Never underestimate the market-moving potential of a nagging child. “Mom, Dad, I want THIS for Christmas!” is a phrase that each year leads to billions of dollars of toy sales. And it’s a phrase parents can appreciate, because knowing what your kid actually wants to find under the tree helps minimize Christmas morning tears. Toy
Month: December 2018
During a grueling 3.5 hour congressional committee hearing today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced some tough questions around his company’s controversial project to build a censored search product in China. Pichai could have used the opportunity to publicly scrap plans to build a version of his company’s core tool, code-named Dragonfly, that would block terms
Delta Air Lines on Tuesday introduced a “simplified” boarding system: Passengers will be divided into eight categories, based on the type of ticket they bought. Delta will start using the new boarding order on Jan. 23. It reflects Delta’s efforts over the past six years to divide the economy cabin into even smaller classes of
Before they hand control of the House of Representatives over to Democrats, House Republicans are mounting one more effort to hold Silicon Valley giants accountable for what they say is rampant liberal bias at tech companies. In the hot seat this time: Google CEO Sundar Pichai. On Tuesday, Pichai will testify before the House Judiciary
On the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, Framebridge CEO Susan Tynan joined Kara in Washington, D.C., to talk about the challenges of starting an online framing company, being a startup in the era of Big Tech and how the D.C.-based company is thinking about Amazon’s planned construction of a new office nearby.
As Google and Facebook reckon with a barrage of privacy issues and technology workers start demanding more transparency from their employers, Salesforce has just announced the hire of its first chief ethical and human use officer. Salesforce said on Monday that Paula Goldman is joining the company from Omidyar Network, the investment firm created by
Fifty years ago today, Doug Engelbart showed 2,000 people a preview of the future. Engelbart gave a demonstration of the “oN-Line System” at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco on Dec. 9, 1968. The oN-Line System was the first hypertext system, preceding the web by more than 20 years. But it was so
During Edward Norton’s long acting career, the Golden Globe Award winner has enjoyed a side gig backing tech start-ups like Uber, data analytics firm Kenso and crowdfunding site CrowdRise. He started way back in 2000 as founding investor of wastewater treatment company Baswood. It doesn’t take long in start-up land to learn that data science
When the stock market sells off, CNBC’s Jim Cramer always advises searching for stocks that have been dragged down with the broader market despite the strength of their underlying businesses. The last time the market endured a major sell-off, those stocks ended up being the “cloud kings,” Cramer’s group of top-quality plays in the cloud-computing
On Thursday in Montreal, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau boasted about his country’s leading position in artificial intelligence and openness to international collaboration. A few miles away, the world’s largest AI conference proceeded without scores of researchers denied visas by Trudeau’s government. All week, Montreal has played host to 8,000 people attending the NeurIPS conference,
While it might seem from news coverage and social media that Amazon’s second headquarters decision angered the public, people were much more likely to favor the decision than to have a negative opinion of it, according to a survey conducted for Recode by the consumer research company Toluna. Indeed, the majority of Americans said they
Google‘s creation of a censored search engine for China, known as “Project Dragonfly,” is proof China has made “successful efforts to recruit Western companies to their information control efforts,” said Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) in Washington D.C. Friday. “It’s pretty amazing to me that Google is actually looking to work with China to develop a
Racing its ride-hailing rival Uber to an IPO, Lyft confidentially filed the paperwork to go public, putting it on pace for a listing in the first quarter of next year. Uber is not likely to arrive on a stock exchange until the middle of next year at the earliest. Here’s why Lyft, which las long
Julia Baritz is having quite a week. The Austin-based developer is the founder and lead architect of Pillowfort.io, a community-oriented social media platform that’s quietly amassed around 20,000 users in its first two and a half years. But since Monday, Baritz has been inundated with more than 8,000 requests from people clamoring to join her
Two dozen Amazon warehouse employees in New Jersey were hospitalized Wednesday, one in critical condition, after a robot punctured a can of bear repellent, according to local reports. The news was soon picked up by national outlets and spread on social media, in part because it’s a perfect horror story for the year of our
Political journalists love to talk about President Trump’s mood. But Jonathan Swan from Axios and Maggie Haberman from the New York Times — two of the best-sourced reporters on the White House — say the “fumes beat” is often blown out of proportion. “I don’t think that he is in this constant state of steam
When you make your holiday travel plans this year, don’t forget about podcasts. They’re perfect for long car trips and plane rides, and the end of the year is a great time to catch up on the biggest and most interesting interviews you might have missed the first time around. With that in mind, we
A free cheesecake promotion celebrating Cheesecake Factory’s 40th anniversary turned ugly as orders and DoorDash delivery drivers flooded restaurants. A brawl broke out at one location, and one person was arrested. The nationwide promotion, which kicked off at 11:30 a.m. local time Wednesday, offered 40,000 free slices of cheesecake to customers who ordered through the
What do a patent application drawing for troll socks, a cartoon scorpion wearing a hard hat, and a comic about cat parkour have in common? They were all reportedly flagged by Tumblr this week after the microblogging platform announced that it would no longer allow “adult content.” But so far, Tumblr’s method for detecting posts
The latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher is a live interview recorded last night in Washington, D.C.: Kara spoke to NBC/MSNBC* political journalists Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell and Hallie Jackson about everything from the 2020 presidential race to how Facebook has changed society. “Facebook has replaced the local newspaper,” Todd said. “I think
A British lawmaker has released more than 200 pages of confidential, internal Facebook emails revealing discussions of payments for user data and special access for certain companies, including Netflix, Airbnb and Lyft. Damian Collins, a British Member of Parliament and vocal critic of Facebook, published the emails Wednesday alongside a summary of his findings and
How do you value a sitcom that hasn’t been on TV for 14 years? Easy: You tell Netflix you’re going to take it away, and see how much they pay. The answer, as we all know by now, is $100 million. Which is what Netflix is going to pay AT&T* for the right to stream
Tumblr was never explicitly a space for porn, but, like most things on the internet, it is chock full of it anyway. Or at least it was. On Monday, to the shock of the millions of users who had used the microblogging site to consume and share porn GIFs, images, and videos, Tumblr banned the
London is predicted to lose up to 800 billion euros ($909 billion) of assets by March next year, as banks move their business operations to other hubs before Brexit takes place. Lobby group Frankfurt Main Finance (FMF) released the figure last week, which it calculated based on a confirmation that 30 financial institutions had applied
Another one bites the dust. This time, millennials are killing canned tuna, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Consumption of canned tuna has dropped 42 percent per capita from the last 30 years through 2016, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. And the industry places the blame on younger consumers, who want fresher
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement to effectively pause their trade war and work toward a pact. The cease-fire leaves American tariffs in place on $250 billion in Chinese goods, but removes — for now —Trump’s threat to increase the tariffs on $200 billion of those goods in January
The latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher is a bit of a milestone: It’s our 300th episode! To celebrate, Kara invited her older son Louie, as well as the Verge’s Silicon Valley editor Casey Newton, to talk about the state of social media, how their tech habits are changing and why Casey thinks
As the holidays approach, carmakers are running those familiar holiday sales commercials — complete with falling snow and massive red bows on top of cars. It’s not just good marketing. December is, in fact, one of the biggest months of the year for auto sales as well as one of the best times to buy
The past three months have not been kind to large public technology companies. Amid crescendos of criticism about monopolistic power, these companies saw their market value plummet. The rampant selling has leveled off, at least for the moment, so it’s an opportune time to ask: What comes next? This was hardly the first drop in
“I’ve been having an extramarital affair for a decade,” actor Robert Downey Jr. said with a frown. “With a brand,” he quickly added, his glum expression transforming into a grin. The “Iron Man” actor turned out for a media preview staged by Audi to mark the opening of the annual Los Angeles Auto Show this