Federal agencies are stepping up efforts to crack down on illegal robocalls by going after the phone companies that connect or enable them.
Why it matters: Robocalls number in the billions each month, according to data from YouMail. Federal agencies are responding by expanding their focus beyond the scam callers themselves.
Snap Inc.'s stock was down 11% Tuesday in after-hours trading after the company reported it fell short on Wall Street's revenue expectations.
Yes, but: The company otherwise did pretty well. It turned its first-ever profit on an adjusted basis and grew its user base for the fourth consecutive quarter. It also provided positive guidance for the quarter ahead.
Twitter on Tuesday announced a new policy aimed at discouraging the spread of deepfakes and other manipulated media, but the service will only ban content that threatens people's safety, rights or privacy.
Why it matters: Tech platforms are under pressure to stanch the flow of political misinformation, including faked videos and imagery. Twitter's approach, which covers a wide range of material but sets narrow criteria for deletion, is unlikely to satisfy critics or politicians like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi — who have both slammed platforms for allowing manipulated videos of them to spread.
eBay's shares rose nearly 10% on Tuesday after the Wall Street Journal reported New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange made a takeover offer for the e-commerce site.
The big picture: Intercontinental Exchange has previously approached the commerce giant, WSJ writes, citing people familiar with the matter. Still, the companies are not in formal talks and a deal remains uncertain.
Our thought bubble: When software introductions fail as badly as Iowa's just did, engineers typically "roll back" their system to its last previously functioning state. For Nevada's Democrats, that's likely to mean turning back the clock to the way they did it four years ago.
Intuit held a daylong trans summit last week that looked at the experiences of its own trans workers as well as bringing in trans youth from the GenderCool Project to get their perspective.
Why it matters: Historically, the discussion around transgender people in tech has focused a lot on workers that have transitioned at some point in their working careers. But many in the next generation of workers are entering the workforce as their authentic selves.
The disastrous rollout of the Iowa Democratic Party's new vote-reporting app Monday night looks to go down as a software train wreck for the ages.
The big picture: Coding disasters have been with us as long as there's been software, and in the past they've led to exploding space missions and lethal doses of radiation for cancer patients. In this case, the failure of a new app, followed by long delays with a phone-reporting backup system, seems to have crippled the calendar-leading Iowa Democratic caucuses — adding a fresh element of instability to our troubled election system.
Ancestry.com refused to comply with a search warrant pushed by a Pennsylvania court for police to gain access to its database of about 16 million DNA profiles, the company confirmed to Axios via email Monday night.
Why it matters: Per Axios' Kim Hart, firms that trace customers' ancestry have amassed huge DNA databases. Some have agreed to share access with law enforcement. The privacy questions this raises could become a "Supreme Court issue," retired investigator Paul Holes, who led the 2018 Golden State Killer case that used genetic data to identify the suspect, earlier told BuzzFeed, which first reported Ancestry's stand.
Asana, a San Francisco-based maker of project management software, said on Monday that it has confidentially filed with the SEC to go public, with a spokesperson confirming it will be via direct listing — making it only the third to do so after Spotify and Slack.
Why it matters: This alternative route has become a hot topic in the past year in Silicon Valley, with some vocal proponents touting its benefits, such as more market-based stock pricing and letting employees sell their stock earlier. Asana could go public before Airbnb, which has also been rumored to be considering a direct listing.
Disclosing YouTube revenue separately for the first time, Alphabet said Monday that the Google-owned video site accounted for more than 10% of the company's $46.1 billion in revenue last quarter, and more than $15 billion for the year.
Why it matters: Everyone knew YouTube was a big business, but until now, we didn't know exactly how big.
Intel is dropping development of the line of neural network processors it acquired through its $400 million purchase of AI chipmaker Nervana in 2016.
Why it matters: The move comes amid continued competition from Nvidia and others and follows Intel's purchase in December of Habana Labs, another startup in the AI chip space.
The 49ers and Chiefs weren't the only ones trying to score some points on Super Bowl Sunday as Verizon and T-Mobile used football's big day to trade shots over each other's 5G networks.
Why it matters: 5G is starting to arrive, but in different flavors and at different speeds — and with all the heavy marketing hype and consumer confusion that has accompanied past transitions from one generation of wireless to the next.
The spats between TV distributors and networks that grew out of the cable and satellite era are beginning to spill over into the streaming world.
Why it matters: Consumers that cut the cord to avoid paying for expensive TV packages are going to be susceptible to some of the same problems, like programming blackouts, that they had with traditional television.
YouTube will bar videos that lie about the mechanics of an election, the company announced in a blog post Monday, but indicated it remains reluctant to crack down more broadly on deceptive political speech, as some critics have demanded.
Why it matters: YouTube's content policies — which are separate from the advertising policies Google outlined in the fall — do not ban political falsehoods at a time when tech platforms are under fire to limit misinformation about candidates and elections.
