James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
FCC’s website goes down the day after John Oliver again urged public to defend net neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission said that the reason its site went down on Monday was not because of John Oliver defending net neutrality once again on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” show, but because of a cyberattack. In 2014 the British comedian’s diatribe defending net neutrality had led to the FCC’s website crashing under the load of ...
Facebook original TV: coming to a newsfeed near you next month
It seems like Facebook Inc. is gearing up to be the media company it has always denied it is. According to recent reports, the social media behemoth will release Facebook Premium TV shows sometime in the middle of June. The news of Facebook TV emerged after Business Insider said it spoke with numerous people close ...
Uber is now under criminal investigation for snooping on government officials
As if things couldn’t get any worse for ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc., the company is now under investigation over software it allegedly used to avoid police and transportation regulators, according to a report published by Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice has begun a criminal probe concerning software Uber devised known as “Greyball,” created ...
Apple will invest $1 billion to create manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook announced today that the company is pledging $1 billion to a fund to help create advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S. In an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Cook said that Apple will reveal later this year the first investments in the fund, but did not give any details as to ...
Samsung goes bumper-to-bumper with Apple as it prepares to test self-driving cars in Korea
Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has joined a long line of companies in the business of developing a fully autonomous vehicle. On Monday, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport gave permission to Samsung to start testing its autonomous car technology in the country. Samsung will team up with Korea’s biggest car ...
Trump will round up tech titans again to revamp the government’s IT systems
President Donald Trump will round up some of the biggest names in computer technology sometime in June with a view to creating a technology council to “transfer and modernize” what the government does with technology. While Trump is not renowned for being tech’s favorite president, the man who once called the Internet “the cyber” does ...
Retreat of the nerds: Study finds bullying, sexism and racism costs tech industry billions
A first-of-its-kind study has found that people of color and women are being driven away from the tech industry, citing racism, sexism and a toxic work environment as the reasons they left. The Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll surveyed 2,000 adults that have left the tech industry over the last three years. ...
Despite protests, FCC chairman will issue plan today to roll back net neutrality rules
The Trump administration’s plan to roll back net neutrality was met with stern opposition, yet the Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai plans to go full speed ahead with a detailed plan to be released today. In one press release, the FCC attempted to address what it perceives to be mythology surrounding net neutrality, the notion ...
Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales says he holds the kryptonite to stop fake news
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales wants to create a crowdfunded news service that will be run by volunteers and feature content from professional journalists. Wales said his site, Wikitribune, will be factual and neutral. “The news is broken, but we’ve figured out how to fix it,” states a demo for the site, referring to the dilemma ...
Unroll.me isn’t ‘heartbroken’ about giving up your data to Uber
Unroll.me, an email de-cluttering service owned by California-based data firm Slice Intelligence, wrote a seemingly disingenuous letter to the public on Sunday relating to its involvement in the latest consumer data-mining scandal, one that involved — would you believe it? — beleaguered Uber Technologies Inc. It is “heartbreaking,” states chief executive of Unroll.me, Jojo Hedaya, in the letter (skirting ...