Facebook’s Open Compute Project struts its stuff
The Open Compute Project kicks off its annual Silicon Valley summit on Tuesday, where vendors and customers will show their latest designs for low cost data center hardware. Facebook started the project about three years ago to wrestle some control away from the big vendors and collaborate on open designs that white-box manufacturers can compete to implement. Microsoft, Intel, Canonical and Goldman Sachs will all give updates on what they’ve been building this past year.
Jesse Jackson heading to Apple shareholder meeting
A day after Apple solidly positioned itself as a luxury company with its $10,000 smartwatch, noted activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson will attend its shareholder meeting Tuesday to argue that it should share the wealth and hire more diverse staff. The company has already bowed to pressure and agreed to raise the wages of drivers by 25 percent.
Apple, recapped
Monday was a big day in Cupertino. Highlights were Apple’s rollouts of:
— pricing and availability for the Apple Watch (you can spend from $349 to $17,000)
— a super-thin, light new MacBook that comes in gold
— an open-source framework for medical research via iPhone.
French spies linked to malware tools
A collection of computer Trojans that have been used since 2009 to steal data from government agencies, military contractors, media organizations and other companies is tied to cyberespionage malware possibly created by French intelligence agencies. That’s a new wrinkle: to date, it’s been the U.S. and its English-speaking allies that have most prominently been fingered as using malware for spying.
U.S. IT training plan draws fire
A $100 million program to train IT workers that was announced by President Barack Obama on Monday is being criticized for shoring up arguments that support the controversial H-1B visa program. The White House said that the program is meant to help fill 545,000 IT jobs, but some labor market observers claim there are far fewer jobs available and the larger number helps justify the visa program for foreign workers.
Legislators want Uber, Lyft and Sidecar to use fingerprint checks for drivers
Eight members of Congress have asked ride-hailing companies Uber, Lyft and Sidecar to conduct fingerprint-based background checks of their drivers, following reports of sexual and other assault by the drivers. The U.S. representatives said that many state-regulated taxi cab companies already use the fingerprint checks which they described as “more comprehensive and harder to fake,” because they access nationwide databases such as those of the FBI and the Department of Justice.
Wikipedia files lawsuit asking NSA to stop spying on its users
Jimmy Wales has had enough of the NSA’s tracking of Wikipedia’s readers and editors, he said in a New York Times op-ed. Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the collaborative encyclopedia, plans to file suit against the NSA and DOJ asking them to stop the surveillance.
Twitter acquires live-video streaming app
Twitter has acquired Periscope, the developer of a live video-streaming app that’s in beta. The social media company paid about US$100 million for the startup about a month ago, reported The Wall Street Journal. Twitter has been trying to improve on the video capabilities of its platform, including testing video ads and letting users upload and edit their own videos.
Watch now
Everything you need to know about the Apple Watch is in this three-minute video.
One last thing
What if you built a website that self-destructed once it was added to Google’s search index? Here’s how art meets technology in the twenty-first century.