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From Square to Block: Another tech company changes its name

There’s a new Silicon Valley corporate name change on the block. A month after Facebook renamed itself Meta, Square Inc., the payments company headed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, is changing its name to Block Inc. The San Francisco-based company said Wednesday it’s making the change because the Square name has become synonymous with […]

'Buy now, pay later' catches on just in time for holidays

As Americans shop for the holidays, they will likely see a swarm of offers to get their gifts now but pay for them later in fixed monthly installments. Fueled by several hot Silicon Valley startups as well as a push by the big credit card companies, “buy now, pay later” is now available for purchasing […]

Haugen urges lawmakers to avert impasse on social media laws

Ex-Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen implored lawmakers Wednesday to avert the usual congressional stalemates as they weigh proposals to curb abuses on social media platforms by limiting the companies’ free-speech protections against legal liability. Still, Haugen urged caution in making changes to the 1996 law that provides legal protection both for content the platforms […]

Facebook: Fake scientist used to spread anti-US propaganda

A disinformation network with ties to China used hundreds of fake social media accounts — including one belonging to a fictitious Swiss biologist — to spread an unfounded claim that the U.S. pressured scientists to blame China for the coronavirus, Facebook said Wednesday. The company based in Menlo Park, California, did not directly attribute the […]

Millennial Money: Sustain generosity beyond the holidays

2020 asked a lot from us. We faced new challenges and reckoned with old ones, and often the world’s problems collided with our own individual needs. Help — whether in donations or even just attention — might’ve been hard to give when you required some yourself. If your finances are in better shape this giving […]

Sports bettors dream: 86 able to bet on game after it ended

It was every sports bettor’s dream: Being able to bet on a game after it had already ended. But the 86 New Jersey gamblers who thought they were beating the system had their bets on a British soccer game voided, and the two betting companies involved got fined. The mishap was revealed in documents made […]

Biden tries to reassure on COVID as he sells spending plan

President Joe Biden on Tuesday went to Minnesota to pitch his completed infrastructure deal and a giant social spending bill that he’s still trying to get passed, but also found himself reassuring the nation he would fight the evolving COVID-19 threat without resorting to “shutdowns and lockdowns.” Biden met with students at Dakota County Technical […]

Cyber Monday caps holiday shopping weekend as virus lingers

Americans are spending freely and going back to store shopping, knocking out some of the momentum in online sales from last year when Americans were making many of their purchases exclusively via the internet. Shopper traffic roared back on Black Friday, but it was still below pre-pandemic levels, in part because retailers spread out big […]

New Twitter CEO steps from behind the scenes to high profile

Newly named Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has emerged from behind the scenes to take over one of Silicon Valley’s highest-profile and politically volatile jobs. But his prior lack of name recognition coupled with a solid technical background appears to be what some big company backers were looking for to lead Twitter out of its current […]

Carmaker Stellantis secures supply of battery-grade lithium

The carmaker Stellantis said Monday that it has secured a five-year supply of battery-grade lithium hydroxide in Europe to support its plans to convert to 98% electrified vehicles by 2025. Stellantis, the company that combined PSA Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler, signed a binding agreement with Vulcan Energy Resources Ltd. in Germany, which uses geothermal energy […]