It snowed the other day. This was our first snowfall for two years. Two years ago, we had the heaviest snowfall in around 35 years. Last year, it didn’t snow at all. We had a mild winter. This year, we have had a mild winter again. It has only snowed for one day so far. … Continue reading [Easy English Blog] Snow at last

Just over a week after the U.S. elections, Twitter has offered a breakdown of some of its efforts to label misleading tweets. The site says that from October 27 to November 11, it labeled some 300,000 tweets as part of its Civic Integrity Policy. That amounts to around 0.2% of the total number of election-related […]

Twitter has at various times acknowledged that Donald Trump isn’t bound by the same rules that govern the rest of us. This executive privilege has allowed him to continue posting comments that could have long ago gotten any normal person banned from the platform. More recently, the service has sought to balance misinformation/disinformation with warning […]

Earlier this week, the Equity crew caught up with Work-Bench investor Jon Lehr to get his take on the current market, and how his firm goes about making investment decisions. The conversation was a treat, so we cut a piece of it off for everyone to listen to. The full audio and a loose transcript […]

For years now, analysts and unconfirmed reports have suggested Apple was working on transitioning its Mac line of computers away from Intel -based chips, and to its own, ARM-based processors. Now, Bloomberg reports that the company could make those plans official as early as later this month, with an announcement potentially timed for its remote […]

Ever since the run up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (and, arguably, well before that), political ads have become a major sticking point on social media sites looking to crack down on misinformation. Facebook has grappled with the issue to the satisfaction of virtually no one, while Twitter has shut them down altogether. Ad […]

Though TikTok is in the middle of fighting off the Trump administration’s attempt to ban its app in the U.S. over data privacy concerns, the company today is launching a new feature focused on the 2020 U.S. elections. TikTok announced this morning it’s introducing an in-app guide to the elections offering its 100 million U.S. […]

This year’s presidential election has already proven to be a considerable test of the U.S. democratic system. It’s also been doing a fine job testing the systems behind leading social networks four years after a rather disinformation-ridden election. Twitter today has proven to be reasonably swift — if not entirely proactive — in its push […]

Can you complete this English expression? It means “get through a tough situation”. Weather the……. a) wind b) typhoon c) hurricane d) storm The answer is below!↓ Answer: d) storm Weather the storm! By I Talk You Talk Press – Easy English Reading.

We should not be debating whether online voting should exist, but rather asking: What is the most secure way to facilitate electronic voting?

American democracy can be confusing and messy. There is, perhaps, no better example than last night’s Iowa caucuses. The votes that kick off presidential primary season are, at once, a wonderful celebration of citizen participation in representative democracy and a rather complex system that remains a mystery to many of those outside the nation’s 31st most […]

At TechCrunch Disrupt today, SmartNews announced the release of major new features for the American version of its news discovery app, designed to make it easier for users to get updates about the elections, COVID-19 and the weather. Several features focus on the presidential race, and other candidates up for vote this year. SmartNews, which […]

Facebook and Instagram are running notifications in their respective apps informing U.S. users that the winner of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election has not yet been determined. In large pop-ups appearing at the top of the Facebook and Instagram News Feeds, the notification states that “Votes Are Being Counted” and directs users to other in-app […]

Big tech’s lead privacy regulator in Europe has intervened to flag transparency concerns about a Facebook election reminder feature — asking the tech giant to provide it with information about what data it collects from users who interact with the notification and how their personal data is used, including whether it’s used for targeting them […]

Tuesday Company, the organizational toolkit for political advocacy groups and candidates, has taken another step to consolidate its position in the growing market for tech-enabled political outreach with the acquisition of the voting mobilization service VoteWithMe. Launched in the wake of the 2016 election by three former staffers from Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, […]

It’s been a busy day for Facebook exec op-eds. Earlier this morning, Sheryl Sandberg broke the site’s silence around the Christchurch massacre, and now Mark Zuckerberg is calling on governments and other bodies to increase regulation around the sorts of data in which Facebook traffics. He’s hoping to get out in front of heavy-handed regulation […]

Facebook has banned a politician from India’s ruling party, Bharatiya Janata Party, for violating its policies against hate speech on its platform, the company said today, weeks after inaction on the politician’s posts landed the social giant in hot water in its biggest market by users. The company said it had removed profiles of T. […]

TikTok announced this morning it will expand the set of resources provided in its in-app election guide in the U.S. to include direct access to sites that help users get information about polling locations and hours, those that help people having voting difficulties, and those offering other details how the voting process works, and more. […]

Two weeks after WeWork CEO Adam Neumann resigned, layoffs are expected.

As social media platforms struggle to get U.S. election misinformation under control with varying degrees of success, TikTok has taken new actions to stop people from searching and browsing select hashtags associated with misinformation and conspiracies related to the U.S. election results. The video app has redirected some hashtags — including #RiggedElection, #SharpieGate and others […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. A few notes before we get into this. One, we have a bonus episode coming this Saturday focused on this week’s earnings reports. And, second, we did not record video this week. So, if you […]

Facebook is facing heat in India, its biggest market by users, over a report that claimed the company compromised its hate speech policy to favor the ruling party. Politicians from both Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules the government in India, and opposition Indian National Congress lambasted Facebook for its supposed favoritism to the other and […]

In this country, we have a longstanding peaceful transfer of power for the executive office, even in the wake of the hardest-fought elections. Certain circumstances have led many to question whether the tradition will continue come January 20. Despite his very vocal protestations, however, the current president has agreed to step aside, should all of […]

TikTok confirmed today it has taken down videos spreading election misinformation that had been posted to two high-profile Republican-supporting accounts, The Republican Hype House and The Republican Boys. The accounts, popular with young, conservative voters, reach more than a million followers combined, and have the potential to reach even more users who would find their […]

One Medical, a San Francisco-based primary care startup with tech-infused, concierge services filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. Internal medicine doctor Tom Lee founded the startup, now valued at well-over $1 billion dollars, in 2007. Lee exited his company in 2017, leaving it in the hands of former UnitedHealth group […]

Today, after three weeks of suffering from COVID, I returned to work. I met with my boss, and was written up for absenteeism. Oh, and we're closing early because there are ongoing riots. Oh, and we lost the contract and I'm unemployed in three weeks. FML

Okay, so, first and foremost, this is going to be a weird one. Mostly because it’s 2020 and everything is just weird now and we have to deal with that until the next, weirder thing comes along. But while an online-only World Wide Developer Conference is certainly unprecedented for Apple, there’s some recent online precedent […]

The Trump administration Huawei ban is sure to have wide-ranging and long lasting effects for all parties. In the meantime, it seems, a number of those involved in the periphery are treading lightly in hope of not burning bridges on either side. Google has taken accidental center stage, in its role providing Android and a […]

As Jack Dorsey announced his company Twitter would drop all political ads, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg doubled-down on his policy of refusing to fact check politicians’ ads. “At times of social tension there has often been an urge to pull back on free expression . . . We will be best served over the long term […]

Facebook confirms it won’t fact-check politicians’ speech or block their content if it’s newsworthy even if it violates the site’s hatespeech rules or other policies. This cementing of its policy comes from Facebook’s head of global policy and communication Nick Clegg who gave a speech today about Facebook’s plans to prevent interference in the 2020 […]