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Judge rejects Silicon Valley anti-poaching settlement on suspicions of conspiracy
Remember the class-action lawsuit that Adobe, Apple and Google faced over no-hiring deals? Well, it turns out that the $324.5 million settlement the trio reached isn't going to be honored by the judge. As The New York Times reports, judge Lucy H. Koh has rejected the low-ball figure because, among other reasons, it reeks of an "overarching conspiracy." Koh notes that there's ample evidence to support this and that late Apple CEO Steve Jobs may even have been the prime suspect in said conspiracy. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Koh says affected employees would receive a proportionally lesser amount than those who were involved with last year's $20 million case against Lucasfilm, Intuit and Pixar. After the lawyers take their as-much-as $81 million cut, the left-over tally would apparently only leave a couple of thousand dollars per plaintiff according to NYT. Unless the Silicon Valley companies involved can come up with an amount that seems more reasonable to the judge (the initial employee-proposed amount was $3 billion), the trial will move forward come this September 10th.
What's on your HDTV this week: Watch Dogs, The Life Aquatic, Wil Wheaton, Mario Kart
With Memorial Day come and gone and the temperatures rising, it's time to get ready for our summer TV schedule. The NBA and NHL are almost ready to enter the championship rounds of the playoffs, and most of the winter TV shows are out of the way. That means we have a few new entrants this week to take their place, including The Wil Wheaton Project, Crossbones and Undateable. HBO's Silicon Valley is also wrapping up with a season finale, but don't worry it will be back. For now, it will be replaced by AMC's new series Halt and Catch Fire, which focuses on a group trying to reverse engineer IBM's PC in the 80s. Also this week, NBC News will interview NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Movie and game fans have a lot of good options, lead by Watch Dogs, Mario Kart 8, and Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on Blu-ray from Criterion. Still, Game of Thrones watchers are probably focused entirely on Sunday night's episode, and with good reason, while soccer fans can tune in to all of the 30 for 30: Soccer Stories flicks on Netflix, and catch up on the US National team (suddenly without Landon Donovan) with ESPN's documentary series update on Thursday. Check after the break for a list of what's new this week plus a few trailers, and drop in the comments if you see any highlights that we've missed.
HBO renews 'Silicon Valley' three episodes in
If you've been enjoying Mike Judge's (King of the Hill, Office Space) take on Silicon Valley, you aren't alone. After just three episodes, HBO has ordered a second season of the eponymous show. What's more, the outfit has also cleared a fourth term... err, season, of the political comedy Veep. Both have apparently done better in terms of viewership than the sadly ill-fated Hello Ladies, which is especially good news for Judge's satirical look at the NorCal tech corridor. Say what you will about being hasty, but it's pretty awesome to see the premium-TV outfit keep rewarding its viewers' favorite shows --regardless of whether or not they knock HBO Go offline. Now, if we could just get a True Detective season two announcement, all would be right with the world.
Watch the first episode of HBO's Silicon Valley on YouTube
Depending on who you listen to, Silicon Valley is either a utopia dedicated to ceaseless innovation and disruption... or a place where self-absorbed nouveau riche techies throw ostentatious parties and drive up housing prices. The real nature of the valley is hard enough to suss out even if you live there, but Mike Judge's Silicon Valley paints a not-too-parodic picture of the new wild west for the rest of us to dissect. Don't have HBO (or a friends HBO Go credentials)? Never fear: The first episode is now available on YouTube. Judge sets everything into motion pretty slowly, but there's plenty there for startup nerds to latch on to: There's an incubator run out of some dude's house, an abundance of pale coders (some with questionable facial hair) and the ticking drama-bomb of a startup eschewing big money from an established company in favor of going alone.
Must See HDTV for the week of March 31st: HIMYM finale, Game of Thrones, Final Four
March Madness comes to an end this weekend, but it's the perfect time for the return of one of our favorite series, HBO's Game of Thrones. It's joined Sunday night by the premiere of Mike Judge's new comedy Silicon Valley, and Turn, a new Revolutionary War spy drama from AMC. This is also the week we finally say goodbye to How I Met Your Mother, and Anchorman 2 arrives on Blu-ray. Check after the break for trailers plus our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and gaming.
Mike Judge's upcoming HBO comedy 'Silicon Valley' gets its first trailer (video)
You can add tech to the list of topics -- Hollywood stardom, cable news, Westeros -- HBO is diving behind the scenes on, as its new series Silicon Valley will debut April 6th. Mike Judge, who brought the world Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, Idiocracy and King of the Hill, is executive producing and writing the series plus directing the first four episodes. According to the show's press release, it's "inspired" by his time as a Silicon Valley engineer in the 80s. This show is a comedy, and it's focused on several coders living together and working together at large (fictional) tech company while trying to launch their own startup. Silicon Valley's first full trailer debuted tonight ahead of True Detective (and it's embedded after the break), give it a peek and see if it's something you'd watch. Given the pedigree of its backers we're hoping for something more like Curb Your Enthusiasm or Eastbound and Down than Luck, but it at least has to be better than the Bravo reality TV series it shares a name with.
Recommended Reading: Cool Tools review, drone delivery and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities by Kevin Kelly This may well be the greatest catalog of all-time -- and given its Boing Boing connection (Cool Tools was cofounded by Boing Boing creator Mark Frauenfelder), you can be assured it's full of wonderful things. Want to draw a graphic novel, design a fabric, shoot a film on the cheap or survive in the woods during the coming apocalypse? There's a cool tool for each of those activities -- several, in fact. Each tool sports a quick description (from one to four paragraphs), the price and a URL where you can buy it. There's also a QR code by each, to save you precious seconds of typing time. Cool Tools doesn't actually sell any of the gadgets itself, so the massive tome comes with a fairly lofty $40 price tag, but for the person who thinks he has everything, here's nearly 500 pages to show them just how wrong they are. -- Brian Heater, Director of Media
The Homebrew Computer Club first met 38 years ago today
Today marks the 38th anniversary of the first Homebrew Computer Club meeting. The Homebrew Computer Club was an eclectic collection of computer enthusiasts who gathered to meet and talk about tech. It was started in 1975 by Gordon French and Fred Moore. The first meeting was held in French's garage in Menlo Park, Calif. Besides talking, hacking and helping each other, the group also wrote a newsletter that was distributed around Silicon Valley. One of the biggest developments to come out of the Homebrew Computer Club was Steve Wozniak's prototype Apple-1, which was shown off to the group in July 1976 and later sold commercially for US$666.66. There are a lot of good articles about this group and those early days of Silicon Valley, but some of my favorites are this recollection from Wozniak, this memoir from Homebrew Computer Club member Bob Lash and this collection from the Computer History Museum. If you have any other favorites of your own, please share them in the comments. [Image from Bob Lash, who scribbled the date and address for the first Homebrew Computer Club meeting on the back of an envelope. ]
NVIDIA plans construction of a new, very polygonal HQ
Well, someone had to offer a counterpart to the giant donut. NVIDIA has decided that its ongoing success in 3D graphics and mobile processors merits a suitably geometric new headquarters, so it's upping the stakes among oddly-shaped offices: it's planning to construct a triangular pair of buildings a stone's throw away from its existing Santa Clara campus. Like its upcoming parallel at the Fruit Company, the NVIDIA facility will focus on both eco-friendly design and wide open spaces that, officially, are meant to reflect the company's loves of art, collaboration and science. Of course, the Tegra creator is quick to admit that it really needs the buildings to accommodate its growing staff count -- and we imagine that "make it look cool" was also part of the proposal. NVIDIA hasn't said just when the new headquarters will be ready, although it will have to make up for lost time if it wants to have Silicon Valley's star attraction.
Samsung expands Silicon Valley crib with 1.1 million square foot R&D center
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most extravagant flashy lifestyle, the deluxe villa, the fly palace of Samsung Semiconductor Inc. It only exists as a pile of architects' drawings right now, and probably looks nothing like the Minecraft wonderment shown above, but when it's finished the 10-story San Jose structure will boast the following: A new sales and R&D center, built in the stead of some existing Samsung offices, with floor space totaling 1.1 million square feet. A layout that seeks to "encourage interaction among staff" and "foster connections with the community," while ultimately improving Sammy's "soft capabilities" A parking garage and an "amenity pavilion" (whatever that is, we just know we can't afford one) So, that's pretty much it in terms of detail. But to put all this into perspective, we're talking about an HQ that will be slightly bigger than Apple's recent 3,600-worker expansion in Austin, Texas -- or around a third the size of an infinite loop. [Image credit: MinecraftModsDL.com]
Facebook allowed to triple size of its HQ, pays $10 million for the privilege
Swollen with cash following its IPO, Facebook is looking to expand its headquarters in Menlo Park. Its plan to triple its workforce there from 2,200 to 6,600 people was approved by local officials last night, removing the previous cap that allowed a maximum of 3,600 messy, resource-consuming humans. In lieu of the added burden on the city, Facebook will have to contribute $850,000 per year for ten years, plus a one-time payment of $1,000,000. The start of a surge towards greater products and profits, or the beginning of a complacent corporate decline? We'll let the stock market decide.
Huawei R&D department gets new home, sets up shop in Silicon Valley
Chinese manufacturing giant Huawei has been calling Plano, Texas its North American home since 2010, but now it seems the company's ready to explore a different business territory. Huawei's just announced its Research and Development squad -- in which it invested about $3.6 billion dollars last year -- is setting up shop in Silicon Valley in a move that could certainly be seen as an effort to rub elbows with the big players this side of the pond. According to the Dallas Business Journal, the company piled up $30 billion in sales last year, and while the new 600-plus human R&D operation will be calling California home, Huawei's Honorary headquarters won't be moving away from the state where "everything's bigger" anytime soon.
DOJ investigation yields fresh evidence against Google, Apple in antitrust lawsuit
Back in 2009, a small controversy began swirling around Google and Apple, amid allegations that the two companies had struck an informal agreement to not poach each other's employees. The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the matter in 2010, but details of the case were only made public for the first time yesterday. TechCrunch was the first to sift through the documents, and has uncovered some ostensibly incriminating evidence against not only Google and Apple, but Pixar, Lucasfilm, Adobe, Intel, and Intuit, as well. According to filings from the US District Court for the Northern District of California, these companies did indeed enter "no poach" agreements with each other, and agreed to refrain from engaging in bidding wars. The documents also suggest that they collectively sought to limit their employees' power to negotiate for higher salaries. Some of the most apparently damning evidence derives from archived e-mails, including one that Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen penned to Steve Jobs in May 2005. In the message, sent under the subject "Recruitment of Apple Employees," Adobe's SVP of human resources explains that "Bruce and Steve Jobs have an agreement that we are not to solicit ANY Apple employees, and vice versa." Pixar's Lori McAdams expressed similar sentiments in an internal e-mail from 2007, writing: "I just got off the phone with Danielle Lambert [of Apple], and we agreed that effective now, we'll follow a Gentleman's agreement with Apple that is similar to our Lucasfilm agreement." This would suggest, as the DOJ writes, that there's "strong evidence that the companies knew about the other express agreements, patterned their own agreements off of them, and operated them concurrently with the others to accomplish the same objective." The DOJ announced in September that it had reached settlements with the six implicated firms, but a class-action lawsuit is scheduled to get underway next week in San Jose.
Stanford archives provide rare glimpse into Apple's early days as mere seedling (video)
Housed in a climate controlled storage facility operated by Stanford University, nearly 600 feet of shelf space is dedicated to preserve documents, videos and memorabilia of Apple and its early days as a young startup. The collection holds rare gems such as interviews with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both of whom discuss some of the rationale behind Apple's name -- Jobs asserts that it was selected to place his company ahead of Atari in the phone book. Originally intended to furnish Apple's corporate museum, the materials were donated to Stanford in 1997 after Steve Jobs' return to the company, which was most concerned with financial survival at the time. According to the university, more than 20 significant collections have been added to the archives in the subsequent years. The warehouse holds blueprints of the Apple I, user manuals, magazine ads, TV commercials and T-shirts, along with thousands of photographs that document Steve Jobs during his years as CEO of NeXT. Other rarities include a $5,000 loan document -- signed by the two Steve's and the partnership's third co-founder, Ron Wayne -- a spoof of Ghostbusters that starred former CEO John Sculley and other company leaders, who played "Blue Busters" to eliminate IBM, and handwritten sales entries of the very first Apple II's. While the location of the facility is undisclosed, we can only hope that, some day, the collection will be showcased for fanboys, fangirls and the public alike.
Julius Blank, chip-making pioneer and Fairchild co-founder, dies at 86
Somber news coming out of Palo Alto today, where Julius Blank, the man who helped found the groundbreaking chipmaker Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, has passed away at the age of 86. The Manhattan-born Blank (pictured third from left, above) began his engineering career in 1952, when he joined AT&T's Western Electric plant in New Jersey. As a member of the engineering group at the plant, Blank helped create phone technology that allowed users to dial long-distance numbers without going through an operator. It was also at Western Electric where he met fellow engineer Eugene Kleiner. In 1956, Blank and Kleiner left AT&T to work at the lab of Nobel Prize-winning physicist William B. Shockley, but departed just one year later (amid to start Fairchild, alongside a group of six other computer scientists that included future Intel Corporation founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. At their new labs, Blank and his peers developed an inexpensive method for manufacturing silicon chips, earning them $1.5 million in capital from a single investor. As the only two with any manufacturing experience, Blank and Kleiner were charged with bringing the dream to fruition -- a task that required them to build the chips from scratch, beginning with the machinery for growing silicon crystals. They succeeded, of course, and in 1969, Blank left Fairchild to start Xicor, a tech firm that Intersil would later buy for $529 million, in 2004. But his legacy will forever be linked to those early days at Fairchild, where, as Blank described in a 2008 interview, he and his colleagues were able to experience the unique thrill of "building something from nothing." Julius Blank is survived by his two sons, Jeffrey and David, and two grandsons. [Photo courtesy of Joan Seidel / AP 1999]
AT&T Foundry innovation center opens its doors in Palo Alto to help devs do what they do
We've heard of keeping up with the Joneses, but this is getting ridiculous. First it was Verizon, then Vodafone, and now Ma Bell -- with an assist from Ericsson -- has built an innovation center in Silicon Valley. This new center completes the triumvirate of AT&T Foundry facilities (the other two are in Texas and Israel), and is a part of the company's strategy to accelerate the process of developing and delivering new products to its customers. Right now, there are over 100 projects in development in Palo Alto, and AT&T is looking to add more. Those who are chosen gain access to AT&T's networks and expertise to ensure that new projects play nice with all of the company's gear, and it's already produced a few things that were on display at the center's grand opening. Want a sneak peek at what's in AT&T's innovation pipeline? Read on past the break to get it. %Gallery-133819%
Lytro's light field camera captures 'unprecedented' images, lets you choose focus later
A Silicon Valley start-up called Lytro claims it's working on a consumer camera that uses light field technology to radically change the way we take, edit and experience photographs. Whereas a normal digital camera captures a snapshot of light hitting a sensor, a light field camera first separates rays of light in order to individually record their color, intensity and direction. This extra information opens up a world of possibilities, including the ability to focus on any depth of field within a taken photo, observe a 3D-type effect even without specs, and boost images taken in extremely low light. Although light field cameras have been around for some time, they haven't been commercially viable. Now though, Lytro has secured backing worth $50million to bring a "competitively priced" camera to market "later this year" -- we'll see if they can beat similar plenoptic technology from Adobe to market. Can't wait that long? Check out the interactive photo (click on Elvis to re-focus) after the break, plus a video that also shows off the 3D effect. Both are the definition of mind-blowing.
Steve Jobs reveals Apple's new spaceship campus, calls it the 'best office building in the world' (video)
Shortly after taking the stage at WWDC, Steve Jobs made an appearance before the Cupertino City Council to pitch the local governing body on Apple's ambition to build a new campus. The site for the curvaceous, four-story, "human-scale" building to house 13,000 employees is the original home of HP's computer systems division, land that was recently sold to Apple. The property is currently covered by a series of big asphalt parking lots. Apple's plan would increase the landscape coverage from 20 to 80 percent with the help of a senior arborist from Stanford who will help restore some of the indigenous plant life to the property, including the apricot orchards. Apple plans to make the campus' energy center the facility's primary power generator using natural gas and other "clean energy" sources -- the city would simply provide backup power when needed. Of course, what would a Jobs presentation be without a few choice superlatives? In this case, Jobs claims that the new curved-glass facility will be the "best office building in the world," luring in students of architecture anxious for a peek. Apple plans to break ground in 2012 with a 2015 move-in date. As an aside, it's fascinating (and yes, troubling) to observe Gilbert Wong, Mayor of Cupertino, guffaw at Steve's "jokes" like a smitten schoolgirl, going so far as to fawn over his own iPad 2 in front of the assembly. For his part, Jobs seems to bite his tongue during several exchanges particularly when one city council member tries to extort free WiFi from Apple in an apparent quid pro quo. Click through to see what we mean. [Thanks, GB]
Apple setting up another data center in Silicon Valley
We haven't even officially been told what's up with the data center in North Carolina, but apparently Apple wants more -- the company is also setting up another new data center much closer to home in Silicon Valley. The 11,000 square-foot setup is smaller than the big complex in North Carolina, which is said to be over 500,000 square feet (with about a fifth of that as actual server space). But the Silicon Valley center will still be pulling its own load when the 2.2 megawatts of critical power load comes online in September of this year. Apple is leasing the space wholesale from a company called DuPont Fabros, and it's not a stretch to think that if Apple needs more data center capacity very soon, DuPont Fabros will be more than happy to provide it. This one is located in Santa Clara, CA, and here's an interesting tidbit: There are a lot of data centers in that neck of the woods because the local power provider, Silicon Valley Power, offers relatively cheaper rates than Pacific Gas and Electric Company nearby. Hopefully we'll hear what all of this data center space is for soon -- WWDC is just around the corner.
Facebook admits hiring PR firm to smear Google
It seems like the ongoing rivalry between Facebook and Google has taken a turn for the subversive. Last night, a spokesman for the social network confirmed to the Daily Beast that Facebook paid a top PR firm to spread anti-Google stories across the media and to encourage various outlets to examine allegations that the Mountain View company was violating user privacy. The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, even offered to help blogger Chris Soghoian write a critical op-ed piece about Social Circle -- a service that allows Gmail users to access information on so-called "secondary connections," or friends of their friends. Social Circle, in fact, seems to have been at the epicenter of Facebook's smear campaign. In a pitch to journalists, Burson described the tool in borderline apocalyptic terms: "The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day-without their permission." Soghoian thought that Burson's representatives were "making a mountain out of a molehill," so he decided to prod them about which company they might be working for. When Burson refused to spill the beans, Soghoian went public and published all of the e-mails sent between him and the firm. USA Today picked up on the story, before concluding that any claims of a smear campaign were unfounded. The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons, however, apparently forced Facebook's hand after confronting the company with "evidence" of its involvement. A Facebook spokesman said the social network hired Burson to do its Nixonian dirty work for two primary reasons: it genuinely believes that Google is violating consumer privacy and it also suspects that its rival "may be improperly using data they have scraped about Facebook users." In other words, their actions were motivated by both "altruistic" and self-serving agendas, though we'd be willing to bet that the latter slightly outweighed the former. Google, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the story, saying that it still needs more time to wrap its head around everything -- which might just be the most appropriate "no comment" we've ever heard.
