Business

Sinclair Broadcasting’s proposed $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune Media, which would have expanded the conservative media company’s footprint to nearly three-fourths of American households, suddenly appears in trouble. Today, Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai effectively came out against the acquisition by proposing to refer it to a hearing with a judge. In theory, the …

Congress is finally turning its attention to Silicon Valley. And it’s not hard to understand why: Technology impinges upon every part of our civic sphere. We’ve got police using AI to determine which neighborhoods to patrol, Facebook filtering the news, and automation eroding the job market. Smart policy could help society adapt. But to tackle …

Wednesday afternoon, on the heels of his belated effort to rescue a youth soccer team from a Thai cave with a tiny submarine, Elon Musk promised to fix another seemingly intractable problem. “Please consider this a commitment that I will fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA …

Following a year in which YouTube has repeatedly promoted conspiracy-theory videos during breaking news events like the shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas, the company announced on Monday a slew of new features it hopes will make news on the platform more reliable and less susceptible to manipulation. The company is also investing $25 …

There are smart speakers, which connect wirelessly to other devices, and then there’s the new era of smart speakers, designed to offer services through voice-controlled virtual assistants. Sonos, for a long time, was all about the former, having been a pioneer of high-quality, Wi-Fi–connected speaker systems. Now it has entered the next era with products …

Last month, a California Assembly committee voted to remove key protections from a state-level net neutrality bill. Critics said the changes opened loopholes that would allow broadband providers to throttle some applications, or charge websites or services for “fast lane” access on their networks. Now those key protections are coming back. At a press conference …

Everywhere you look, regulators are cracking down on Airbnb. In Paris, the company’s largest market, hosts must now register with the city government and can only list their homes for 120 nights each year. In Amsterdam, new rules, which go into effect in 2019, will restrict hosts to listing for just 30 nights annually. And …

There is a travel story that Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, formerly called Priceline, likes to tell. While planning a recent family trip to Iceland, his wife wanted to check out “another site,” which Fogel carefully avoids naming, but is clearly Airbnb. The home rental she found there looked good, so she tried to …

In the game Armor Blitz, players assemble an army of anime “tank girls.” When the game debuted on Google Play in November 2016, it grossed just $23,400 in six months, less than half its production cost. Then the same game relaunched on the adult-gaming platform Nutaku—now with the notable addition of hentai cartoon porn. Blitz …

A strong majority of Americans think social media companies intentionally censor political viewpoints, but Republicans believe they have it worse, according to a new Pew Research Center survey about public attitudes towards big tech. Seventy-two percent of all respondents said it was likely or very likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints they …