Last year, Seattle’s city council repealed a tax on big employers less than a month after approving the legislation designed to raise funds to support homeless programs. The quick reversal came after Amazon, which employs around 45,000 people in the city, halted the construction of a new building and threatened to not occupy space it
Month: February 2019
President Trump’s immigration policies have made it harder for tech companies to bring highly skilled workers to the US, according to newly released immigration data. That’s bad news for US tech companies as well as non-tech companies, which rely on third-party outsourcing companies to execute the growing technology sides of their businesses. It could also
General Electric CEO Larry Culp has simplified the company’s report techniques and could be on the right path to fix the challenges in its power division, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday. Culp, who became chief of GE in September, delivered his first annual letter to shareholders on Tuesday that Cramer said made a significant departure
When Y Combinator accidentally admitted 15,000 people to its 3,000-person Startup School online program last summer due to an almost funny technical glitch, it was an embarrassing moment for one of Silicon Valley’s marquee brands, and a rollercoaster of an experience for emotionally vulnerable startup founders. The accepted founders should have been rejected. The rejected
Guidebooks highlight San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood for its lively bars and restaurants, nurtured by the removal of an earthquake-damaged freeway and swelling tech industry salaries. At Uber’s headquarters nearby, data scientists working on the company’s food delivery service, Uber Eats, view the scene through a more numerical lens. Their logs indicates that restaurants in
As the world learns more and more about how the world will operate with 5G, Cisco is one stock that investors should get their hands on, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said on Tuesday. The “Mad Money” host said while the Cisco stock is still cheap, selling for 15 times earnings and offering a 2.7 percent yield,
As the US wrestles with what to do about the tremendous power its technology giants have amassed, the Federal Trade Commission is launching a new task force, which will keep tabs on the industry’s competitive landscape and assess mergers both past and present. But critics say the creation of the task force is little more
Elon Musk’s itchy Twitter finger has got him in trouble again. The Tesla CEO’s Twitter use is supposed to be closely monitored since he reached a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a different tweet-first, justify-later controversy — last August, Musk tweeted that he had sufficient funding to take Tesla private. But
Tech workers are increasingly uneasy about their employers’ work with the US government, especially the military. Some protests have led to real change: Google last year decided not to renew a contract with the Pentagon to apply artificial intelligence to drone footage, after 4,000 employees signed a petition protesting the arrangement. Last week, a group
If you’re like Spike Lee and felt underwhelmed by “Green Book” or angered over its best picture win Sunday night, fret not. Another story inspired by a travel guide for Jim Crow-era black road trippers is on the way to the screen. And it’s being brought to the screen by one of Lee’s producers on
On the latest episode of Recode Decode, Rhizome artistic director Michael Connor joined Recode’s Kara Swisher in studio to talk about the group’s exhibit at the New Museum, “The Art Happens Here,” and the future of art made on the internet — which Rhizome calls “net art.” “It’s not a passive object on a shelf,”
The Oscars is the biggest event of the year for Hollywood – and the battles brewing and questions swirling about this year’s show capture the tension and transformation underway in the entertainment industry. Unlike most years, where a few front-runners are expected to nab the top awards, this year’s awards are more of a toss-up.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos thinks it’s wrong to be so fearful of his company’s outsize presence. He may have a point. At an internal all-hands staff meeting last March, an employee asked Bezos about the growing fear over Amazon potentially killing competition in many different industries, according to a recording CNBC has heard. The questioner
Ajit Pai says the Federal Communications Commission’s annual broadband assessment will show that his deregulatory policies have substantially improved access in the United States. The annual report will also conclude that broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely basis. The FCC hasn’t released the full Broadband Deployment Report yet and
It’s been a long time since Ev Williams, one of Twitter’s four co-founders and its one-time CEO, was making any notable decisions within the company he created way back in 2006. But on Friday, when Williams announced that he is leaving Twitter’s board to “ride off into the sunset” and “focus on some other things,”
A group of around 50 Microsoft workers signed a letter today demanding the company cancel its nearly half-billion-dollar contract with the US military to license its augmented reality HoloLens technology for use in military combat and training. The letter, addressed to Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith, was initially circulated internally and is
While international bookmakers have long allowed Americans to bet on the Oscars, this is the first time they can legally place bets domestically. The 91st annual Academy Awards are scheduled for Sunday night. New Jersey is the only state allowing such bets, but the expansion away from traditional gambling — horse and dog racing and
Just before Valentine’s Day last week, Belgian security researcher Inti De Ceukelaire noticed something strange on Facebook. He found the social network’s search function treated pictures of men and women in dramatically different ways. Searching for “photos of my female friends” returned a hodgepodge of images, whereas a similar search for “photos of my male
Even before the online gig economy existed, a simple truth defined life in the American workforce: full-time employees get a safety net—the benefits, the labor protections, the security—and everyone else goes without. Tech companies have revolutionized how people work in countless ways, but this benefits gap persists, especially among low-income workers. The question now is
It’s been a big week for 5G, the next generation of wireless networks. Samsung announced its first 5G capable phone, the S10, on Wednesday. Qualcomm announced a new 5G modem on Tuesday. But President Trump is aiming higher. “I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible,” Trump wrote
Google announced today it will end forced arbitration for current and future employees, a practice that waives workers’ rights to sue their employer in court. The changes will apply to current and future Google employees beginning March 21, for any new cases. The move comes after months of sustained pressure by employee activists demanding the
Newly released court documents paint the clearest picture yet of what the joint health-care venture between Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway is up to. The three companies created the still-unnamed, not-for-profit joint venture in January 2018. Since then, the venture, known as ABC, has named renowned surgeon, author and speaker Dr. Atul Gawande as
As trust in Facebook and its ability to handle user data has eroded over the past year, one particular question has been asked a lot: Why isn’t there an ad-free version of Facebook? The general thinking is that Facebook should offer users a version of its service that doesn’t depend on user data and targeted
Some AT&T customers noticed a strange phenomenon earlier this year. The upper left corner of their smartphones began displaying “5GE,” ostensibly indicating their phones were using 5G technology. And while Samsung announced Wednesday that it will soon release a 5G-compatible phone, actual 5G networks in the US are still in their nascent stages. AT&T is
Southwest Airlines is planning to investigate maintenance issues that have kept an “unprecedented” number of aircraft out of service and prompted flight cancellations as a feud heats up between the carrier and its mechanics’ union. Southwest says that on any given day it plans to have roughly 20 aircraft out of its fleet of about
Thousands of public school teachers in California’s Oakland Unified School District — one of the largest school districts in the state, representing 3,000 teachers and more than 100 schools — voted to go on strike beginning this Thursday. The move comes at a time when a wave of public school teachers across the nation —
The much anticipated remake of the cult classic sci-fi novel “Dune” finally got a release date last week, but the film’s Nov. 20, 2020 trip to theaters is upending another popular franchise’s next movie. “Fantastic Beasts 3,” the third installment of five in the prequel “Harry Potter” saga, had initially been slated for that spot
Seven years ago, a smooth-talking associate of Peter Thiel promised that he had launched the “capstone” to Thiel’s investment empire, naming their new firm after a mythical metal in Lord of the Rings because it was flashy yet permanent. “It’s invaluable,” leader Ajay Royan told one interviewer about Mithril Capital. “It’s lifesaving. It’s sustainable. It
Two years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a renewed focus on communities and its Groups feature, boasting that it would help create a more “meaningful” social infrastructure. It worked. Last month, Zuckerberg told investors that “hundreds of millions” of users reported belonging in “meaningful groups,” up from one million in 2017, when the company
Humans pricked by info-hunger pangs used to hunt and peck for scraps of trivia on the savanna of the internet. Now we sit in screen-glow-flooded caves and grunt, “Alexa!” Virtual assistants do the dirty work for us. Problem is, computers can’t really speak the language. Many of our densest, most reliable troves of knowledge, from