silicon valley

An IPO filing provides a window into wealth. In the case of Facebook, the wealth will likely be enormous and spread throughout hundreds, if not thousands of early investors and employees.

The number of millionaires and billionaires in Silicon Valley grew noticeably on Wednesday.

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Facebook made a much-anticipated status update Wednesday: The Internet social network is going public eight years after its computer-hacking CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University.

That means anyone with the right amount of cash will be able to own part of a Silicon Valley icon that quickly transformed from dorm-room startup to cultural touchstone.

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Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing are among the popular websites that will be dark Wednesday to protest a pair of bills making their way through Congress.

Hollywood studios say tougher rules are needed to protect their intellectual property from online piracy. But Silicon Valley companies say the bills would encourage censorship and harm innovation.

The problem is not only the small number of women with bachelor's degrees in computer science coming in the door, it's also the industry's inability to retain them.

Women leave their technical jobs far more often than men.

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With many companies slow to hire, it will take a long time to get back to the kind of healthy job market Silicon Valley once had.

Still a lot of people are seeing new signs of life in the economy and they're more optimistic than they were a year ago.

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One way to judge the health of the tech sector is to scan the dining room at Buck's Restaurant in Silicon Valley, down the road from a nest of venture capital firms.

Some big deals have been cut at Buck's -- and business at the restaurant is picking up again.

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A U.S. visa program that's critical for bringing overseas talent to Silicon Valley and Wall Street usually fills up quickly. The Wall Street Journal reports the H-1B program has many spots unfilled.

Last year, all 65,000 visas were taken in one day. Nearly 20,000 spots remain open. One reason is the recession: Companies aren't hiring workers here or from abroad.

Japan is welcoming a new government and a new U.S. ambassador. John Roos isn't an expert on the region, but rather a Silicon Valley lawyer and political fundraiser.

Choices such as this suggest President Obama is continuing a tradition of rewarding donors with plum assignments abroad, analysts say.

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