The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Thursday issued rules requiring that all mobile phones — including smartphones — sold in the U.S. be compatible with hearing aids. The news comes two years after the FDA made hearing aids available to all Americans without a prescription. The FCC has not yet issued a specific timeline for compliance, […]
General Catalyst reportedly to back Saudi Arabian startup
Despite Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, some investors are warming up to investing in the country’s startups. General Catalyst is planning to invest in Lean Technology, a Saudi Arabia-based fintech startup, the firm’s first investment in the Middle Eastern nation, the Information reported. Other Saudi Arabian startups that U.S.-based investors recently backed include […]
Amazon indicates employees can quit if they don’t like its return-to-office mandate
AWS CEO Matt Garman has harsh words for remote workers: return to the office or quit. The Amazon executive recently told employees who don’t like the new five-day in-person work policy that, “there are other companies around,” presumably companies they can work for remotely, Reuters reported on Thursday. Amazon’s top boss, Andy Jassy, told employees […]
Automattic offered employees another chance to quit — this time with nine months’ severance
Days after 159 people accepted Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s offer of a six-month severance package to employees who wanted to leave, the company floated a new offer late on October 16 of a nine-month severance package to anybody who quit immediately. Employees had four hours to decide whether they wanted to take the deal. In […]
Elon Musk’s X is changing its privacy policy to allow third parties to train AI on your posts
On Wednesday, social network X (formerly Twitter) updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party “collaborators” to train their AI models on X data, unless users opt out. While X owner Elon Musk trained xAI’s Grok AI chatbot on X user data, leading to an investigation by the EU’s lead privacy regulator, […]