Slack, the company that made office messaging apps cool, is seeing its torrid growth slow, even as a far larger rival has emerged. That would be Facebook Workplace, which launched two weeks ago (Oct. 10). Workplace is undercutting Slack on price and leveraging its consumer version’s existing userbase of 1.7 billion monthly active users.
The Chinese government has published a “whitepaper” (link in Chinese) that sets out key milestones for the development of blockchain technology in the country, in the strongest signal yet that it’s encouraging the growth of the technology there. The move will give further impetus to firms pushing for blockchain applications in sectors ranging from payments to smart contracts on the mainland, which is already a central force for bitcoin mining (paywall).
It would be the ultimate user interface: a device the size of two stacked nickels that allows your thoughts to control computers. The only catch is it’ll have to be implanted in your brain.
When Salesforce is out hunting other companies to acquire, there’s one metric it looks up before that decision is made: Check how well it’s rated on Glassdoor, the recruitment site that lets employees post reviews of companies and rate their experiences. It’s a bit like consulting Yelp before picking a restaurant for dinner.
As the manager of a Premier League soccer club, do you dump your non-British players in anticipation of a “hard Brexit” or do you take your chances with the best foreign talent, hoping for the best, work permit-wise, when the UK eventually quits the European Union?
Get a bicycle for free, as long as you’re prepared to be a mobile ad billboard—and as long as you’re the right kind of mobile ad billboard. That’s the pitch from BuzzBike, which is using an ad-supported model—not unlike the ones beloved of the internet’s biggest companies—to disrupt urban cycle rentals, starting in London.
Twitter bots programmed to support Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of content around the first debate between the two candidates running for the US presidency on Sept. 26, according to new analysis (pdf) by the Project on Computational Propaganda at Oxford University.
Google is doubling down on its submarine cable investments in the Pacific ocean, this time with Facebook’s backing. The two tech companies announced last week (Oct. 12) that they are joining a consortium to build a new transpacific submarine cable system that will be ready in 2018.
Apple’s product launches are notoriously secretive, but the Cupertino, California tech giant is sure to do one thing ahead of a big reveal: file trademark paperwork in Jamaica.
For the first time since it set out to buy Yahoo in July, Verizon is making unhappy noises. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Verizon has said the hack of 500 million user accounts that Yahoo revealed last month could be “material” to the one-time internet titan’s business. This casts doubt over the $4.8 billion acquisition, because a “material adverse effect” is a get-out clause in the deal for the buyer.
The UK has a shot at leading the world in artificial intelligence and robotics governance, if not for Brexit. Britain’s impending exit from the EU has cast doubts over crucial legal provisions for AI and robots, according to the results of an inquiry by the British parliament published today (Oct. 12).
Imagine getting out of bed to find a freshly boiled kettle of water awaiting you, calibrated to perfect tea-brewing temperature. That’s what the iKettle 2.0 promises its users—which is great, except when you run into technical difficulties, as Mark Rittman did this morning:
Facebook made its new platform for businesses available to the public yesterday (Oct. 10). The product, called Workplace, looks very much like the consumer version of Facebook, with a news feed and a chat app, but there’s a fee to use it.
Blockchain technology has been slow to gain adoption in non-financial contexts, but it could turn out to have invaluable military applications. DARPA, the storied research unit of the US Department of Defense, is currently funding efforts to find out if blockchains could help secure highly sensitive data, with potential applications for everything from nuclear weapons to military satellites.
Facebook paid £4.2 million ($5.2 million) in tax in the UK, according to the latest accounts filed by its UK entity yesterday (Oct. 10). That’s quite an increase from the £4,372 its UK subsidiary paid in 2014. (The company is also, however, claiming an £11.3 million tax credit—in other words, a discount on future taxes—thanks to an accounting rule change on how its employee bonuses are taxed.)
We’re used to thinking of the internet as a place that exists apart from our physical presence in a particular country. I can send an email to someone who lives in New Zealand as easily as I can to someone next door. When I do, thousands of independent computer networks whisk my message around the globe without regard for the walls, mountains, oceans, or border fences that stand in the way. There are no import tariffs, national taxes, or customs agents to deal with. There are, it seems, no national borders on the internet.
Our insatiable appetite for digital video—preferably streamed on-demand—has quietly reshaped the internet.
On an August day, Tracey Williams was out beach-combing with her dog, a daily routine for the resident of Cornwall, when she came across an odd-looking object lying on the sand. It was a grayish slab stained brown by the elements, weighing about 3 lbs. and measuring 13 inches across—roughly the size of a kitchen chopping board. The word “Tjipetir” was inscribed on it.
It keeps getting worse for Yahoo users, who recently endured news that their data was stolen in the biggest security breach in history. Now Reuters is reporting that the US government issued a classified legal request for Yahoo to write custom software that scanned Yahoo Mail for specific terms in real time, and Yahoo agreed. The reported cited four anonymous sources with knowledge of the events.
When it rains, it pours. The cloud is growing over Europe, to the tune of billions of dollars in investment from the world’s biggest tech companies.
The European Commission has three outstanding antitrust charges against Google. They are far from settled, but documents leaked to Reuters Oct. 1 provide some clarity on how the European Union’s executive arm plans to deal with Google’s alleged abuse of dominance.
Asia is leading the way in the robotics revolution.
Remember how every time Pokémon Go launched in a new country, the game would become unavailable for swathes of new players? It was because of ”the servers,” people said, that were struggling to cope with the flood of new players. Now Google, which provided those servers to Niantic Labs, Pokémon Go’s creator, has revealed just how big the flood was, compared to what was anticipated:
Music streaming is a tough business to be in. Even the biggest names lose money. It’s an even tougher business to get out of, as exits have been scarce. That might soon change if SoundCloud is indeed in “advanced talks” to sell to rival Spotify, as the Financial Times reported on Sept. 28 (paywall).
