Huawei export restrictions will hurt Silicon Valley. The Commerce Department’s decision Wednesday to scrutinize exports to Huawei Technololgies Inc. will force suppliers to apply for licenses to keep selling to the Chinese firm. Among suppliers are the biggest names in the Valley, says The Wall Street Journal, including Qualcomm Inc., Broadcom Inc., Intel Corp. and Oracle Corp. Huawei last year bought about $11 billion in U.S. components.
Saving for a rainy day. Anticipating supply challenges, Huawei has been stockpiling U.S. components for almost a year, the South China Morning Post reports.
Portrait of a cyber-crime ring. Law enforcement in the U.S. and Europe announced the disruption of a crime ring responsible for attempting to steal $100 million after infecting with malware some 41,000 computers. Scanning the indictment, Wired sees not one cyber gang, per say, but a collection of freelancers, who came together for the big heist after offering their services on Russian-language online crime forums.
Tesla’s autopilot was engaged in fatal Florida crash, investigators find. Data taken from a Model 3 compact sedan that crashed in Florida showed the driver hadn’t touched the steering wheel in the seconds leading up to the incident and made no effort to avoid the collision, the WSJ reports. Autopilot, a collection of driver-assistance features, is part of Tesla’s effort to create vehicles that one day may drive themselves without human oversight.
Top prospects reconsider Facebook job offer. Job-acceptance rates from software engineers and graduates of top universities dropped in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal former Facebook Inc. recruiters tell CNBC. Among top schools, the acceptance rate dropped to between 35% and 55% as of December compared to 85% for the 2017-2018 school year, according to recruiters. Facebook tells CNBC that the numbers are incorrect.
Microsoft and Sony announce cloud partnership. The two videogame rivals are teaming up to work on cloud and game-streaming technologies, the WSJ reports. Through the partnership, announced Thursday, Sony Corp. is considering using the Microsof Corp. Azure cloud service for streaming its game content. It also calls for potential collaboration between the two involving Microsoft’s artificial intelligence and Sony’s image-sensor chips.
‘China’s Google’ posts first loss since 2005. Chinese search-engine giant Baidu Inc. reported its first quarterly loss since going public in 2005 and warned that the cause—weak advertising—is likely to linger due to China’s slowing economy, the WSJ reports. Its cloud business posted a revenue growth of 133% to 1.3 billion yuan in the first quarter. Heavy investments have eaten into its profit margins, analysts said.
Former Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts joins Airbnb board. It is her first corporate position since she left the tech giant earlier this year, the WSJ reports.
Amazon invests in U.K. food-delivery startup. Amazon.com Inc. is investing in British food-delivery company Deliveroo, whose delivery bikes are almost as common a sight on the streets of London as the capital’s black cabs and double-decker buses, says the WSJ.
The future is already written. The Economist catches on to what's driving the technological elite's pet space projects. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are hard-core science-fiction fans. "If you want to understand how those who are building the future think, ignore the snobs," says the Economist.
Everyone please shut up. I am ideating. How can anyone get any work done—let alone iterate, innovate and ideate—when the open office has the charm and the acoustics of a wind tunnel to test jet engines? Quartz published the results of an survey by office-equipment maker Poly on top workplace distractions.
What do we want? Singularity! A research scientist trained a neural network with petitions posted on Change.org to generate its own demands. Some real winners: "Everyone: Put the Bats on YouTube!;" "Anyone: Stop the use of the word ‘shoe’ in a derogatory way;" "Unicorn: Stop breaking crab products."
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