Newspaper Page Text
ED BUSINESS
Jeff Gill | Business reporter
770-718-3408 | jgill@gainesvilletimes.com
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia
Friday, December 14, 2018
Apple OK’s $1B Texas hub
RICARDO BRAZZIELLI Associated Press
Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s Vice President of People, speaks during an event about Apple’s new campus announcement in
Austin, Texas, Thursday, Dec. 13.
Tech giant also expanding into six other states across US
BY MICHAEL LIEDTKE,
MATT O’BRIEN
AND WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas —Apple
plans to build a $1 billion
campus in Austin, Texas,
that will create at least 5,000
jobs ranging from engineers
to call-center agents while
adding more luster to a
Southwestern city that has
already become a bustling
tech hub.
The decision, announced
Thursday, comes 11 months
after Apple CEO Tim Cook
disclosed plans to open a
major office outside Califor
nia on the heels of a massive
tax cut on overseas profits,
which prompted the com
pany to bring about $250 bil
lion back to the U.S.
The company said it will
also open offices in Seattle,
San Diego and Culver City,
California, each employing
at least 1,000 workers over
the next three years. Apple
also pledged to add hun
dreds of jobs each in New
York; Pittsburgh; Boston;
Boulder, Colorado; and Port
land, Oregon.
“They are just picking
America’s most established
superstar cities and tech
hubs,” said Richard Flor
ida, an urban development
expert at the University of
Toronto.
Apple’s scattershot expan
sion reflects the increasing
competition for engineers
in Silicon Valley, which has
long been the world’s high-
tech capital. The bidding
for programmers is driving
salaries higher, which in
turn is catapulting the aver
age prices of homes in many
parts of the San Francisco
Bay Area above $1 million.
Many high-tech workers
are thus choosing to live
elsewhere, causing major
tech employers such as
Apple, Amazon and Google
to look in new places for the
employees they need to pur
sue their future ambitions.
“Talent, creativity and
tomorrow’s breakthrough
ideas aren’t limited by
region or ZIP code,” Cook
said in a statement.
Cities around the coun
try offered financial incen
tives in an attempt to land
Apple’s new campus, but
Cook avoided a high-profile
competition that pitted them
against one another, as Ama
zon had before deciding to
build huge new offices in
New York and Virginia.
Amazon could receive up
to $2.8 billion in incentives
in New York, depending
on how many it ultimately
hires there, and up to $750
million in Virginia. Apple
will receive up to $25 mil
lion from a jobs-creation
fund in Texas in addition to
property-tax rebates, which
still need approval. The fig
ure is expected to be a small
fraction of what Amazon
received.
The government incen
tives offered to Apple seem
“more in the line of normal
business site selection” com
pared with Amazon’s public
“shakedown,” said Mark
Muro, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution’s Met
ropolitan Policy Center.
“There’s a growing back
lash in the country against
the entire process of sub
sides and relocation induce
ments,” Muro said. “That
said, the Apple numbers for
a very significant increase
in jobs are much less eye
popping than the Amazon
numbers.”
The spots where Ama
zon and Apple decided
to expand were obvious
choices, based on an analysis
released earlier this year by
CBRE Research. Washing
ton, D.C., ranked as the third
best place in North America
for tech talent, behind Sili
con Valley and Seattle. New
York ranked fifth and Austin
sixth. No. 4 was outside the
U.S.: Toronto.
The new Austin campus,
with about 3 million square
feet of office space, will be
about a mile from another
large office that Apple
opened five years ago.
Apple currently employs
about 6,200 workers in
Austin, making it the com
pany’s largest hub outside
Silicon Valley even before
the expansion.
The new jobs are
expected to mirror the same
mix Apple already has at its
Cupertino, California, head
quarters, ranging from jobs
in technology and research
that pay well over $100,000
to lower-paying positions in
customer call centers. Aus
tin Chamber of Commerce
Board Chairman Phil Wilson
described jobs that Apple
will be adding as “mid-skill”
and “good-paying.”
Virtually all of the jobs
in Seattle and San Diego
will be in technology — a
field where six-figure pay-
checks plus stock options are
standard.
Smaller Amazon Go store tested in Seattle
BY BENJAMIN ROMANO
Tribune News Service
Amazon continues its experiments
with new physical retail formats and
technologies, this time with a shrunken
version of its no-checkout convenience
stores.
The company on Wednesday opened
a 450-square-foot Amazon Go store —
about a quarter the size of existing Go
stores — on the sixth floor of the Macy’s
department-store building in downtown
Seattle. Amazon began leasing the top
six floors of the landmark retail location
in 2017, securing room for some 1,500
employees.
The Amazon Go store is only open to
company employees and their guests. It
follows three existing Go stores in Seattle
— including the first, which opened in
January—and others planned in at least
three major U.S. cities.
The small-format Go store follows
reports that Amazon is testing its cashier
less technology — a system of cameras,
sensors and a company smartphone app
that enables payment via an Amazon
account — in larger retail settings.
The company is also now looking at
airports, hospitals and office buildings
for the Go format — and the smaller ver
sion introduced in Seattle could be a stab
at a solution for those spaces.
Bloomberg News reported in Septem
ber that Amazon was contemplating as
many as 3,000 Go stores by 2021, though
earlier reports of such ambitious plans
have been denied by the company.
Rise in AI shows
tech gender gap
BY MATT O’BRIEN
Associated Press
The challenges of making the technology industry a
more welcoming place for women are numerous, espe
cially in the booming field of artificial intelligence.
To get a sense of just how monumental a task the tech
community faces, look no further than the marquee gath
ering for AI’s top scientists. Preparations for this year’s
event drew controversy not only because there weren’t
enough female speakers or study authors.
The biggest debate was over the conference’s name.
The annual Conference and Workshop on Neural
Information Processing Systems, formerly known as
NIPS, had become a punchline symbol about just how
bad the gender imbalance is for artificial intelligence.
Thousands of AI researchers convened in Montreal last
week under a slightly tweaked banner — NeurlPS — but
with many of the same problems still under the surface.
AI’s challenge reflects a broader lack of diversity
in the tech industry. At major tech companies, women
account for 20 percent or fewer of the engineering and
computing roles. By some accounts, AI’s gender imbal
ance is even worse: One estimate by startup incubator
Element AI shows women making up just 13 percent of
the AI workforce in the U.S.
The challenge has repercussions far beyond career
recruitment. Artificial intelligence and a self-training
discipline known as machine learning can mimic the
biases of their human creators as they make their way
into consumer products and everyday life.
“The more diversity we have in machine learning, the
better job we will do in creating products that don’t dis
criminate,” said Hanna Wallach, a Microsoft researcher
who is a senior program chairwoman of the conference
and co-founder of an asso
ciated event for women in
machine learning.
AI systems look for pat
terns in huge troves of data
— such as what we say to
our voice assistants or what
images we post on social
media. These systems can
share the same gender or
racial prejudices found
there.
Such misfires have
increasingly attracted atten
tion. A rogue Microsoft chat
bot spouted sexist and racist
remarks. A Google app to
match selfies to famous
works of mostly Western art
lumped many non-whites
into the same exoticized fig
ures. In another example,
a study looking at several
prominent AI systems for
recognizing faces showed
that they performed far bet
ter on lighter-skinned men
than darker-skinned women.
This year, Google tests of an email feature designed to
predict what someone wants to write turned up evidence
that its algorithms were making biased assumptions —
referring, for instance, to a nurse as “her” and an engi
neer as “him.” The company said it ended up removing
all gender pronouns before launching the feature in May.
And while a growing number of researchers and prod
uct designers are devoting attention to solving these prob
lems, Wallach said it didn’t help to have an “off-putting”
name marring an important gathering for sharing new
research and recruiting new people.
The conference dates back to 1986 and the name didn’t
raise as many eyebrows for its first few decades, espe
cially with even fewer women working in tech.
But as the nerdy summit’s headcount and its public rep
utation exploded in recent years, the nickname became
increasingly embarrassing. Critics said it added to a
hostile environment that for some women also included
unwelcome advances and other forms of harassment.
“This name change has opened up so many of the
issues that women and minorities face in tech, ” said long
time conference attendee Animashree Anandkumar,
who directs machine-learning research at chipmaker
Nvidia.
Startup booths hawked T-shirts and other promotional
freebies with sexist slogans riffing off the acronym. The
connotations became more problematic as the confer
ence attracted corporate giants like Google, Amazon,
Microsoft and Facebook as sponsors and attendees —
and tried to promote more women and other underrep
resented groups in its ranks.
‘The more
diversity
we have in
machine
learning, the
better job
we will do
in creating
products
that don’t
discriminate.’
Hanna Wallach
Microsoft researcher
Stock Exchange Highlights
V
NYSE
11,936.16 -7.13
B Nasdaq
W 7,070.33 -27.98
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2.60
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-.14
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Advanced
Declined
Unchanged
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New Lows
Volume
994
1,803
92
2,889
21
346
3,846,641,408
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AMD 879345
NewAgeB n322979
Apple Inc 317522
SiriusXM 308930
Microsoft 306005
AdialPh n 289095
JD.com 254650
MicronT 237711
MarvellTch 209316
Cisco 199393
19.86 -.62
5.89 -.12
170.95 +1.85
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109.45 +.37
4.16 +2.13
22.71 +.82
35.02 -1.01
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Diary
Advanced
Declined
Unchanged
Total issues
New Highs
New Lows
Volume
740
2,187
130
3,057
14
335
2,092,054,978
Stocks of Local Interest
Name Ex
YTD
Div Yld PE Last Chg %Chg
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1.04
2.3
14
45.75
+2.85 0.0
IBM
6.28
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2.00
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29.91
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1.20
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3
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2.92
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1.84
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1.94
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1.62
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2.38
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3.71
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YTD
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Stock Footnotes: g = Dividends and earnings in Canadian dollars, h = Does not meet continued-listing standards. If = Late filing
with SEC. n = New in past 52 weeks, pf = Preferred, rs = Stock has undergone a reverse stock split of at least 50 percent within the
past year, rt = Right to buy security at a specified price, s = Stock has split by at least 20 percent within the last year, un = Units, vj
= In bankruptcy or receivership, wd = When distributed, wi = When issued, wt = Warrants. Fund Footnotes: m - Multiple fees are
charged, usually a marketing fee and either a sales or redemption fee. Source: The Associated Press. Sales figures are unofficial.
Stock Market Indexes
Dow Jones industrials
Close: 24,597.38
Change: 70.11 (0.3%)
27,200
26,400
25,600
24,800
26,000
24,940
23,880 10 DAYS
J
J A
S
O
N
D
52-Week
Net
YTD
12-mo
High
Low
Name
Last
Chg
%Chg
%Chg
%Chg
26,951.81
23,344.52
Dow Industrials
24,597.38
+70.11
+.29
-.49
+.36
11,623.58
9,666.65
Dow Transportation
9,672.74
-161.07
-1.64
-8.85
-6.34
762.97
647.81
Dow Utilities
759.55
+6.01
+.80
+5.00
+1.20
13,637.02
11,696.58
NYSE Composite
11,936.16
-7.13
-.06
-6.81
-5.49
8,133.30
6,630.67
Nasdaq Composite
7,070.33
-27.98
-.39
+2.42
+3.12
1,309.73
1,118.69
S&P 100
1,178.25
+2.23
+.19
-.41
+.14
2,940.91
2,532.69
S&P 500
2,650.54
-.53
-.02
-.86
-.06
2,053.00
1,746.06
S&P MidCap
1,758.62
-18.63
-1.05
-7.47
-5.81
30,560.54
26,293.62
Wilshire 5000
27,240.02
-62.50
-.23
-1.99
-.96
1,742.09
1,422.98
Russell 2000
1,432.70
-22.62
-1.55
-6.70
-4.93
Mutual Funds
Name
Total Assets
Obj ($Mlns) NAV
Total Return/Rank
4-wk 12-mo 5-year
Pet
Load
Min Init
Invt
Vanguard 500ldxAdmrl
LB 253,238
245.81
-2.4
+1.5/B
+10.6/A
NL
3,000
Vanguard TtlSMIdxAdmrl
LB 203,888
65.96
-2.7
+0.8/B
+10.0/A
NL
3,000
Fidelity 500ldxlnsPrm
LB 164,099
93.02
-2.4
+1.5/A
+10.6/A
NL
0
Vanguard TtlSMIdxinv
LB 129,896
65.93
-2.7
+0.6/B
+9.9/B
NL
3,000
Vanguard TtlnSIdxInv
FB 128,269
15.74
-1.3
-10.4/B
+2.3/B
NL
0
Vanguard TtlSMIdxins
LB 123,279
65.98
-2.7
+0.8/B
+10.0/A
NL 5
000,000
Vanguard Insldxlns
LB 116,738
242.51
-2.4
+1.5/B
+10.6/A
NL 5
000,000
Vanguard InsIdxinsPlus
LB 104,731
242.54
-2.4
+1.5/A
+10.6/A
NL100,000,000
Vanguard TtlnSIdxinsPlus
FB 95,758
105.32
-1.3
-10.3/B
+2.4/A
NL100,000,000
Fidelity Contrafund
LG 91,616
11.57
-1.5
+3.0/C
+11.2/B
NL
0
Vanguard TtBMIdxAdmrl
Cl 86,606
10.35
+ 1.1
-1.2/B
+2.2/C
NL
3,000
Vanguard WlngtnAdmrl
MA 86,207
70.50
-1.4
-0.3/A
+7.4/A
NL
50,000
Cl -Intermediate-Term Bond, FB -Foreign Large Blend, IH -World Allocation, LB -Large Blend, LG -Large Growth,
LV -Large Value, MA -Moderate Allocation, WS -World Stock, Total Return: Chng in NAV with dividends reinvested.
Rank: How fund performed vs. others with same objective: A is in top 20%, E in bottom 20%. Min Init Invt: Minimum
$ needed to invest in fund. Source: Morningstar.