April 2017

In his first public appearance since leaving the White House in January, former president Barack Obama told young leaders that "special interests dominate the debates in Washington" and that he had failed to realize his "aspirational" goal of uniting Americans in red and blue states. "That was an aspirational comment," the former president said of his famous 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, prompting laughter from the audience at the University of Chicago.

He added that when talking to individual Americans from different political backgrounds, you learn that "there’s a lot more that people have in common" than it would appear. "But, obviously, it’s not true when it comes to our politics and our civic life." Obama, who has kept a relatively low public profile since the end of his second term, did not mention President Trump once during the 90-minute event. But he said he was determined to galvanize younger Americans to do more politically because they were the ones best positioned to bridge the current political divide.

A blindness to boundaries is not uncommon for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But in Travis Kalanick, that led to a pattern of repeatedly going too far at Uber, including the duplicity with Apple, sabotaging competitors and allowing the company to use a secret tool called Greyball to trick some law enforcement agencies. To develop its own business, Uber sidestepped the authorities. Some employees started using a tool called Greyball to deceive officials trying to shut down Uber’s service. The tool, developed to aid driver safety and to trick fraudsters, essentially showed a fake version of Uber’s app to some people to disguise the locations of cars and drivers. It soon became a way for Uber drivers to evade capture by law enforcement in places where the service was deemed illegal.

Uber engineers assigned a persistent identity to iPhones with a small piece of code, a practice called “fingerprinting.” Uber could then identify an iPhone and prevent itself from being fooled even after the device was erased of its contents. There was one problem: Fingerprinting iPhones broke Apple’s rules. Apple CEO Tim Cook believed that wiping an iPhone should ensure that no trace of the owner’s identity remained on the device. So Kalanick told his engineers to “geofence” Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino (CA) a way to digitally identify people reviewing Uber’s software in a specific location. Uber would then obfuscate its code for people within that geofenced area, essentially drawing a digital lasso around those it wanted to keep in the dark. Apple employees at its headquarters were unable to see Uber’s fingerprinting.

The cable industry supports 2.9 million jobs with an economic impact of $421 billion. That is according to an economic impact study by Bortz Media and Sports Group commissioned by NCTA–The Internet & Television Association. “Whether its building the powerful broadband networks that are transforming our lives or creating the award-winning TV that is entertaining us, this industry continues to be one of the most significant contributors to our nation’s economy,” said Michael Powell, president and CEO of NCTA–The Internet & Television Association. “We are not only an American industry with employees in every corner of the country but we employ people of all different skill levels and backgrounds, providing important jobs for hard working citizens everywhere.”