Democracy is being eroded by an overwhelming information ecosystem buoyed by major tech platforms, former President Barack Obama said Thursday.
Why it matters: Obama's comments reflect a shift in his feelings toward technology, in contrast to his embrace of Silicon Valley and social media as a force for good as president.
California's Department of Public Health announced Thursday that it has launched a Spanish- and English-language chatbot to help spread reliable information about COVID-19 and the safety of its vaccines.
Why it matters: The launch makes California the first state to try out a tool of this kind, the press release noted.
Digital Distribution platform GOG, headquartered in Poland, is now providing its employees with menstrual leave, a policy unheard of in the game industry, and even many countries.
Why it matters: It’s considered a controversial policy, one that some say respects the physical toll of menstruation but risks making employees who take advantage of the time off seem less capable.
There are two "leading" forks of the two biggest blockchains, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic — neither of them are doing great, compared to their parent chain.
Why it matters: Because blockchains run on open-source software, they can always be forked — the term for when someone makes a change that's not approved by the developers in charge of a codebase. This provides a check on the developers who maintain that codebase, making sure they don't veer wildly away from what their users want.
Traditional money is speeding up. The Federal Reserve has promised a new service to banks and credit unions around the country called FedNow, a 24/7 payment settlement service.
Why it matters: More and more services function round the clock, but payments are still on something of a 9-to-5 schedule. For payments in the U.S., FedNow will really settle payments immediately, all day, every day.
Monday was an important deadline in Washington for the crypto industry: comments on a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposal to expand the definition of "exchange" were due. In short: it's getting a big thumbs down.
Why it matters: The crypto industry is mostly worried that the definition would become too broad and vague and could easily encompass — or at least create uncertainty for — decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and other participants that should not be regulated as such.
Boring Company, the urban tunneling transportation company founded by Elon Musk, raised $675 million in Series C funding at a $5.68 billion valuation co-led by Sequoia Capital and Vy Capital.
Why it matters: Urban transportation tunnels aren't new, for either cars or trains, but Boring has claimed its shuttles eventually will travel at a breakneck 150 miles per hour. In Las Vegas, which recently approved a 29-mile tunnel network, that could mean more than 55,000 passengers per hour and a significant reduction to Strip traffic.
Elon Musk on Thursday disclosed in a federal securities filing that he doesn't yet have any equity partners on his takeover bid for Twitter, but said that he has secured billions of dollars worth of loan commitments from Morgan Stanley.
Why it matters: Musk is saying he can afford to buy Twitter, either via last week's $43 billion offer, to which Twitter's board hasn't yet responded, or via a hostile tender offer that would be taken straight to company shareholders.
Activision Blizzard is adding two women senior executives to its board, sources familiar told Axios. The company is expected to announce soon that Lulu Cheng Meservey is joining immediately and that it will nominate Kerry Carr for election at its annual meeting in June.
The states, not Washington, are where tech regulation happens for now, thanks to a deadlocked Congress.
What's happening: Statehouses are drawing money and attention from tech firms and advocates hoping to influence laws on everything from privacy to digital taxes to driverless cars — and now online speech.
The numbers are in: Venture capital deployment in the U.S. slumped in Q1, per the latest PitchBook data.
Why it matters: This is largely a knock-on effect of the public market pullback that kicked off late last year. Companies are rethinking near-term public listing plans, and investors are recalibrating deal sizes — particularly when it comes to late-stage funding.
