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Showing posts from February, 2020

A look at top Democratic presidential candidates' stances on tech issues like breaking up Big Tech, digital privacy, encryption and backdoors, and Section 230 (Lauren Feiner/CNBC)

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Lauren Feiner / CNBC : A look at top Democratic presidential candidates' stances on tech issues like breaking up Big Tech, digital privacy, encryption and backdoors, and Section 230   —  - Voters from 14 states and one U.S. territory will decide which Democratic candidate to support for the presidential nomination on Super Tuesday. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2I6JTgL

K Health, whose AI-powered primary care app lets patients in 47 US states chat with doctors, raises $48M Series C, bringing its total raised to $97M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)

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Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News : K Health, whose AI-powered primary care app lets patients in 47 US states chat with doctors, raises $48M Series C, bringing its total raised to $97M   —  K Health, a primary care consultant powered by artificial intelligence, announced this morning it has raised a $48 million Series C round. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/39ajtXi

Roughly 2 million tweets spread dangerous misinformation and hoaxes about the coronavirus, according to an unpublished State Department report

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Millions of tweets have spread dangerous conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, an unpublished State Department report said, according to The Washington Post . Many posts have offered baseless and untrue allegations about the outbreak's origins, speculating that it was created as a bioweapon or manufactured by the CIA or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Some of the hoaxes have appear to have been propelled by fake accounts, the report said. Major social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter began taking action weeks ago to limit the spread of conspiracy theories. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . An unpublished State Department report found that roughly 2 million tweets spread dangerous and untrue conspiracy theories about the coronavirus while the outbreak began to spread beyond China, The Washington Post reported Saturday . The State Department report flagged a number of wildly inaccurate myths, such as theories positing that the c

Union of Concerned Scientists study: ride-hailing trips today result in an estimated 69% more climate pollution on average than the trips they displace (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)

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Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge : Union of Concerned Scientists study: ride-hailing trips today result in an estimated 69% more climate pollution on average than the trips they displace   —  Union of Concerned Scientists recommends more electric cars and pooled trips  —  Uber and Lyft have weathered criticism about pollution … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/38824wV

eMarketer: in the US, TikTok is expected to grow 21.9% YoY to 45.4M MAU in 2020, down from 97.5% growth in its breakout year of 2019 (eMarketer)

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eMarketer : eMarketer: in the US, TikTok is expected to grow 21.9% YoY to 45.4M MAU in 2020, down from 97.5% growth in its breakout year of 2019   —  More than 20% of social users will use TikTok this year … After nearly doubling its US user base last year, growth for TikTok will slow in the coming years … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/388xTFN

Catastrophic software errors doomed Boeing's airplanes and nearly destroyed its NASA spaceship. Experts blame the leadership's 'lack of engineering culture.'

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NASA is investigating Boeing after software coding errors jeopardized its Starliner spaceship's crucial test flight . One error caused the spaceship's thrusters to fire too early. A second — fixed mid-flight — could have caused a catastrophic crash between two closely maneuvering modules of the spaceship. Software flaws also caused two Boeing 737 Max plane crashes that killed 346 people. NASA officials mentioned those problems when they announced the new investigation.  Together, multiple government agencies are now questioning whether Boeing's newest planes or spacecraft are safe for people. One analyst said "there is a clear lack of engineering culture, aeronautical culture, and long-term business culture" on Boeing's board. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . Just 31 minutes after Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spaceship launched into space, Mission Control knew something was wrong. In the early stages of that crucial test fl

T-Mobile customers are the most likely to get 5G on their new Galaxy S20 phones — but there's a catch

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T-Mobile customers will have a greater chance of connecting to a 5G network with the new Galaxy S20 phones than AT&T and Verizon customers. That's because T-Mobile has a long range 5G network compared to AT&T's and Verizon's 5G short-range networks.  But the trade-off with longer range 5G networks like T-Mobile's is slower 5G speeds. So while a T-Mobile customer may get 5G where AT&T or Verizon customers don't, they're not getting the blistering speeds that you may have heard about with 5G. Still, T-Mobile also has its own short-range "mmWave" 5G networks in certain dense urban areas that's similar to AT&T's and Verizon's 5G networks, and supposedly offer blistering data speeds and performance.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . Samsung's new Galaxy S20 phones herald in the age of 5G smartphones, as you don't need to buy a special model to get access to 5G — all three models come wit

DoorDash's food deliveries earned it a $13 billion valuation, but experts say its IPO plans amid market turmoil and a virus outbreak are a recipe for disaster (GRUB)

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DoorDash, which this week confidentially filed its public-offering paperwork, could face a poor reception from Wall Street, business experts told Business Insider. Many of the other jumbo-sized, money losing startups like DoorDash that have gone public recently have seen their stocks perform poorly, and WeWork wasn't even able to complete its IPO, they noted. Door Dash's chief public competitors are struggling with losses and its closest analog, GrubHub, has a market capitalization that's about one-third of its valuation. Meanwhile, Coronavirus-related turmoil in the stock markets and the potential for an economic downturn could further dampen interest in DoorDash's shares. Click here for more BI Prime stories . DoorDash isn't WeWork or Uber. But it shouldn't expect a much better reception from Wall Street than those companies received, business experts warn. Indeed, the failure of WeWork's attempted initial public offering last year and the poor p