Facebook adds more women to its workforce

Globally, the number of women working at Facebook has risen to 35 per cent, up from 33 in 2016 while their number in the technical department has risen by two per cent in the past year to 19 per cent, the company said.

According to a Facebook blog post on Wednesday, women now make up 27 per cent of all new graduate hires in engineering and 21 per cent of all new technical hires at Facebook.

"We're committed to building a more diverse, inclusive Facebook -- and will remain committed. Much like our approach to launching new products on our platform, we are willing to experiment and listen to feedback. We want to highlight three programs in particular," Maxine Williams, Global Director of Diversity at Facebook said.

In the senior leadership roles, women make up 28 per cent of the total workforce that currently stands at more than 20,000.

In the US, Facebook has increased the representation of Hispanics from four per cent to five per cent, and Black people from two per cent to three per cent.

However, the figures continue to show the minorities forming small percentage of the company's global workforce.

"It's complicated. This is a reflection of a lot of societal issues that are not specific to tech," a report in CNBC quoted Williams as saying.
READ MORE

NASA uploads hundreds of early test flight videos on YouTube

If you are a space buff get ready to watch videos of rare historic test flight, launch and landing footages on YouTube, media reports said.

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Centre in California was currently in the process of uploading hundreds of archival videos, including those of hypersonic jet takeoffs and shuttle landings, the Verge reported on Wednesday.

The project is part of the space agency's continued effort to better open access to its archives, as well as help inform the public about the types of research and record-setting milestones the agency achieves each year across various fields of aerospace engineering.

Out of a total 500 clips, nearly 300 have been uploaded to YouTube thus far, with some footage going back many decades, the report added.

The clips include everything from the assembly of the D-558 Skystreak aircraft back in 1947 to a 1991 takeoff of a Lockheed Martin SR-71 stealth jet to hypersonic test flights of the unmanned NASA X-43A in 2004.

Previously, the AFRC's video library was available only through the Dryden Aircraft Movie Collection on the website of the Dryden Flight Research Centre, which was the name of the Armstrong facility before a 2014 change.

Now that it's all on YouTube, it will be indexed by Google and more easily available through the company's search engine.
READ MORE