Google plans to roll out a slate of Meet video conferencing updates to match and surpass features in Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams and Zoom throughout the year. The search giant unveiled the improvements this week, targeting the features at maximizing employee productivity at home and in the office. Many companies have adopted hybrid work as a benefit to retain or attract workers in a tight labor market. Google will roll out a real-time collaboration feature its competitors lack in the… Source link

Starting next week, users of Barnes & Noble’s Android app will no longer be able to buy digital books in the app, and it seems to be due to a Google Play policy deadline that’s been more than a year and a half in the works. And it’s not just Barnes & Noble that’s affected; you aren’t able to buy Amazon’s Audible titles with a debit or credit card in the latest version of its Android app, either. The changes appear to stem from Google’s insistence that apps use Google Play’s… Source link

In 2015, naval observers noticed that Russia had purchased and refurbished a small fleet of dilapidated cargo ships barely suitable for scrap. Russia lacked modern supply vessels and needed the creaky ships to transport weapons and supplies to Russian troops fighting in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad. In 2018, Russia’s largest floating repair dock sank near Murmansk, in northern Russia, damaging Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov. Officials blamed a power… Source link

The U.S. labor market extended a streak of strong hiring in March, recording another month of job growth even as decades-high inflation, supply chain imbalances and Russia’s war in Ukraine raised concerns over the economic outlook. The Labor Department reported Friday that non-farm payrolls rose by 431,000 in March. Payroll gains were shy of the 490,000 jobs Bloomberg economists had forecast employers would add and below last month’s blowout tally of 678,000 but still marked an increase… Source link

The market’s most closely watched part of the yield curve inverted Friday, and if its record over the last half-century is any indicator, the U.S. could be headed for a recession soon. But others say the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented firefight with high inflation makes this yield curve inversion different from those of decades’ past. On Friday, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond ended the day at 2.38%, 6 basis points below the 2-year U.S. Treasury yield of 2.44%. This… Source link

Shut down for two years due to COVID-19, festivals like Coachella and Stagecoach are finally making their comebacks — but the return of live events comes with a new set of hurdles as labor shortages, supply chain backlogs, and rising costs rock an industry that’s in the midst of a recovery. “We lost over half our staff to other industries,” said Daniel Nickleski, the COO of Illinois-based festival, concert and event production company Sound Works Production. The executive explained that… Source link

My phone has been blowing up lately. Yes, I have dozens of fans — I call them Howley’s Wolf Pack — but that’s not who texts me at all hours of the day and night. No, I’ve been getting texts from numbers telling me a delivery I never ordered has been lost. Or for products that will, confusingly, “enhance our sluggishness.” Yep, I’m talking about spam texts. And lately my phone has been inundated by them. And chances are yours has too. It’s not just an annoyance either. Spam… Source link

Russian-born tech giant Yandex has responded to allegations surrounding the security of user data. In a blog post published on Friday, the company clarified the functions of analytics tool AppMetrica, which has come under scrutiny in the past week. It also insisted that its use of data is transparent, and invited international auditors to conduct an appraisal of the… Source link

If jobs and wages told you everything you need to know about the U.S. economy, we’d be in a golden age. Employers added 431,000 new jobs in March, a muscular pace of hiring that shows no sign of abating. Job creation is averaging 562,000 new jobs per month so far this year, and 565,000 new jobs per month since President Biden took office in 2021. At this rate, the economy will exceed pre-pandemic levels of employment by summer. The unemployment rate dropped from 3.8% to 3.6% and is also on… Source link

Russian-born tech giant Yandex has responded to allegations surrounding the security of user data. In a blog post published on Friday, the company clarified the functions of analytics tool AppMetrica, which has come under scrutiny in the past week. It also insisted that its use of data is transparent, and invited international auditors to conduct an appraisal of the… Source link