Marketplace Tech

Google, as a company, has a long history of internal disagreement and activism. But in recent years that internal culture, where employees are encouraged to argue with executives, with each other and to protest decisions and policies they don’t like has become an external culture, too. Employees have visibly protested Google over politics, hiring, how the company deals with sexual harassment and business decisions; for example, whether the company should do business in China or make deals with the Pentagon.

As the effects of climate change grow, the market for technology to monitor and adapt to those impacts grows as well. In this installment of our series “How We Survive,” reporter Daniel Ackerman explores the use of robots in service of a problem that’s going to be more important as climate change increases drought and water scarcity. Pipes that carry drinking water in the United States are not doing so great. Many are over a century old, and on average, 1 in every 6 gallons of water leaks before it reaches anyone’s tap. A robotics startup has new technology for detecting leaks to help utilities fix them.

There’s been more attention lately on who’s part of the tech boom and who’s not. At Facebook, Google and Apple about three in four technical employees are men — the coders, engineers and developers. African Americans make up a tiny share of that workforce — just 1.5% at Facebook, 2.8% at Google and 6% at Apple, according to these companies.

We’re months away from the next CES, the huge tech trade show that draws almost 200,000 people to Las Vegas every January. In 2020, for the first time, sex tech startups will be officially included at the conference and booth babes will not.

A lot of science fiction shows present a darkly dystopian view of the future, where humans battle for limited resources and are starkly divided between the haves and have-nots. But some views of the future are far more utopian and techno optimistic. In “Star Trek,” members of the federation live in a post-money society: Everyone has the basics, nobody must work, and ordering what you need is as easy as telling a replicator “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

Tesla still swings wildly between profits and losses from quarter to quarter. But sales of its more affordable Model 3 sedan are strong. It was Western Europe’s biggest selling battery car in the first half of 2019. In the U.S., it’s outselling luxury gas-powered competition from BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Lexus. For the past few years, journalists who cover transportation have been wondering: Is this the time that electric cars finally become a major part of the market?

Uber and Lyft report earnings this week, and the biggest long-term threat to profits for both of their businesses is drivers. Currently, of course, drivers aren’t classified as employees with benefits, overtime or workplace protections. They’re technically independent contractors with none of that.

The Department of Defense is looking for a company that can turn its patchwork quilt of cloud networks into one giant cloud. There’s a big contract on the line — $10 billion. Amazon was the front-runner until last week when President Donald Trump intervened and asked the DOD to investigate whether the process was unfair.

The online forum 8chan was mostly offline yesterday. It was booted from several big web platforms after the weekend’s mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. The Walmart rampage was at least the third mass shooting this year to be announced in advance on 8chan, which has become a haven for far-right extremists.

The effects of last year’s Camp Fire stretched far beyond the Northern California town it destroyed. The smoke traveled hundreds of miles, exposing millions to toxins and pollutants. As climate change extends wildfire season, keeping indoor air clean and healthy will be all the more important. That’s the focus of this installment of “How We Survive,” our series on tech and adapting to the changing climate.