduct about creator of its Android software, Andy Rubin. The report said Rubin received a $90 million severance package in 2014 even though Google concluded the sexual misconduct allegations against him were credible.

Rubin derided the Times story article as inaccurate and denied the allegations in a tweet.

The same story also disclosed allegations of sexual misconduct of other executives, including Richard DeVaul, a director at the same Google-affiliated lab that created far-flung projects such as self-driving cars and internet-beaming balloons. DeVaul had remained at the “X” lab after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced about him a few years ago, but he resigned Tuesday without severance, Google confirmed Wednesday.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized for the company’s “past actions” in an email sent to employees Tuesday. “I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel,” Pichai wrote. “I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society. and, yes, here at Google, too.”

The email didn’t mention the reported incidents involving Rubin, DeVaul or anyone else, but Pichai didn’t dispute anything in the Times story.


In an email last week, Pichai and Eileen Naughton, Google’s executive in charge of personnel issues, sought to reassure workers that the company had cracked down on sexual misconduct since Rubin’s departure four years ago.

Among other things, Pichai and Naughton disclosed that Google had fired 48 employees , including 13 senior managers, for “sexual harassment” in recent years without giving any of them severance packages.

But Thursday’s workout could signal that a significant number of the 94,000 employees working for Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc. remained unconvinced the company is doing enough to adhere to Alphabet’s own edict urging all employees to “do the right thing .”

A Silicon Valley congresswoman tweeted her support of the Google walkout using the “metoo” hashtag that has become a battle cry for women fighting sexual misconduct. “Why do they think it’s OK to reward perpetrators & further violate victims?” asked Rep. Jackie Speier, who represents an affluent district where many of Google’s employees live. /ee

source: technology.inquirer.net

Researchers find new security flaw in Intel chips

WASHINGTON, United States – Researchers have discovered a new security flaw that could let hackers pry information from supposedly secure virtual vaults in Intel chips, the company warned on Tuesday.

Intel said software updates are already available and it did not appear anyone had taken advantage of the “Foreshadow” vulnerability, which has been likened to troubling “Meltdown” and “Spectre” flaws exposed in computer chips early this year.

“If used for malicious purposes, this class of vulnerability has the potential to improperly infer data values from multiple types of computing devices,” Intel said on its website.


“Intel has worked with operating system vendors, equipment manufacturers, and other ecosystem partners to develop platform firmware and software updates that can help protect systems from these methods,” it said.

The “Meltdown” and “Spectre” flaws roiled the Silicon Valley chip maker, prompting a series of lawsuits and a congressional inquiry about Intel’s handling of the matter

“We are not aware of reports that any of these methods have been used in real-world exploits, but this further underscores the need for everyone to adhere to security best practices,” Intel executive vice president and general manager of product assurance and security said of “Foreshadow” in a post on Intel’s website.

“Once systems are updated, we expect the risk to consumer and enterprise users running non-virtualized operating systems will be low.” /cbb

source: technology.inquirer.net

Google’s new self-driving cars cruising Silicon Valley roads

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — The latest models of Google’s self-driving cars are now cruising the streets near the Internet company’s Silicon Valley headquarters as an ambitious project to transform the way people get around shifts into its next phase.

This marks the first time that the pod-like, two-seat vehicles have been allowed on public roads since Google unveiled the next generation of its self-driving fleet more than a year ago. The cars had previously been confined to a private track on a former Air Force base located about 120 miles southeast of San Francisco.

Google announced last month that it would begin testing the curious-looking cars last month, but hadn’t specified the timing until Tuesday when it disclosed the vehicles are driving up to 25 miles per hour on the roads around its Mountain View, California, office.

Google had installed its robotic driving technology in Lexus sports utility vehicles and Toyota Priuses during the first few years of testing before developing the smaller prototype. The new models are designed to work without a steering wheel or brake pedal, although the vehicles will be equipped with those features during the initial runs on public roads.

A human will also ride in the cars to take control in emergencies, just as has been the case with the self-driving Lexus vehicles during the past six years.

The debut of the pod-like car will help Google get a better understanding on how well its technology works around other vehicles steered by people.

Last year, Google Inc. told reporters it hoped to have a 100 of the self-driving prototypes in its fleet by now, but the company said it has only built 25 of them so far. All 25 have received permission from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to drive neighborhood roads.

If all goes well, Google hopes to gain regulatory clearance to remove the steering wheel, brake pedal and emergency driver from the prototype. Company executives have expressed hope that self-driving cars using its technology will be joining the flow of daily traffic by the end of this decade.

The earlier models of Google’s self-driving cars had been involved in 13 minor accidents through more than 1.8 million miles on the roads, according to the company. Google blamed the collisions on other vehicles in every instance except one when the company says one of its own employees was steering.

Motorists who encounter Google’s latest self-driving car while they are in Mountain can share their experience with the company at http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/contact/www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/contact/ .

source: technology.inquirer.net

‘Mac’ turns 30 in changing computer world

SAN FRANCISCO – Decades before changing the world with iPhones and iPads, Apple transformed home computing with the Macintosh.

The friendly desktop machine referred to as the “Mac” and, importantly, the ability to control it by clicking on icons with a “mouse,” opened computing to non-geeks in much the way that touchscreens later allowed almost anyone get instantly comfortable with smartphones or tablets.

The Macintosh computer, introduced 30 years ago Friday, was at the core of a legendary rivalry between late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft mastermind Bill Gates.

Thousands of Apple faithful are expected for a birthday party this weekend in a performing arts center in Silicon Valley, not far from the company’s headquarters in the city of Cupertino.

‘Quantum leap forward’

“The Mac was a quantum leap forward,” early Apple employee Randy Wigginton told AFP.

“We didn’t invent everything, but we did make everything very accessible and smooth,” he continued. “It was the first computer people would play with and say: ‘That’s cool.’”

Prior to the January 24, 1984 unveiling of the Mac with its “graphical user interface,” computers were workplace machines commanded with text typed in what seemed like a foreign language to those were not software programmers.

Credit for inventing the computer mouse in the 1960s went to Stanford Research Institute’s Doug Engelbart, who died last year at 88.

“The Mac’s impact was to bring the graphical user interface to ‘the rest of us,’ as Apple used to say,” Dag Spicer, chief content officer of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, told AFP.

“The Mac GUI was picked up by Microsoft, who named it Windows.”

The man remembered today as a marketing magician was a terrified 27-year-old when he stepped on stage to unveil the Mac, then-chief executive John Sculley said of Jobs in a post at the tech news website CNET.

“He rehearsed over and over every gesture, word, and facial expression,” Sculley said.

“Yet, when he was out there on stage, he made it all look so spontaneous.”

Orwellian Super Bowl ad

Apple spotlighted the arrival of the Mac with a television commercial portraying a bold blow struck against an Orwellian computer culture.

The “1984″ commercial directed by Ridley Scott aired in an expensive time slot during a US Super Bowl football championship in a “huge shot” at IBM, Daniel Kottke of the original Mac team told AFP.

“In the Apple board room, there were strong feelings that it was not appropriate; there was a big battle,” Kottke said.

“Fortunately, Steve Jobs and his reality distortion field won the day and it left a strong memory for everyone who saw it.”

There was a drive to keep the Mac price within reach of consumers in a market where computers costing $10,000 or more were typical.

While clicking an on-screen icon to open a file appeared simple, memory and processing demands were huge for the computing power of that time.

“Every time you move that mouse, you are re-drawing the screen,” Kottke said. “It is almost like video.”

The original vision of launching a Macintosh with 64 kilobytes of RAM and a $1,000 price gave way to introducing one with 128 kilobytes of RAM at $2,500.

“Steve really was crazy about details,” Wigginton said. “He wanted everything to be just right. Compared to the IBM PC of those days, it is just gorgeous.”

Macintosh also arrived with a new feature called “drop-down menus.”

“The Macintosh brought a new level of accessibility for personal computing to a much wider market in the same way the iPad did 25 years later,” Kottke said.

Mac prowess at page layouts and photo editing won the devotion of artistic types. The release of “hypercard” is credited with inspiring fanatical loyalty to Macs.

“It was the idea that you could create a page on your screen and create links to other pages,” Kottke said.

“You could have all your computers networked to share data; it was like a private Internet.”

The Windows-Apple rivalry

Macs sold decently out of the gate, but Windows machines hit with a low-price advantage for budget-minded buyers. Microsoft released the first version of Windows in late 1985.

The ensuing rivalry is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend and coffee shop smack talk.

“I think Steve Jobs cultivated a sense of Windows versus Mac,” Kottke said.

“Steve Jobs was always taking swipes at Microsoft, but it really heated up when Microsoft released Windows. He would say they copied us.”

Microsoft took the lead in the home computer market by concentrating on software while partners cranked out Windows-powered machines at prices that undercut the Mac.

“Really, Apple could well have gone out of business in the late 1990s,” Kottke said.

“That would not have surprised people.”

The rivalry between Microsoft and Apple has yielded to the mobile age, with Google and its Android operating system targeted as the new nemesis as lifestyles center on smartphones and tablet computers.

The original boxy Macintosh with a mouth-like slit below the screen for “floppy” data disks has evolved into a line that boasts slim, powerful laptops and a cylindrical Mac Pro desktop model.

“I am thankful to have been a part of it,” Wigginton said.

“Once you go through an experience like that, and it was extremely painful, you look back and every sacrifice is absolutely worth it. It is when Apple leapfrogs in technology that they succeed.”

source: technology.inquirer.net