Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd passes away, Facebook’s CEO gives a talk about how Facebook promotes and regulates free speech, and the U.S. Air Force finally retires its 8-inch floppies from its missile launch control system.
 |
 |
 |
Mark Hurd, co CEO of Oracle, has died at age 62. Hurd joined the cloud tech company in 2010 after a 5-year stint at Hewlett-Packard from 2005 to 2010 where he helped double the company’s share price. In 2014 he became the co-chief of Oracle with Safra Catz, and together, they’ve helped increase Oracle’s shares by 37 per cent. On LinkedIn, people have posed their condolences, describing Hurd as an iconic salesman and someone who listened to front line managers on a regular basis. Rest in Paradise, Mr. Hurd.
Also trending on LinkedIn is Mark Zuckerberg’s talk about how Facebook promotes free speech. The Facebook CEO spoke for nearly 40 minutes at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and described Facebook as a “fifth estate” in society and that he doesn’t think it’s proper for a private company to censor politicians or the news. This comes shortly after strong criticism from Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren over a Facebook ad that’s been labeled false and misleading, in addition to her ongoing calls to break up big tech companies in the US.
And lastly, trending on Reddit is a news report about the US Air Force finally ditching the use of those eight inch floppy disks that were still used to store data about its intercontinental ballistic missile command, control and communications network. That’s a mouthful. The system, once called the Strategic Air Command Digital Network (SACDIN), relied on IBM Series/1 computers installed by the Air Force at Minuteman II missile sites in the 1960s and 1970s. There were reservations about moving on to a more modern system because of the cybersecurity advantages the old system provided.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing.