Posts Tagged: company

This company gave us a sneak peek at the future of smartphone design

One of 2023’s most interesting smartphone companies is at MWC 2024, and it just gave us a sneak peek at what the future of smartphone design could look like.
Digital Trends

An unknown company has a plan to change smartwatches forever

You won’t know this company’s name, but you need to know about its plan to enter the smartwatch market — because it could change it forever.
Digital Trends

How one company is giving your Wear OS smartwatch superpowers

A company is showing off a complex gesture control system for Wear OS smartwatches at CES 2024, and we found out how it’s improving on Apple’s Double Tap.
Digital Trends

Meta whistleblower tells Senate the company ‘cannot be trusted with our children’

Another Meta whistleblower has testified before Congress regarding safety issues on the company’s platforms. On the same day that Frances Haugen told Congress in 2021 how Meta could fix some of its safety problems, Arturo Béjar, a former director of engineering for Protect and Care at Facebook, sent CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives an email regarding the harms that young people may face while using the company’s products.

Two years later, Béjar was the sole witness in a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing titled “Social Media and the Teen Mental Health Crisis.” In his testimony, Béjar claimed he was subpoenaed earlier this year to testify regarding emails he sent Meta higher-ups. He said he realized that since he sent them, nothing had changed at the company.

“Meta continues to publicly misrepresent the level and frequency of harm that users, especially children, experience on the platform,” Béjar told the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law in prepared remarks. “And they have yet to establish a goal for actually reducing those harms and protecting children. It’s time that the public and parents understand the true level of harm posed by these ‘products’ and it’s time that young users have the tools to report and suppress online abuse.”

Béjar was an engineering director at Meta between 2009 and 2015, during which time he was responsible for protecting Facebook users. He supported a team that worked on “bullying tools for teens, suicide prevention, child safety and other difficult moments that people go through,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

He testified that he initially left Meta feeling “good that we had built numerous systems that made using our products easier and safer.” However, he said that, since they were 14, his daughter and her friends “repeatedly faced unwanted sexual advances, misogyny and harassment” on Instagram. According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on Béjar’s claims, he stated that Meta’s systems typically ignored reports they made or responded to say that the harassment they faced didn’t break the rules.

Those issues prompted him to return to Meta in 2019, where he worked with Instagram’s well-being team. “It was not a good experience. Almost all of the work that I and my colleagues had done during my earlier stint at Facebook through 2015 was gone,” Béjar said in his testimony. “The tools we had built for teenagers to get support when they were getting bullied or harassed were no longer available to them. People at the company had little or no memory of the lessons we had learned earlier.”

Béjar claimed that Instagram and internal research teams gathered data showing that younger teens dealt with “great distress and abuse.” However, “senior management was externally reporting different data that grossly understated the frequency of harm experienced by users,” he told senators.

In a 2021 email to Zuckerberg and other executives laying out some of his concerns, Béjar wrote that his then-16-year-old daughter uploaded a car-related post to Instagram only for a commenter to tell her to “get back to the kitchen.” Béjar said his daughter found this upsetting. “At the same time the comment is far from being policy violating, and our tools of blocking or deleting mean that this person will go to other profiles and continue to spread misogyny,” Béjar wrote. “I don’t think policy/reporting or having more content review are the solutions.”

Béjar said that along with his daughter’s experiences with the app, he cited data from a research team indicating that 13 percent of users aged between 13 and 15 reported that they received unwanted sexual advances on Instagram within the previous seven days. While former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg offered sympathy toward his daughter for her negative experiences and Instagram head Adam Mosseri asked to set up a meeting, according to Béjar, Zuckerberg never responded to the email.

“That was unusual,” Béjar said in his testimony. “It might have happened, but I don’t recall Mark ever not responding to me previously in numerous communications, either by email or by asking for an in-person meeting.”

Béjar told the Associated Press that Meta has to change its approach to moderating its platforms. This, according to Béjar, would require the company to place a greater onus on tackling harassment, unwanted sexual advances and other issues that don’t necessarily break the company’s existing rules.

He noted, for instance, that teens should be able to tell Instagram that they don’t want to receive crude sexual messages, even if those don’t violate the app’s current policies. Béjar claims it would be easy for Meta to implement a feature through which teens could flag sexual advances that were made to them. “I believe that the reason that they’re not doing this is because there’s no transparency about the harms that teenagers are experiencing on Instagram,” he told the BBC.

Béjar laid out several other steps that Meta could take to reduce harm users face on its platform that “do not require significant investments by the platforms in people to review content or in technical infrastructure.” He added that he believes adopting such measures (which primarily focus on improving safety tools and getting more feedback from users who have experienced harm) would not severely impact the revenues of Meta or other companies that adopt them. “These reforms are not designed to punish companies, but to help teenagers,” he told the subcommittee. “And over time, they will create a safer environment.”

“My experience, after sending that email and seeing what happened afterwards, is that they knew, there were things they could do about it, they chose not to do them and we cannot trust them with our children,” Béjar said during the hearing. “It’s time for Congress to act. The evidence, I believe, is overwhelming.”

“Countless people inside and outside of Meta are working on how to help keep young people safe online,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “Working with parents and experts, we have also introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families in having safe, positive experiences online. All of this work continues.”

Béjar hopes his testimony will help spur Congress to “pass the legislation that they’ve been working on” regarding the online safety of younger users. Two years ago, Haugen disclosed internal Facebook research indicating that Instagram was “harmful for a sizable percentage of teens.” Growing scrutiny led Meta to halt work on a version of Instagram for kids.

Since Haugen’s testimony, Congress has made some efforts to tackle online safety issues for kids, but those have stuttered. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) twice advanced from a Senate committee (in the previous Congress and earlier this year), but it hasn’t reached a floor vote and there’s no companion bill in the House. Among other things, the bill seeks to give kids aged under 16 the ability to switch off “addictive features and algorithm-based recommendations, as well as having more protections for their data. Similar bills have stalled in Congress.

Last month, attorneys general from 41 states and the District of Columbia sued Meta over alleged harms it caused to young users. “Meta designed and deployed harmful and psychologically manipulative product features to induce young users’ compulsive and extended Platform use, while falsely assuring the public that its features were safe and suitable for young users,” according to the lawsuit. Béjar said he consulted with the attorneys general and provided them with documents to help their case.

“I’m very hopeful that your testimony, added to the lawsuit that’s been brought by state attorneys general across the country … added to the interest that I think is evidenced by the turnout of our subcommitee today, will enable us to get the Kids Online Safety Act across the finish line,” subcommittee chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Béjar. Blumenthal, one of KOSA’s original sponsors, expressed hope that other legislation “that can finally break the straitjacket that Big Tech has imposed on us” will be enacted into law.

Over the last few years and amid the rise of TikTok, Meta has once again been focusing on bringing younger users into its ecosystem, with Zuckerberg stating in 2021 (just a couple of weeks after Haugen’s testimony) that the company would refocus its “teams to make serving young adults their North Star rather than optimizing for the larger number of older people.” Recently, the company lowered the minimum age for using its Meta Quest VR headsets to 10 through the use of parent-controlled accounts.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-whistleblower-tells-senate-the-company-cannot-be-trusted-with-our-children-185616936.html?src=rss

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Company responsible for 7.5 billion robocalls sued by nearly every Attorney General

We can all agree that robocalls are the worst. While there might never be a way to get rid of them entirely (though agencies are certainly working on it), one the most prolific sources of these intrusions is finally getting hauled into court.

CBS News reports that Attorneys General from 48 states (as well as DC) are coming together to file a bipartisan lawsuit against Arizona-based Avid Telecom, its owner Michael D. Lansky and vice president Stacey S. Reeves. The 141-page suit claims that the company illegally made over 7.5 billion calls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry. Arizona Attorney General Kris Meyes claims that nearly 197 million robocalls were made to phone numbers in her state over a five-year period between December 2018 and January 2023.

The lawsuit says that Avid Telecom spoofed phone numbers, including 8.4 million that appeared to be coming from the government or law enforcement, and others disguised as originating from Amazon, DirecTV and many more. The suit alleges that Avid Telecom violated the Telephone and Consumer Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and several other telemarketing and consumer laws. 

The AGs are asking the court to enjoin Avid Telecom from making illegal robocalls, and to pay damages and restitution to the people it called illegally. They're also pursuing several statutory avenues to make Avid cough of money on a per-violation basis, which given the enormous volume of calls it has made, could add up quickly. Sumco Panama, which was responsible for a comparatively smaller 5 billion robocalls, was fined nearly $ 300 million by the FCC late last year.

Earlier this month, it was reported that XCast Labs is being sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over allegedly helping other companies call those on the National Do Not Call Registry.

In 2017, Dish reached a settlement that cost them $ 210 million. The company allegedly made millions of calls in an attempt to sell and promote its satellite TV service. Dish ultimately had to pay a $ 126 million civil fine to the US government, and $ 84 million to residents in California, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio. Hopefully, we’ll see a similar result with Avid Telecom.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/company-responsible-for-75-billion-robocalls-sued-by-nearly-every-attorney-general-220050450.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Apple drops lawsuit against former exec who accused company of spying

After more than three years of litigation, Apple has quietly dropped its lawsuit against Gerard Williams III, the former chip executive the company accused of poaching employees. Williams spent nearly a decade working for Apple, leading development on some of its most important chips – including the A7, the first 64-bit processor for mobile devices.

In 2019, Williams left Apple to co-found Nuvia, a chip design firm later acquired by Qualcomm in 2021. When the tech giant first sued Williams, it accused him of “secretly” starting Nuvia and recruiting talent for his startup while he was still an Apple employee. Williams disputed Apple’s claims and accused the company of spying on his text messages.

As reported by Bloomberg, Apple filed a request to dismiss the suit against Williams earlier this week. The document does not state the company’s reason for dropping the case. However, it does say Apple did so “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot file the same claim against Williams again. It also suggests the two sides came to a settlement. Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s dismissal request, court documents show Apple sought the recusal of Judge Sunil Kulkarni. Around March 17th, 2023, the company added two lawyers from the legal firm Morrison and Foerster to the team litigating its case against Williams. On March 28th, Judge Sunil Kulkarni filed a brief disclosing that he had worked at Morrison and Foerster for approximately 13 years and had kept in contact “over the years” with Bryan Wilson and Ken Kuwayti, the two “MoFo” attorneys Apple hired on as counsel earlier in the month.

“I have occasional social interactions with them (e.g., bimonthly lunches, seeing them at parties of mutual friends, and so on),” Judge Kulkarni wrote. “I believe I have recused myself from past cases involving Mr. Wilson and/or Mr. Kuwayti, but solely as a prophylactic measure.” After learning of the involvement of his former colleagues, Judge Kulkarni held an “informal” meeting with the two sides where he said he was “leaning toward recusal” if Apple retained the counsel of either Wilson or Kuwayti. In that same meeting, Kulkarni says he told Apple and Williams his recusal from the case would likely mean a delay in the case going to trial. Before the meeting, the case was scheduled to go to trial on October 2nd, 2023.

In a brief filed on April 6th, Williams and his legal team came out strongly against the idea of Judge Kulkarni removing himself from the case, arguing Apple’s position on the subject “should not matter” and that the move had the potential to be “prejudicial” against the former exec.

“Given that this case has been pending for over three years – with a fast-approaching discovery deadline and trial date – and given the Court’s familiarity with the parties, the case history, and the applicable law, the Court’s recusal decision has the potential to be prejudicial and disruptive,” the brief states. It then argues it was Apple that introduced a potential conflict of interest to the case.

“Even if a conflict existed that might warrant recusal, the procedure imposed by the Court – allowing the party that introduced the ‘conflict’ and would theoretically stand to benefit from it – to decide whether to waive it is inconsistent with basic rules of fairness and due process,” the brief concludes. “Such a procedure would set a dangerous precedent for judge shopping in the middle of a case: any part, at any time, could recruit former colleagues of a sitting judge and then force his or her recusal.”

Putting together what happened after that point is more difficult. However, after the 6th, the court in Santa Clara held multiple hearings where no one from either side appeared. Apple then filed to dismiss the case on April 26th. Qualcomm, Williams’ current employer, did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-drops-lawsuit-against-former-exec-who-accused-company-of-spying-211547595.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Jeep parent company Stellantis blames EV costs for upcoming layoffs

Jeep parent company Stellantis on Friday said it would indefinitely shut down a manufacturing plant in Illinois and lay off approximately 1,350 employees early next year. The facility – located in Belvidere, a city 75 miles northwest of downtown Chicago – is responsible for producing the internal combustion engine Jeep Cherokee crossover. In a statement the automaker shared with Reuters, Stellantis blamed the cost of electrifying its cars for the move.

“[The automotive industry] has been adversely affected by a multitude of factors like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the global microchip shortage, but the most impactful challenge is the increasing cost related to the electrification of the automotive market,” the company said, adding that it may shutter the facility permanently as it considers what to do next.

United Auto Workers Local 1268 shop chairman Tim Ferguson told Reuters that company documents show Stellantis plans to move Cherokee production to a facility in Toluca, Mexico. “To me, there is no question about it,” he said. “Their plan is to close this plant.” Stellantis declined to comment on Ferguson’s allegations. “We are not commenting on the future of the Cherokee,” the company said.

As The Verge points out, Stellantis isn’t the first automaker to blame EVs for a recent set of layoffs. In August, Ford cut about 3,000 employees. “We have an opportunity to lead this exciting new era of connected and electric vehicles,” the automaker said at the time. “Building this future requires changing and reshaping virtually all aspects of the way we have operated for more than a century.”

It’s also worth noting Friday’s announcement came on the same day that workers at a General Motors-LG battery cell facility in Ohio voted overwhelmingly in favor of unionization. Unions in France, Italy, Canada and other parts of the world recently asked Stellantis to raise worker wages by as much as 8.5 percent following a year of record global inflation. In the third quarter of the year, Stellantis said revenue grew to €42.1 billion (approximately $ 44 billion), a 29 percent from the same period last year.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Meal kit company sued by customers who claim ‘contaminated’ lentils led to gallbladders removals

Vegan meal kit startup Daily Harvest has been hit with two lawsuits by customers alleging they needed gallbladder removals after eating one of the company's products, reportedCNN. Last month the company issued a voluntary recall of its “French Lentil + Leek Crumbles” dish following multiple claims of gastrointestinal and liver from consumers. The first lawsuit was filed by Carol Ann Ready, an Oklahoma woman who is suing the company in the federal court for the Southern District of New York. Ready purchased and ate lentil crumbles from Daily Harvest on two separate occasions in May, both of which both of which resulted in trips to the emergency room. The second of these was a four-day stay, which ended with Ready's physician recommending gallbladder removal. 

Attorneys for Ready are asking for a jury trial, alleging that damages for the case exceed what the court normally allows. “Plaintiff has sustained serious personal injuries; suffered, and will continue to suffer, significant pain and other physical discomfort; incurred, and will continue to incur, substantial medical expenses; have missed, and will likely miss in the future, work and time necessarily dedicated to advancement in her profession; and remains at risk for future health complications with damages far in excess of $ 75,000, the jurisdictional threshold of this court,” says the complaint, obtained by Food Safety News.

Earlier this week, an Oregon-based content creator who claimed he also consumed the lentils and subsequently had to have his gallbladder removed filed a personal injury lawsuit against Daily Harvest. In a video posted to Twitter on June 21, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Luke Wesley Pearson, warned his followers not to eat the lentil crumbles.

Daily Harvest still hasn’t pinpointed what may have caused the adverse reactions. "All pathogen and toxicology results have come back negative so far, but we're continuing to do extensive testing so we can get to the bottom of this. Everyone who has been affected deserves an answer, and we are committed to making this right,” the company said in a statement to CNN.

Yesterday the FDA announced a formal investigation into the outbreak, in an effort to determine the cause. In a blog post, Daily Harvest said it received approximately 470 reports from customers who suffered adverse reactions after eating the product.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Meta lawyers are reportedly investigating Sheryl Sandberg’s use of company resources

Meta’s lawyers are investigating outgoing COO Sheryl Sandberg amid claims she misused company resources, The Wall Street Journal reports. The paper says the investigation goes back “several years” and is scrutinizing Meta employees’ work on Sandberg’s personal projects.

When Sandberg first announced her departure from the company, The Wall Street Journal reported the company was examining whether she had improperly used company resources in planning her upcoming wedding. Now, WSJ has shed a little more light on the investigation.

Meta lawyers are reportedly looking at Facebook staff’s involvement with Sandberg’s foundation Lean In, and their work to help her promote her most recent book, Option B. The company is also investigating reports that Sandberg used Facebook staffers in an attempt to kill a negative story about her former partner, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. The company could be looking to head off regulatory concerns that could arise if such work wasn’t properly disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sandberg eventually “could be asked to repay the company for employee time spent on her personal work,” according to the report.

Meta declined to comment to The Wall Street Journal.

The investigation is indicative of just how much Sandberg’s status within the company has changed in recent years. As The WSJ points out, both Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg’s personal lives have been closely tied to the company. Meta spends millions of dollars every year on their personal security and travel expenses, and both executives have tapped Facebook employees to help with personal projects. That Sandberg is now facing scrutiny for these actions shows how much her influence has waned.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Amazon’s consumer chief Dave Clark is departing the company

Dave Clark, who headed Amazon’s worldwide consumer operations, announced he is resigning after 23 years at the company. The former Kentucky warehouse manager was in charge of overseeing the company’s retail business as well as its warehouse and shipping operations, which expanded due to the pandemic. Clark tweeted the announcement today along with an email sent to his team, writing that he had discussed “transitioning out of Amazon” for some time with family and those close to him. Clark was promoted to his current role only last year, following the departure of longer-serving executive Jeff Wilke.

Clark’s resignation comes as the company is dealing with its first quarterly loss in seven years, a unionization push and more warehouse space than it needs. Clark was in charge of the company’s logistic operations, which he expanded as demand soared during the pandemic. The company reported in April that excess warehouse space would contribute to $ 10 billion in excess costs for the first half of 2022.

The executive regularly defended Amazon’s warehouse operations, even amid criticism of its unsafe working conditions. After John Oliver investigated Amazon warehouses in an episode of Last Week Tonight, Clark tweeted that Oliver was “wrong on Amazon” and that the company was “proud of the safe, quality work environment” of its facilities.

Clark’s resignation will be effective in July, according to a regulatory filing by Amazon. So far a successor has not been named.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

There’s much ado about Nothing as Carl Pei claims a ‘major’ company attacked the supply chain

It’s bad enough that we have a global chip shortage that never seems to end but now it seems that there may be a case of industrial sabotage against Nothing. Having published a blog post complimenting his team on the performance of the company’s first product, the Ears (1), Nothing’s CEO went on to accuse […]

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The same company that supplied batteries for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 will reportedly produce batteries for the Galaxy S22

When it comes to sequels in the phone industry, we like to see more battery, more power, more megapixels, and just more of everything else, with the exception of the dreaded bloatware monster. Sadly, it would appear that Samsung isn’t following the well-trodden path of more is better because the latest report suggests that the […]

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London’s largest cab company will go fully electric by 2023

London courier and private hire taxi firm Addison Lee has pledged to convert its whole passenger car fleet to electric vehicles by 2023. While the company's website says it has over 4,800 cars operating in the UK capital, its recent acquisition of black taxi service ComCab will make it the largest taxi company in London with over 7,000 vehicles. It already has 650 zero-emission vehicles in its fleet after the acquisition, but to be able to fully switch over to electric, it has teamed up with Volkswagen.

Addison Lee is investing £160 million ($ 218 million) to replace its existing fleet with slightly larger Volkswagen ID.4 vehicles. The standard ID.4 has a 77 kWh lithium-ion battery pack and has range of 250 miles, making it more suitable for city use than for long-distance driving. Its capable of 201 horsepower and 229 pound-feet of torque, with speeds reaching 100MPH. 

The firm will start by rolling out 450 EVs by the end of 2021, presumably in addition to the 650 electric cars it already has. Then, the company plans to add 200 electric cars per month until its whole fleet has been replaced within a couple of years. The firm also plans to set up charging infrastructure for its drivers using the new £3.5 million (US$ 4 million) Future Mobility Fund it has established.

If the company succeeds in transitioning to electric by 2023, it'll be ahead of its competitors like Uber, which previously pledged to replace its existing fleet with EVs by 2025. It also means up to 20,000 zero-emission trips each day in London, which will help the government achieve its goal of a net zero economy by 2050.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Company made to change name that could be used for website hacks

Companies have jokingly given themselves code-based names in the past (you can thank XKCD for that), but one of them was just forced to mend its ways. The Guardian reports that UK business registrar Companies House has forced a software consultant to…
Engadget

California Uber drivers sue company over Prop 22 app notifications

It’s no secret Uber has been aggressively supporting Proposition 22, a California ballot initiative that would allow the company to skirt a state law requiring them to classify drivers as employees. Now, a group of the app’s drivers say the company’s…
Engadget

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei has reportedly left the company

Following a report by Reddit poster JonSigur showing internal memos suggesting OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei is no longer affiliated with the company, TechCrunch and Android Central have confirmed the claim citing their own sources. This comes after th…
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‘Company of Heroes’ set to invade Android and iOS devices from September 10th

It’s a game that I remember fondly when it first stormed the beaches on PC, and now Company of Heroes is set to assault the smartphone gaming segment on September 10th. Feral Interactive is bringing the blockbuster PC game to Android and iOS devices with perhaps the most exciting news being that it will be […]

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Uber CEO says his company can’t hire all of its drivers in California

Whatever the outcome of its ongoing legal spat with the state of California, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi doesn’t believe his company can employ all the people who drive for the platform in California, at least not without a fundamental rethinking of i…
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Telegram is the latest company to file an EU antitrust complaint against Apple

If big tech thought that its antitrust reckoning would end with yesterday’s hearings, it’ll have its optimism sorely dented by what’s likely to follow. A number of smaller players are lobbing grenades over the fence in the hope of forcing regulators…
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Microsoft employees ask the company to end contracts with Seattle police

Hundreds of Microsoft employees are calling on the company to cancel its contracts with the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and make other changes in response to police use of tear gas and other violent tactics during recent peaceful protests, OneZer…
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What does Apple want from a VR events company?

Since 2009 a startup called NextVR has been developing proprietary cameras and striking deals to bring live events — think sporting events, wrestling matches and concerts — straight to the VR headset of your choice. It sounds like a potent cure for…
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Sphero spins off a new company to make robots for police, military use

Sphero, the company behind robotic toys like the BB-8 robot and educational robotics kits, announced today that it’s spinning its public safety division into a new company, dubbed Company Six. It plans to commercialize robots and AI software for firs…
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Charter is the first cable company with a deal for HBO Max

WarnerMedia didn’t initially say how TV providers besides AT&T would offer HBO Max, but that’s now becoming clear through a first-ever deal. Cable provider Charter has landed a multi-year agreement that will make HBO Max available to all of its e…
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Recommended Reading: The CIA-owned company that helped it spy on the world

The intelligence coup of the century Greg Miller, The Washington Post This in-depth report tells the story of Crypto AG, a Switzerland-based company that achieved success for its code-making machines during World War II. The company eventually bec…
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Elon Musk’s Boring Company is done excavating first Las Vegas tunnel

The Boring Company has finished excavating the first of the two tunnels planned for Las Vegas Convention Center's underground loop transportation system. If you'll recall, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) tapped Elon Musk's com…
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NYT: Experts find evidence Russians hacked Ukrainian gas company

Any relationship between former Vice President Joe Biden, his son and the Ukrainian gas company Burisma has become a central figure in the 2020 election campaign and the impeachment of Donald Trump. Now, in a situation with echoes of the 2016 electio…
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Connected sous vide company Nomiku is shutting down

Nomiku, one of the companies that helped make sous vide immersion circulators mainstream, is shutting down. The small kitchen appliance maker announced the news on Friday afternoon, noting that it plans to discontinue both its WiFi Sous Vide Smart Co…
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TikTok’s parent company reportedly faces a national security review

Recently TikTok's popularity has exploded worldwide, and so has scrutiny over the app's parent company ByteDance and its relationship to the Chinese government. Now Reuters reports that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)…
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Facebook reaches settlement with company selling fake Instagram likes

Instagram has been struggling recently from an onslaught of spam comments, fake likes and fake follows. Now Facebook, which owns the service, has won a small victory against the spammers. The social media giant has settled a court case with a New Zea…
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Ford bought a robotics company to boost its self-driving cars

Back in April, Ford chief Jim Hackett admitted that the company overestimated the arrival of self-driving cars. He added that the applications of Ford's first autonomous fleet will likely be narrow, "because the problem is so complex." Now, the autom…
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Las Vegas taps Elon Musk’s Boring Company for transport project

Your next visit to Las Vegas might include a peek at the possible future of transportation. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has recommended choosing Elon Musk's The Boring Company to develop an underground tunnel loop that would use a…
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Amazon’s latest massive purchase is the mesh network company Eero

Eero was one of the first companies to dive into mesh networking, and they’ve consistently delivered some killer products. But like all tech companies and startups, the main goal for these smaller players is to eventually get scooped up by a bigger fish, and that’s where Eero is going next. Amazon has announced that they’ll […]

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Mystery company buys Meta’s augmented reality tech

After a promising start, AR startup Meta's assets have been sold to an unknown buyer, reports TechCrunch and other sites. Meta fell on hard times in September after a promised $ 20 million investment from a Chinese company fell through over trade tens…
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Essential buys the company behind Newton Mail

The Newton Mail subscription service might be dead, but its owner just found an unusual lifeline. Essential has acquired Newton developer CloudMagic for an unspecified amount. The phone maker didn't say just what it would do with its new purchase,…
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Ticketmaster buys a blockchain company to guard against ticket fraud

Ticketmaster will soon have another way to fight bogus ticket sales: by hopping on one of the biggest tech bandwagons of 2018. It's acquiring Upgraded, a company that melds blockchain's distributed trust with encrypted barcodes to minimize the fraud…
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Tinder co-founders sue parent company for $2 billion over deception

Three of Tinder's co-founders and several other current and former senior executives are suing the dating company's parent organizations, Match Group and IAC. According to a complaint published online, the lawsuit seeks billions of dollars in damages…
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Lyft is reportedly close to buying the company behind Citi Bike

Lyft might not sit idle while Uber leaps into the bike sharing space. The Information sources have claimed that Lyft is close to acquiring Motivate, the bike sharing behemoth responsible for New York City's Citi Bikes and San Francisco's Ford GoBike…
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RIP ZTE: new sanctions have caused the company to cease global operations

If you’re a big ZTE fan, you may want to sit down. We have some bad news. Those last round of sanctions that were passed to stop ZTE from dealing with American companies after ZTE tried to skirt around sanctions on Iran and North Korea are apparently going to be enough to completely cripple ZTE’s […]

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Bumble sues Tinder’s owners for stealing company secrets

Bumble isn't done swiping left on Tinder's parent company Match Group. After publishing an open letter excoriating Match, the women-focused dating app has filed a lawsuit against Tinder's owner, accusing it of stealing trade secrets, among other thin…
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Israeli company claims Apple copied its dual-camera tech

Whatever you think of your dual-camera iPhone, there's one company that's less than thrilled. Israeli startup Corephotonics is suing Apple for allegedly infringing on patented technology with the cameras in the iPhone 7 Plus and 8 Plus (it's likely…
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The Pokémon Company bringing Pikachu! to smart speakers

Over the past year, as competition has heated up notably between Amazon and Google for the smart speaker market, we have seen a significant expansion in the capabilities of AI-infused home assistant devices. Both Google and Amazon have worked to build features to help users put together their own scripts and third-party developers have been […]

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Alphabet finalizes restructuring with a new company called XXVI

Back in 2015, Google announced that it was restructuring its company into multiple parts, with a new giant company called Alphabet to oversee all of Google's various businesses. The reasoning behind the move was to essentially separate out some of Go…
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HTC U11 sparks revenue growth for the company in June

It’s not a well-kept secret that HTC has struggled pretty badly in the financial department for the past couple of years, but every once in awhile they’ll see a nice revenue bump from a successful flagship launch. It seems like that was the case in June, too, thanks to the slick U11. Revenues in June […]

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[TA Deals] Keep your resume diversified after using the Virtual Training Company (96% off)

On Talk Android Deals you can gain access to thousands of courses to diversify your resume. Here’s what you get from the library of the Virtual Training Company: Get lifetime access to 1,026 courses on any topic available at the time of purchase Learn from industry experts in their respective fields Download work files to […]

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Verily, the Alphabet health company, announces the Study Watch

If you happen to own an activity tracker, you probably know that the companies producing them are careful to disclaim the accuracy of the devices. Despite this, companies producing the devices have been hit with the occasional lawsuit because the data the devices provide are not “medical” grade or quality. For a company like Verily, […]

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Missouri Star Quilt Company: Our YouTube Story

In 2009, my new quilting business was struggling to get off the ground. The recession had hit my family and my town of Hamilton, Mo., pretty hard and I had started Missouri Star Quilt Company as a way to earn retirement money while doing something I loved. But like almost every small business at the time, Missouri Star wasn’t setting the world on fire. To help get the word out, my son Al suggested we film some tutorials and post them to YouTube.

“Sure,” I told him. “What’s a tutorial?”

Back then, I had never even visited YouTube, but I decided to try it out. I set up my sewing machine in a corner of the shop and Al began to shoot our first video on a handheld camera. We didn’t even bother to close the shop because foot traffic was so slow. Those first videos didn’t always look super spiffy, but I think people appreciated that I was making a hobby that sometimes feels intimidating to learn, more approachable.

Week by week, we filmed new tutorials and though it took a little while, we started seeing our views and subscriber numbers go up. First we hit 1,000 subscribers, then 10,000 subscribers. And while our online following was growing, we started getting some new visitors in real life, too. People were popping into our store from as far away as Texas, Virginia and Mexico telling me how they’d seen our videos on YouTube and wanted to visit me in person. We couldn’t just film the videos during store hours anymore; the foot traffic had picked up! And it was coming from everywhere.

By 2012, we had over 25,000 subscribers and we were regularly getting visitors to Missouri Star from around the world. Our sales were growing quickly and we decided to use the money we were earning to help invest in our community. One by one, I had seen businesses in Hamilton pack up and leave as the recession got worse and I wanted to change that trend. We decided to buy up a few of those boarded-up buildings to give our visitors an even richer experience.

We opened a store for Civil War-era prints, a store for modern quilt fabric, a store for novelty patterns and still we kept growing. Today, Hamilton is the Disneyland of quilting. We have 12 quilting stores operating in Hamilton and we get busloads of visitors coming to our small town almost every week. We didn’t just stop at quilting, either. We’ve partnered with talented chefs, cooks and bakers in our community to help them open their own business. In small town of 1,800, Missouri Star Quilt now employs over 400 people.

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I remember having a dance party with my family when we sold seven orders in one day. Now we ship as many as 5,000 orders a day. Missouri Star Quilt Company has grown from one woman with a quilting machine to the largest seller of pre-cut quilting fabric in the world and the biggest employer in our county.

None of that could have been possible without YouTube. Our channel allowed us to turn our small business into a global business. We now have over 350,000 subscribers on YouTube, from countries throughout the world.

But as great as all those numbers are, the thing that makes me happiest is what I did in that very first video: teach someone how to quilt. I’ve been lucky to find something I truly love to do and I’m so happy YouTube has given me the opportunity to share that passion with others. It’s meant the world to my small business, to my community and to me.

–Jenny Doan


YouTube Blog

IBM and The Weather Company launch mesh-powered app for internet-poor regions

IBM and The Weather Company have pioneered a mesh network technology capable of delivering real-time alerts to smartphone users in developing nations. It’s launching in the coming weeks.

The post IBM and The Weather Company launch mesh-powered app for internet-poor regions appeared first on Digital Trends.

Android Army–Digital Trends

The man driving Xiaomi’s international launch efforts is leaving the company

Hugo Barra, the man behind the global launch efforts for Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi, is leaving the company. Citing a desire to return to Silicon Valley, his time with Xiaomi will end in February.

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Android Army–Digital Trends

Fossil could be the only company that really gets wearables right in 2017

Fossil is taking the same approach to its wearable tech as it does to its fashion-forward watch range, by updating them seasonally to reflect the latest trends. We’ve been looking at the latest versions.

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Mobile–Digital Trends

Company founded by 15-year-old wants to help the blind browse the web

Earlier this week, Braigo Labs launched a beta version of its service aimed at helping the visually impaired and blind recognize text on images. It’s the first release of a larger overall platform aimed at making the web more accessible.

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Cool Tech–Digital Trends