Walmart's Jet buys ShoeBuy in push versus Amazon's Zappos

Jet.com, the Amazon rival owned by retailing giant Walmart, bought online footwear retailer ShoeBuy for $70 million, the company said Thursday.

The move underscores Walmart's continued push against Amazon, owner of online shoe store Zappos. The biggest retailer in the world, Walmart made online expansion its priority last year, taking over Jet for $3.3 billion and setting up a plan to invest billions more into e-commerce while cutting down new store openings.

​After Uber brouhaha, CA looks to tighten self-driving car law

Uber flouted California law and rolled out its self-driving cars to passengers in San Francisco last month, without a permit from the state. Now, some local legislators are taking measures, in the name of safety, to ensure no company does that again.

Assembly member Phil Tang introduced a state bill on Thursday that would give the California Department of Motor Vehicles more ways to go after companies that illegally operate autonomous vehicles.

​Apple to invest $1B in SoftBank's tech fund

Apple has said it will invest $1 billion in one of the world's biggest future-tech funds.

The iPhone-maker confirmed Wednesday that it plans to invest the money in the SoftBank Vision Fund, according to The Wall Street Journal. The investment fund, created by Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, is scheduled to launch in the next few weeks with a focus on emerging technologies.

 

US government sues D-Link over alleged security flaws

The Federal Trade Commission is taking D-Link to court, accusing the company of poor security practices for its routers, web cameras, baby monitors and other products.

The lawsuit (PDF), filed in San Francisco's district court, argues that D-Link failed to meet security standards from 2007, leaving widespread vulnerabilities open to hackers.

The commission alleges that D-Link coded easy to crack login credentials into its camera software, enabling hackers to easily spy on the company's customers.

 

Uber challenged on diversity by Jesse Jackson

A long list of big-name tech companies have released statistics on the racial and gender makeup of their workforces, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

Uber isn't on that list. And on Thursday, civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson wrote a letter to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick pushing the ride-hailing company to make its diversity figures public.

"As we enter the new year...we urge Uber to 'lean in' and join the ranks of technology companies that are reporting your diversity and inclusion data," Jackson wrote, referencing the title of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's book about women in the workplace.