YouTube outlined a string of new features coming to the internet’s biggest video platform, including enhancements to YouTube TV and the rollout next month in the U.S. of YouTube Shorts — its tool for creating short-form vertical videos a la TikTok. From a report: YouTube TV, Google’s pay-TV service, will introduce an add-on option that will let subscribers watch shows in…
Tag: eCommerce
SpaceX Announces First-Ever All-Civilian Space Flight Crew
Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur behind a payment processing startup, is funding a multimillion trip to space aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which could be the first-ever orbital flight crewed entirely by non-astronauts. CNN reports: Isaacman, 37, said he will command the mission, which is slated for late-2021 and will see the spacecraft make a “multi-day” trip into Earth’s orbit, according…
Amazon Now Has More Than 1 Million Employees
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Amazon.com said it now has about 1 million employees after hiring 250,000 workers in the third quarter, part of a growth spurt driven by booming ecommerce sales during the coronavirus pandemic and a milestone for a company founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookseller. Despite its rapid ascent, Amazon…
Amazon Remasters Streaming Tracks in Effort To Woo Subscribers
Amazon has teamed up with Universal Music and Warner Music to remaster thousands of popular streaming tracks to better-than-CD audio quality [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalleddd; alternative source], as the music industry tries to lure listeners to pricier subscriptions. From a report: In addition to a standard $10 a month streaming service comparable to Spotify, Amazon offers a high-definition…
Last-Minute TikTok Deal Averts Shutdown
“President Donald Trump said Saturday he’s given his ‘blessing’ to a proposed deal that would see the popular video-sharing app TikTok partner with Oracle and Walmart and form a U.S. company,” reports CBS News:
Mr. Trump has targeted Chinese-owned TikTok for national security and data privacy concerns in the latest flashpoint in the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. The president’s support…
Kanye West Accused of Plundering Trade-Secret Tech To Fund His Internet Church
Kanye West is being sued for pulling the tried-and-true Silicon Valley tactic of allegedly stealing trade tech secrets. Gizmodo reports: First spotted by TMZ, the suit is being spearheaded by small, Pennsylvania-based ecommerce company MyChannel (MYC, for short). MYC allege that after pouring millions of dollars and half a year’s worth of work into mocking up a spiffy new site for…
India Is Reportedly Looking To Ban 275 More Chinese Apps — Including PUBG, Zili and AliExpress
schwit1 writes: India has drawn up a list of 275 Chinese apps that it will examine for any violation of national security and user privacy, signaling heightened scrutiny and the possibility of more Chinese internet companies being banned in the country, according to people aware of the developments. This follows the high-profile ban of 59 Chinese apps last month, including short…
$350M ‘Quant Fund’ Played the Stock Market Using Real-Time Data — Then 2020 Happened
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Coatue’s $350 million data-driven ‘quant fund’ made a swift exit from the market in early April — having realized the coronavirus pandemic had rendered its algorithm unreliable, Business Insider reports. The tech-focused fund, launched by billionaire Philippe Laffont just over one year ago, joins a growing list of “quant funds” to…
Thank God for the Internet
Everything is so dark, but the internet — for all its bad and broken parts — is helping to keep us together in a way that has never happened before, writes Joshua Topolsky in an essay on Input Mag. Two excerpts from the essay: What the hell would we do right now without the internet? How would so many of us…
COVID-19 Pushes Up Internet Use 70 Percent, Streaming More Than 12 Percent, First Figures Reveal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: The first internet streaming and usage figures are coming in as the coronavirus pandemic places a quarter of the world’s population under lockdown. As millions of people go online for entertainment and more, total internet hits have surged by between 50% and 70%, according to preliminary statistics. Streaming has also jumped by at…