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The Morning Download: Who Needs an Office? Startup GitLab Is All About Working Remotely
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Good day, CIOs. The changing nature of work, increasingly digitized, has enabled the tech industry to have an oversized impact on defining the workplace—from open offices to remote-work-friendly schedules. Now from GitLab Inc. comes an extreme take, even by Silicon Valley standards. All 600 employees at the software development startup work remotely, CIO Journal's Agam Shah reports.
The office of the future is no office at all. There is no headquarters, nor is there any plan to have one after GitLab’s initial public offering, planned for late 2020, Mr. Shah reports. Employees rely on internal tools and cloud-based services to collaborate, communicate and contribute to projects. “The message we send to investors is, ‘We are on the forefront of a revolution in working,’” says Sid Sijbrandij, the company’s chief executive and co-founder.
The metric is output not hours. A YouTube video channel for employees called GitLab Unfiltered and a 2,000-page handbook keep remote employees up to date on operations, strategies and goals. “Someone who took the afternoon off shouldn’t feel like they did something wrong. You don’t have to defend how you spend your day,” the handbook reads.
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And for those that insist upon visiting an office. People who want to visit the company sometimes end up at the unofficial headquarters, Mr. Sijbrandij’s two-bedroom loft in San Francisco's trendy SoMa neighborhood. The dining room doubles as a videoconferencing center.
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Students in ‘The Eloquent Presenter’ class at Northeastern University in Boston. PHOTO: KAYANA SZYMCZAK FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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When computer-science majors take improv. Getting a computer-science degree at Northeastern University is no joke, CIO Journal's Sara Castellanos reports. Among the requirements is a course in theater and improv, a class designed to “robot-proof” computer-science majors, helping them sharpen uniquely human skills, said Joseph E. Aoun, the university president.
Not everyone thought it was a good idea. “We saw a lot of hysterics and crying,” when the class was made mandatory in 2016, said Carla E. Brodley, dean of the Khoury College of Computer Sciences.
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“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, where is this going?’”
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— Zach Lowen, a former Northeastern University student, on his first day in class
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The Microsoft flaw was one of several high-profile computer-security issues to crop up recently. PHOTO: MARK KAUZLARICH/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Microsoft warns of a monster computer bug. The flaw affects Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. It also affects Windows 2003 and Windows XP—older versions of Windows that Microsoft doesn’t typically patch, the WSJ reports. In a sign of the severity of the bug, Microsoft released XP and Windows 2003 patches as well.
Similiar to WannaCry. The company said that it hasn’t seen anyone take advantage of the flaw, but when someone does, it "could propagate from vulnerable computer to vulnerable computer in a similar way as the WannaCry malware spread across the globe.” The 2017 WannaCry worm infected more than 200,000 systems world-wide with ransomware.
Meltdown redux? Following last year's Meltdown and Spectre chip flaws, Wired reports on a new vulnerability affecting some Intel Corp. chips.
Russian hackers breached Florida voter databases ahead of 2016 election. Hackers compromised two of the state’s counties during the 2016 election, indicating a wider breach of Florida voting systems than previously known, the WSJ reports. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed the findings Tuesday after an FBI briefing concerning hacking activity first described in Robert Mueller’s report. He didn't reveal which counties were affected.
Work email at risk. Cisco Systems Inc. engineers are working on a fix to a vulnerability affecting hardware that determines whether software updates come from legitimate sources. Experts tell the BBC that the flaw, identified by Red Balloon Security, could put work emails at risk.
Huawei touts 'no-spy' agreements. Reuters reports that the telecom giant's chairman said the company is willing to sign no-spy agreements with the U.K. and other governments as they identify vendors for next-generation networks.
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Digital Transformation, CFO-Style
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Duke CFO Steve Young led some early digital changes in finance to push the rest of the company along. PHOTO: DUKE ENERGY
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How automation is changing the workplace at Duke Energy. Duke Energy Corp. CFO Steve Young sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Ezequiel Minaya and Tatyana Shumsky to talk about how automation is changing the way he and his department do their jobs.
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A:
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We started in finance, with a few software robotics that now perform bank reconciliations, account reconciliations and financial-statement compilations. A lot of those tasks were done quickly. So, I could say: “Hey, we’re doing it here in finance. You need to start doing it in your department.”
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Q:
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What was the next step?
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Q:
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We set up what we called lighthouse projects, efforts to find a more efficient way to handle a specific task or process, taking advantage of digital and data-analytic capabilities....You can now have in-the-field equipment that can take pictures, immediately ascribe notes, send it back to an engineering lab to take a look as they try to solve a piece of equipment problem.
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Scientists worry use of some ultrahigh radio frequencies could scramble nearby readings from federal weather satellites. PHOTO: NOAA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Meteorologists worry 5G expansion could interfere with weather forecasts. The WSJ reports that officials at a number of agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, are warning that radio frequencies auctioned off by the Federal Communications Commission for 5G networks could scramble nearby readings from weather satellites used to make storm predictions.
Facebook restricts live streaming. Facebook Inc. will stop people who have recently posted or shared terrorist propaganda from broadcasting live video on its service, the WSJ reports. The action is the company’s most concrete response so far to dial back the feature after it was used to broadcast the deadly attack on 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
San Francisco passes ban on facial-recognition surveillance. The ban comes as officials, activists and companies nationwide debate how to balance the usefulness of rapidly improving AI technologies against their potential for invading privacy and eroding civil liberties, the WSJ reports. San Francisco’s police department says it stopped testing the technology in 2017 and doesn’t use it now. But supporters say an outright ban goes too far, pointing to the potential benefits in a place that had the highest property-crime rate of any major U.S. city as of 2017, according to FBI figures.
Foxconn profit falls. Foxconn Technology Group’s profit fell about 17.7% in the first quarter after its biggest customer, Apple Inc., reported an accelerated decline in sales of the iPhone. The WSJ has more.
CORRECTION: A Download Extra feature in Monday’s newsletter misidentified Insight North America Inc. The company is a global information technology systems integrator.
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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Economic activity in China cooled across the board last month, undoing a brief surge earlier in the year and raising questions about the vitality of the world’s second-largest economy. (WSJ)
The Alabama Senate passed an antiabortion bill that would effectively ban the procedure and is aimed at reaching the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. (WSJ)
The U.S. ordered all its nonemergency staff to leave Iraq immediately, amid heightened tensions with Iran over recent attacks against oil tankers and facilities in the Persian Gulf region. (WSJ)
A Federal Aviation Administration review determined that its engineers deferred to Boeing’s early safety classification of its 737 MAX flight-control system, with limited oversight. (WSJ)
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