Jon Swartz, USA TODAY 12:38 p.m. EDT September 25, 2013 Oracle CEO Larry Ellison reacts after Oracle Team USA beat Emirates Team New Zealand in race 17 of the America's Cup Finals on September 24, 2013 in San Francisco.(Photo: Ezra Shaw, Getty Images)SAN FRANCISCO – Today may mark the first time in decades the word "underdog" and Larry Ellison appear in the same sentence.But the Silicon Valley billionaire found himself in that position a few days ago, when his multimillion-dollar Oracle Team USA boat was on the verge of a humiliating loss to Emirates Team New Zealand in the America's Cup.A win in the decisive race today, though, would cap one of the greatest comebacks in sports history, burnish the athletic resume of Ellison and quite possibly put he and his team in the same conversation as the Miracle on Ice U.S. Olympic hockey team in 1980.Wait. Larry Ellison?The Chicago native, who co-founded Oracle and is its CEO, is arguably high-tech's happy warrior, gleefully taking on rivals such as Google, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard while quoting from The Art of War in high-profile smackdowns. While others battle for market share with rivals, Larry's Oracle simply bought PeopleSoft in a hostile takeover several years ago.His appetite for competition beyond bits and bytes. There was an abortive attempt to buy the Golden State Warriors recently and Ellison still harbors dreams of bringing the NFL back to Los Angeles with a team he blissfully calls the Stars.Ellison, 69, amassed a personal fortune of $41 billion by treating tech as a form of sport – and the America's Cup is no different. The team got into hot water before it touched San Francisco Bay's cold waters for illegally altering boat parts, costing it valuable points and putting it in a competitive hole.The cavalier Ellison…

Jack Dorsey.(Photo: Robert Deutsch USA TODAY)Story HighlightsDorsey's Square is in expansion modeTwitter recently filed paperwork for its IPO plansOn a visit to New York, Dorsey made a recruiting visit to Columbia UniversityNEW YORK — Jack Dorsey invented Twitter, which last week filed paperwork to go public, and redefined mobile payments with Square, which is ready to move into sparkling new headquarters in San Francisco.Yet, he was simply Jack, Square recruiter, when he spoke to several hundred students at Columbia University here Monday night. While regaling them with stories about his youthful obsession with punk music, surrealism and St. Louis, he also made a full-throated appeal for entrepreneurial talent."This city has something different than Silicon Valley," Dorsey said minutes before he took to the stage. "San Francisco is great. But New York has people, dynamics, intensity."Dorsey's visit underscores what is a budding movement among New York entrepreneurs to raise the city's profile in tech. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has started an initiative to draw engineers and designers from Silicon Valley to relocate to New York.The 36-year-old Dorsey said New York was considered as headquarters for Square four years ago — except it was hard to find engineers and designers."There is a big transformation in New York," says Richard Witten, a special adviser to the president of Columbia University, who heads the school's entrepreneurship initiative. "The city's dependence on financial institutions has waned," and it needs to appeal to tech start-ups and behemoths.Kevin Zhang, president of the Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs, was among the students wowed by Dorsey's personal journey and keenly interested in Square. "I really got the sense that maybe he was the only person who had different pieces that could have come together into Twitter," Zhang says.During Dorsey's day Monday, he and his handlers allowed a USA TODAY reporter…

Max Colbert, front, and Matt Dillabough, outside the pool house where the two teach programming classes to their peers.(Photo: Jessica Brandi Lifland, for USA TODAY)Story HighlightsTwo teens in Silicon Valley went from being curious about coding to convinced everyone should learn itThey hope to expand from area coding camps to a funded mission that would yield 2,500 coding teachers nationwideCode.org says in 2020 two-thirds of U.S. coding jobs will go unfilled by AmericansSHARE 67 CONNECTEMAILMOREATHERTON, Calif. — Matt Dillabough and Max Colbert, the two 14-year-olds behind the Menlo App Academy, have a mission to teach the USA to code. And that could fill a growing need for U.S. employers.The two entrepreneurs are adamant. This is one economic train the U.S. can't miss."Millions of high-paying programming jobs are out there, but they're going to others," says Matt Dillabough, shaking his head in quiet frustration. "If we can spark an interest in this area in kids, those jobs can be filled here."Max Colbert nods. "Learning to (write computer) code should be like learning to read," he says. "Everyone uses apps on phones and tablets, but how many know how to make them?"What's remarkable about what these two are saying isn't their commentary, it's their age. Dillabough and Colbert are both 14, and like millions of kids around the nation have just traded the idyll of summer for the rigors of school.With one big exception. As founders of the Menlo App Academy, Dillabough and Colbert have spent a good deal of time in the past year teaching other kids how to write digital code.As if replacing a paper route with teaching gigs weren't enough, the duo now hope to land a $250,000 grant from the Packard Foundation. Their goal: teach 25 coding-capable teachers who will in turn teach 2,500 other teachers over two…