Increased public focus on the Delta variant has coincided with slowed spending in key sectors, according to a JPMorgan (JPM) Research report by senior economist Jesse Edgerton and economist Peter McCrory. “COVID case counts are still growing rapidly, even in highly-vaccinated states,” the report reads. “Google (GOOG, GOOGL) search data suggest that public focus on the Delta variant has intensified in recent weeks, and Chase card spending in some travel and entertainment categories has… Source link

Facebook has updated its data transfer tool, Transfer Your Information, with two new destinations for information associated with your Facebook account: Photobucket and Google Calendar (via Engadget). Facebook allowed photo transfers to services like Google Photos in the past, but the company says Facebook Events are a new data type for the tool it created as part of the Data Transfer Project. Support for Photobucket and Google Calendar comes alongside a larger redesign of Transfer Your… Source link

(Bloomberg) — Tyson Foods Inc., the top poultry producer in the U.S., is racing to get its chicken unit back on track as a new, formidable competitor emerges. The third and sixth biggest U.S. chicken companies, Sanderson Farms Inc. and Wayne Farms Inc., are combining in a $4.53 billion deal, according to a statement Monday from buyers Cargill Inc. and Continental Grain Co. The deal comes as Tyson’s chicken unit posted a loss in its third quarter amid a series of headaches including high… Source link

Enlarge / Let’s see, you landed on my “Google Ads” space, and with three houses, that’ll be $1,400. Ron Amadeo / Hasbro Back in 2018, Google and Epic Games kicked off a years-old spat over Fortnite on the Play Store. Instead of distributing the game through Google Play, Epic decided that sideloading would be the way to get Fortnite on Android, thereby sidestepping Google’s 30 percent cut of sales. Epic would go on to file an antitrust… Source link

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) scrapped another Trump-era policy on student loans, enabling state governments to resume oversight of loan servicers on behalf of borrowers within their borders. In March 2018, the ED under former Education Secretary Betsy Devos posted a legal interpretation on the Federal Register — a publication kept by the federal government about proposed rules and public notices — that effectively blocked state governments and attorneys general from taking… Source link

As Google’s batch sizes for AI training continue to skyrocket, with some batch sizes ranging from over 100k to one million, the company’s research arm is looking at ways to improve everything from efficiency, scalability, and even privacy for those whose data is used in large-scale training runs. This week Google Research published a number of pieces around new problems emerging at “mega-batch” training scale for some of its most-used models. One of the most noteworthy new items… Source link

(Bloomberg) — DraftKings Inc. agreed to buy Golden Nugget Online Gaming Inc. in a deal valued at about $1.56 billion, expanding the fantasy-sports giant’s presence in the hot market for online betting. DraftKings expects use the combined resources to boost sales and market share, yielding $300 million in savings from overlapping costs and creating new cross-selling opportunities, the companies said Monday in a statement. The deal, which has been approved by both companies’ boards, is… Source link

Electric vehicles (EVs) have been on the roads for the better part of two decades now, in slowly increasing numbers. The technology isn’t new – EVs were part of the initial wave of automotive technology over a century ago – but modern metallurgy, batteries, and drive trains have made them more practical. While the internal combustion engine still offers an overall better package of performance, power, and price, EVs are catching up. They are getting a boost from the government, in the… Source link

Stocks fell Monday, losing some steam after rising to all-time highs late last week. Commodity prices tumbled as concerns over the coronavirus’s spread resurged, with crude oil prices moving sharply to the downside. The S&P 500 fell as shares of oil companies including Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Apache Corporation (APA) and Diamondback Energy (FANG) dropped. The Dow also dipped, weighed down by a decline in shares of Chevron (CVX).  U.S. West Texas intermediate crude oil futures (CL=F)… Source link

Daniel Cooper Contributor Daniel Cooper is a senior editor at Engadget. Facebook has today announced that it has added two new destinations for when you want to move your data from the social network. In a blog post, the company said that users will be able to move their images to Photobucket and event listings to Google Calendar. Product Manager Hadi Michel said that the tool has been “completely rebuilt” to be “simpler and… Source link