Tech

Yesterday was a big day for Google CEO Sundar Pichai as he was promoted as CEO of Alphabet. In his new role, Pichai would be heading 8 other companies apart from Google. While the new role brings a lot more prestige and responsibilities to Pichai, it also brings a set of challenges that may make it one of the toughest jobs in Silicon Valley. To begin with Google is facing a lot of employee unrest in the last 12 months. Last month, the company fired four employees, who were reportedly protesting against certain company policies. Google denied that the reason why the four were fired was dissent. In the last 18 months, employees have protested against certain moves by Google. For instance, there were rumours of Google doing a project in China, which led to employees showing their dissent. Then there was a drone project with the Pentagon and that also evoked more than murmurs of discontent at Google. One of Pichai’s biggest challenge will be deal with the developing employee … [Read more...] about Why Sundar Pichai may have just got the ‘toughest’ job in the tech industry

Washington, DC (CNN Business)House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working to strip key legal protections from tech companies under a long-awaited trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. Pelosi's push highlights how a groundswell of skepticism about the tech industry has reached the highest levels of congressional leadership, and could result in a setback for Silicon Valley as the Trump administration negotiates the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The tech industry has argued aggressively for including the protections, saying it would help shield businesses from legal exposure they would otherwise face for much of the content others post on their platforms. But an ongoing debate at home about whether tech companies continue to deserve such expansive protections — under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — has led to calls for those rights to be excluded from international trade deals. "There are concerns in the House about enshrining the increasingly … [Read more...] about Nancy Pelosi wants to scrap legal protections for Big Tech in new trade agreement

Advertisement Also, UK cinemas preemptively ban Google Glass, Reading Rainbow breaks popularity contest on Kickstarter, Emojli is a chat app for emoji masters, ‘Yo, Hodor’ adds Hodor to Yo, and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare finally gets an honest trailer.Google Kills Orkut & QuickofficeWe really haven’t talked about the fact that Orkut is literally google’s most successful attempt at social networking. Yikes! — Overrated Outcast (@over_rated) July 1, 2014Google appears to be having another spring clean Reader Is Dead: What Technology Could Google Kill Next & How Can You Protect Yourself? Reader Is Dead: What Technology Could Google Kill Next & How Can You Protect Yourself? First they came for Buzz and no one cared. Then they came for Notebook. Now they've come for Reader. What technology will Google take away from you next? This article explains several Google technologies that... Read More , with Orkut and Quickoffice both being killed … [Read more...] about Google Kills Orkut & Quickoffice, Yahoo Saves Community, And More… [Tech News Digest]

Advertisement Also, online book sales have overtaken retail book sales, the UK is investigating the Facebook experiment, IFTTT makes Yo useful, an Oculus Rift experiment lets you see the world from a third-person perspective, and Google tests our general knowledge with Smarty Pins.The NSA Can Spy On Most CountriesUnder pressure from environmental activists, NSA agrees from now on to only print lists of countries it’s NOT authorized to spy on — Julian Sanchez (@normative) July 1, 2014The National Security Agency (NSA) is authorized to spy on almost every country in the world. We know this thanks to a classified legal certification issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2010 which has now been leaked by Edward Snowden.According to the Washington Post, the document lists 193 countries that are “of valid interest for U.S. intelligence.” Just four countries — the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — are given byes thanks to … [Read more...] about The NSA Can Spy On Almost Everybody, Google Buys Songza, And More… [Tech News Digest]

Advertisement Today in Tech News Digest, the 2014 World Cup gets social, Nintendo reveals all at E3, Honeywell launches Lyric, banning Google Glass, the Turing Test remains undefeated, alarming news from Google, and a clever smartphone driving PSA.Facebook & Twitter Launch World Cup HubsThe 2014 FIFA World Cup kicks off tomorrow (June 12), with a match between Brazil and Croatia. The tournament will then run all the way through until the final on July 13. In preparation for the World Cup, both Facebook and Twitter have launched dedicated hubs concentrating the action in one place.Facebook’s 2014 World Cup hub acts as a central location for all World Cup news and status updates that are trending. There are links to the official Facebook pages for all of the teams, and upcoming fixtures are listed. There is even a map showing the locations of fans of the best players, such as Ronaldo and Neymar.Twitter’s 2014 World Cup hub turns the #WorldCup hashtag into a repository … [Read more...] about The World Cup On Facebook & Twitter, Nintendo Games At E3 2014 [Tech News Digest]