Enterprise
Tech brands celebrating Pride month
LGBTQ+ rights are human rights
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a series of protests widely regarded as the historic event that ignited the gay liberation movement and the first Pride parade in 1970.
A lot of companies are joining in this year’s celebration by changing their logos or selling limited edition merchandise to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community, but being an ally doesn’t stop at plastering a rainbow on everything and using #Pride online for the month of June. Here, we have compiled a list of tech brands who have taken concrete steps in creating equal opportunities for everyone and a more inclusive culture, not just this month but all year round:
Apple
Apple released a new watch band and watch face for the Apple Watch at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) this year in celebration of Pride. A portion of its proceeds will be donated to LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations including Encircle, Gender Spectrum, and the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Apart from Pride merch, Apple has long supported inclusion and diversity by hiring and advocating on behalf of underrepresented minorities, including LGBTQ+ people. For this, the company has been receiving a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index for 16 years now — a benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees.
Dell
A culture that is more inclusive unlocks the innovation that fuels the ultimate creativity. Join us as we stand up to support our #LGBTQ team members by celebrating #PrideMonth. https://t.co/e3HMJfVfuq pic.twitter.com/oicJrpOKUi
— Dell Social Impact (@Dell4Impact) June 12, 2019
Since 2002 Dell has been actively participating in and leading initiatives that support the LGBTQ+ community that the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index also deems the company as one of the best places to work for LGBT equality. The company provides healthcare benefits to its LGBTQ+ employees including parental leave, adoption assistance, and gender transition toolkit.
Dell is an active sponsor of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, a nonprofit organization that partners with Top Fortune 500 companies in building resources and hosting events to help other companies around the globe in achieving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workplace equality. This year, Dell also hosted a Pride month training for its Nashville office to help its employees become better allies to the community.
June 4 Google Doodle is a celebration of 50 years of Pride, created by Doodler Nate Swinehart who says, “working on this Doodle was a very personal project for me. As a member of the LBGTQ+ community, I am very familiar with the struggle of feeling included, accepted, and that I am a ‘part’ of this world.” Google also put up Pride Forever, which aims to preserve LGBTQ+ history for future generations by extending the Stonewall National Monument from its physical location in New York City to a digital experience that anyone can access on pride.google.com.
Apart from programs that support minorities, Google has Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) comprised of LGBT Googlers and their allies called Gayglers, as well as Trans at Google that seeks to ensure that the company’s products and policy stances are inclusive of all gender identities and expressions.
Instagram recognizes that many of its users are members of the LGBTQ+ community. To celebrate Pride this year, the platform will display relevant hashtags in a rainbow gradient including #lgbtq, #bornperfect, and #pride2019 for a month. Using the hashtags in Stories will also turn the story ring into rainbow instead of Instagram’s gradient.
Instagram is updating gender options for users as well, “to be more inclusive and reflective of how people self-identify today.” There is also an LGBTQ+ teen guide on online well-being and self-care that Instagram created with The Trevor Project.
Lyft
Like Instagram, Lyft now offers a range of pronoun options to support transgender and non-binary riders. For transitioning drivers, Lyft provides them assistance with changing the name and gender designation on their driver’s license together with the National Center for Transgender Equality. Through its Round Up & Donate feature has donated over $5 million to HRC and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Lyft also has a Gender Inclusion & Affirmation policy created by members of the company’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, LyftOUT, that lays out comprehensive protections and benefits for its employees.
Microsoft
Later this month Microsoft is releasing a Surface Pro Pride Type Cover designed with and for the LGBTQ+ community, and donating US$ 100,000 to nonprofits in celebration of Pride. For its employees Microsoft has implemented anti-discrimination policies and benefits since 1989. In 1993, they were one of the first companies in the world to offer employee benefits to same-sex partners. Microsoft is also one of the companies that’s received a perfect score from HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.
To quote Microsoft, “we’ve come far in the last 50 years after Stonewall, but we haven’t gone far enough.” In many countries where tech companies operate, being queer is still a crime and LGBTQ+ rights are still not recognized.
It takes more than just hearing voices of the community to make the world more inclusive and non-discriminatory — individual allies and corporations play a big role in amplifying the movement. Let’s celebrate Pride not just by buying rainbow products that donate to a good cause or using hashtags this month, but also by eliminating bias in everything that we do and pushing for equal rights in the workplace and local communities until we no longer have to.
Happy Pride!
Enterprise
NVIDIA CEO admits to having an affair with alleged Chinese spy
The company is currently investigating the allegations.
In one of the craziest headlines this year, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
Over the weekend, a heavy allegation claimed that the NVIDIA CEO had a relationship with a person actively involved in Chinese intelligence. Since Huang is involved in business globally, the accusation isn’t a light one. In fact, it’s serious enough that Huang admitted to the affair late this past Sunday.
In an internal letter reported by Associated Press, the CEO acknowledged the existence of the affair with a business executive. Of note, Huang did not confirm the executive’s ties to Chinese intelligence. NVIDIA, however, will conduct its own investigations regarding the allegations. Despite the allegations, Huang will remain as the company’s CEO. The company is also confident that the alleged spy did not compromise NVIDIA’s secrets.
According to The New York Times, the executive, Alice Huang, was reportedly feeding information back to Beijing, despite being an executive of the Singapore-based Megaspeed, which is already a serious customer of NVIDIA.
Now, NVIDIA is currently in a prime position when it comes to the industry today. Formerly a huge proponent of gaming peripherals, the company is now one of the biggest names in AI hardware, allotting a lot of its products for data centers. Huang’s allegations come at an interesting time.
Apps
Salesforce introduces Slack Frontline for deskless workers
Simple, secure, mobile-first way for deskless teams across retail, healthcare, manufacturing, field service
Salesforce is bridging the massive divide between corporate headquarters and deskless workers with the launch of Slack Frontline.
This new solution is designed specifically for retail associates, healthcare providers, factory workers, and field crews.
The mobile-first workspace brings communication, data, role-specific tools, and AI together in a single clutter-free app.
While frontline employees make up about 80 percent of the global workforce, they have historically been left out of workplace transformation, often relying on paper checklists, group texts, and broken communication loops.
Slack Frontline addresses these challenges by giving mobile workers up to 10 role-relevant channels, instant Huddles with headquarters, on-demand AI agents, and automated workflows.
Backed by Salesforce data and enterprise-grade security, the platform lets IT teams govern the entire workforce under one secure layer with employee ID sign-ins, multifactor authentication, and compliance configurations like HIPAA.
This ensures that critical updates, training materials, and shift handoffs reach workers directly in their pockets without needing corporate email addresses or shared terminals.
Moreover, the platform is tailored to transform operations across multiple industries, including retail, home healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, and field services.
For instance, retail teams can instantly sync promotions and monitor inventory, while healthcare professionals can securely review patient histories and coordinate care on the go.
Manufacturing and hospitality teams benefit from drastically reduced downtime and faster issue resolution, cutting response times significantly.
Slack Frontline is available now as an add-on for businesses on the Slack Enterprise+ plan.
Enterprise
Google illegally destroys 250,000 trees for a single AI data center
This is what we stand to lose with data centers.
In the Philippines, it’s illegal to cut down a single tree without a permit. It’s a constant reminder that the preservation of nature should be a civil, besides being a moral, obligation. And yet, corporations are seemingly immune from obligations and morals. Google, the company that used to stand for “Don’t be evil,” shows off its true colors by illegally cutting down 250,000 trees in Finland for a datacenter.
As first reported by The Guardian, Finland is now staring at 330 hectares of land suddenly denuded of around 250,000 valuable trees, all thanks to Google. A local ecologist has also said that the company killed a further 150,000 trees at a separate site.
The environmental desecration is part of Google’s multibillion-dollar push to build data centers all over the world for artificial intelligence. Google has since been ordered to stop the development in the country after Finland found that the company acted without securing the needed assessments and permits to clear the area.
Google brushed away the report by saying that they acted “on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time.” The company also said that they are protecting the water quality at the affected sites and committed to replanting trees across 130 hectares, a pale comparison to the total area affected.
Other AI companies are also trying to weasel their way into other countries to build data centers. An example is the controversial Pax Silica in the Philippines. Finland now stands as a cautionary tale against the unimpeded and unsupervised growth of data centers for a service that no one asked for.
Don’t be evil, my ass.
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