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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 […]

Here's why Ant Group is about to shatter IPO records

HONG KONG (AP) — Stella Su, who lives and works in Shanghai, has used an ATM only once in the past year. Instead of cash, in recent years she has done almost all her business using the digital wallet Alipay –- shopping in a mall, buying stuff online or transferring money to friends. “Now when […]

3 social media CEOs face grilling by GOP senators on bias

The CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google are facing a grilling by Republican senators making unfounded allegations that the tech giants show anti-conservative bias. The Senate Commerce Committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing Wednesday. The executives agreed to appear remotely after being […]

Chinese FinTech could shatter records with $35B share offer

The world’s largest fintech company, China’s Ant Group, will try to raise nearly $35 billion in a massive public offering of stock that would shatter records. Alibaba-affiliated Ant Group, which operates a suite of financial products including the widely-used Alipay digital wallet in China and one of the world’s largest money market funds, will hold […]

Finland shocked by therapy center hacking, client blackmail

Finland’s interior minister summoned key Cabinet members into an emergency meeting Sunday after hundreds — and possibly thousands — of patient records at a private Finnish psychotherapy center were accessed by a hacker or hackers now demanding ransoms. Finnish Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo tweeted that authorities would “provide speedy crisis help to victims” of the […]

Facebook demands academics disable ad-targeting data tool

Academics, journalists and First Amendment lawyers are rallying behind New York University researchers in a showdown with Facebook over its demand that they halt the collection of data showing who is being micro-targeted by political ads on the world’s dominant social media platform. The researchers say the disputed tool is vital to understanding how Facebook […]