Microsoft backtracks on price hike for Xbox Live Gold subscriptions announced Friday and says free-to-play games will also no longer require a Gold subscription
Free-to-play games will also no longer require a Gold subscription — Microsoft has reversed its controversial Xbox Live price increase. Source: Xbox Wire .
Italy tells TikTok to block all unverified user accounts after a 10-year-old girl dies while allegedly participating in the “blackout challenge” on the app
ROME (Reuters) - The Italian data privacy watchdog ordered video app TikTok on Friday to block the accounts of any users …
Microsoft confirms it halted all donations of its PAC while it decides by Feb. 15 whether to suspend donations to those who voted against election certification
Microsoft confirmed publicly today, as it announced internally on Jan. 8, that it has halted all donations of its PAC …
Microsoft president Brad Smith defended the company's political contributions in a meeting with employees after some questioned donations from its PAC
and has never had — a PAC. @BradSmi https://twitter.com/... Steve Schmidt / @steveschmidtses : .@ProjectLincoln @Microsoft has sent a crystal clear message about the importance of democracy. I'm confi...
Apple says magnets in iPhone 12 models and MagSafe accessories may affect devices like pacemakers and defibrillators, warning users to keep them 6" to 12" apart
Since the launch of iPhone 12 models in October, Apple has acknowledged that the devices may cause electromagnetic interference …
Facebook said a “configuration change” caused some users to be logged out of their apps on Saturday morning; issue is now fixed
USA Today :
Uber laid off ~185 Postmates staff, about 15% of the division's workforce; sources: most Postmates execs including CEO Bastian Lehmann will leave the company
The layoffs include most of the executive team at Postmates, the food delivery app that Uber bought last year.
What's in store for Amazon during Biden admin: more unions, labor protection and oversight, antitrust actions, privacy and facial recognition regulations, more
- Amazon has cozied up to the Democratic Party through donations and its top spokesperson has a longstanding relationship with President Joe Biden. Tweets: @mattrosoff Tweets: Matt Rosoff / @mattrosof...
Ex-ADT technician pled guilty to computer fraud and invasive visual recording for viewing home security camera feeds he installed in ~200 homes over 9,000 times
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica : Source: ADT .
Despite the influx of tech veterans into Biden's administration, the latest appointments and developments show Biden will be tougher on tech than predecessors
Two schools of thought on the new administration — For all of Donald Trump's railing against Amazon's “monopoly,” social media …
Philips acquired Capsule Technologies, a provider of data platforms to connect all medical devices and record systems within a hospital, for $635M in cash
Conor Hale / FierceBiotech :
Sources: VCs have approached Clubhouse about investing in its next round at ~$1B valuation, a 10X increase from the previous round; a16z is expected to lead
The race to invest in social audio app Clubhouse is on again. Venture capital firms have approached the startup's founders … Tweets: @alexeheath , @alecstapp , @benedictevans , @basti , @wongmjane , ...
Research: GPT-3 frequently creates sentences associating Muslims with shooting, bombs, murder, and violence, a bias OpenAI acknowledged upon its public release
OpenAI disclosed the problem on GitHub — but released GPT-3 anyway — Last week, a group of researchers from Stanford …
As Starlink builds out its satellite constellation, it is enjoying a very warm reception from the early adopters of its internet service in remote areas
- SpaceX's satellite-based service wins over some early adopters — Coverage so far includes rural areas in U.S., Canada and U.K. Tweets: @xrolet , @business , @economictimes , @sub8u , @economictim...
Custom parts manufacturer Protolabs buys 3D Hubs, an online on-demand service providing access to ~240 manufacturing partners, for up to $330M in cash and stock
Robin Wauters / Tech.eu :
A look at the current state of industrial and service robotics, a century after the Czech play “R.U.R.” introduced the word “robot” to the English language
A century after playwright Karel Čapek coined the word ‘robot,’ we finally have the technology … Tweets: @markmuro1 , @mims , @markmuro1 , @mims , @erikbryn , @wsjtech , @mims , @mims , and @helengrei...
As platforms race to purge harmful content after the Capitol riots, police race to gather evidence, showing the need for international data preservation laws
How we conceptualize the role social media played in the Capitol siege will set the stage for information governance across the globe. Tweets: @bostonjoan , @marklittlenews , @foreignpolicy , and @ken...
Globality, whose AI-based sourcing software connects companies with service providers, raises $138M Series E from Sienna Capital and SoftBank's Vision Fund
Cromwell Schubarth / Silicon Valley Business Journal :
Interview with Chase CIO Rohan Amin on managing Chase's $4B tech budget, API integrations, and this year's rise in digital mortgage applications and banking
Mary Ann Azevedo / FinLedger :
A look at the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a government-sponsored research lab, and its work on a new language model similar to GPT-3
Will Knight / Wired : Tweets: @lsenews , @willknight , and @wired Tweets: LSE / @lsenews : “Innovation by its very nature is sort of uncertain, and perhaps nowhere more so than in AI.” @LSEManagement...
Analysis of US-based venture-backed companies that went public in roughly the past two years shows that top 40 companies are now valued at around $1.1T
Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News : Tweets: @crunchbasenews , @jrichlive , @hunterwalk , and @mmasnick Tweets: @crunchbasenews : Venture-backed U.S. unicorns that went public in the past couple of yea...
How Volkswagen's ID.3, the automaker's long-awaited answer to Tesla, was beset by faulty in-car software, prompting a reboot of the company's software business
Clear electric #2 behind Tesla. But it's lagging in the techy part - software. https://www.wsj.com/... Patrick McGee / @patrickmcgee_ : Great quote on the challenges for incumbent automakers - who the...
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
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Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
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