Activision Blizzard shares moved down 1 percent in after-hours trading on Monday after the company said that it has informed its chief financial officer, Spencer Neumann, that it plans to let him go. For now he has been placed on a paid leave of absence. The news comes after a rough year for the gaming
Month: December 2018
One year ago this month, Shervin Pishevar, an early investor in Uber, was ousted from his venture capital firm, Sherpa Capital, over sexual harassment allegations. He appears to be quietly back as the CEO of a scooter startup called Bolt, records reveal. Dave McClure was forced out of his own startup accelerator, 500 Startups, in
China reported lower than expected manufacturing activity in December amid its trade dispute with the U.S. Official manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) was 49.4 — lower than the 49.9 analysts expected in a Reuters poll. That was worse than November’s official manufacturing PMI, which was 50.0. A reading above 50 indicates expansion, while a reading
Most years, I round up the news of the year in technology through a collection of quotes, arranged roughly by some combination I make up of their importance and how much I like them. Here they are for 2018. 14. “He was that kind of guy. You know, an asshole. But a really gifted one.
As the streaming video wars heat up, technology companies like Apple, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon are willing to spend billions of dollars on movies and shows that they hope will attract big audiences. On the other side of the market, smaller niche services are testing out a more cost-sensitive model. Dust, from independent studio Gunpowder
The Chinese internet is not like the internet in the rest of the world. More than 150 of the world’s 1,000 most popular internet sites are blocked in China, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Instead, domestic platforms like Baidu, WeChat, and Sina Weibo thrive. Internet freedom advocates have worried that the internet will fracture
Tesla has outmaneuvered the Securities and Exchange Commission by appointing Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson to its board, management expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told CNBC on Friday. The electric-car company made the appointments on Friday to comply with an SEC settlement. “The SEC has been had on this one,” said Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the
We learned a lot this year: Amazon could be the next advertising giant, tech workers can push powerful executives into change and, despite all the writing on the Facebook wall, few of its executives are leaving. As 2018 comes to an end, we’re taking a look at the biggest stories in tech, media and commerce
First algorithms figured out how to decipher images. That’s why you can unlock an iPhone with your face. More recently, machine learning has become capable of generating and altering images and video. In 2018, researchers and artists took AI-made and enhanced visuals to another level. Scroll through these examples to see how software that can
Sears, the 125-year-old icon, has 24 hours to survive. The employer of more than 68,000 filed for bankruptcy in October. Its last shot at survival is a $4.6 billion proposal put forward by its chairman, Eddie Lampert, to buy the company out of bankruptcy through his hedge fund, ESL Investments. ESL is the only party
What is going on? That’s what Instagram users wanted to know Thursday morning when some people got a new version of the app that required them to tap through posts instead of scroll through them. Posts moved from right to left instead of up from the bottom of the phone screen. Here’s video of what
There are a lot of good reasons for people to quit Facebook right now, but the one that keeps me thinking about pulling the plug has nothing to do with Facebook’s embarrassing privacy record: I just have too many Facebook friends. I’m not trying to brag, but I have 981 Facebook friends. I could have
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman apologized Wednesday for funding a group that allegedly had a hand in spreading misinformation during the 2017 Alabama Senate race. In a post on his Medium blog, Hoffman said he was not aware of the tactics alleged in the New York Times article that called out his ties to American Engagement
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has burst onto the leaderboard of political donations in the age of Trump, cementing his status as a powerbroker in Silicon Valley politics. But over the last few weeks, Hoffman has been learning one of the hard lessons that almost all billionaires discover as they leap into political combat: This isn’t
2018 has been a bumpy year for digital media publishers. Several newsrooms have had to downsize, restructure and, in some cases, sell or shut down altogether. 2019 could be worse. Which is exactly the scenario union advocates spelled out as they organized digital publishers — including Vice, Gizmodo Media Group and Recode parent company Vox
Earlier this month, I was on the phone with Ryan Fox, cofounder of New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm that tracks Russian-related influence operations online. The so-called Yellow Vest protests had spread across France, and we were talking about the role disinformation played in the galvanizing French hashtag for the protests, #giletsjaunes. Conversations like these are
On the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, Imgur CEO Alan Schaaf explained how the image sharing site is trying to be a “beacon of hope to attract the people that are sick of social media’s toxicity.” Part of the solution, he told Recode’s Kara Swisher, is that Imgur doesn’t subscribe to free
When a little baby boy came wailing into the world on Sept. 12, 2005, his birth made headlines far from his home in Sweden. Oliver Christian Google Kai’s quirky techno name caught the attention of blogs across Europe and in the United States, and the search giant itself even published its own post, writing “we
Tesla fell as much as 6.7 percent Monday after the company cut prices in China and said it would pay customers who missed a tax credit deadline due to the company’s production delays. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down about 1 percent on Monday morning. CEO Elon Musk tweeted Saturday that it would make sure
2018 was the year that Big Tech’s mission statements came back to haunt it. When employees felt that their products were damaging the world and that management wouldn’t listen, they went public with their protests. At Google and Amazon, they challenged contracts to sell artificial intelligence and facial-recognition technology to the Pentagon and police. At
When Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa first came on the scene they were impressive novelties. Over time, though, they got smarter and more popular — and now we’re entering a new phase of voice tech, says Voicebot.ai editor Bret Kinsella. On the latest episode of Recode Decode, Kinsella told Recode’s Rani Molla that one of
Surveying the reactions to the latest revelation that Facebook played fast and loose with user data, it was hard not to harken back to what Scott McNally, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, told a group of reporters, including one from WIRED, in 1999: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” McNealy was widely
Most people are familiar with identity theft, which happens when someone pretends to be someone else to make purchases, apply for credit or even get their tax refund. However, an increasing number of criminals are doing the same thing, but stealing business data. Business identity theft was up 46 percent year-over-year in 2017, the latest
At the beginning of 2018, it didn’t seem like the open source movement could get any bigger. Android, the world’s most popular mobile operating system; websites including Facebook and Wikipedia; and a growing number of gadgets have open source software under the hood—literally, in the case of cars. The world’s largest companies, including Walmart and
In 1994, soon after Jeff Bezos incorporated what would become Amazon, the entrepreneur briefly contemplated changing the company’s name. The nascent firm had been dubbed “Cadabra,” but Bezos wanted a less playful, more accurate alternative: “Relentless.” (Relentless.com redirects to Amazon.com to this day.) Twenty-four years later, perhaps no adjective better describes Bezos’ empire than the
Tumblr has long housed some of the most self-expressive, marginalized communities of the internet. The site welcomed LGTBQ and sex-positive bloggers, artists and creators, self-proclaimed nerds and those in need of support. Now, with a strict and poorly executed ban on adult content, Tumblr is alienating power users and pushing some to other sites. The
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For the past several years, giant tech companies have rapidly ramped up investments in artificial intelligence and machine learning. They’ve competed intensely to hire more AI researchers and used that talent to rush out smarter virtual assistants and more powerful facial recognition. In 2018, some of those companies moved to put some guardrails around AI
Shares of Snap are now worth less than $5 each for the first time as of Friday’s close. The stock hit a new low of $4.99 per share as the entire market fell on fears of an impending government shutdown and the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes announced Wednesday. The stock has declined fairly steadily as
Many of Netflix’s most popular shows are owned by companies that plan to compete with Netflix. Which means many of those shows may vanish from the streaming service in the next few years. So if you like watching “The Office,” “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Gossip Girl” on Netflix, you should enjoy them while you can. More