News

Uber's food delivery business outshines core rides service

Uber’s food delivery business brought in more money during the third quarter than its signature rides business, showing just how much consumer behavior has changed — and how far the company has adapted — since the pandemic struck. The San Francisco-based ride-hailing company lost $1.09 billion in the three months that ended Sept. 30 as […]

Alibaba revenue up 30% as virus drives demand for e-commerce

China’s biggest e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding on Thursday reported a 30% jump in quarterly revenue, as China recovers from the virus and online shopping demand remains high. Alibaba reported revenues of 155.1 billion yuan ($23.4 billion) for the three months ended September. Its profit was down 60% to 28.8 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) compared […]

Did social media actually counter election misinformation?

Ahead of the election, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube promised to clamp down on election misinformation, including unsubstantiated charges of fraud and premature declarations of victory by candidates. And they mostly did just that — though not without a few hiccups. But overall their measures still didn’t really address the problems exposed by the 2020 U.S. […]

Ride-hailing, delivery giants win fight against labor law

App-based companies like Uber, Lyft and Doordash have dodged a potentially devastating blow to their industry by carving out an exemption from a California law that required them to classify their drivers as employees instead of contractors. California voters passed Proposition 22 and delivered a stinging rebuke to state lawmakers and labor leaders who were […]

Pennsylvania emerges as online misinformation hot spot

A single voting machine jammed for just minutes Tuesday morning at a precinct in Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania — but misleading posts on Facebook and Twitter claimed multiple machines there were down for hours. Pennsylvania emerged as a hot spot for online misinformation on Election Day. Facebook and Twitter scrambled to take down […]

Walmart abandons shelf-scanning robots, lets humans do work

NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart is laying off the robots it had deployed in about 500 stores to keep tabs on what’s on and not on the shelves. The retailer said Monday it has ended its relationship with startup Bossa Nova Robotics, which builds roving robots equipped with cameras for identifying out-of-stock and misplaced products. […]

Google ad costs, not its alleged monopoly, irks businesses

NEW YORK (AP) — When asked about Google, Bryan Clayton voices a familiar lament among small business owners. “You keep getting squeezed further and further down the search results page,” says Clayton, CEO of GreenPal, a company that operates an app to help homeowners find lawn care. “As a startup, you don’t have a million-dollar […]

Judge postpones Trump's TikTok ban in suit brought by users

A federal judge has postponed President Donald Trump’s threatened shutdown of the popular short-form video app TikTok, siding with a Pennsylvania comedian and two other TikTok creators who say Trump’s order hampers their free speech. U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone on Friday blocked an upcoming Commerce Department action that would have effectively banned TikTok in […]

Harris target of more misinformation than Pence, data shows

CHICAGO (AP) — Long before Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced her as his running mate, Kamala Harris was the target of widespread online misinformation. Social media posts included racist claims that she was ineligible to serve in the White House or that she was lying about her Black and Indian heritage. Her mother is […]

FBI warns ransomware assault threatens US healthcare system

BOSTON (AP) — Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking. In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they […]