Technology category, Page 23
Sam Bankman-Fried’s downfall sends shockwaves through crypto
NEW YORK — Sam Bankman-Fried received numerous plaudits as he rapidly achieved superstar status as the head of cryptocurrency exchange FTX: the savior of crypto, the newest force in Democratic politics and potentially the world’s first trillionaire. Now the comments about the 30-year-old Bankman-Fried range from bemused to hostile after...
Elon Musk ends remote work at Twitter, warns of troubles aheadVideo
Elon Musk has emailed Twitter employees, most working remotely, ordering them to return to the office immediately for at least 40 hours a week and warning of “difficult times ahead.” A pair of Wednesday night missives seen by The Associated Press marked Musk’s first companywide message to employees who survived...
‘Official’ Twitter tag for some users appears, then vanishes
Now you see a new “official” label on some high-profile Twitter accounts, now you don’t. Twitter began adding gray “official” labels to some high-profile accounts Wednesday to indicate that they are authentic, the latest twist in new owner Elon Musk’s chaotic overhaul of the platform and its verification system. A...
Facebook parent Meta cuts 11,000 jobs, 13% of workforce
Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday. The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner,...
Crypto exchange Binance to buy rival FTX in apparent bailout
NEW YORK — The cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it plans to buy its rival FTX Trading, in what appears to be a bailout of FTX. The owners of the two exchanges — Samuel Bankman-Fried of FTX and Changpeng Zhao of Binance — announced the deal on Twitter, but did not...
Meta reportedly to start laying off thousands of staff this week
Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin layoffs this week that will affect thousands of workers, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The job cuts could come as early as Wednesday, the newspaper said. The company has already told employees to cancel non-essential travel...
Elon Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators
BOSTON — Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another. The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names — not their account names — and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to...
Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads
The discourse was never all that civil on Twitter. The loudest voices have often drowned out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, it’s much easier to rage-tweet at a perceived enemy than to seek common ground, whether the argument is about transgender kids or baseball. In the chaos that has...
Widespread Twitter layoffs begin a week after Musk takeover
Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the platform as a source of reliable information just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At...
Musk: People banned from Twitter won’t be restored for weeks
NEW YORK — Elon Musk said Wednesday that Twitter will not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that, a process that will take at least a few weeks. That would mean people banned from the site...
Amazon Music expands catalog to 100M songs for members
LOS ANGELES — Amazon Music is gearing up for a massive content expansion: The streaming giant will offer a full catalog of music with more than 100 million songs for members. The streaming service told The Associated Press that members will gain hundreds of millions of songs — a huge...
Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, ousts top executives
Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and ousted the CEO, chief financial officer and the company’s general counsel, two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night. The people wouldn’t say if all the paperwork for the deal, originally valued at $44 billion, had been signed or if the...
Argo AI, a Pittsburgh driverless car pioneer, goes out of business
One of Pittsburgh’s autonomous vehicle companies announced Wednesday that it is shutting down. It’s unclear how many Pittsburgh workers will be laid off, as some Argo AI employees at the Strip District-based company will be absorbed into two of Argo’s investors: Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG. In addition to...
Report: TikTok bad at culling U.S. election misinformation ads
TikTok’s algorithms are very good at finding videos to keep people glued to their phone screens for hours on end. What they are not so good at, a new report has found, is detecting ads that contain blatant misinformation about U.S. elections. That’s despite TikTok having banned all political advertisements...
Poor, less white U.S. neighborhoods get worst internet deals
A couple of years into the pandemic, Shirley Neville had finally had enough of her shoddy internet service. “It was just a headache,” said Neville, who lives in a middle-class neighborhood in New Orleans whose residents are almost all Black or Latino. “When I was getting ready to use my...
11 more crash deaths are linked to automated-tech vehicles
DETROIT — Eleven additional people were killed in U.S. crashes involving vehicles that were using automated driving systems during a four-month period earlier this year, according to newly released government data, part of an alarming pattern of incidents linked to the technology. Ten of the deaths involved vehicles made by...
Semafor news site makes debut, intent on reinventing news
NEW YORK — The media organization Semafor launched on Tuesday with no less an ambition than reinventing the news story. Semafor is the brainchild of Ben Smith — former media reporter for The New York Times and, before that, former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed — and Justin Smith, ex-CEO of Bloomberg...
Workforce training seen as a key to maximizing $63 million grant to boost region’s robotics, AI industries
While Southwestern Pennsylvania’s robotics industry has the potential to grow with a targeted federal grant of almost $63 million, officials Monday stressed the need for a skilled workforce to make that potential for growth a reality. “This is about our economic future,” said Craig Buerstatte, the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s...
Pa. plan for electric vehicle supercharger stations becoming reality
Davie Huddleston wasn’t looking for an electric vehicle. He loves his gas-powered Nissan Murano convertible. But his two daughters kept insisting, and he finally bought one. “They should sell electric vehicles,” he said of his daughters. “It was constant. And they had a point for my every objection. But it...
Tesla robot walks, waves, but doesn’t show off complex tasks
DETROIT — An early prototype of Tesla Inc.’s proposed Optimus humanoid robot slowly and awkwardly walked onto a stage, turned, and waved to a cheering crowd at the company’s artificial intelligence event Friday. But the basic tasks by the robot with exposed wires and electronics — as well as a...
Giorgio Coraluppi, Pittsburgh inventor of tech for video calls, lauded as pioneer
People who rely on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, WhatsApp and other instant messaging platforms have Giorgio Coraluppi to thank. The longtime Pittsburgh resident and businessman, known as “Dr. C,” invented the technology for the digital teleconference call from which those apps were derived. Following his death Wednesday, Sept. 28, at...
Meta disables Russian propaganda network targeting Europe
A sprawling disinformation network originating in Russia sought to use hundreds of fake social media accounts and dozens of sham news websites to spread Kremlin talking points about the invasion of Ukraine, Meta revealed Tuesday. The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it identified and disabled the operation before...
As TikTok eats the world, YouTube makes a bid for creators’ hearts — and wallets
PLAYA VISTA, Calif. — Gathered in the company’s historic Spruce Goose hangar Tuesday morning, a host of YouTube leaders laid out a roadmap for the platform’s evolving relationship with both video creators and the music industry, announcing new monetization tools and industry partnerships in the cavernous event space where Howard...
Serious breach at Uber spotlights hacker social deception
The ride-hailing service Uber said Friday that all its services were operational following what security professionals are calling a major data breach, claiming there was no evidence the hacker got access to sensitive user data. But the breach, apparently by a lone hacker, put the spotlight on an increasingly effective...
As data centers proliferate, neighbors knock the noise
MANASSAS, Va. — In a universe of cloud computing, northern Virginia might be in a perpetual fog. More of the data centers that feed the cloud are clustered in the region outside the nation’s capital than anywhere else in the world. As cloud computing — which enables data storage and...
