Activision Blizzard is asking employees to “take time to consider the consequences” of workers’ recent efforts to unionize, a tactic some organizers are calling "union busting."
Driving the news: Chief administrative officer Brian Bulatao sent an internal email on Friday, claiming that employees signing union cards “will have signed over to [the Communications Workers of America] the exclusive right to ‘represent [you]’...that means your ability to negotiate all your own working conditions will be turned over to CWA.”
The AI startup Primer has harnessed a natural language processing (NLP) model to generate conversation-provoking questions for team building.
Why it matters: The exercise shows how AI, properly trained by experts, can "help humans be more humans," as Primer director of science John Bohannon puts it.
Back in 2018, White House National Security Council official Gen. Robert Spalding wrote a controversial PowerPoint deck on how the U.S. government could play a greater role in building 5G networks. Now Spalding has left government and military service and landed $20 million to bring some of his vision to life via a private company.
How it works: The startup, Sempre, aims to offer a more secure, smarter alternative to the traditional cell tower, adding computing power at the edge and making the cell tower itself more resilient to attacks.
Retailers are fighting online anonymity to stop stolen goods from being resold on the internet.
Driving the news: CEOs of nearly two dozen retail companies threw their weight today behind legislation aimed at marketplaces like Amazon and eBay in a letter to congressional leaders.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo made waves in Washington when she criticized Europe's planned regulations of tech companies, despite the White House's interests in reining in the sector at home.
Why it matters: The incident reveals the balancing act the Biden administration performs as it weighs talking tough on Big Tech while standing up for U.S. firms abroad.
A workers group for employees of Activision Blizzard started a strike fund today and has begun distributing union authorization cards to the company’s employees.
Why it matters: The A Better ABK organization is no longer just hinting at trying to form what would become the first major video game developer union in the U.S. They’re doing it.
Today's cars typically lose value as soon as they leave the dealership. But with regular software updates, it's possible your next car might keep more of its value over time.
The big picture: A new generation of digital-age car buyers wants to update their vehicles as seamlessly as their smartphones, adding features and services that weren't available at the time of purchase.
A #StopAsianHate tweet was the most retweeted in 2021, Twitter said on Thursday. The post, from K-pop group BTS, generated nearly 1 million retweets.
Why it matters: The tweet, published on March 29, came a few weeks after a 21-year-old white man shot and killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women, in Georgia.
Italy's antitrust regulator fined Amazon $1.3 billion on Thursday, claiming an investigation unveiled that it abused its dominant position in the market by favoring third-party sellers that used its logistics services.
Why it matters: It comes amid a wave of antitrust law enforcement by European nations against Big Tech companies.
