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- [00:01]
Rob Dunwood
Want to get this show ad free? Head to DailyTechNews Show.com subscribe to find out how.
- [00:12]
Sean
Hi friends, Sean, Linda from Two Black Guys with Good credit here. Whether you're running a non profit, a school or a small business, Walmart Business is here to support your mission. They make it easy to order what you need, from tech and cleaning supplies to everyday essentials, all at low prices and with helpful tools like spend tracking and tax exempt purchasing for eligible organizations. Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger. Visit business.walmart.com to get started.
- [00:39]
Linda
How do you manage emergency evacuations in your city or keep order during a flood or wildfire? Citizen safety isn't an easy job, but we can make it a little easier with TomTom's live traffic and mapping solutions. Governments and public sector teams get to have eyes everywhere disaster zones, road conditions or infrastructure health. We've got it all covered. From defense and security to emergency response and urban planning. Get the insights to act quickly and safely. See how it works@tomtom.com government wait, you're.
- [01:10]
Unknown
Not a Hotels.com member, so you're choosing to pay full price? Did you not hear the song how.
- [01:19]
Linda
Could you not be a member and save up to 20%? That's less than 50%, but it's more than 0%. You're welcome.
- [01:31]
Unknown
See, the math is mathing. Save up to 20% on hundreds of thousands of hotels with Hotels.com.
- [01:44]
Sean
These are.
- [01:45]
Rob Dunwood
The Daily Tech Headlines for Thursday, July 17, 2025. I'm Rob Dunwood. Scale AI, a prominent data provider in the AI industry, is laying off 14% of its workforce, approximately 200 employees and and an additional 500 global contractors. This decision comes just one month after Meta invested billions in the company and recruited its CEO and other staff. The restructuring is aimed at streamlining scale AI's data business, which relies on human workers to label data from major AI companies like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. This move reflects the current volatile climate within the AI industry, characterized by frequent mergers, acquisitions and employee shifts between startups. Twitter co founder and block CEO Jack Dorsey has invested $10 million to fund experimental open source projects and tools that could transform the social media landscape. These efforts are funneled through an online collective called and Other Stuff, formed in May, whose team includes Dorsey, Twitter's first employee Evan Hinshaw Plath Kali, creator of the ECASH platform Cashew, Alex Gleason, former engineering head at Truth Social and Jeff Gardner, the fourth employee at Intercom. Substack was initially launched as a newsletter company focused on connecting writers with paying subscribers who were critical of social media and advertising. Nearly eight years later, the company is pivoting its efforts towards building a social network and embracing advertising. To support these new ambitions, substack has secured $100 million in funding from investors such as Schoning Group, Bond Klutch Sports Group, Andreessen Horowitz and Jens Greed, a co founder of Skims, valuing the company at $1.1 billion. Uber is investing heavily in the electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle sectors, with a combined investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in the EV manufacturer Lucid and AV technology startup Nuro. The strategic move aims to launch a premium robo taxi service. The deal involves Uber investing $300 million in Lucid and committing to purchase a minimum of 20,000 of Lucid's new Gravity SUVs over the next six years. These SUVs will be outfitted with Nuro's autonomous vehicle system and be owned and operated by Uber or its fleet of Uber plans to roll out robo taxi service in a major US City next year, with production of customized Lucid Gravity vehicles anticipated to commence in late 2026. South Korea's Supreme Court dismissed all charges against Samsung chairman J.Y. lee in a fraud case related to a 2015 merger of Samsung subsidiaries. Prosecutors had alleged stock manipulation, but a 2024 court found insufficient evidence and the Supreme Court upheld that decision. Spotify has expanded its premium Audiobook service with two new plans offering more listening hours and family access. These plans are currently available to premium users in the uk, Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein following initial tests in Ireland and Canada. While US users already had a standalone 15 hour audiobooks access plan, these new additions allow users in other markets to tailor their audiobook access to their specific needs. Automattix Beeper, the universal messaging app, is relaunching a year post acquisition. The updated app directly connects to messaging networks, bypassing Beeper cloud for improved security and reliability. Beeper supports WhatsApp, Instagram and Google messages, offering cross device messaging. The free version connects to five services. Beeper plus, at $9.99 per month, provides more accounts, send later functionality and benefits for early users. Slack is rolling out new AI features to improve productivity and communication. These include AI powered search across channels and integrated apps, transcriptions and summaries for huddles with action items and conversation summaries. Future updates will bring AI driven user profile summaries, action items in the Activities tab and contextual message explanations. Additionally, an AI writing Assistant will be added to the Canvas feature. The app will also get a design refresh Centralizing shared content TikTok is launching new features in beta for songwriters, including a Songwriter label and Songwriter Music tab to help them showcase original music. This initiative, developed with songwriter input, aims to boost discovery and monetization, especially since over half of full time songwriters use TikTok. The platform's royalty system remains standard, and this move follows TikTok's recent TikTok for Artist launch in Spotify's similar 2020 feature launch. And finally, Roblox introduced new safety measures for users aged 13 to 18, including trusted connections for known contacts, age estimation, improved privacy and parental insights. This update, which renames friends to connections and allows unfiltered chat within trusted connections, aims to address past safety concerns and satisfy regulators. Following a similar update for younger users, a Roblox product manager noted these changes seek to offer older teens more expressive chat options, discouraging off platform communication where risks are higher. For more analysis of the tech news of the day, subscribe to dailytechnewshow.com and if you enjoy the show, remember to tell a friend to check us out. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time.
- [06:58]
Linda
How do you manage emergency evacuations in your city or keep order during a flood or wildfire? Citizen safety isn't an easy job, but we can make it a little easier with TomTom's live traffic and mapping solutions. Governments and public sector teams get to have eyes everywhere disaster zones, road conditions or infrastructure health. We've got it all covered, from defense and security to emergency response and urban planning. Get the insights to act quickly and safely. See how it works@tomtom.com government.
- [07:28]
Unknown
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