Tech shapes our daily life, impacting not just how we read and work and play but how we interact, how we learn, how we grow. And just days from now in Las Vegas, CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) will give us a window into what that will look like.
Unfortunately, it’s a really big window.
Apple has rattled investors with news that its sales have been slowing, blaming economic weakness in China.
In a surprise disclosure, the iPhone maker said it anticipated revenue of about $84bn (£67bn) for the three months to 29 December.
In November it forecast sales of at least $89bn – a prediction that had already disappointed investors.
Apple’s share price sank more than 7% in after hours trade, extending its more than 28% slide since November.
The festive season is typically Apple’s strongest quarter.
Colin Kroll, was the co-founder of Vine and HQ Trivia, both consumer sensations that brought joy to millions; Anthony Bourdain, had been a chef, journalist and philosopher, who brought understanding and connectedness to millions of lives; while Robin Williams built a career as a brilliant comedian and actor.
What these three share in common is that they were all people at the pinnacle of their industry and they all died too soon. Their premature loss is a tragedy.
IF YOU SAY you saw this coming, I don’t believe you. In 2018, electric scooter-share stole the mobility show. They arrived unannounced in cities. They provoked fierce council meetings and protests. They launched debates about who owns sidewalks, anyway, and what role regulators play in bossing around big business. They sucked up VC dollars, mountains of them, as upstarts crowed about the revenue generated per scoot. They got damaged and fixed, they launched their own new gig economy jobs.
Twitter released its biannual Transparency Report on Thursday outlining current trends in government information requests, content removal requests, and other privacy matters regarding the network.
This year’s report marks the thirteenth time in the company’s history that Twitter has expounded on its privacy practices in such tremendous detail. The new report also expands on the type of data Twitter is making publicly available.
When James Shaw Jr. decided to launch a GoFundMe in honor of victims of a deadly shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville earlier this year, he set a modest goal of $15,000.
Shaw, however, had just become famous as the “Waffle House hero” after tackling and disarming the alleged gunman. The GoFundMe he launched with a few of his friends quickly went viral, and it ultimately raised $241,000.
“I was doing it just to help out, ’cause I know losing a child in that kind of way, and you have to plan that funeral, as young as they were, they probably didn’t have insurance,” says Shaw. “It was just my way of trying to ease the pain.”
Retailers are battling hard over toys, flat-screen TVs and new tech gadgets this holiday season, and Amazon appears to be in a strong position.
The company said on Tuesday that it sold 18 million toys between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Amazon did not disclose toy sales from last year, but it has been stockpiling toys since Toys “R” Us’ closed its stores in June.
Amazon (AMZN) expanded its toy efforts in the run-up to the holidays. It mailed out a 70-page toy catalog with top items and deals, and even began selling toys at Whole Foods. Last week, Amazon offered discounts on Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, and Lego.
It’s been just over month since Amazon announced the end of its the protracted search for its second headquarters and announced it would be expanding to Long Island City, New York, and Crystal City, Virginia, and adding an “operations hub” in Nashville. But rather than acclimating to the idea of Amazon in their midst, organizers in the three cities are doubling down on resisting it.
Prime Minister Theresa May has won a vote of confidence in her leadership of the Conservative Party by 200 to 117.
After securing 63% of the total vote, she is now immune from a leadership challenge for a year.
Speaking in Downing Street, she vowed to deliver the Brexit “people voted for” but said she had listened to the concerns of MPs who voted against her.
Her supporters urged the party to move on but critics said losing the support of a third of MPs was “devastating”.
ON TUESDAY, THE House Judiciary Committee had the opportunity to question one of the most powerful people on the planet—Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, the company that filters all the world’s information. And they blew it.
Over the course of three and a half hours, the members of the committee staked out opposite sides of a partisan battle over whether Google search and other products are biased against conservatives. Republican members largely criticized the company for burying conservative websites in search results and amplifying criticism of conservative policies—accusations that Google has repeatedly denied. Democrats only poured fuel on the fire by spending their allotted five minutes helping Pichai shoot down those trumped-up claims, which are hard to prove either way thanks to the company’s black box algorithms. The rhetorical tennis match left precious little time for committee members to explore in any detail the urgent questions around Google’s interest in building a censored search engine for China, the company’s bulk data collection practices, its recent security breaches, or issues related to competition and antitrust regulation.
