Major Internet platforms will be required to open up their algorithms to regulatory oversight under proposals European lawmakers are set to introduce next month. In a speech today Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager suggested algorithmic accountability will be a key plank of the forthcoming legislative digital package — with draft rules incoming that will require platforms […]
Facebook today confirmed that it will be limiting the distribution of the hashtag “save our children.” Over the past several months, the phrase — and ones like it — have become associated with QAnon. These terms have served to provide a kind of innocuous cover for the popular online conspiracy theory. A spokesperson for the […]
In 2015, then-Twitter product manager Terri Burns penned a piece about staying optimistic despite the sexism and racism that exists expansively within tech. “America has broke my heart countless times, but I believe that technology can be a tool to mend some of the woes of the world and produce tools to better humanity,” she […]
It wasn’t the lingering exhaustion that made Christine Huang, a New York public school teacher, leave the profession. Or the low pay. Or the fact that she rarely had time to spend with her kids after the school day due to workload demands. Instead, Huang left teaching after seven years because of how New York […]
VC firm e.ventures is expanding its footprint in Europe with a new office in Paris, as well as a new Paris-based partner. Jonathan Userovici, who previously worked for Idinvest Partners, is joining e.ventures as partner and head of the Paris office. Originally founded in the U.S. 20 years ago, e.ventures has been expanding to new […]
Daimler’s trucks division has invested in lidar developer Luminar as part of a broader partnership to produce autonomous trucks capable of navigating highways without a human driver behind the wheel. The deal, which comes just days after Daimler and Waymo announced plans to work together to build an autonomous version of the Freightliner Cascadia truck, […]
Uber says it has received more than 8,500 demands for arbitration as a result of it ditching delivery fees for some Black-owned restaurants via Uber Eats. Uber Eats made this change in June, following racial justice protests around the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Uber Eats said it wanted to make […]
What do you call the grey area between a Series A and a Series B? In 2020, when the money is taken on opportunistically, you call it a Series A-1 extension, according to Teampay. Even if the new capital was raised at a new, higher valuation. At least that’s what Teampay CEO Andrew Hoag has […]
U.K.-based Fertifa has bagged a £1 million (~$1.3 million) seed to plug into a fertility-focused workplace benefits platform. Passion Capital is investing in the round, along with some unnamed strategic angel investors. The August 2019-founded startup sells bespoke reproductive health and fertility packages to U.K. employers to offer as workplace benefits to their staff — […]
Reliance Jio Platforms, the telecom venture run by India’s richest man (Mukesh Ambani), had 405.6 million subscribers in the quarter that ended in September, becoming the first operator outside of China to cross 400 million subscribers in a single-country market. The Facebook and Google-backed telecom operator said its finances have improved, too, despite the pandemic. […]
If the projections are to be believed, the amount of money swirling around the space industry is poised to grow considerably over the next decade. Consider that the aviation giant Boeing estimates that the aerospace market will reach $3 trillion in market size between now and 2029. It’s most certainly in Boeing’s best interests to […]
The cloud infrastructure market kept growing at a brisk pace last quarter, as the pandemic continued to push more companies to the cloud with offices shut down in much of the world. This week the big three — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — all reported their numbers and, as expected, the news was good, with […]
Coronavirus cases in the United States are reaching new peaks. E-commerce is continuing to boom. And b8ta, a San Francisco startup that is betting on the future of physical retailers, is doubling down on its in-person footprint. B8ta offers shelf space to unique digital products, such as electric skateboards or a coffee alarm clock, on […]
Yesterday’s earnings deluge made plain that tech shares are not rocketing higher as 2020 comes to a close. Indeed, in pre-market trading this morning, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are all down. Alphabet is the only member of the Big Five that is worth more today than yesterday. Strong advertising and cloud results helped the […]
Mobile news organization NowThis is announcing a bit of counter-programming for next week’s presidential election — it’s partnering with meditation app Calm to create a live stream for anyone who needs relief from the stress of Election Day news. Not that NowThis is exactly avoiding that news, but this live stream (combining breathing exercises and […]
China was the first major global smartphone market to rebound from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stringent lockdown measures were able to help the country recover from the virus relatively quickly during the first wave, as sales started to return well ahead of other areas. In Q3, however, things have begun to decline […]
Here’s an example of ad targeting that’s actually good for public health: In a campaign encouraging people to wear masks, the Illinois state government has been focusing its digital ad dollars on the counties with the highest COVID risk. To achieve this, the government’s been working with Civis Analytics, the data science company founded by […]
The UK’s ICO has reduced the size of a data breach penalty for hotel business Marriott — dropping it to £14.4 million (~$23.8M) in a final penalty notice down from the £99M ($123M) figure that the watchdog initially said it would levy in July 2019. The fine relates to a data breach suffered by the […]
Global fitness giant Under Armour announced this morning that it will be selling MyFitnessPal to investment firm Francisco Partners for $345 million, five and a half years after acquiring it for $475 million. The company also announced that it will be winding down the Endomondo platform which it also acquired at the same time for […]
AOL founder Steve Case was there in Dulles, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., when in 1996 the Communications Decency Act was passed as part of a major overhaul of U.S. telecommunications laws that President Bill Clinton signed into law. Soon after, in its first test, a provision of that act which states that, “[n]o […]
