Tech Trunch

Three female former employees of Alphabet Inc's Google filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing the tech company of discriminating against women in pay and promotions. The proposed class action lawsuit, filed in California state court in San Francisco, comes as Google faces an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor into sex bias in pay practices. The lawsuit appears to be the first to make class action sex bias claims against Google, but is only the latest instance of a major tech company being accused of discriminating against women. The Department of Labor sued Oracle America Inc in January, claiming it paid white men more than women and minorities with similar jobs. Microsoft Corp and Twitter Inc are facing sex bias lawsuits, and Qualcomm Inc last year settled claims for $19.5 million. Meanwhile, Uber Technologies Inc in June said it would make a series of changes after a former engineer in a blog post accused the ride-hailing service of condoning ra

Researchers at International Business Machines Corp have developed a new approach for simulating molecules on a quantum computer.  The breakthrough, outlined in a research paper to be published in the scientific journal Nature on Sept 14, uses a technique that could eventually allow quantum computers to solve difficult problems in chemistry and electro-magnetism that cannot be solved by even the most powerful supercomputers today.  In the experiments described in the paper, IBM researchers used a quantum computer to derive the lowest energy state of a molecule of beryllium hydride. Knowing the energy state of a molecule is a key to understanding chemical reactions.  In the case of beryllium hydride, a supercomputer can solve this problem, but the standard techniques for doing so cannot be used for large molecules because the number of variables exceeds the computational power of even these machines.  The IBM researchers cr

Apple is placing a bold bet that your face can securely unlock your phone, but experts are sceptical that it will be foolproof from the get-go.  The iPhone X, out in November, will rely on facial recognition technology called Face ID. Apple, which is known for discarding technologies more aggressively than rivals, dumped its well-tested Touch ID fingerprint system that has been available in iPhones since 2013.  While Face ID appears to be more sophisticated than the biometric systems used in competing devices like Samsung's Galaxy S8 phones, experts say the iPhone X will have to prove it won't be fooled by facial hair, makeup, glasses, masks, skin tones or poor lighting.  Apple's bet goes beyond just unlocking phones. On Tuesday, Apple executive Phil Schiller said Face ID could also be used for purchases on an iPhone.  There are enough unanswered questions to make Premkumar Natarajan, a biometrics industry expert and Apple stockholder, decide t

Google on Wednesday announced updates to its "Translate" app that would enable users in Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu languages to use offline translations and instant visual translation in their preferred language. Google "Translate" has also added support for conversation mode feature -- that lets users have a bilingual conversation with someone, simply by talking to "Translate" app -- in regional languages such as Bengali and Tamil. To activate the feature, users should tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the "Translate" app will automatically recognise which of the two languages are being spoken, enabling a smooth conversation, the company said in a statement. Meanwhile, the offline support enables users (of Indian languages) to translate a word or sentence even when they are not connected to the Internet. To use offline translation

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook has removed its self-hosted, fast-loading article format Instant Articles meant for mobile from the Messenger app. The feature was originally designed to run in the News Feed in the Facebook core app and will continue to do so, Tech Crunch reported late Tuesday. "As we continue to refine and improve Instant Articles and in order to have the greatest impact on people and publishers, we are focusing our investment in Instant Articles in the Facebook core app and are no longer offering Instant Articles in Messenger," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying. Instant Articles was an article format launched in 2015 to speed up page load time in the Facebook core app by ten times compared to the mobile web and was later expanded to Messenger. Several high profile publications and publishers either pulled, scaled back or never participated in Instant Articles in the first place because of the lack of monetization on the

WASHINGTON: The US government banned the use of Kaspersky security software in federal offices Wednesday, saying the Russian company has risky ties to Russian intelligence that threaten US national security. Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke ordered all government offices to remove and replace any of the company's popular anti-hacker software in use within 90 days. "The department is concerned about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies," Duke said in a statement. "The risk that the Russian government, whether acting on its own or in collaboration with Kaspersky, could capitalize on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise federal information and information systems directly implicates US national security," Duke said. The move comes amid heightened strains between Russia and the US over Moscow's alleged interference in last year's

A hacking campaign is targeting the energy sector in Europe and the US to potentially sabotage national power grids, a cybersecurity firm has warned. The group, dubbed “Dragonfly” by researchers at Symantec, has been in operation since at least 2011 but went dark in 2014 after it was first exposed, secretly placing backdoors in the industrial control systems of power plants across the US and Europe. Now, Symantec reports, the group has resumed operations, apparently working since late 2015 to investigate and penetrate energy facilities in at least three countries: the US, Turkey and Switzerland. “The Dragonfly group appears to be interested in both learning how energy facilities operate and also gaining access to operational systems themselves, to the extent that the group now potentially has the ability to sabotage or gain control of these systems should it decide to do so,” the cybersecurity firm warns. Dragonfly’s methods are varied, but all its attacks seem to be fo

China’s move last week to ban initial coin offerings (ICO) has caused chaos among start-ups looking to raise money through the novel fund-raising scheme, prompting halts, about-turns and re-thinks. China is cracking down on fundraising through launches of token-based digital currencies, targeting ICOs in a market that has ballooned this year in what has been a bonanza for digital currency entrepreneurs. The boom has fueled a jump in the value of cryptocurrencies, but raised fears of a potential bubble. “This is not unlike the dotcom bubble of 2000,” said a partner at a venture capital fund in Shanghai, who didn’t want to be named because of the issue’s sensitivity. “There are a lot of companies raising a lot of money for not very good ideas, and these will eventually be weeded out. But even from the big dotcom bust, you still have gems.” “One of the reasons regulators stepped in was that the ICO fever extended beyond the traditional crypto community. The timing w

Bithumb was hacked in February, although the breach was not noticed until June, and it was only made public in July. At the time one customer claimed more than a million dollars’ worth of digital currency was stolen. Claire Finkelstein, a national security expert and faculty director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Centre for Ethics and the Rule of Law told Buzzfeed News: “This is very consistent with what I would expect North Korea to be doing.” Luke McNamara, a senior analyst with FireEye, also said: “I see there being two macro drivers of this threat activity.” According to Mr McNamara, the first driver was the tightening of sanctions on North Korea's economy. But he added: “You also have cryptocurrencies appreciating significantly since the beginning of the year. So you see cryptocurrency exchanges, particularly in South Korea, becoming a logical target.” Ms Finkelstein warned that Bitcoin is a “high-risk currency” because it can be “easily manipulated” maki

It’s a good day for Nintendo fans, the company has announced that the NES Classic Mini is going to be back in stock next summer. The hugely successful console in a tiny little case sold like proverbial hotcakes, leading to stock running out and prices on auction sites souring. While previously the company had said that shipments would cease at the end of this year, now the company is planning on shipping more units in 2018. Interestingly, the same thing has been happening with its followup, SNES Classic Mini that is routinely selling out every time more come into stock. But there’s good news for people who want one of these too. Nintendo is extending shipments of the SNES Classic Mini into 2018 too. And that’s not all. For UK Nintendo fans, Game is celebrating National Video Game Day (yes, there is a video game day) by reducing the price of the Nintendo Switch to £259.99. 

“Microsoft Monday" is a weekly column that focuses on all things Microsoft. This week, Microsoft Monday includes details about the new LinkedIn Audience Network program, keyboard and mouse support for the Xbox One, the Windows 10 S upgrade extension, Halo backward compatibility, a strategic partnership with Adobe, the new My Workspace menu bar app for the Mac, guest support for Teams and much more! Microsoft Is Taking Extra Time For Halo Backwards Compatibility In Order To Live Up To Fan Expectations It is already known that Halo: CE Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo 4 will be available to play on the Xbox One through the backward compatibility program as announced earlier this year. But it was not clear when. Fortunately, 343 Industries provided an update last week. In a  blog post , 343 Industries acknowledged that players are eager to play the 4 Halo games on the Xbox One. “The Xbox back-compat team is hard at work on final polish and we continue to

On September 15, a meteor will burst through the cloud tops of Saturn’s atmosphere, burning bright and breaking apart into hundreds of pieces. From Saturn’s surface, this would appear as a beautiful cosmic event, like shooting stars that arc across the Earth’s night sky. But this meteor won’t be a piece of rock jostled loose from an asteroid. It will be the Cassini spacecraft in its final moments of life. Jupiter saw a similar tail of fire streak through its atmosphere back in 2003, when the Galileo probe turned to face the planet, fired its thrusters, and sped into Jupiter at 108,000 miles per hour. More than a year earlier, a team of people at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had decided they would kill the spacecraft by throwing it into into the giant planet. It’s a decision not to be taken lightly, especially when these missions cost billions of dollars and can take decades of planning. Every mission has a team that plans the deaths of these spacecraft; some have pl

Apple has been hard at work on four different operating systems — iOS, tvOS, watchOS and macOS. And the company just updated its website after its iPhone launch event. It now says that macOS High Sierra is going to come out on September 25. macOS didn’t get any love this time around as the company didn’t even mention High Sierra once. Maybe there wasn’t enough time. Or maybe there wasn’t anything new to share beside a new release date. Apple first unveiled High Sierra in June at its WWDC developer conference. TechCrunch’s Brian Heater played around with the new operating system already and realized that most changes are under the hood. The Photos app is still receiving some new features to keep it up to date with the iOS version. There are more editing tools, you can reorganize the toolbar and you can filter your photos by type. If you’re a Safari user, my favorite change is that there is a new feature in the settings that lets you automatically block autoplaying video

Google Drive is having some major issues this morning. Starting around 7:30am PT, Google’s file storage service, which forms the backbone of much of Google’s G Suite, became either unreachable or incredibly slow, depending on where you were. Since then, the problems have only continued and Google doesn’t currently have an ETA for when the service will return to normal. In addition to Drive, Google Classroom is also suffering an outage. That one is likely related because Classroom, Google’s tool for teachers and students, uses Drive for saving attachments. While outages are inevitable, it’s unusual for a Google service to go down for this long without any indication for when it will come back. This will definitely cost Google, which is trying hard to get enterprises to adopt its platform, given that it will reduce trust in a service that’s rather vital for a company to function. It’s worth noting that this is Google’s second major Drive outage this year. In January, t

The biggest is probably the expansion of the Canvas ad format to Instagram Stories (which supposedly reach 250 million people daily). While businesses have been able to advertise in Instagram Stories since earlier this year, this introduces a new, full-screen, interactive ad format to that mix. “With the ability to utilize Facebook’s fast-loading full screen Canvas format in Instagram Stories, marketers are able to use the creative versatility of Canvas to tell compelling brand and product stories,” Instagram writes in a blog post. “This seamless extension of the full screen experience allows advertisers to capture the attention of customers with just a single ad.” Instagram also says businesses will now be able to upload the media they used for organic Instagram Stories and save them for use in future ad campaigns through the Power Editor and Ads Manager. Plus, the company wants advertisers to incorporate Instagram Stories into their campaigns across Facebook properties

Google is appealing against the record €2.4bn (£2.2bn) fine imposed by the European Union for its abuse of its dominance of the search engine market in building its shopping comparison service. The world’s most popular internet search engine has launched its appeal after it was fined by the European commission for what was described as an “old school” form of illegality. The Luxembourg-based general court, Europe’s second-highest, is expected to take several years before ruling on Google’s appeal, which had been widely expected. The Silicon Valley giant had responded to the fine at the time of its announcement by saying that it “respectfully” disagreed with the legal argument being pursued. A spokesman for the commission said: “The commission will defend its decision in court.” In June, the EU official in charge of competition policy, commissioner Margrethe Vestager, told reporters that Google, a unit of US parent company Alphabet, had artificially and illegally promot

WikiLeaks has released several documents of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) secret missile control system, the organisation announced. The project differed from the "usual" malware development project of the CIA, with no indication as to why it's contained within a repository of hacking techniques, it said on Thursday.Almost every week since March, Wikileaks has been leaking CIA-related secrets, reports Xinhua news agency. However, this is the first time that the whistleblower has not exposed any malware used to exploit bugs or perform surveillance. The latest leak contains four secret documents in total from the missile control system, dubbed Project Protego, along with "37 related documents (proprietary hardware/software manuals from Microchip Technology Inc)", WikiLeaks said. The documents indicate that the micro-controller-based system, developed by major US defence contractor Raytheon, installe