Tech

Elon Musk is reportedly trying to get out of a contract to sell Twitter. In this context, Twitter is unwilling to give in. Musk moved to terminate a $44-billion acquisition agreement with Twitter on Friday, alleging that the social media company breached the deal by failing to hand over data he says he needs to evaluate the number of bots and spam accounts on the platform. However, Twitter's legal representatives hit back in a letter to Musk's lawyers Sunday, calling his claims "invalid" and demanding that Musk follow through with the takeover. "Mr. Musk's and the other Musk Parties' purported termination is invalid and wrongful, and it constitutes a repudiation of their obligations under the Agreement," reads the letter from William Savit, a lawyer at Wachtell, Rosen, Lipton and Katz—w...

The UK competition regulator announced Wednesday that it was launching an antitrust investigation into Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of video gaming giant Activision Blizzard. The probe will focus on whether the deal may substantially lessen competition—or create expectations that it might. Microsoft has previously said it expects antitrust officials to scrutinize how the deal, announced in January, may affect competition in the video game industry, app stores and even labor markets. "We expect and believe it's suitable for controllers to investigate this obtaining," Lisa Tanzi, corporate VP and general direction at Microsoft, said in a proclamation Wednesday. "We have been clear about how we intend to maintain our gaming business and why we accept the arrangement will ...

SpaceX's satellite-based internet service, Starlink, has now been given authorization to expand, and will service aircraft, ships, automobiles, RVs and other mobile units. The company has moved to expand its customer base by first providing internet service for roughly $100 per month, primarily to homes in areas that have poor or no ground-based internet service. The company has hundreds of thousands of subscribers around the world. Now, the Elon Musk-led company is likely to begin providing its Starlink service to commercial airlines, possibly beginning with Hawaiian Airlines, which signed a deal in April with SpaceX saying it planned to bring complimentary Starlink services to some of its jets. The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday gave SpaceX permission to expand it...

NetEase appears to be in trouble. The Chinese gaming company postponed the release of a video game that was expected to be released on mainland China this week after its social media accounts were blocked for reportedly politicizing a comment. "Diablo Immortal," which was scheduled to be delivered on Thursday, has been delayed until additional notification, as indicated by a declaration on NetEase's (NTES) Chinese site on Sunday. The title was co-made by NetEase and Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard (ATVI).   NetEase didn't give motivation to the last-minute postponement, yet proposed in its proclamation that it was making specialized updates to the game. The organization didn't share another delivery date, and declined to remark further regarding this...

Amid a push to pass landmark antitrust legislation, Big Tech is bringing out its heaviest hitters to influence the members whose votes could decide the bill's fate. Google CEO Sundar Pichai will travel to Washington next week to meet with US lawmakers, two people familiar with the plans said. Pichai's excursion comes after Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook was spotted meandering the Senate last week. (Apple didn't answer inquiries on Cook's visit at that point.) It likewise follows a report by Politico that Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy has straightforwardly called numerous individuals from Congress to communicate resistance to the bill. In an explanation, an Amazon representative told CNN that Jassy "meets with policymakers on the two sides of the passageway in regards to strategy gives that co...

Democratic members of Congress have espoused Google in their efforts to prevent return results for abortion ambulotories from surfacing in search engines and ads related to abortion that appear to be legit that direct individuals to sites that oppose the process. They argue that after such searches, medical practitioners may accidentally mislead the population into thinking dubious abortion methods are safe, putting women's health in danger. Lawmakers Mark Warner and Elissa Slotkin said in a letter sent Friday to Google CEO Sundar Pichai that if the company does not limit anti-abortion clinics from appearing in the Google Search and Maps results for abortion services, it should label search results to clearly show whether a clinic in its results actually provides abortions. "Directing w...

Tech companies are constantly advertising the advances of their artificial intelligence. But Google was quick to debunk unverified claims that one of its programs had become sentient. As per an educational story in the Washington Post on Saturday, one Google engineer expressed that after many connections with a bleeding edge, unreleased AI framework called LaMDA, he accepted the program had accomplished a degree of cognizance. In meetings and public articulations, numerous in the AI people group pushed back at the designer's cases, while some brought up that his story features how the innovation can lead individuals to dole out human credits to it. In any case, the conviction that Google's AI could be aware seemingly features both our feelings of trepidation and assumptions for what ...