Tech News Today for January 4, 2017
Tech News for Wednesday January 4, 2017
As the Republican-led Congress begins a new session this week, Politico reports that the GOP has adopted new rules banning and imposing hefty fines for livestreaming or otherwise broadcasting protests on the House floor. You might remember how some representatives used live-streaming to broadcast a gun-control sit-in after official cameras were turned off. Fines for streaming protests would start at $500 for the first offense and could go as high as $2500. Representatives who opposed the new rule as unconstitutional say they've been fined before and refuse to be silenced. Read more at politico.com.
Apple wants China. Bad. Enough so that its willing to say “how high” when Chinese authorities request that it jump. Apple removed the New York Times app from its app store late last month at the request of the Chinese government, which cited that the Chinese and English language versions of the app violated local regulations. Those regulations were not explicitly defined in the request. Read more at nytimes.com.
The Wall Street Journal says consumers spent $967.6 million in mobile games for iOS and Android over the holidays. This figure is up more than 50 percent since last year. Nearly 90% of all gross app revenue came from games. Read more at wsj.com.
Tesla had some bad news and some good news. First it announced that it missed its target for 2016 vehicle deliveries in 2016 by about 4,000 vehicles, seeing a slowdown in production during the last quarter thanks to changes to the Autopilot software. But today, Tesla started producing batteries at its Gigafactory in Nevada which is under construction and currently only around 30 percent complete. That seems to have shot Tesla stock to a three month high. Read more at wsj.com.
The publishing platform started by the founder of Twitter and Blogger announced layoffs today. In a post on his struggling platform, Ev Williams said they will lay off a third of their employees, close their offices in New York and DC, part ways with transitional executives and refocus on a "less proven" way to pay writers. Williams said writers should be payed on their ability to enlight and inform, not their ability to attract the most eyeballs, but he wasn't clear on exactly where that payment would come from or whether or not the site would adopt a paywall. Read more at blog.medium.com.
Get more news from CES today with Megan Morrone and Jason Howell on Tech News Today. The show streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe and download it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.