One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investment firms will face government scrutiny over its investments in China. Sequoia Capital has received a polite but pointed request from Congress to enter into more detail on how it will prevent further U.S. investment dollars from advancing Chinese interests. Sequoia announced in June that it would be splitting…
The IRS will test a free tax filing service in 2024 for a subset of lucky taxpayers in as many as 13 states, the agency announced today. Direct File, as the service is called, is a shot across the bows of TurboTax, H&R Block and other paid tax prep services, whose owners have resisted free…
European Union lawmakers are being urged to avoid too much risk aversion from holding back the potential of the homegrown biotech sector. Developments in biotech could be transformative in a range of critical sectors. Beyond huge promise in healthcare, innovative, low carbon applications in areas like agriculture and food systems and energy production could help…
Google is challenging proposed laws that would require online services to implement age checks in a new framework that theorizes how technology companies should approach children’s safety online. The framework, titled the “Legislative Framework to Protect Children and Teens Online,” is the tech giant’s response to congressional child online safety proposals. In its set of principles,…
Web Summit, the big tech conference brand that runs events in several cities and whose 70,000 person flagship event in Lisbon is taking place next month, is running into a wall — a wall of outrage. Founders, investors and others from the technology community in Israel have gone ballistic over comments made by the founder…
If you rented a van from Zipcar a while back, there’s a chance it failed to meet the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s standards. The NHTSA hit Zipcar with a first-of-its-kind fine for “renting vehicles with open, unrepaired recalls,” the agency announced on Monday. The federal safety agency regulates vehicle recalls in the U.S., and…
Out of court negotiations between content moderators, Meta and Sama, the social giant’s former content review partner in Africa, over a labor dispute before a Kenyan court have collapsed. This emerged today when the court was briefed on the outcome of the mediation, coming after it allowed the parties to settle the case out of…
Eliza Eddison Contributor Eliza Eddison is COO at FabricNano, a biocatalyst engineering company that enables the sustainable manufacture of products — including but not limited to industrial chemicals — at scale. When British prime minister Rishi Sunak appeared in front of the hastily assembled press on September 20, the letter-crammed slogan on his lectern caused…
Eliza Eddison Contributor Eliza Eddison is COO at FabricNano, a biocatalyst engineering company that enables the sustainable manufacture of products — including but not limited to industrial chemicals — at scale. When British prime minister Rishi Sunak appeared in front of the hastily assembled press on September 20, the letter-crammed slogan on his lectern caused…
Microsoft has finally done it — nearly two years after first revealing plans to acquire gaming giant Activision Blizzard in a mammoth $68.7 billion deal, it has managed to secure the final regulatory clearance required to make Activision a fully-fledged subsidiary. But with one notable caveat. For the next 15 years, Microsoft is relinquishing cloud-streaming…