The current situation in Israel and Palestine is tragic, ugly, and quite capable of touching all our lives in some form soon. For tech workers there, it’s already had a devastating effect.
Several years ago, Nvidia bought an Israeli-American networking company called Mellanox for $7 billion, using it as the basis for a center that employs 3,000 people. As reported Friday by CTech, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote to Israeli employees to offer his condolences to Mellanox founder Eyal Waldman, whose daughter Danielle was among those slaughtered by Hamas militants at the Supernova music festival—her partner, former Nvidia employee Noam Shai, also was killed.
Nvidia employee Avinatan Or and his girlfriend Noa Argamani are hostages. And hundreds of Nvidia’s workers have been called up to return to military duty. “Our thoughts are constantly with you, and we hope for your safe return,” Huang wrote. “Nvidians worldwide will rise to cover for our colleagues in Israel and pick up and offload whatever work you need. We are here for you.”
Meanwhile, at least a tenth of workers at the workplace collaboration platform Spike have taken up co-founder Dvir Ben-Aroya’s offer of company support for those who want to temporarily move away from Israel with their families, according to CNBC—the article also notes several examples of companies where international colleagues are eagerly filling in for Israeli employees who have been called up, or who just need time off to cope with the national trauma.
“It’s very difficult to concentrate on work when you’re dealing with all these personal matters and on securing yourself and the country,” venture capitalist Yaniv Sadka told CNBC, also noting that many of the tech workers are being pulled into the Israeli Defense Forces’ intelligence units.
But while Israel’s tech focus is well known—the sector accounts for a tenth of the Israeli workforce—Palestine also has aspirations as a tech hub, with some Silicon Valley companies eagerly hiring talent there. TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher provides a grim account of what’s been happening in Gaza even before Israel’s planned ground offensive.
The building that housed the Gaza Sky Geeks accelerator—from which 5,000 developers graduated last year—has been blown out by Israeli shelling. “The offices are destroyed, the fiber lines are destroyed. The universities are destroyed,” Ryan Sturgill, who used to run the accelerator, told Butcher. “Three main universities in Gaza that produce all the computer science grads are leveled.”
“The tech sector is almost completely unable to function in Gaza right now,” added Iliana Montauk, CEO of Y-Combinator-backed social impact startup Manara. “Most people are in too much danger to be able to work; some have evacuated three times in the past 24 hours, moving from friend’s house to family house, because each neighborhood they end up in is the next one being bombed.”
More news below.
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David Meyer
NEWSWORTHY
U.S. tightens chip restrictions. Reuters reports that the U.S. is about to update its restrictions affecting sales of advanced chips and semiconductor-manufacturing equipment to China, to block sales of more AI chips. This could affect shipments of chips like Nvidia’s H800, which the company released for the Chinese market due to the legal impossibility of exporting its flagship H100 product there.
SoftBank sells most of Alibaba stake. SoftBank has been quietly winding down most of its involvement with Alibaba, through a series of prepaid forward contracts reported on by the Financial Times. The Japanese conglomerate once owned over a third of Alibaba, but—unless it exercises its option to rebuy the shares—it will end up with 3.8%.
Australian X fine. Australia’s online safety authority has fined X $386,000 for insufficiently answering questions around its actions against child sexual abuse material. As TechCrunch reports, eSafety accused X of leaving some fields “entirely blank” in its responses to the official questions, and giving inaccurate answers in others. Agency chief Julie Inman Grant: “Twitter/X has stated publicly that tackling child sexual exploitation is the No. 1 priority for the company, but it can’t just be empty talk, we need to see words backed up with tangible action.” Google also got a formal warning for giving the regulator “generic responses” to the same questions.
ON OUR FEED
“We sell geolocation data for which we do not have consent to do so…we sell/share device ID data for which we do not have consent to do so [and] we sell data outside the EU for which we do not have consent to do so.”
—Jay Angelo, general counsel and chief privacy officer of data intelligence outfit Near Intelligence, in an email to CEO Anil Mathews, reported by the Wall Street Journal. Angelo reportedly also said the EU data, derived from ad exchanges, was being illegally sent to U.S. federal government “twice per day.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
How a slick accounting maneuver led to a $29 billion tax bill for Microsoft, by ProPublica
Your next iPhone might be pricier after the Google antitrust trial: ‘Google has essentially been subsidizing the cost of devices’, by Associated Press
Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers request Adderall for the FTX founder as he decides whether to testify, by Leo Schwartz
How big companies from EY to Johnson & Johnson are learning to master AI prompts, by Ryan S. Gladwin
Elon Musk’s X illegally fired employee for publicly blasting the company’s return to office plans, labor regulator alleges, by Bloomberg
Ferrari will now let you pay for your new car with crypto, and the brand is expanding the service to Europe at the request of wealthy customers, by Christiaan Hetzner
BEFORE YOU GO
Self-driving air taxis, for real. For the first time, an aviation authority has approved autonomous air taxis for takeoff. The beneficiary is China’s Ehang, which received authorization from the Civil Aviation Administration of China for its EH216-S AAV drone.
As CNBC reports, the U.S.-listed firm hopes to start expanding overseas next year, though there is currently no mutual-recognition process for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft such as this two-seater.
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