Google is beginning to open up access to its Bard artificial-intelligence service, the company said Tuesday. The search giant sees Bard as “a complementary experience to Google Search,” and those who ask questions to Bard will also see options allowing them to easily search for more information through the Google search engine. “We’ll also be…
Cruise, the self-driving unit of General Motors Co. that operates a robotaxi service in San Francisco, has applied for permission to test its autonomous vehicles across all of California. Cruise launched a fully autonomous robotaxi service in San Francisco last June. Late last year, it expanded that service to Phoenix and Austin, Texas. “While this…
A push to ban TikTok in the U.S. picked up more supporters on Tuesday, with the Biden White House and a bipartisan group of 12 senators offering their endorsements. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the latest bipartisan bill that would block TikTok, called the RESTRICT Act, will help “address the threats…
So much for teens spending hours scrolling through 10-second videos: TikTok wants to limit how much time young people spend on TikTok each day. The social-media platform, whose parent is the Chinese-controlled ByteDance, says it will debut a new 60-minute daily screen-time limit for minors in the coming weeks, which is intended to “help teens…
Black homeownership rates have been largely stagnant for decades, despite rising slightly in recent years, according to a new analysis from Apartment List. That’s bad news for closing the racial wealth gap. Currently, the Black homeownership rate is 44% — up from 40.8% in 2016, with the number of Black homeowners increasing by about 750,000 in…
Nvidia Corp. shares jumped in after-hours trading Wednesday, as the graphics-chip specialist revealed it has mostly settled inventory issues and is focusing on opportunities in artificial intelligence. Nvidia NVDA, +0.48% founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang revealed in a conference call Wednesday afternoon that Nvidia’s AI software will now be available in several cloud-computing offerings,…
Beware of potential romantic partners who are looking for money instead of love. In 2022, nearly 70,000 Americans lost money to romance scams, up from 56,000 the year before, according to the Federal Trade Commission. People lost a total of $1.3 billion in 2022, broadly in line with the previous year, based on updated data,…
A 70-year-old gamer from Missouri known as @GrndPaGaming said he’s been playing videogames since 1976 and has never looked back. “The graphics have changed immensely. The games are now more detailed, realistic and faster,” said @GrndPaGaming, who declined to give his name. He first started playing on an Apple 1 AAPL, +0.25% computer, but now…
President Joe Biden renewed his pitch for bipartisan antitrust enforcement during his State of the Union address Tuesday — after a year in which Congress whiffed again on Big Tech legislation. “Pass bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage,” Biden said in his…
Will you be able to build the next blockbuster videogame at home using ChatGPT? Not so fast, says Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. TTWO, -3.40% Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick. But that doesn’t mean the technology lacks promise. Read: Take-Two stock slips as company plans cost cuts, outlook falls below Street view Zelnick said on his company’s…
Alphabet Inc.’s stock slipped nearly 5% in extended trading Thursday after the tech giant missed slightly on revenue and earnings in ho-hum quarterly results. Google’s parent company reported fiscal fourth-quarter total revenue of $76.05 billion, up from $75.3 billion a year ago. Earnings were $13.62 billion, or $1.05 per share, compared with $20.64 billion, or…
Shares of Baidu Inc. advanced in Hong Kong, following a surge overnight in U.S.-listed ADRs on news that BlackRock Inc. raised its stake in the Chinese internet-search giant. Shares 9888, +4.78% rose as much as 7.9% Thursday in the Asian financial hub, hours after the company’s ADRs BIDU, +13.05% closed 13% higher at US$152.25 in…
Investors have got the jitters as a big week unfolds — several central bank meetings including the Fed, earnings from Apple and Amazon.com, and jobs data. Yikes. Any investor out there who isn’t nervous, perhaps should recheck his gut, says our call of the day, from Standard Chartered’s global head of research, Eric Robertsen. “We…
In the biggest week of the holiday-earnings season, Big Tech results will receive the spotlight amid thousands of layoffs that could only be the beginning. After tech stocks were decimated in 2022, investors will be looking for signs of a turnaround in holiday reports and potential forecasts for the year ahead from three of 2022’s…
More than 3,000 Amazon.com Inc. employees in New York, California and the company’s home state of Washington were recently notified that they are losing their jobs as part of a second big wave of the company’s mass layoffs. As required by law, Amazon AMZN filed notices of the job cuts with the three states this…
Microsoft Corp.’s profit declined more than 12% in the holiday season, and executives said Tuesday that a revenue deceleration at the end of 2022 is expected to continue into the new year as the company lays off workers. Microsoft MSFT Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said in a conference call Tuesday that “we are seeing…
Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said top executives would take pay cuts following the largest round of layoffs in the company’s history. Speaking at a companywide meeting on Monday, Pichai said employees at the senior-vice president level and above would get lower bonuses as part of cost-cutting measures, according to people who heard the remarks. The comments came after…
After slowing its pace of hiring last year, Spotify Technology SA is planning layoffs as soon as this week, according to a new report, adding to the wave of jobs cuts sweeping across the tech industry. Citing people familiar with the plans, Bloomberg News reported late Sunday that the streaming music service faces imminent job…
More than 55,000 global technology sector employees have been laid off in the first few weeks of 2023, according to data compiled by the Layoffs.fyi website. The website’s tally of global tech layoffs in 2023 has doubled this week. It had recorded just over 25,000 as of Tuesday. The data suggest 2023 is on pace…
California and Silicon Valley saw net gains in jobs in December, even as tech companies based in the state announce thousands of layoffs. Employers added 16,200 nonfarm payroll jobs in December, the state’s Employment Development Department reported Friday, even as Silicon Valley companies like Intel Corp. INTC, +2.81% began layoffs. The state’s jobless rate stayed at…