Facebook making its workforce more diverse

Diversity is core of business at Facebook.  According to an update by the social media company, diversity enables them to build better products, make better decisions and help bring the world closer together. While most tech companies struggle to make their workplaces more diverse and less dominated by white and male employees, Facebook has managed to hire more women and minorities in the last year in almost every category it tracks. Of course, the improvements are still very incremental, but the improvements show that Facebook’s efforts, led by executive diversity…

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Google leaks Microsoft’s Internet Explorer bug

Google has disclosed a still-active vulnerability in the Edge and Internet explorer browsers that Microsoft apparently ignored for more than three months. The Internet explorer bug was reported to Microsoft by a Google engineer and given 90 days to eliminate the error. The flaw was leaked as Microsoft failed to comply with the appointed timeframe. The flaw fundamentally allows ill-intended individuals to build websites that cause the browsers to spontaneously crash and  to take control of your browser in certain cases, BBC reports. The flaw has to do with the way…

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Google and Microsoft agree crackdown on illegal downloads

Vivo

US tech giants Google and Microsoft have reached a truce with the Government and the creative industries in a bitter and long-running battle over links to pirated films and music online. The search engine operators have signed up to a clampdown that will see the UK’s copyright watchdog monitor the search results they provide for unlawful websites. The agreement follows years of campaigning by record labels and film studios, which have accused Google and Microsoft of turning a blind eye to piracy and dragging their feet over measures to protect…

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A Startup Has Developed An Artificial Intelligence That Can compete with Google

artificial intelligence

There is something familiar about fears that new machines will takeover human activities. Today, the machinery question is back with a vengeance. The entire tech industry has fallen hard for a branch of artificial intelligence called deep learning. The AI involves throwing massive amounts of data at a neural network to train the system to understand things like speech and images.The deep learning allows systems to learn and improve by crunching lots of examples rather than being explicitly programmed. Acording to Forbes, a new startup coming out of stealth called Gamalon , claims…

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BlackBerry, Microsoft and the Ever-Smarter Connected Car

Microsoft

BlackBerry announced that its turnaround was finished, and Microsoft finally provided some information on its new connected car deliverables. CEO John Chen excitedly pointed out that BlackBerry had displaced Microsoft in Ford and announced a strategic initiative to work more closely with Microsoft’s Azure platform on BlackBerry’s own market-leading QNX car operating system. That showcased not only the massive changes in both companies, but also the really strange way this market is evolving. With all the focus on the coming autonomous car and on BlackBerry’s old phone business, most don’t…

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Google Gets Rid of 1.7 Billion Bad Ads

Google

Google has reported that it removed 1.7 billion bad advertisements from its various sites in 2016, more than double the prior year’s totals. The firm took several steps to crack down on the deceptive advertising, including updating its policies to protect users from “misleading and predatory offers.” It also beefed up its technology to help identify misleading ads and remove them, according to Scott Spencer, Google’s director of product management, sustainable ads. The director noted that free and open Web is a vital resource for individuals and businesses around the…

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Zuckerberg “deeply disappointed” by the Internet.org, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explosion

Earlier today, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad for no apparent reason. While we’re still trying to learn more about what happened, we already know that the company was doing a test, and an anomaly created a big mess. Fortunately, all personnel were clear of the launch pad. But this incident is going to affect Facebook’s Internet.org effort in a significant way as a satellite was also destroyed in the process. While insurance companies are going to pay out for today’s failure, the SpaceX rocket was…

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CyberXchange Conference And Hackathon To Be Held In Nigeria In November

CyberXchange

The Facebook Sponsored CyberXchange Hackathon will be held in Lagos, Nigeria in November. The Hackathon is a competition geared towards finding the best prototypes by starting from scratch to build a workable idea with the help of collaborating colleagues on their teams. As aptantech reports, during the Hackathon, teams will compete against other teams with less than 2 years experience from all over Nigeria. These participants will have the opportunity to build a hack against a cybersecurity issue. The pre-qualifier registration for the Hackathon closes on August 30th, successful parties…

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Data Breaches: First half of 2015 saw venture firms invest $1.2 billion in cybersecurity startups

Data Breaches Boost Funding for Cybersecurity Startups Extract: In the 2015 first half, venture firms invested $1.2 billion in cybersecurity startups, according to researcher CB Insights. That is down slightly from $1.4 billion a year earlier but up sharply from $771 million in 2013’s first half. The shift is particularly notable at Andreessen Horowitz, which used to view security companies as necessary for Internet safety but less lucrative than other technology niches. One reason is that cybersecurity startups were often acquired prior to an initial public offering, says Scott Weiss,…

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Private undersea cable ventures validate network growth trends

Liquid Telecom

Google may invest in a multi-million-dollar undersea cable across the Pacific Ocean that will help handle increasing amounts of undersea traffic being sent across private networks, according to The Wall Street Journal. Despite arguments about Net neutrality, privately owned undersea cables, for example, give the companies that own it more control over traffic prioritization long before it reaches consumers. Google’s potential move makes sense in terms of a recent TeleGeography Global Bandwidth Research Service report, which found that while international backbone operators are still the primary users of international bandwidth,…

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