Tech News Today - Oracle Faces Class Action, Google Australia Problems & UK ATM 1970s code mix-up

Oracle [Music] [Applause] it's 8:30 oracles gender pay gap lawsuit upgraded to a class action by a judge Google Australia's cache for content talks breakdown and Britain's streets were nearly flooded by cash from ATMs because of a crap 1970s code from backyard tech this is tech news today 8:30 Tuesday morning good morning everyone welcome to tech news today three stories to get through all from the register let's get into the first one Oracle faces claims of unequal pay from 4,000 plus women after Judge upgrades gender gap lawsuit to class-action I T joint accused of paying women less than men doing the exact same roles a lawsuit filed against Oracle on behalf of six women seeking to be paid as much as their male colleagues has been certified as a class action a legal milestone that will allow thousands of women a chance to have their gender discrimination claims heard in 2017 Zhi Ann Marie Sophie Wang and wrong jewett who had been employed by the American database giant as a project head a principal application engineer and an application engineer respectively sued the corporation claiming that it's pays that it pays women less than men for similar roles three other women Marilyn Clark Manjari Kant and Elizabeth sue Peterson subsequently joined as plaintiffs they claimed that they were paid an average of thirteen thousand dollars less per year than male Oracle employees in similar positions earlier in 2017 the u.s. department of labor sued oracle for allegedly underpaying women and minorities the DOL explained its lawsuit in January last year arguing Oracle had deprived women and minorities of four hundred and four four hundred million dollars u.s. in wages in November Oracle filed a counterclaim against the government insisting that Uncle Sam didn't have the authority to block contracts or challenge Oracle's payment practices a recent study by job search biz hired found quote six times out of ten women are offered less than men to do you exactly to do the exact same job at the exact same company it's quite on Thursday California Superior Court judge Raymond Swope of San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City issued an order certifying the plaintiffs proposed class action of 4100 women in his order Judge swap expressed skepticism of Oracle's claim that people with the same job code at the company did not perform similar work quote first Oracle's contingents do not appear to be consistent with Oracle's own document documents and P and Q or person most qualified testimony close quote the order says it goes on to assert that the matter of law Oracle cannot set individual pay within a job code base based on experience education and performance if it does so inconsistently between men and women and it concludes that there is enough statistical evidence and commonality amongst the discrimination claims that a jury can hear them as a group quote we're heartened the judge swipes certified the class as it will give all 4100 women in a clerk in the class a chance to assert their claims that they were paid less than their men in the same jobs close quote said James Finn Berg an attorney at the San Francisco firm old Schiller Berzin LLP in a phone interview with a register quote and hopefully we will be able to get Oracle to change its approach going forward close quite good luck with that Oracle I doubt it unfortunately what we've known of Oracle over the last few years is they are steadfast and won't change anything the potential cost to Oracle could reach several hundred million dollars if a jury finds the winner in the woman's favor technology companies have been the subject of numerous claims over payment discriminations based on gender and race but they're not often certified as class actions instead they tend to be resolved individually without any public consequence for the company or change in pay practices Google is fighting a pay discrimination lawsuit in California uber in 2018 paid ten million to settle pay discrimination claims bought by four hundred female and minority engineers concerned about the issue of pay equity has prompted some companies like Adobe Apple Cisco eBay and Intel to release data about their gender and pay an employee pay Oracle meanwhile intends to continue arguing that it did nothing wrong quote this is just procedural step unrelated to the merits of the case and we look forward to trying those in court close quote an Oracle spokesman said in an email to the register well unfortunately I think 4,000 women it's nothing to be sneezed at granted it's a fairly decent sizable lawsuit Oracle fight it tooth and nail and as the article says it'll probably get sorted outside of court so it'll be an out-of-court settlement and they'll be you can guarantee a non-disclosure a statement will be signed so that it doesn't make Oracle look bad Google Google Australia Australia says government pulled pen on content for cash talks hands in its homework anyway and fires back with we do for free what meatspace distributors charge full argument Google Australia's tentacles have hit back at Australia's plan to make web join play publishers for content shared on their network in a Sunday roast penned by Google Australia managing director and veep Mel Seaver sliver Silva sorry the company said that it was on track to deliver everything asked of it in the constant in the consultation process quote before the government changed the deadlines and shifted focus to a mandatory code close quote quote from the outset Google Google actively engaged in voluntary code process silver road continuing the quote google acted in good faith working constructively by consulting with more than 25 news media businesses broadcasters and print and online publishers from metro and regional areas we met with some publishers on multiple occasions to work through and understand the complex issues close quote Silva says Google Australia has sent its thoughts to local regulators anyway and did so on the previously previously agreed timeline Silva didn't say what was in the submission but our post makes the argument that publishers have always played distributors for their content yet Google performs the same service for free quote any everyone benefits from this exchange close quote Silva writes quote while news content has significant social value it's often difficult to make money from and primarily news seeking queries make up only a tiny percentage of the queries we see but by including news results next to other search results we encourage users to click to view stories they may not have otherwise read giving publishers the ability to show ads against those stories left unsaid is the Google could well place those ads and control the marketplace for those ads Silva does not does point out that webmasters can keep their results out of search results but she ignores Australia is call for transparency on the algorithms Google users to decide which content breaches uses eyeballs Silva seems to graze on the subject by saying quote our search results including links to news stories have always been determined by relevance not by commercial considerations Google does not accept payment to appear in organic search results nor does it pay for sites to appear in search results close quote now that's called optimizer SEO optimization well SEO isn't that called SEO Australian regulators have not publicly responded to Google at the time of writing Australia's government plans to have its pay to link scheme ready by July I don't know I don't know about that one I'm gonna have to sit on that one I think I'll keep my mouth shut for the time being Britain has no idea how close UK ATMs it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crack code 1970s style but rather purple tester put paid to that inflate inflate and baking bug who me welcome to the start of another working week and the tale and a tale to take us back to the orange and brown hues of the 1970s courtesy of the registers who's me thread today's story flings us back 45 years Skylab was still in orbit Russia in the US were playing touchy-feely with their apollo-soyuz test project Bohemian Rhapsody was released and cash dispensers or ATMs were cropping up around lightly a hero tale our hero of the tale who the regular dramatic 9000 has elected to call Sam had just graduated and was working for a firm responsible for the cash dispensers of well-known UK high street banks fresh face and just out of college quote I was the sole programmer on the firm's oldest range of ATMs close quote he told us we can just imagine those were the days long before bean counters had a broad idea of shoving Windows XP embedded or Windows 7 into holes in the wall back then serious iron was involved in such things the IBM 2984 cash issuing terminal for example turned up at Lloyds Bank in 1972 as well as coining the term cash point can be seen very much as an ancestor of the ATMs today Sam's ATMs were based on the Burroughs TC 500 as ubiquitous back then back in the day as the pdp-11 would become a few years later I've watched a doc I on the borough's TC 500 series and it's very interesting quote it was a strange little computer close quote he recalled quote having no Ram stories the programs were executed directly off the desk which had a whopping 8 kilobytes of memory the computer also incorporated a golf-ball typewriter for recording transactions what do you reckon the IBM Selectric s-- back in the night back in the 1970s our hero was tasked with writing the dispensed routine for an elderly kid which he described as quote the exciting bit at the end of the process after the customer had shoved in the appropriate card and tap and tapped in a pen cash was supposed to pop out of the machine the princely sum of ten pounds recalled Sam happily as a reminder 10 pounds in 1975 works out to be about 85 pounds in today's money back then a first-class stamp would set you back about 7 P and you could expect to pay around 25 P for a pint of beer so that crisp 10 pound was something was not something to be sniffed out riding in machine code the software was loaded on 8 hole punched paper tape as all proper software should be he all seemed to go well until field engineering came to test my masterpiece recalled Sam and it seemed overkill how complicated could the code be clearly not not complicated enough as 30 minutes into the test a red-faced engineer sputtered we've got a problem with your routine if one of the sensors fail the ruddy machine will empty the contents of the safe onto the streets we'd love to report we'd love to report that sand era had made it into production and up and down the streets of lightly afflicted ATMs was spewing forth with broken tokens like confetti beer tokens like confetti Oh last night I went white as a sheet he said being quick thinking I could see how this be an issue Sam swiftly fixed the bug and the test engineer lost his purple hue after passing the not so generous code being the 1970s nothing was said on the matter now a web engineer and semi-retired sam says sam said of his 45 year old faux pas no one else was any the wiser ever made a horrible horrible coding error but managed to discreetly brush it under a handy rug or cause the tester to burst a blood-vessel we've done at least one of those two things so that could be very ugly we know I mean just just think about this for a minute and this is why I picked this story today I want you to think about this for a minute imagine today now it can be a embedded Microsoft atm okay or an embedded Linux ATM which there are some imagine that the utter chaos in today's environment okay if that happened if an ATM from a bank just started spewing currency now here in Australia it would be something like you know 20s and 50s that's all we can get out of ATMs the US UK imagine an entire bank chains ATM coming off the back end of a ATM server and it just starts spilling cash now there is such a thing as free money and that would be free money and the bank probably would charge everyone who nicked a bit but can you imagine the chaos today back then it would have been cows but can you imagine the utter cut chaos if this was to occur right today with today's technology today's software today's hardware today's communications the it would be under the most serious investigation and you would not be able to keep it quiet it would be very very very difficult to keep it quiet and that's why I picked this one because back then yes we had networks yes we had modems we had communications capabilities but you know IBM and Burroughs and all that type of stuff but if you were to take that and convert it into our environment not not our current economic environment but generally speaking today's environment and a bunch of ATMs just started spewing cash I tell you what it would be very hard for it to be kept under wraps because you probably find there'd be a public inquiry there we are tech news today for Tuesday the 5th of May stick around hopefully that 80 series video gets out today if not I'll catch it or not for the convoys enjoy your Tuesday guys Cheers [Music]