McDonald's is enacting a tech-forward marketing play around the Lunar New Year on Feb. 1, a holiday predominantly celebrated in countries in East and Southeast Asia. The fast food marketer continues to experiment in the fledgling frontier of the metaverse while trying to engage a set of U.S. consumers who are increasingly important to its business.
Ford will spend $20 billion to reorganize its business for the electric future, also mulling whether to spin off some of its EV business as a special acquisition company in order to attract more investment. Ford previously stated that it would spend $30 billion on electric and autonomous vehicle development by 2025.
Apple News is introducing its first daily local newsletter for the Bay Area and is actively exploring expanding the offering to other cities. The Bay Area newsletter includes tops stories across local news, sports, politics, dining and more. The launch comes at a time when tech companies are adding newsletters as part of their offerings, including Twitter and Facebook's newsletter platform Bulletin.
Tel Aviv University team identify two types of liars. Those who involuntarily move eyebrows when they tell a fib and those who cannot control a very slight lip movement. Their software and algorithm can now detect 73% of lies and they intend to improve that. "It's very, very hard for you to conceal a lie with this technology," says Prof Levy.
Spotify will add an advisory to every podcast episode about the COVID-19 pandemic to help listeners to find out more information about the disease. The company has been criticized by musicians for its handling of the allegations of spreading misinformation on the platform. The CEO of the company claims that the company hasn't been transparent about its content policy.
Apple will allow developers to distribute unlisted apps through the App Store. Unlisted apps will not be discoverable through search results or App Store categories or charts, but they are available to administrators via Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager. The company says an unlisted app is ideal for "limited audiences," such as special event attendees and research study participants.
SpaceX called off its latest mission just 33 seconds from launch on Sunday evening due to a cruise liner in the so-called “hazard area” close to the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission has already suffered three delays in as many days due to poor weather conditions around the site.
Vladimir Putin backs a Russian government proposal to tax and regulate the mining of cryptocurrencies, rejecting the central bank’s proposal to ban it completely, as Russia has many regions with a surplus of electricity. The central bank continues to oppose mining on environmental grounds because it creates incentives to bypass regulations.
OpenSea is in the midst of controversy after one employee resigned for using insider information to profit from NFT drop drops. The company announced on Thursday that it would put a 50-item limit to its free Minting tool, which allows people to create an NTS without paying a fee.
Global smartphone shipments had already begun to shrink ahead of 2020, though two years of a pandemic and the resulting supply chain and chip constraints certainly didn’t help the overall figures, however, the market finally experienced growth last year for the first time since 2017, with Counterpoint Research putting the overall year-over-year growth at 4%, with a slightly more optimistic 5.7% from IDC.
Epic Games lost its lawsuit against Apple in the past, but is now appealing the decision. The original ruling was put on hold, but the appeal has been filed by 35 states, Microsoft and the EFF. This is because they think Apple may hold a monopoly with mobile gaming.
China's State Administration for Market Regulation conditionally approves AMD-Xilinx deal. AMD and Xilinx had reached a deal to buy each other in October 2020. The two companies had already received approvals from competition authorities in major markets.