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SolarCity to pay $29.5 million to resolve U.S. government allegations

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – SolarCity has agreed to $ 29.5 million to settle U.S. allegations that it had violated federal law “by submitting inflated claims” to the federal government, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement on Friday.

The department said the there was no determination of liability as part of the settlement with SolarCity, now owned by Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), and that the company had also agreed to drop related litigation.

Reporting by Susan Heavey

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Tech

Twitter Meeting With Senate Intelligence Committee Investigating Russia’s Involvement in 2016 Election

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Twitter representatives will meet with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence staff next week in relation to inquiries into the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a company representative said.

The committee, along with other congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller, is investigating possible links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Twitter’s (twtr) meeting with the committee comes amid mounting pressure on regulators and Silicon Valley companies to open up the opaque world of online political ads and to prevent governments from using them to sway elections or attempt other meddling.

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Facebook (fb) said earlier this month that a Russia-based operation spent $ 100,000 on thousands of ads on its social media platform promoting “divisive” messages before and after last year’s presidential election.

After Facebook’s revelations, Democrats have urged the Federal Election Commission to require transparency for social media advertising.

Russia continues to deny meddling in the election, in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Tech

Bosch partners with startup Nikola on electric long-haul truck

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DETROIT (Reuters) – Bosch, the German auto components supplier, is partnering with startup Nikola Motor Co to bring two hydrogen-electric, long-haul, heavy-duty truck models to market by 2021, the companies said on Tuesday.

The market for electric medium- and heavy-duty trucks is in its infancy, but has drawn a growing crowd of competitors.

Manufacturers such as Daimler and Navistar International Corp, as well as electric car maker Tesla Inc and a host of other new entrants, are racing to overcome the challenges of substituting batteries for diesel engines as regulators crack down on carbon dioxide and soot pollution.

Bosch and Nikola will jointly develop a powertrain, which transmits drive from the engine of a vehicle to its axle, using Bosch’s eAxle technology. Bosch, which had 73.1 billion euros ($ 87 billion) in sales in 2016, has been shifting away from traditional combustion engine technologies to zero-emission vehicles.

The vehicle uses a hydrogen fuel cell to power the electric motor. Hydrogen fuel cells are easier and quicker to charge than batteries and have a longer range.

The Nikola One and Nikola Two models are both supposed to have a range of between 800 miles to 1,200 miles, an electric powertrain and zero emissions.

Bosch and Salt Lake City-based Nikola said the eAxle system will be paired with a jointly developed “custom-designed fuel cell system,” and hope the powertrain will achieve “segment-leading performance at a competitive total cost of ownership.”

High battery costs are a significant hurdle to mass adoption of electric vehicles as they limit vehicle range and size. Industry executives like Navistar Chief Executive Officer Troy Clarke say that in the short term, electric package delivery vehicles in urban areas with short, predictable routes will be the main area for competition until battery prices come down.

Last week Daimler said United Parcel Service Inc will be the first U.S. commercial customer for its new battery-powered eCanter package delivery truck. The company hopes to expand electric truck production as lower-cost, longer-range batteries become available within two to three years.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted last week that the Silicon Valley company would show off a prototype of an electric semi-trailer truck on Oct. 26.

Reuters reported last month that Tesla’s semi is expected to offer a range of 200 miles to 300 miles, far less than the 1,000 miles for some diesel-powered counterparts that U.S. long-haul truckers use.

Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Tech

Salesforce snaps up analytics startup BeyondCore

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Salesforce.com has acquired business intelligence and analytics startup BeyondCore, as part of its strategy to make its software more intelligent.

“I am thrilled [to] announce @Salesforce has acquired @beyondcoreinc to enhance the AI capabilities of Analytics Cloud,” wrote Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in a tweet on Monday.

The financial terms of the deal were not not disclosed.

BeyondCore in San Mateo, California, had already started integrating its product with the Salesforce platform. At the Gartner BI Summit earlier this year, the company showed off this integration, which would be part of its upcoming BeyondCore 7 release, wrote CEO Arijit Sengupta in a blog post.

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10 acquisitions driving Oracle’s cloud strategy

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Oracle craves cloud companies
intro hp

Image by Thinkstock

Since 2010, Oracle has been steadily acquiring cloud software companies, particularly SaaS providers that can help the business software maker grow its market share for software rented over the internet. The deals, including last month’s $ 9.3 billion blockbuster bid for NetSuite, are crucial for the company’s ability to keep pace with challengers such as SAP, Salesforce.com and Microsoft, all of which are forging their own aggressive strategies in the cloud.

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5 people Tim Cook calls for advice on running the biggest company in the world

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It’s only fitting that the leader of the biggest company in the world has a pretty impressive list of friends. 

In an extended interview with the Washington Post, Apple’s top executive offered new insight into how he’s handled some of the bigger decisions he’s made in his five years as CEO. Among the revelations: a casual list of some of the biggest names in business and politics who he has called upon for advice in years past.

“I think it’s incumbent on a CEO to not just listen to points of view but to actually solicit them,” Tim Cook said in the interview. “Because I think, if not, you quickly become insular. And you’re sort of living in the echo chamber.” Read more…

More about Us, Tim Cook, Apple, Businesss, and Tech


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Online gaming may boost school scores. Social media? Not so much.

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If you or your kids are avid gamers, here’s some good news: All that strategising may have a beneficial impact on school results. Whether regular Facebook use is a drag on one’s English test scores — that’s another question.

A study conducted by Alberto Posso, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University, found that teenagers who played online video games regularly were often able to improve their school scores. 

Students who were daily social media users, however, tended to under perform in maths, reading and science. “The results suggest that a student who uses online social networks on a daily basis will also obtain a grade in math that is 20 points lower than a student who never uses this type of social media,” Posso said in the report. Read more…

More about Social Media, Science, School, Online Gaming, and Australia


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Boom Learning Keeps Teachers Sharing Resources When Schools Say Print…

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Teachers like sharing resources, but schools want teachers to print and copy less and use devices more. New this fall, Boom Learning enables teachers to make, share, and sell interactive teaching…

(PRWeb August 08, 2016)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/08/prweb13598732.htm


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How Brands Are Learning To Engage The Silicon Valley Latino Ecosystem

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Prior to the last presidential election cycle, I had the opportunity to assist a White House sponsored initiative to engage and empower Latino leaders nationwide. The project took the White House on the road to more than a dozen different cities to provided insight and perspectives on opportunities for Latino leadership.  As I learned back then, the Silicon Valley perspective is special. It’s one, in fact, that might help many organizations — not just government players — to rethink their Latino engagement strategy.


Cloud Computing

This PC monitor hack can manipulate pixels for malicious effect

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Don’t believe everything you see. It turns out even your computer monitor can be hacked.

On Friday, researchers at DEF CON presented a way to manipulate the tiny pixels found on a computer display.

Ang Cui and Jatin Kataria of Red Balloon Security were curious how Dell monitors worked and ended up reverse-engineering one.

They picked apart a Dell U2410 monitor and found that the display controller inside can be used to change and log the pixels across the screen.

During their DEF CON presentation, they showed how the hacked monitor could seemingly alter the details on a web page. In one example, they changed a PayPal’s account balance from $ 0 to $ 1 million, when in reality the pixels on the monitor had simply been reconfigured.

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How illogical: New Skype bot lets you chat with Spock

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Microsoft has made no secret of its grand plans for chat bots, and this week it rolled out five new ones for Skype. Surely the most fun is “Spock,” a bot that promises to help you “learn the ways of Vulcan logic.”

Back in April, Microsoft debuted a preview of Skype bots, the artificial intelligence-based helpers it hopes will make it easier for users to get things done. Today, more than 30,000 developers are building bots for Skype, it says.

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Computerworld Cloud Computing


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How illogical: New Skype bot lets you chat with Spock

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Microsoft has made no secret of its grand plans for chat bots, and this week it rolled out five new ones for Skype. Surely the most fun is “Spock,” a bot that promises to help you “learn the ways of Vulcan logic.”

Back in April, Microsoft debuted a preview of Skype bots, the artificial intelligence-based helpers it hopes will make it easier for users to get things done. Today, more than 30,000 developers are building bots for Skype, it says.

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This site lists all the Siri commands you’ll ever need

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If you rock an iPhone and don’t yet use Siri, you’re missing out: the voice-activated assistant can do a LOT of things for you without the hassle of tapping and swiping through a ton of menus. It’s also wicked cool to have your phone respond to the sound of your voice. Most people know about common tasks that Siri can help out with, such as calling a contact or reading out your last text message. But did you know that it can also show you the traffic near your destination, adjust screen brightness and even dim the lights in your…

This story continues at The Next Web


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Levitating Apple Watch charger turns smartwatch into futuristic art

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Whether you love or hate the Apple Watch, charging it is often one of the first encounters many users have with the magic of wireless charging. 

Now that magic has been taken to the next level with a new kind of Apple Watch charger that mixes wireless charging with magnetic levitation. 

The Lift is a wireless charger designed to work with the Apple Watch and the Pebble smartwatches, offering a cool way to recharge your wearable while enjoying what looks like a piece of museum art from the future. 

Using magnetic levitation, a method that has become common for the latest, high-end Bluetooth speakers, the charging unit that holds your Apple Watch hovers over the charging base while delivering a charge to your device.  Read more…

More about Levitating, Charger, Kickstarter, Apple Watch, and Apple


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A look at Oracle’s 10 biggest acquisitions

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Oracle is back at it again today, announcing one of the largest acquisitions in company history with the purchase of enterprise resource planning (ERP) company NetSuite for $ 9.3 billion.

+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Details of Oracle’s NetSuite takeover | Can Oracle buy its way into the cloud? +

Larry Ellison and crew are no strangers to acquisitions. The company has made many over the past few decades. For Ellison though, cloud acquisitions are particularly noteworthy, given that not too long ago he derided the market as a fad.

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Network World Cloud Computing


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IDG Contributor Network: Kubernetes and OpenStack to collide in Silicon Valley

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Mirantis, the pure play OpenStack company, is one of the sponsors of OpenStack Days – Silicon Valley. I caught up with Mirantis co-founder and CMO Boris Renski to learn more about the upcoming event. Here is an edited version of that interview…

Can you tell us more about the event?

OpenStack – Silicon Valley is the event that we started three years ago. This is the third in the series. The OpenStack community in general, as you know, has a summit twice a year and then it has this concept of OpenStack Days, which are different regional events that are organized by various community members.

OpenStack – Silicon Valley has historically been the event that’s organized by the Silicon Valley community of OpenStack. It is essentially the largest community to date because the users from the early days of OpenStack are based in Silicon Valley. The NASA Research Center that started the Nova project is also based out of here. And a lot of engineers are here. It’s probably the second biggest OpenStack event out there after the main OpenStack Summit.

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