Tech Zone

Employees of Indian IT outsourcing giant Infosys in Bangalore. Infy, as it is known, is one of the ... [+] biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B visa program in the U.S. (Photo by MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/Getty Images) Getty Companies looking to bring in foreign software engineers and other IT specialists got dealt another uppercut by the Trump Administration this week. It’s a “no soup for you” moment for companies accustomed to bringing in mostly Indian tech workers to fill the hiring gaps they have been blaming on the lack of domestic STEM talent, for at least the past decade. “Today I’m signing an executive order to ensure that the federal government lives by a very simple rule: hire American,” Trump said yesterday.  Nearly two-thirds of all H-1B visa hires are from India. Most of them end of working for the Indian multinational IT firms — Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services here in the U.S. But companies like Amazon AMZN , Facebook, Deloitte and IBM IBM also bring in foreign ...

Apple  (AAPL) - Get Report denied that it is in the running to purchase the U.S. operations of popular Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok after Axios reported that the tech giant was interested in buying it.  While Microsoft  (MSFT) - Get Report has confirmed that it is negotiating with ByteDance, the Chinese conglomerate that owns TikTok, to purchase the platform's U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations, Apple responded to the report by saying that there are no negotiations and it is not interested. Apple has about $193 billion in cash on hand and last month strong second-quarter results helped the tech company overtake oil driller Saudi Aramco as the world's most valuable publicly listed company. Axios reported earlier that multiple sources outside of Apple said that the tech giant has expressed interest in buying TikTok.  Meanwhile, TikTok has been a lightning rod for scrutiny after President Trump told reporters that he would...

Your tech news digest, by way of the DGiT Daily tech newsletter, for Tuesday, 4 August 2020. As it turns out, loads of reviewers had hands-on with the Pixel 4a in advance of Google announcing the phone, which came out in one model for $349/£349/€349. And, the majority reckon it’s pretty good. My colleague David Imel calls it Google’s best phone in years in his review, noting that it’s one of the best experiences on Android, for one-third the price of flagships, and adding: “If you don’t care about flashy features and just want something that works well, the Pixel 4a is a no-brainer.” The camera here is again the real winning element. It has the same 12.2MP Sony IMX363 rear sensor as the Pixel 4, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 3, and it offers much of the same. Here, versus the 3a, the Snapdragon 730G looks to have given Google some improvements, with better white balance, employing warmer tones and more balanced shadows. Google didn’t get anything wrong here. You get good battery...

To have data is to have power, and collecting it is the lifeblood of four of the most valuable companies in America: Facebook Inc., Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. Together, they are worth more than $5 trillion by market cap. That’s like adding up the market values of Walmart Inc., Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Procter & Gamble Co., Pfizer Inc., Coca-Cola Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., Nike Inc., McDonald’s Corp. and Walt Disney Co. — and then multiplying that sum by two. Calling it “Big Tech” doesn’t even do it justice. These leaders of social-media, online-search, e-commerce and smartphones are so embedded in consumers’ lives that it’s nearly impossible to avoid interacting with them on a given day and handing over reams of data, all for free, in the process: Checking emails, “liking” a post about Taylor Swift, clicking on an enchiladas recipe, joining a group for novice knitters, searching for bug spray and new e...

You might say I faked it. You might say I paid attention to the macro rather than the micro. I prefer to be generous to myself. I managed to convince many scholars, deans, reporters, and even the editors of this esteemed publication (to which I have subscribed since about 1996) that I am, in fact, an expert. I have written or edited six books related to the effects of technology on democracy and culture, including one devoted to the consequences of our collective dependence on Google and another to the uses and dangers of Facebook. Am I really an expert on Google and Facebook? Or, more appropriately, who is an expert on these companies? Is anyone? I have some nominees. There are journalists like Steven Levy or Kara Swisher, who have been covering the personalities and policies of these companies for decades. But do they understand the code, the server farms, the global networks of undersea cables? Can they discuss the fragile treaties and legal settlements that have let these c...

Days after President Donald Trump announced he could use an executive order to ban TikTok from the United States, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the administration is “closing in on a solution and I think you’ll see the president’s announcement shortly.” In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” with host Maria Bartiromo, Pompeo also said that the Trump administration may take action against other Chinese tech companies doing business in the U.S., claiming that some are “feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party.” Beijing-based ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, is currently in talks with Microsoft to sell to the American tech giant its TikTok business in the U.S. and several other countries. The negotiations have taken on more urgency over the last two weeks as the Trump administration issued escalating statements about the popular app. Microsoft said on Sunday that it is in discussions to buy TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Ze...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian content-sharing platform ShareChat is in early-stage talks with U.S.-based Sequoia Capital and some other investors to raise up to $200 million, which could value the company at over $1 billion, three sources aware of the matter told Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A man watches a movie on his phone as he waits for the bank to open to exchange his old high-denomination banknotes in the early hours, in the old quarters of Delhi, India, November 16, 2016. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo ShareChat has appointed JPMorgan to advise on the new fund raising which it expects to complete before the end of the year, said the sources, who declined to be named as the talks were private. The discussions come as Indian apps such as ShareChat are seeing a popularity surge after New Delhi in June banned 59 Chinese origin apps including ByteDance’s TikTok following a border clash between the two countries. ShareChat, in which Twitter (TWTR.N) last year invested an undisclosed...