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CNBC.com's Pippa Stevens brings you the day's top business news headlines. On today's show, CNBC.com's MacKenzie Sigalos reports on ethereum's London hard fork update and what it means for miners. Plus, President Joe Biden announces a new electric vehicle initiative with carmakers, but Tesla is left out of the event.

Ethereum's much-hyped and somewhat controversial "London" hard fork has just activated.

So far, news of the successful upgrade has coincided with a runupin the price of ether, the native token of ethereum's blockchain. The cryptocurrency is at $2,620,up 3.9% in the last 24 hours.

A big part of the enthusiasm has to do with the fact that the software upgrade means a few big and necessary changes are coming to the code underpinning the world's second-biggest cryptocurrency.

It has always been a tough go for ethereum users. The blockchain has a long-standing problem with scaling, and its highly unpredictable and sometimes exorbitant transaction fees can annoy even its biggest fans.

The problem has become worse in recent months thanks to a surge in interest in nonfungible tokens, which are mostly built on ethereum's blockchain, as well as an explosive growth in the world of decentralized finance, or DeFi, which also largely uses the ethereum blockchain.

Targetsaid Wednesday it will offer new perks to woo workers: a debt-free way to get a college degree and payments toward graduate programs.

Starting this fall, the big-box retailer said it will cover the cost of tuition, fees and textbooks for part- and full-time workers who pursue a qualifying undergraduate degree at more than 40 institutions. It will also fund advanced degrees, paying up to $10,000 each year for master's programs at those schools.

The national retaileris the latest company to dangle perks to attract job candidatesin a competitive labor market. With the move, Target joins other retailers and restaurant chains includingChipotleandStarbucks that have programs that help employees pay for college.Walmartrecently announced it wouldcover the full cost of college tuition and booksfor its employees, after previously requiring them to pay $1 a day.

President Joe Biden will set a new national target on Thursday for the adoption of electric vehicles, calling for them to represent half of all new auto sales by 2030, according to senior administration officials.

The target is expected to be supported by companies such asGeneral Motors,Ford MotorandStellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler. Executives of the Detroit automakers are scheduled to attend an event Thursday at the White House and pledge EV sales of between 40% and 50% by 2030.

Though the president will sign an executive order, the sales target is not mandatory. Instead, the document encourages the U.S. auto industry and government to promote legislation and the adoption of electrified vehicles. The target includes zero-emission vehicles powered byfuel cellsand batteries as well as plug-in hybrid models with internal combustion engines.

The order "doesn't function as a mandate, but it does create the conditions for us to meet that goal," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday. "We have got to act, the transportation sector is the biggest part of our economy emitting greenhouse gases, and cars and trucks are one of the biggest parts of that."

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Ethereum upgrade marks beginning of the end for traditional ether mining: CNBC After Hours - CNBC

SAP customers need to change the way they operate to shift their ERP systems to the cloud, according to the CEO of the Americas' SAP Users' group (ASUG).

Responding to the results of a joint survey between ASUG and German-speaking user group DSAG, which showed some scepticism towards SAP's lift-and-shift package, Geoff Scott said users would have to look again at how they had customised their SAP ERP systems to fit their business processes.

"The traditional on-prem, highly customised ERP solution, absolutely, positively has to give way to a more SaaS-based ERP solution," he said.

SAP launched its RISE package in January with the hope that, working in tandem with service partners, it could convince users to move existing, customised ERP systems to cloud infrastructure, then, in a second step, create new processes and business transformation to make it onto a more standardised, configured system.

But Scott warned it might be a lengthy process, where there is much more to consider than just software and IT infrastructure.

"You need to spend some careful time looking at how your business is operating and perhaps the way you've operated a certain business process five years ago is not the way you want to operate it today," he said. "Thinking about how your business is operating in a post-pandemic world, there could be a lot of opportunities for you to take a look at."

Scott's comments echo those of Oliver Betz, SVP head of product management for SAP S/4HANA, who told customers they could not have the modifications they have in the on-premises world with the move to software-as-a-service. "That's not how the cloud works," he said.

The joint DSAG/ASUG research found that 24 per cent of American users view the RISE with SAP product as somewhat of value or high in value but only 12 per cent of their German-speaking counterparts say the same. Meanwhile, 39 per cent of DSAG members see RISE with SAP as having little value or no value at all, the 443-response survey found.

Jens Hungershausen, DSAG chairman, told a joint webinar hosted by the two user groups that past experiences of problems integrating cloud-based enterprise software led to some of the doubts about RISE with SAP.

"German-speaking users' experiences with old on-premise SAP systems have been really good," he said. "They got a lot of things done. They have good processes, but they also experienced some problems with integrating with cloud technology, and I think that's one of the reasons why our membership is a little bit cautious about RISE with SAP, right now, because they just want to see if that's really going to work. The experiences they've had were not so good all time. It's up to SAP to prove they are a cloud company and can deliver on their promises."

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Get ready to make processes fit the software when shifting to SAP's cloud, users told - The Register

Furthermore, this large community contributes non-stop with traffic reports, so others can know in advance when theyre approaching a speed trap, roadkill, a construction zone, or simply a traffic jam that could slow them down.

The community-driven engine has turned Waze into a must-have weapon in the modern arsenal of a daily driver, and this is how the Google-owned app ended up becoming one of the most downloaded on both iPhone and Android.

But on the other hand, Waze has long been pretty much the only app offering such capabilities, despite smaller developers in the development of their own alternatives, sometimes to no avail. Its not easy to build a large userbase that can contribute with live reports and suggest map edits, so only a company with proven experience in the navigation software market can do this.

TomTom is one of the giants ready to get involved in a battle against Waze, as its AmiGO navigation app proposes a similar approach based on the power of the community.

The company says its userbase counts half a billion drivers that can contribute with real-time updates, therefore providing users with up-to-date traffic info, alerts, online routing, and everything else.

Similar to Waze, AmiGO allows users to report essential traffic data, such as jams, speed camera locations, blocked and closed roads, accidents, and more, and TomTom says it analyzes and verifies the information to make sure only accurate data is offered to others.

In other words, TomTom AmiGO should offer only super-accurate reports that help generate a faster and safer route to a destination, all while avoiding sections of the road flagged by others.

TomTom says AmiGO is and will remain completely free, with no plans to ever introduce ads or start selling user data. The app is available on both iPhone and Android, and more recently, it also received support for Android Auto.

At the end of the day, competition is a boost to innovation, and as far as Waze is concerned, this is a must-have, especially as the Google-owned company has long been the only solid choice in this side of the navigation software market. The only thing AmiGO needs right now is to grow bigger, especially in smaller countries where its userbase isnt as large as Wazes.

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A Free Alternative to Waze Is Finally Available and the World Seriously Needs It - autoevolution

Blue patches represent publicly owned land in Seattle that could support housing. (CityBldr Graphic)

Engineers at CityBldr knew they were sitting on a goldmine of zoning and land data. After all, thats how the Bellevue, Wash.-based big data company helps large corporations know the most cost-effective way to expand operations.

Then five years ago, staff members realized the data might lend itself toward solving one of the biggest social problems in the urban United States: affordable housing. The same information that could show a company where to build its next warehouse could also show a housing nonprofit or a city planner the entire inventory of underutilized, publicly owned land.

Moreover, it could immediately show them how many people could be housed on each parcel under existing zoning. Today, the company is launching a free demonstration website called Public to show in a sharply limited-access way what the software can do.

And with the launch, CityBldr is kicking off a campaign to get corporations to sponsor affordable housing nonprofits in order to get full access to the complete data that could reveal anything from low-hanging housing fruit to the underpinning of a long-term housing plan.

We spent five years building the Rosetta Stone of zoning, said Bryan Copley, CEO and co-founder of CityBldr. And we think it can really help change the amount of housing available.

That data could come in handy in Seattle come November. Should the Compassion Seattle Initiative get voter approval in the next election, the city will be required to build 2,000 units of housing over the following two years.

Copley said CityBldr has compiled a vast and deep land database of 100 U.S. cities with 255 different zoning standards. In those cities, Public data can show everything from land valuation, parcel size, current zoning, what currently is on the land, and how many people could be housed on the land under existing regulations.

For land that has multi-use zoning, a user can click through parameters for single-family, townhome, or multi-family dwellings to find out how many people or units the land could legally hold. A city planner could find out in minutes how many additional people could be housed on all available public land within the city limits.

After consulting with urban planning experts at U.C. Berkeley, M.I.T. and Harvard University the Harvard expert researched how best to help cities with the data Copley said the search was restricted to publicly owned land for two reasons: it can be easier to get a city to unload underused land to a nonprofit and cities sometimes dont have a simple way to track their own land inventories.

That said, the database someday could be opened to privately owned land as well, he said.

We built it so people could make use of it, Copley said. You cant make a private individual sell. Some people just want to sit on the land. But publicly owned land can be different.

Copley said CityBldr representatives have spoken to housing officials and government leaders in Seattle and across the country and the reception has been enthusiastic. He said the cost of getting the data for each city will run $10,000 so that is what a corporation will pay to sponsor a nonprofit.

Ideally, he said, CityBldr wont make a dime on Public. The plan is to collect money to pay for five full-time staff to help housing nonprofits and cities wade through and understand the data while continually updating the database as local regulations and land inventories change.

The dream, Copley said, is to make this zero out, cost wise. Were not doing this for the money.

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Mining its own data, CityBldr builds tool to show cities the best places to build affordable housing - GeekWire

For the National Whistleblower Centers National Whistleblower Day celebration, which Whistleblower Network News (WNN) co-sponsored, WNN had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas le Bonniec. In 2019, le Bonniec worked in Ireland for a subcontractor employed by Apple. When he first started the job, he was enthusiastic about the location and good pay, but he quickly took issue with what the job entailed: listening to user recordings from Siri, Apples virtual assistant.

I disagreed from the first day with what I was supposed to do at my job, le Bonniec says during the interview. He stayed at the job for two months, but when he listened to a recording from a pedophile, he decided he couldnt stay on any longer. That was also the moment le Bonniec decided that the public needed to know what was going on.

Since leaving Apple, le Bonniec has been urging the data protection authorities in Europe to take action about his allegations, because they are responsible for these kinds of violations. They are the ones who should investigate that. During the interview, he talked about his whistleblowing experience and how he tried to flag the recording to no avail. He also talked about how he was unable to blow the whistle on these issues internally, because it was the job itself that is extremely objectionable. These recordings were made on a massive scale, le Bonniec emphasizes.

During the last part of the conversation, le Bonniec gives advice to people who might want to blow the whistle. He advises that a potential whistleblower would need a lot of time of introspection before they decide what path theyre going down to. He recalls that he was told by several people close to him that blowing the whistle would be pointless and an uphill battle, and he concedes that whistleblowing is not something you should do lightly. You should definitely think about it before you start the process, thats not something you go back from, especially when you go public.

It feels good to be able to say youre not going to bow down to pressure, especially when it feels, in my case at least, that its wrong, le Bonniec remarks. So thats a good thing. Other doors, other opportunities are open. You meet different people who have a different view of the world. They may not be in power, but they are at least trying to do things for the betterIm connected to people who are trying to do things for the better, and thats very much whats important to me.

I would also say that you definitely need to bear in mind that your employer is not on your side in these specific cases pretty much anytime, actually. Your employer is not going to be on your side: be careful with what youre going to share with them and what your intentions are and how disgruntled you may seem to them as well. Be careful and dont give anything to them that they might use afterwards, le Bonniec advises.

At the end of the interview, le Bonniec emphasized his commitment to trying to enact meaningful change and urging European data protection authorities to take action. Im not going to let this go, thats for sure, he says.

He also cautions individuals to think critically about their relationship with big tech industries: If you ever think of what kind of data youre just giving away and how much it is worth, actually, to the people who are spying on you, please make sure to check your iPhone settings, your Siri settings. Please make sure that youre not using Google anymore, try another search engine like DuckDuckGo, try to switch from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox. Try and get involved with free software and those kinds of actors, such as the Wikimedia Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and Linux and all those people who are actually doing a great job of fighting that.

le Bonniec was one of the many brave whistleblowers who shared their stories and experiences at this years National Whistleblower Day celebration. His powerful story provides invaluable insights into the tech industry.

Learn more about National Whistleblower Day 2021 here.

Interested in tech and social media whistleblowers? Read an interview with Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang here.

Originally posted here:
Apple Whistleblower's Advice to Potential Whistleblowers: Your employer is not going to be on your side. - Whistleblowers Protection Blog