Revere Digital

[Commentary] As technology becomes even more intertwined with people’s daily lives, whether it’s at home or at work, it becomes more and more imperative that the people who build that technology demonstrate a diversity of thought and focus. The industry has grown past being a small group of dreamers. It’s our responsibility to approach problems with clear eyes, and have our brains (and our hearts) tuned toward empathy and inclusion. Once we do, we will break out of our comfortable echo chamber and open up new worlds of opportunity for ourselves — and more importantly, for the people we make things for.

[Stacey Epstein is the CEO of Zinc, an enterprise software company offering a mobile messaging platform]

At first, Google Fiber delivered super-fast Internet through fiber pipes. Now it’s moving to do that without any pipes at all — and may soon be offering that option in more places.

A new Federal Communications Commission filing reveals that Google Fiber is seeking permission to test wireless broadband tech in 24 US locations, including at least 12 cities. If approved, it would mark the most ambitious step in Fiber’s strategy to build out a nationwide broadband network with reduced costs and much faster rollout. The locations Fiber is scouting, according to the FCC listing, include some cities where it is currently operating, like San Francisco, as well as places where it is not, like Boulder (CO) and Reston (VA). In order to effectively deploy the kind of wireless internet to the home that Fiber is thinking of, the company needs to rely on some sort of backhaul — as in, existing fiber optic pipes or Google infrastructure.

Another big security flaw in Android highlights just how messed up the Google ecosystem still is when it comes to security. This one, known as Quadrooter, was disclosed in recent days by security software maker Check Point. Quadrooter affects a whole host of top-end Android devices running one of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. That means hundreds of millions or even a billion devices could be at risk, including top-end models such as the Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC 10 and LG G5 and even Google’s latest Nexus devices and security-focused devices like BlackBerry’s Priv and Silent Circle’s Blackphone.

The problem is there are still so many hands in the pot when it comes to updating Android. Google updates its software, but device makers have to tailor it for their phones — and sometimes they get their software not from Google, but from chipmakers like Qualcomm. And then sometimes mobile carriers want to do their own testing to make sure they aren’t inadvertently introducing other problems onto their network. All that means the time from when a flaw is identified or disclosed to when it is fixed is longer than it should be, sometimes leaving hundreds of millions of phones vulnerable for weeks or months.

Hillary Clinton went with a pretty vanilla choice for her running mate: Sen Tim Kaine (D-VA). Though he’s relative unknown to most of the country and, by extension, Silicon Valley, Sen Kaine will provide yet another reason to not vote for Donald Trump. He toes a Clinton-like line about appropriately balancing privacy and security when it comes tech encryption, and he has proposed legislation for “technical” education programs.

When he served as the governor of Virginia (and as a senator), he supported expanding broadband Internet access. Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association trade group, praised Kaine as an ally of the tech industry. Sen Kaine’s open support for free trade policies, the kind of thing that Silicon Valley people really like to hear, is a rarity in this election cycle. Both Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Donald Trump have loudly criticized the in-progress Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and Hillary Clinton has done the same — albeit with a fraction of the same conviction. But for Silicon Valley, Sen Kaine’s biggest asset is a very simple one: His running mate is not Donald Trump.

Social media platforms have since become the modern-day soapbox, providing new channels through which candidates and parties engage with voters. For evidence of the digital revolution, just follow the money. In the 2012 election cycle, political campaigns spent $159 million on digital media. In 2016, that figure is expected to top $1 billion. However, campaigns still largely use social media like they use television — by talking to the voters rather than with them. T

he 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia (PA) will change that in a way that should make every party, candidate and campaign manager sit up and take notice. In 2016, the Democratic National Convention will bring supporters into the conversation and tell the story of this historic event through the eyes of the attendees. Understanding that communication in this digital age is becoming increasingly visual, the convention will take the images captured by attendees and connect those images to other relevant information that supporters may be on the lookout for. Layering in this information and making all of these images "intelligent" will transform each image into an opportunity to engage supporters beyond the convention hall and lead them to information and action like never before. What’s more, the convention will track the performance of each image, and use that data to guide decisions about messaging.

Milo Yiannopoulos, the tech editor at conservative news site Breitbart and a pretty notorious Internet troll, has been suspended from Twitter for the final time. He’s now banned for good for repeatedly abusing other users, the company confirmed.

Yiannopoulos crossed the line when he went after actress Leslie Jones on the microblogging site. Jones was harassed and taunted by users, many of them sending her racist images and slurs. She ultimately signed off “with tears and a very sad heart” after publicly pleading with Twitter to intervene. Yiannopoulos, who had 338,000 followers and a Twitter bio that called him “The most fabulous supervillain on the Internet,” was one of the main instigators. He tweeted that Jones was “barely literate” and also referred to her as a man. The permanent ban means that Twitter will essentially keep Yiannopoulos off its network in any way possible, including finding and suspended any new accounts he creates. It’s the same punishment Twitter has handed down to other repeat trolls, like rapper Azealia Banks and Gotnews founder Chuck Johnson.

Donald Trump used his favorite hailing frequency, Twitter, to confirm his selection of Gov Mike Pence (R-IN) as his vice presidential running mate. The choice is bound to make conservatives within the Republican party happy — though the he’s unlikely to win the hearts and minds of anyone in the tech industry. Indeed, his selection is likely to provoke the ire of many leaders in Silicon Valley, 70 of whom aligned against an anti-LGBT measure that Gov Pence signed into law in 2015. Some of the technology industry’s most prominent executives — among them Apple’s Tim Cook and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff — vocally protested the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a “religious liberty bill” that they warned would open the door to legalizing discrimination against minority groups.

Of course, Trump isn’t courting Silicon Valley with his choice of Gov Pence. The first-term governor and former congressman is there to make the GOP’s evangelical wing happy. He’s a guy who described himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.” For Silicon Valley, which has aggressively used corporate muscle on issues of LGBT rights, it seems Trump’s likely pick might be the worst possible selection he could have made.

Verizon is announcing that it is nearly ready to offer nationwide calling over its LTE network, but the reality is this is just the start of a long process.

Eventually, the addition of voice-over-LTE will allow for higher-quality calls, quicker connection and easy video chats. But because those features require both parties to be on Verizon, have a compatible phone and opt-in to LTE calling, very few such calls will be made initially.

At some unspecified point, VoLTE calling will become the default. Even further down the road -- probably not until at least 2016 -- Verizon will start selling phones that only support LTE. And while the initial service is limited to calling fellow Verizon members, lab work is under way to eventually let people call among different LTE networks.

Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA) has signed into law a bill that will require all smartphones sold in California to come equipped with technology that would render the devices useless if stolen.

The “kill switch” measure, proposed by Sen Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), applies to all smartphones sold in the state after July 1, 2015.

Twitter began adding content to users’ timelines, and it says it’s going to keep doing that.

Sources familiar with the update say Twitter’s algorithm searches for popular tweets in your “social graph,” marked by actions like favorites and retweets. But it’s not showing you those tweets specifically because of one of your pal’s actions -- it’s showing it to you because lots of your pals have shown interest in that tweet.