HONG KONG — Ever since a new round of pro-democracy protests broke out in Hong Kong last year, journalists from both local and global media have exposed how freedoms are shrinking, human rights are deteriorating and police brutality is worsening in the city. Now, with new sweeping powers under the national security law that China […]
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WordPress.org today launched WordPress 5.5, which brings a slew of speed, search, security, block editor, accessibility, and developer updates. You can download version 5.5, which was developed by 805 volunteer contributors, now from WordPress.org/Download. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that powers over 30% of the web (including VentureBeat). This means there is a […]
Read MoreAt its Anywhere School 2020 event today, Google announced a slew of updates for educators across Google Classroom and Google Meet to help schools start this next semester. The company said its tools “lighten the load for teachers, school leaders, families, and especially the students who have navigated learning from home with grace and resilience.” […]
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About 22.5 million pieces of content published to Facebook were removed for violating the company’s hate speech policies in Q2 2020. The metric comes from Facebook’s latest Community Standards Enforcement Report covering April 2020 through June 2020, which suggests the company’s AI detected 95% of hate speech taken down in Q2. That’s up from 88.8% […]
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Pinterest today announced updates to increase the discoverability of beauty products and tutorials personalized to individual skin tones, styles, and preferences on its platform. The network made its search filter for skin tone ranges available in countries beyond the U.S. including the U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Pinterest also refreshed the filter’s design […]
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Donald Trump’s attacks on Joe Biden aren’t working. The president has sought to portray Biden as a closet Antifa member out to abolish everything: the police, the suburbs, god. Those attacks aren’t working because they’re preposterous. Voters have a good idea of who Biden is—a moderate former vice president—and know he doesn’t throw on a […]
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Simpplr today raised $10 million for its AI-powered intranet platform, which is designed to streamline communications. CEO Dhiraj Sharma says the funds will be used to drive customer adoption during the pandemic as Simpplr develops new products and extends its partner ecosystem. With people increasingly work from home, businesses have put a renewed focus on […]
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On this week’s How Games Make Money podcast, game industry public relations pro Stephanie Tinsley joins host Jeff Grubb to talk about her job. She has a lot to say about what it takes to facilitate the communication between developers and gamers. And that changed a lot this year due to the pandemic and the […]
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Video platform startup Mux today announced it raised $37 million, bringing its total raised to date to $69 million. Mux plans to use the proceeds to expand its product, sales, and marketing teams as it gears up for growth in the coming year, a spokesperson told VentureBeat via email. Video is among the internet’s most […]
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(Reuters) – Microsoft’s bid to carve out parts of TikTok from its Chinese owner ByteDance will be a technically complex endeavor that could test the patience of President Donald Trump’s administration, according to sources familiar with the setup. Trump has given Microsoft until Sept. 15 to put together a blueprint for an acquisition that safeguards the […]
Read MoreEven before the pandemic, the battle to own your living room was reaching a boiling point. Now the big screen is bigger than ever as 2020 accelerates the streaming wars and raises the smart TV platform stakes. Naturally, Google is making every effort to avoid being left behind. Today the company gave Android TV developers […]
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Ironscales, a startup developing an AI phishing prevention and detection platform, today closed an $8 million extension to its series B round led by Jump Capital, bringing the total to $23 million. A spokesperson says Ironscales plans to use the funding to further accelerate growth through market expansion and ongoing R&D of its email security […]
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Two weeks on and people are already making incredible things with Dreams’ PSVR support, like these authentic re-creations of Space Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye. Dreams creator TheArmyofDos just released these amazing experience, based on the popular rides at Disneyland in California. But it’s not just a simple VR roller […]
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Gaming industry TV ad spend saw a 5.39% decrease in July, dipping down to an estimated $17.8 million from June’s $18.7 million. Although 11 brands aired ads, Sony drove the bulk of the spend with its PlayStation brand, which continues to be a leader this summer for both impressions and budget outlay. GamesBeat has partnered […]
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A new HoloLens 2 app uses volumetric capture of a COVID-19 patient, that this is helping doctors and nurses in the U.K. safely identify symptoms. HoloPatient: COVID-19 is a free extension of GIGXR’s HoloPatient platform, produced in partnership with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and the new Resilient XR consortium. The app presents users […]
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In a paper published on the preprint server Arxiv.org, scientists at the King’s College London Department of Informatics used natural language to show evidence of pervasive gender and religious bias in Reddit communities. This alone isn’t surprising, but the problem is that data from these communities are often used to train large language models like […]
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(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday unveiled sweeping bans on U.S. transactions with China’s ByteDance, owner of video-sharing app TikTok, and Tencent, operator of messenger app WeChat, in a major escalation of tensions with Beijing. The executive orders, which go into effect in 45 days, come after the Trump administration said this week […]
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Public departures have been one of the biggest media stories of the summer. The New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss walked off the job in July, claiming the newspaper was now being edited by woke Twitter users. Andrew Sullivan used his last New York column to assert that he was being let go because […]
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StreamElements wants to help bring more diverse creators into livestreaming. To facilitate this, it’s launching the Creator Diversity Fund. As part of this program, StreamElements will provide $100,000 worth of its services to underrepresented groups. This includes women, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). “The challenges surrounding underrepresented groups […]
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Rally is launching a cryptocurrency dubbed Creator Coin that will help influencers, content creators, and streamers run their own virtual economies. And while it’s all virtual, Creator Coin is a new way for people with fans to make real money. With Creator Coin, Rally will enable influencers to create their own flavor of cryptocurrency that […]
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(Reuters) — Facebook on Wednesday took down a post by U.S. President Donald Trump, which the company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus. The post contained a video clip, from an interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. […]
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Digital health startup Infermedica today nabbed $10.25 million to further develop its platform for symptom diagnosis. The company, which claims to have performed more than 6 million health checks to date, says it will put the proceeds toward R&D and international expansion in the U.S. and Germany. The demand for triaging solutions has risen substantially […]
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Disney announced this week it’d be releasing at least one of its pandemic-delayed films, not in theaters, but on its Disney+ streaming service. The live-action Mulan won’t be free, either — instead it’ll be the platform’s first-ever Video On Demand release. Depending on how long this pandemic lasts, it might not be the only one. The Mulan live-action […]
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Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates testifies during a hearing on slavery reparations held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on June 19, 2019, in Washington, DC. Photo: Zach Gibson (Getty Images) Ta-Nehisi Coates, the acclaimed author of the National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me, is helping Vanity Fair […]
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It’s August 5, 2020, and another Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event is in the history books. Even if you can’t name a single memorable past announcement from past Unpacked shows, you surely know what I’m referring to: semi-annual press events where Samsung “reveals” a bunch of new products, except that the products were so extensively leaked […]
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AI-powered document processing platform PandaDoc today raised over $15 million in additional funding, bringing its series B round to $30 million. The company says the capital will bolster its go-to-market efforts as it doubles down on product research and development. Companies spend an average of $20 to file and store a single document, by some […]
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The result is an all-out campaign by Trumpworld against mail-in voting. Last weekend, lawmakers in Nevada approved a bill that would send absentee ballots to every registered voter in the state. The move drew a furious response from Trump on Monday morning. “In an illegal late night coup, Nevada’s clubhouse Governor made it impossible for […]
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Last week, Voicebot.ai reported that Adam Cheyer, a founding member of the startups that built both Siri and Bixby, left Samsung after a two-year stint at the company. Cheyer himself corroborated the report today, telling VentureBeat that he has no next plans as of yet. Cheyer’s departure coincides with a minor exodus from the Bixby […]
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The most jarring thing about Donald Trump is that he is president. Nearly every press conference, public event, and interview is awash with contradictions. On the one hand, there is the man in the office: grotesque, incoherent, malicious, dumb. On the other, there are the rituals and aesthetic trappings that have grown around the office […]
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Mozilla today started rolling out Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) 2.0 in Firefox. While the company technically launched Firefox 79 for Windows, Mac, and Linux last week, it only unveiled its marquee feature today. Firefox 79 by default blocks redirect tracking, also known as bounce tracking, and adds a handful of new developer features. You can […]
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Syntiant, a startup developing AI edge hardware for voice and sensor solutions, today closed a $35 million round. CEO Kurt Busch says the funds will be used to ramp up production throughout the remainder of 2020. According to a report published by Meticulous Research, the speech and voice recognition hardware market is expected to reach […]
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