Dropbox Rolls Out Advanced Tools for Enhanced Knowledge Work | Small Biz Trends

November 6, 2023November 5, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Dropbox has announced a suite of new features and tools designed to enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and support the next generation of knowledge work. This as remote work culture continues to evolve and the tools that drive it need to keep pace.

In the wake of the 2020 pandemic, the rise of remote work compelled many companies to adapt and innovate. Dropbox was no exception, transitioning to a Virtual First model to combine the best elements of remote and in-person working. Yet, despite these strides, challenges persist. A recent study sponsored by Dropbox revealed startling insights: a whopping 42% of participants claimed they could not sustain productive work for more than an hour due to distractions. This has led to the average knowledge worker losing over 500 hours each year, with a significant chunk of this time – 157 hours – wasted on non-productive messages from workplace chat apps.

Disney will soon own 100% of the streaming service Hulu | Digital Trends

November 2, 2023November 1, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As part of a buyout move that’s been several months in the making, Disney will soon purchase Comcast’s 33% stake in Hulu, becoming the sole owner of the popular streaming service.

The Walt Disney Company, which already owns the other two-thirds of Hulu thanks to its 2019 purchase of 20th Century Fox, made an announcement today that updates the timeline for its acquisition. In the statement, Disney said it expects to pay Comcast Corp.’s NBC Universal approximately $8.61 billion. The purchase amount is to be based on an appraisal of Hulu’s value conducted on September 30, 2023.

Facebook and Instagram launch ad-free subscription tier in EU | BBC News

October 31, 2023October 30, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Facebook and Instagram are launching subscriptions in most of Europe that will remove adverts from the platforms.

People using the Meta-owned platforms will be able to pay €9.99 (£8.72) per month for an ad-free experience. It will not be available in the UK.

In January, Meta was fined €390m for breaking EU data rules around ads.

The regulator said at the time the firm could not “force consent” by saying consumers must accept how their data is used or leave the platforms.

The subscription tier will be exclusive to people in the EU, European Economic Area and Switzerland from November.

General Motors deal clears the way for an end to US car strike | BBC News

October 31, 2023October 30, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

General Motors has struck a deal with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to end a six-week strike in the US.

The tentative agreement follows similar deals at Ford and Chrysler-maker Stellantis, the other two carmakers affected by walkouts.

Nearly 50,000 workers and dozens of sites were involved in the action, the first in union’s history to target all three firms at once.

US President Joe Biden welcomed the deal hailing the deal as “great.”

The president added: “These record agreements reward auto workers who gave up much to keep the industry working and going during the financial crisis more than a decade ago.”

A look at how one fintech CEO’s PR decision backfired | TechCrunch

October 30, 2023October 29, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This past week, Carta CEO Henry Ward took it upon himself to send a letter to customers addressing the company’s recent negative press. The move had many scratching their heads, including many customers and at least one investor.

I first learned about it when I saw one of those customers, Winnie co-founder and CEO Sara Mauskopf, post something on X. In her post, she noted that prior to receiving the email from Ward, she “didn’t actually read any negative press about Carta recently.”

She wasn’t alone.

So essentially what Ward did was notify all of Carta’s customers that the company was the target of lawsuits around allegations of sexual abuse on the part of executives and has been accused of having a toxic “boy’s club culture,” among other things. He did so by pointing them to a Medium post/missive he had shared with Carta employees a few days earlier.

More than a year later, the $20B Adobe-Figma deal is still stuck in regulatory limbo | TechCrunch

October 30, 2023October 29, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In September 2022, Adobe dropped the bombshell news that it intended to buy Figma for $20 billion. It was a huge chunk of money for a startup that had recently been valued at half that amount, and it was a deal that would make investors and some Figma employees wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. But first it had to pass regulatory muster — and that has proven stubbornly difficult.

In fact, more than 13 months after the deal was announced, the two companies remain separate entities. A year is a long time in the tech world. Figma hasn’t been idly waiting for its corporate suitor and has continued to work on the platform, hiring 500 new people since the deal was announced for a total of 1,300 employees today.

Rolls Royce: Aircraft engine maker plans up to 2,500 job cuts worldwide | CNN Business

October 23, 2023October 22, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce will slash up to 2,500 jobs worldwide in a bid to streamline its operations and tackle years of underperformance.

Britain’s flagship engineering firm, which makes engines for Boeing (BA) and Airbus planes, said Tuesday that the cuts were part of a broader strategic overhaul to “remove duplication and deliver cost efficiencies.”

The restructure will lead to between 2,000 and 2,500 job losses from a global workforce of 42,000, a cut of around 6%. (Rolls-Royce is a separate company from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, a wholly owned subsidiary of BMW. The two businesses bearing the Rolls-Royce name were part of the same firm until the 1970s.)

Is overhype dooming the cultivated meat industry? | Fast Company

October 17, 2023October 16, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As the founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing societal consumption of meat, I’m of the belief that we’re never going to convince everyone to give up animal products altogether, so we need to come up with ways to fill that demand without destroying the planet. Cell-cultivated meat—meat grown from animal cells rather than slaughtered animals—could be one of those history-changing innovations, allowing us to feed the world without the dirty business of torturing animals.

So you can imagine my disappointment when Wired reported last month that all was not as it seemed at Upside Foods, a leading cultivated meat company in the U.S. Since the company launched in 2015, journalists have gushed about their promise to make cell-cultivated meat a reality. The prospect seemed practically inevitable, and even the world’s biggest meat-producing companies were vying for a stake.

How to watch the annular solar eclipse in person or online | Digital Trends

October 11, 2023October 10, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Skywatchers across the U.S. will have the chance this week to see a special event: an annular solar eclipse, also known as a “ring of fire” eclipse. The main date to look out for is Thursday, October 14, when people in various locations across the globe will be able to see the event at different times.

If you’d like to watch the eclipse in person, we’ve got advice on how to do that safely. But if you’re after an easier option or you’re located outside of the viewing regions, there’s also a live stream available that will let you watch the event online. More details are below.

A lot of workers are out on strike right now. Here’s how that looks in the jobs report | CNN Business

October 9, 2023October 8, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

From actors to autoworkers, more than 450,000 workers have participated in 312 strikes in the United States this year, according to Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker.

Are all of these workers missing from the US government’s monthly jobs reports?

The report produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a product of two different surveys.

One asks a sample group of employers to report how many workers they employed, based on their payroll records for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. Data from that survey is used to determine how many people were hired or laid off in a given month.