A $6 billion investment from Intel will expand Kiryat Gat factory; government to provide 300-600 million dollars for project. Lapid: This is a vote of confidence for the Israeli economy.

American technology giant Intel announced its intentions on Wednesday to invest six billion dollars in upgrading its plant in Kiryat Gat where the company plans to add 1,000 employees to its workforce

Representatives from Intel informed Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett of the plans. Israel in turn agreed to cover 5-10 percent of the costs of renovation, amounting to anywhere from 300 to 600 million dollars.

Intel didn't confirm the statements made by the Israeli government, which put the full cost of the project at six billion dollars. The final business plan is set to be delivered to the ministers on Thursday.

The company has spent the last two years examining which of their factories should be upgraded with the latest and most advanced technologies. Its choice of renovation in Israel means that it sees its future of production in Israel which could lead to additional factories.

According to Israeli sources, if Intel had chosen to invest in a country other than Israel, the Israel factory would likely be closed in the near future due to ageing facilities and all the jobs it currently holds would be lost.

"This is excellent news for Israel and an excellent gift for its 66th birthday," Bennett told Ynet. "This is one of the biggest investments that have ever been made in Israel and the significance for the periphery and technological education is tremendous."

Photo: AP

Bennett, who lead negotiations on the deal with Intel said: "There are also demands for industrial cooperation. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Yair Lapid who took this journey with me."

Lapid also welcomed the successful conclusion of negotiations, saying: "We will continue to promote investments in advanced industries in Israel. This is a vote of confidence for the Israeli economy."

"These investments will directly create an additional 1,000, and tens of thousands of jobs indirectly, all for the Israeli middle class," said Lapid.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the investment and said, "the plans for this investment are the result of a process that we've been working on for a few years already. Israel is a world center of technology and investing in it yields profits both for the investors and for the citizens of Israel.

"I call on additional international companies to expand their investment in Israel, and for those who still haven't taken advantage of the benefits of the Israeli market to come and invest here," said the Prime Minister.

Director of Intel in Israel and Vice President of Intel Maxine Fassberg, said, "Over the last 40 years, Intel's exports added up to 35 billion dollars and most of that came from Intel's production factories in Kiryat Gat."

"During 2013, Intel's factory in Kiryat Gat won Intel's prize for prestigious quality, the Intel Quality Award (IQA)... Intel is committed to continuing the sequence of achievements in qualitative results of operations in Kiryat Gat," said Fassberg.

The Fab28 Intel factory in Kiryat Gat produces 22 nanometer technology chips and the company is interested in beginning to produce the more advance 10 nanometer chips in Israel.

Intel's first factory in Israel was built in 1996 at the cost of 1.7 billion dollars of which the government paid 680 million or 40 percent of the cost. The second Intel factory built in 2011 came at a cost of 2.7 billion and the government paid 200 million or seven percent of the investment.

BitTorrent Sync Allows You To Skip the Cloud Entirely

BitTorrent is harnessing their infamous filesharing protocol for good.

As cloud service companies battle it out for supremacy, one file sharing service sets itself apart by skipping the cloud altogether. It’s called BitTorrent Sync, and starting this week, it’s going to be available through Netgear’s native app store.

Sync is like a cloud storage solution, only with no actual cloud storage involved.

Cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive keep your data in a central online database that you can access from any device — for example, you can work with files on your tablet or laptop, and when you switch over to your PC, the files will still be accessible.

Sync is similar, only there’s no central database. All of your devices are simply connected to one another, so when you change a file on your phone, it will update that information across all of your devices directly.

Sync takes the BitTorrent protocol that’s often used to download music and movies illegally, and harnesses that technology for good — helping you move files at what BitTorrent claims is seven times the speed of Dropbox. It’s free to use, and the only limits on how much storage you have are based on whatever devices you’re connecting with it.

The software is still in beta testing, but has already racked up two million users.

(image via BitTorrent)

Still, cloud services do have one thing going for them: with Sync, the sending and receiving devices need to be turned on in order to move the information back and forth. Cloud servers are always “on” and can transfer and update information even when some of your devices are off.

That’s where the Netgear partnership comes in. Netgear makes network-attached storage (NAS) devices or, put simply, file servers. Individuals and businesses who want to avoid cloud storage can get a small server and use Sync to make it their own private cloud storage.

“When you have a NAS device, it’s designed to be always on,” BitTorrent VP of Product Development Erik Pounds told Betabeat, “so it will hold your data and make it available even when your device is off.”

This gives BitTorrent an edge for anyone wary of cloud services, which have been giving people more to worry about lately than just pricing and storage limitations.

“[Cloud storage servers] are just very big data servers that are growing and growing and growing,” Mr. Pounds said, “and the more they grow powerful, the more control they gain over your data.”

Handing all of your data over to a cloud service can cause all kinds of problems. For one, a thief getting his hands on your username and password could potentially let him access all of your files. But another growing concern — especially in the international community — is that cloud storage services that keep databases here in the U.S. are compliant with the NSA.

Dropbox has taken flak lately for its compliance with government requests for access, and that outrage came to a peak when they took Condoleezza Rice onto their Board of Directors. If the government requests data from Dropbox, there are instances when Dropbox can hand it over without informing you that they’ve even done it.

“If someone shows up with a discover complaint, cloud services can abide by that and not let you know,” Mr. Pounds said. With Sync, if the government showed up with a warrant, at least you’d know, and could deal with it personally.

People who are hesitant to use cloud storage are Sync’s biggest market opportunity — whether it’s businesses and individuals looking for something more private, or governmental organizations that are legally unable to use cloud services.

BitTorrent doesn’t have a plan to monetize Sync yet, and insists that the basic product will always be free. They don’t see themselves as Dropbox or OneDrive’s competition — more like ahead of the game entirely.

“There’s a lot of benefits to cloud storage,” Mr. Pounds said, “but we’re at the tip of the iceberg.”