Google employees lose nearly 250 Gbikes a week: Report

Technology giant Google loses between 100 and 250 of its colourful employee bicycles a week from its campus, the media reported.

Google maintains roughly 1,100 free, two-wheelers with yellow frames, red baskets and green and blue wheels, known as Gbikes, for its employees to get around its sprawling campus.

However, according to company estimates, its bikes consistently go missing from its campus-between 100 and 250 a week, typically costing $100 to $300.

The bikes have shown up at local schools, in neighbours' lawns, at the bottom of the town creek and on the roof of a sports pub.

"The disappearances often aren't the work of ordinary thieves, however. Many residents of Mountain View, a city of 80,000 that has effectively become Google's company town, see the employee perk as a community service," the Wall Street Journal reported on January 5.

A decade ago, Google started Silicon Valley's first corporate bike programme, which was adopted by at least 16 others across the US, including at Apple, Facebook, and Walmart, the report said.

The company recently equipped about a third of its 1,100 bikes with GPS trackers, which revealed that the two-wheelers take an average 12 trips and travel six miles a day.

It now also has a team of 30 Google contractors and five vans who are tasked with retrieving Gbikes. They carry waders and grappling hooks for pulling bikes out of a creek.
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Leaks reveal Kremlin cash is behind billionaire's Twitter and Facebook investments

In the fall of 2010, the Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner took the stage for a Q and A at a technology conference in San Francisco. Mr. Milner, whose holdings have included major stakes in Facebook and Twitter, is known for expounding on everything from the future of social media to the frontiers of space travel. But when someone asked a question that had swirled around his Silicon Valley ascent — Who were his investors? — he did not answer, turning repeatedly to the moderator with a look of incomprehension.

Now, leaked documents examined by The New York Times offer a partial answer: Behind Mr. Milner’s investments in Facebook and Twitter were hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kremlin.

Obscured by a maze of offshore shell companies, the Twitter investment was backed by VTB, a Russian state-controlled bank often used for politically strategic deals.

And a big investor in Mr. Milner’s Facebook deal received financing from Gazprom Investholding, another government-controlled financial institution, according to the documents. They include a cache of records from the Bermuda law firm Appleby that were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and reviewed by The Times in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Ultimately, Mr. Milner’s companies came to own more than 8 percent of Facebook and 5 percent of Twitter, helping earn him a place on various lists of the world’s most powerful business people. His companies sold those holdings several years ago, but he retains investments in several other large technology companies and continues to make new deals. Among Mr. Milner’s current investments is a real estate venture founded and partly owned by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser.
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Where driverless cars brake for golf carts

Molly Jackson, an 82-year-old retired nurse, was sitting in the back seat of a self-driving taxi when the vehicle jerked to a halt at a crossing as its computer vision spotted an approaching golf cart.

When the vehicle, a modified Ford Fusion developed by a start-up named Voyage, started to inch forward, it abruptly stopped again as the golfers pressed ahead and cut in front of the car.

Jackson seemed unfazed by the bumpy ride. As a longtime resident of the Villages Golf and Country Club, a retirement community in San Jose, Calif., she knew all about aggressive golf cart drivers.

“I like that; we made a good stop there,” Jackson said. “I stop for them. They say we don’t have to, but I do.”
Voyage is starting to expand its driverless taxi service beyond a small test in the Villages, a gated community of about 4,000 residents where the average age is 76.

Retirement communities, with their tightly controlled roads, can be an ideal proving ground for autonomous vehicles.
In the Villages, there are 15 miles of roads where autonomous vehicles can learn how to navigate other cars, pedestrians, golf carts, animals, roundabouts and many other obstacles.
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From Kalanick to Dave McClure: Silicon Valley faces it sexist culture woes

A growing chorus of voices denouncing sexist culture is echoing through male-dominated Silicon Valley, knocking a number of internet industry executives from their perches.

Accusations concerning the lack of women in tech jobs and unfair, or downright crude, treatment endured by some in the industry have simmered for years, occasionally reaching a boil.

Now increasing numbers of women are going public with complaints of gender-based discrimination -- in some cases leading men to step down.

Uber's embattled chief executive Travis Kalanick resigned last month, yielding to pressure from investors seeking to clean up the company's allegedly toxic corporate culture.

His departure capped a rocky period for the global ridesharing giant, which has been roiled by disturbing reports of cutthroat workplace conditions, harassment and discrimination.

Before Kalanick's departure, Uber said it had fired 20 people after examining 215 claims of discrimination, harassment, unprofessional behavior and bullying.

June also saw venture capitalist Justin Caldbeck take an indefinite leave of absence from Binary Capital in Silicon Valley in the face of allegations he made sexual advances towards female entrepreneurs interested in funding.

"To say I'm sorry about my behavior is a categorical understatement," Caldbeck said in released statement.
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