A roundup of the week’s technology news including Amazon doing networking, charitable hackers, and running robots.
Climate change could kill the internet
The datacenter industry has a carbon footprint equal to that of the aviation industry; around 2% of the world’s total emissions. Tech is estimated to consume around 10% of the world’s energy output. While tech might not be the biggest polluter, it could suffer the effects of climate change.
A new study the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Oregon warns that critical communications infrastructure could be submerged by rising seas in as soon as 15 years. Given that much of the world’s internet infrastructure is close to coastlines, it estimates that by 2033 more than 4,000 miles of buried fiber will be under water and more than 1,100 traffic hubs will be surrounded by water. The most susceptible US cities are listed as New York, Miami, and Seattle.
ZTE back up and running, a few billion dollars lighter
ZTE has been given the all-clear to resume operations in the US. The US Commerce Department announced it had lifted the ban late last week after ZTE had followed all the financial and leadership requirements imposed on it.
“While we lifted the ban on ZTE, the Department will remain vigilant as we closely monitor ZTE’s actions to ensure compliance with all U.S. laws and regulations,” said Secretary Ross.
As well as the $400 million in an escrow account, the company has paid over $1 billion in fines on top of losses estimated to be over $3 billion.
However, Huawei is in hot water in the UK after a government report claimed the UK has “only limited assurance” that the company’s involvement in the UK’s critical networks aren’t a national security risk.
At the same time, President Donald Trump claimed the European Union ‘is taking advantage of the US’ after it slapped Google with a €5 billion fine.
M&A
Salesforce has acquired Datorama, Orange has bought Basefarm, Slack has snapped up Missions, Workday has got its hands on Stories.bi, Ultimate Software now owns PeopleDoc, and Okta has snaffled ScaleFT.
Security
- Darkweb hacker forums have lots of rules, and also raise money for charity.
- A new smartphone where the camera mechanically pops out is highlighting when apps are secretly recording users.
- A US maker of eVoting machines admitted to putting remote access software on its devices.
AWS fear strikes again
‘Who will Amazon disrupt next?’ is the fun game investors and analysts love to play; get wind of a patent or acquisition, report it, and watch the stocks of all the incumbents drop. This week it was the turn of Cisco to panic.
The Information reported that the tech conglomerate was moving into the data center networking world and will start selling its own networking switches. Cisco and others such as Juniper saw their share value drop as a result.
The news saw Cisco release a statement saying it had assurance from AWS that the news was false.
“Cisco and AWS have a longstanding customer and partner relationship, and during a recent call between Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and AWS CEO Andy Jassy, Andy confirmed that AWS is not actively building a commercial network switch,” a Cisco spokesman told MarketWatch.
Bitcoin bullish again
This week has seen Bitcoin reach historic highs of... less than half of what it was worth at the start of the year. But that hasn’t stopped the experts coming out and making optimistic predictions again. Avenue Capital Group CEO Marc Lasry said the premier cryptocurrency could be worth “$20,000 to $40,000” in the future, while John McAfee tweeted that “The Bull Market IS coming.”
“And when it does, it will make the eruption of Krakatoa seem like a Meerkat's burp.”
Meanwhile, Vietnam is reportedly considering banning the import of cryptocurrency mining machines.
RUN. NO, RUN FASTER.
This week’s installment of ‘Boston Dynamics are actually Skynet’ sees its eerie robots RUNNING. ROBOTS CAN NOW RUN. AND DO BACK FLIPS. WE’RE DOOMED.