Tech News Today For April 7, 2017
Tech News for Friday April 7, 2017
Homeland Security has officially withdrawn its request for Twitter to reveal who is behind @ALT_USCIS, an account that is frequently critical of the Trump administration. The government's change of heart comes only one day after Twitter filed suit against them for making a request that violates federal law and our right to free speech. Twitter dropped its suit against the department and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. If the DHS wants to pursue the case they could still request a court order that's more in line with Twitter's guidelines, if they think they can make a valid legal request. Read more at wsj.com.
The US Department of Labor says it has evidence that shows how Google is violating federal laws as relates to compensating its female workforce. The DoL testified in court saying it found “systemic disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce.” Google told Techcrunch that they vehemently disagree with the claim, and pointing to its own analysis that shows no gender pay gap. Read more at theguardian.com.
In other Google news, the company says it will soon add fact checking to its worldwide results. So it won't label items as fake news, but will notify readers if an article has been officially fact-checked. Google has been using the tool in the US and the UK and now the company says its ready to go global in all languages. They will assign the fact checked label to results that have received feedback from both publishers and users.
It turns out, Samsungs gonna be alright. Samsung reported an estimate that its operating profit for Q1 should increase to more than 50 percent higher than what it brought in the same quarter last year, to around 9.9 trillion won or $8.8 billion dollars. That would make it Samsung’s highest ever Q1 profit, and its second most profitable quarter in its history. Read more at cnet.com.
Here's an update on the intellectual property lawsuit that Google's Waymo has filed against Uber. In court documents, Uber says they haven't stolen Uber's LIDAR system and they can prove this since theirs isn't even finished yet. In other words, they didn't copy their neighbor's homework because they haven't even done their homework yet. Uber also says the LIDAR tech they're working on is quite different than Waymo's since they use four lenses while Waymo uses only one. The documents also attest to the fact that their LIDAR was in development long before they hired Anthony Levandowski from Waymo. In case you're not keeping up, Levandowski is the employee accused of stealing 14,000 files of proprietary company documents and he has chosen to plead the 5th. Read more at bloomberg.com.
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