Daily Archives: November 19, 2021

Gillian Tan / Bloomberg: SoundHound, which offers voice AI tech to companies like Mercedes-Benz, Snap, and Mastercard, is going public via a SPAC merger at a ~$2.1B valuation  —  – Company counts Mercedes-Benz, Snap, Pandora among customers  — Shazam competitor’s technology can identify a song via humming

Reuters: JD.com warns of weak consumption demand in China in the second half of its fiscal year, after reporting a 25.5% YoY rise in net Q3 revenue to ~$34B  —  China’s JD.com Inc on Thursday warned that slowing consumption amid higher input costs could hurt business in the second half […]

Zoe Schiffer / NBC News: Internal memo: Apple affirms that employees have the right to discuss working conditions and pay internally and externally  —  Following months of internal controversy about how much workers make at one of the highest valued companies in the world, Apple has announced that employees …

Dade Hayes / Deadline: Disney adds Disney+ and ESPN+ to Hulu + Live TV, and will raise its monthly price by $5 to $70 for the ad-supported tier and $76 for ad-free, starting Dec. 21  —  Softening the blow of a monthly price hike, Disney is offering subscribers to Hulu’s […]

Gilad Edelman / Wired: Q&A with Integrity Institute’s Jeff Allen on how Facebook’s algorithm gives preference to engagement baiting, and how to address that from a design perspective  —  Jeff Allen, cofounder of the Integrity Institute and a former data scientist at Facebook, says social media companies need missions beyond […]

Enlarge / They ain’t afraid of no ghosts. A new generation goes a-busting. (credit: Sony Pictures) The original Ghostbusters is one of my all-time favorite movies. Ghostbusters II? Not so much. But I enjoyed the 2016 all-female film (especially the extended cut, which let the cast cut loose a bit […]

Susan Decker / Bloomberg: ITC says it will review its preliminary finding that Google infringed on five patents owned by Sonos; a final decision is scheduled to be issued on January 6  —  – ITC will review findings on Sonos’s patents, Google’s designs  — Sonos is seeking an import ban […]

Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic: A writer created a nonpartisan Facebook account to test the app’s algorithm for extreme content, but ended up being shown low-quality, clickbait posts  —  In 2019, a researcher at Facebook conducted an experiment to see whether the platform really has a tendency to send users […]

Enlarge / The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters stands in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday, March 14, 2020. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now signed off on offering booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to all adults, allowing […]

CoinDesk: Square’s TBD division releases a white paper detailing tbDEX, a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets  —  Payments giant Square released a white paper on Friday detailing a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets known as tbDEX.