Google is once again delaying its return to the office in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, although it’s now planning a change to the way people work when they get back. The New York Times has obtained company-wide email from
Gebru, who was co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team, said Google fired her last week, but the company said she resigned. Google declined to grant Gebru and four other Google employees permission to include the company's name or theirs
LG is shaking things up in its mobile division once more. It confirmed to Reuters it will increase outsourcing of its low- and mid-range smartphones. Third-party companies will design and build more of the devices, and LG will slap its
Messaging app Slack will be acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion in what will be the software company’s biggest acquisition to date. The deal is expected to complete during the second quarter of 2021, following regulatory approval and the usual round of box-ticking.
Under the new arrangement, Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield will continue to lead the messaging service, which will become an operating unit within Salesforce, the companies said. In a statement, Salesforce said that Slack would be “deeply integrated into every Salesforce Cloud,” and that Slack “would become the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360,” the company’s customer
Game developer and publisher Square Enix says it will allow the majority of its employees to work from home on a permanent basis. Starting on December 1st, the company will designate each individual worker as either home- or office-based. In both cases, those individuals will work an average of at least three days from their respective locations.
Provided their position allows for it, they’ll have the flexibility to change their designation on a month to month basis. Square Enix expects about 80 percent of its employees will end up working from home once the program starts next month. Depending on
Once you go over your data allotment, Comcast will automatically bill you $10 for every additional 50GB of data your household uses, up to a maximum of $100. If you don’t want to worry about your usage, you’ll need to either spend an additional $30 every month on an unlimited plan or $25 monthly on the xFi Complete package that comes with unlimited data and a modem rental.
If you live in one of the following states, you’ll need to keep track of your usage: Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont,
The future of a virtual reality startup offering in-person experiences is in doubt as a consequence of COVID-19. Protocol is reporting that The Void, which produced titles like Avengers: Damage Control, has been taken over by creditors after experiencing financial difficulty. Its money woes were sufficiently bad that Disney, whose IP was used in a number of its titles, has ended the pair’s licensing and real-estate partnership.
Jim Bennett, who now owns The Void’s IP and assets, reportedly said that he plans to sell the company, or resume operations when it is safe to do so. It quotes the figure,
For the time being, David Fincher is a Netflix man. Speaking with French magazine Premiere, the director revealed that he’s signed an “exclusive contract with them for another four years.” [Note: The report was originally written in French, but we’re confident in Google’s translation.] It’s an obvious step in the pair’s growing relationship. Fincher was an executive producer on House of Cards, Netflix’s first breakout hit, and directed the first two episodes. He then moved onto the critically-acclaimed Mindhunter and, last year, was involved in the animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots. His next movie, a biopic called Mank,
Huawei may sell its budget technology brand to a coalition of buyers that includes major partners and even the local Shenzhen government. Reuters is reporting that Honor, the low-er end arm of Huawei’s sprawling tech conglomerate, will be sold in its entirety for an all-cash price of $15.2 billion. As well as Shenzhen, the buyers include Digital China, a distributor and Huawei partner, as well as private investors.
The terms of the deal mean that Honor would hold its own brand, research and development facilities, as well as its own supply chain. Presumably the intention is to sell the company
The Wall Street Journal noted that Lee often had a hands-on approach, calling emergency meetings to review problems, influencing hiring decisions and launching new products on short notice. He’s well known for a symbolic 1995 move where he ordered workers to burn tens of thousands of devices for poor quality. If Lee felt there was an issue, he’d ramp up pressure until it was fixed.
Lee’s chairmanship was marked by scandals, however. He was convicted in 1995 for bribing South Korea’s President, and in 2008 for embezzlement and tax evasion. While he resigned, his clout was such that he received a
JP Morgan Chase is clearly eager to compete with Square in contactless, app-based store payments. It just launched a Chase-branded Business Complete Banking account with a QuickAccept feature that promises simpler (and crucially, faster) payments for small shops. There’s a reader that supports tap-to-pay, chip and swipe payments along with a mobile app to replace old-fashioned machines. The pricing for the service is just as important, for that matter.
As with Square, payments are flat and transparent — a store pays either 2.6 percent plus 10 cents for every card or tap-based transaction, or 3.5 percent plus 10 cents for manual
When it first notices a person associated with a business has been a target or accused of racism, Yelp will add a Public Attention Alert to that company’s page “to warn consumers that the business may be receiving an influx of reviews as a result of increased attention.” If a business has been accused of “overtly racist actions, where we can link to a news article,” Yelp will use its “Business Accused of Racist Behavior” label instead.
Yelp is relying on news and social media reports in this process partly to warn people about the possible influx of fake reviews affecting