James Farrell
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Lyft launches an electric self-driving taxi service in Las Vegas
Ride-hailing giant Lyft Inc. and the autonomous vehicle firm Motional today launched an all-electric robotaxi service that will hit the streets of Las Vegas. Motional, a $4 billion joint venture between Hyundai Motor Co. and auto parts maker Aptiv PLC, will provide Lyft with Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 electric sport utility vehicles. The cars feature more ...
Elon Musk gets cozy with China by penning an article for Communist Party regulator
Free speech advocate Elon Musk is currently turning heads after writing an article in a magazine of the Cyberspace Administration of China – the mighty agency dedicated to censoring the internet in China. Musk is currently being sued by Twitter Inc. after he pulled out of a $44 billion acquisition. Sometime later, the acquisition started ...
Facebook undergoes revamp and comes out looking like TikTok
Meta Platforms Inc. seems to have embraced the “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” adage as it announced today that people are about to see something new when they use the Facebook app – something like they see when they open their TikTok app. The revamped Facebook app will feature a Home tab that, ...
House panel votes to pass landmark privacy bill
A 53-2 bipartisan vote today means a privacy bill that could change how tech companies deal with users’ data in the U.S. is closer to coming to fruition. Democrats and Republicans in the House Energy and Commerce Committee greenlit the American Data Privacy and Protection Act in what is being called a giant leap for ...
Netflix says it isn’t concerned about losing almost a million subscribers
The king of streaming didn’t seem overly concerned today when it talked about losing close to 1 million subscribers from April to July on an earnings call. Chief Executive Reed Hastings said the company was prepared to lose more subscribers than that, perhaps even close to 2 million. Still, this is the biggest loss of ...
Meta tries to ascertain its impact on society in its first human rights report
Meta Platforms Inc. today released its first human rights report, an 83-page document that covers the years 2020 and 2021. According to the Facebook parent company, the report includes “insights and actions from our human rights due diligence on products, countries, and responses to emerging crises.” Over the years, the company has been criticized for ...
More than 500 women are suing Uber over sexual assaults by drivers
A complaint was issued with a San Francisco County Superior Court today claiming that more than 550 women riders were sexually assaulted by drivers who works for Uber Technologies Inc. The complaint says that “women passengers in multiple states were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed, or otherwise attacked.” Attorneys at ...
‘Scarcity breeds clarity’: Google tells staff it will slow hiring next year
Google LLC Chief Executive Sundar Pichai sent a memo to employees today informing them that next year it will cut back on hiring and concentrate on consolidating its investments. Pichai said that doesn’t mean no new hires, but those that do come in will likely work in “engineering, technical and other critical roles.” He added ...
FTC will boost efforts to prevent sharing of sensitive data amid abortion concerns
The Federal Trade Commission today said it’s in the process of cracking down on companies that illegally share data gleaned from consumers, especially health data. In a blog post today, Kristin Cohen, the FTC’s acting associate director in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, said there remain many “shadowy” brokers who collect people’s data ...
Tesla is being investigated for two new fatal crashes
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today said it has started an investigation into two fatal crashes involving Tesla Inc. cars. One of the crashes happened recently in California. A 2018 Tesla Model 3 hit a pedestrian and killed her, and investigators believe that the reason for the crash could have been the car’s advanced ...