- By going public, dissidents at Google will face some huge risks
The 60-some people who initially signed Never Again and the dozen who first signed the Dragonfly letter were taking the biggest risk–charging up the hill, not knowing if others would follow. Nevertheless joining a public statement–potentially an ultimatum–against your own employer is a courageous act no matter how many names precede yours.
And at least some of them are risking the loss of their jobs–whether or not Google fires them. A readiness to resign was also a key element of Never Again. “If push comes to shove…and there’s no other way to stop them…there’s the commitment in the pledge to make the ultimate decision to resign rather than being complicit,” said Ka-Ping Yee, a former Googler and co-organizer of Never Again.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90273385/by-going-public-dissidents-at-google-will-face-some-huge-risks
- Rudy Giuliani, a Trump cybersecurity adviser, doesn’t understand the internet
Giuliani’s original tweet on November 30 (above) didn’t contain a period between sentences, which created a hyperlink to G-20.in. An eagle-eyed member of the public — named by the BBC as Atlanta-based marketing director Jason Velazquez — clicked through the link and, finding that it was blank, quickly registered the domain and created a website carrying the “a disgusting anti-President message” to which Giuliani referred.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/rudy-giuliani-doesnt-understand-the-internet/
I am highlighting this not on political bias, but to point out that we need to elect people (and those elected people need to hire) tech-knowledgeable individuals to make policy. - How this drug lord created a hippo problem in Colombia
- Apple Investigated Possible Business Misconduct in Its Supply Chain
“We have over 2,300 operations employees in China and, while misconduct issues are rare, we take any allegations very seriously and investigate each one thoroughly,” the spokesman said. He declined to disclose what prompted the probe or its findings.
Inside Apple, the supply-management team in China handling nonelectrical components for iPhones experienced some turnover this year. A top procurement executive left in May, and two junior members of the team exited Apple around that time, according to people familiar with the departures. The reasons for their exits aren’t clear. Apple declined to comment on the departures.
- Is ethical tech a farce?
If profits beat ethics, is ethical tech possible? Simply put, yes. There is a different genre of tech startup that values impact over profits. They are tech nonprofits. Rather than building products that satisfy animalistic behavior, from screen addiction to fear mongering, tech nonprofits are building technology to fill gaps in basic human needs — education, human rights, healthcare. Or as an early tech nonprofit Mozilla stated in its manifesto, technology that, “must enrich the lives of human beings.” Tech nonprofits are building tech products that serve customers where markets have failed.
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash