 |
|
|
|||||
Just one day before TikTok is expected to shut down in the US, startup Perplexity AI has submitted a bid to TikToks parent company ByteDance proposing a merger that would allow it to continue operating, CNBC reports. Citing an anonymous source, CNBC reports that the proposed merger would create a new entity combining Perplexity, TikTok US and New Capital Partners. It comes after the Supreme Court on Friday ruled unanimously to uphold a law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok or it will be banned in the US. The company has so far resisted the idea of a sale. According to CNBCs source, Perplexity is hoping a merger rather than a sale will be more appealing to ByteDance. The new structure would allow for most of ByteDances existing investors to retain their equity stakes and would bring more video to Perplexity, CNBC reports. If ByteDance were to accept the proposal, theres a chance the company would be given a 90-day extension by Trump to work out a deal, which he told NBC News' Kristen Welker that he would most likely do when he takes office on Monday. But there is as yet no indication that ByteDance will go this route. Despite rampant speculation about potential buyers, TikTok said it will be forced to go dark on January 19 when the law takes effect unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement. The outgoing administration, however, reportedly says its leaving all that for the Trump team to deal with. Per MSNBC, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called TikToks claim about shutting down a stunt, and said we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration, Jean-Pierre said, according to MSNBC. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/perplexity-ai-has-reportedly-submitted-an-11th-hour-bid-to-save-tiktok-in-the-us-215012514.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Instagram is rolling out a bunch of changes this weekend that will conveniently make it look a lot more like TikTok, which could go dark in the US on Sunday now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the law banning the app if parent company ByteDance doesnt sell it. Those changes include extending Reels to three minutes long and changing the longstanding square grid on your profile to a rectangular layout, as Adam Mosseri announced in an Instagram post and on his Story, respectively. Considering how some users have crafted a specific look for their pages around the square grid, the latter isnt likely to go over well with everyone. Nor is the third thing: theres now a tab in your Reels feed that shows you videos your friends have liked or added Notes to, Mosseri shared on Threads. Which means, of course, that your friends can more easily see what youve been liking and interacting with, too. Didnt we already agree this was kind of invasive back when Instagram had and eventually removed a whole feed dedicated to seeing the activity of the people you follow? In any case, the changes have already begun rolling out. You'll now see a button showing your friends' activity at the top right of the Reels tab, which will bring you to the new feed. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) Addressing the switch from the square grid in his Stories, Mosserri chalked it up to aligning with users posting habits. I know some of you really like your squares, and square photos are kind of the heritage of Instagram, but at this point most of whats uploaded both photos and videos are vertical in their orientation, so portrait versus landscape or square, and it just is a bummer to overly crop them, he said. So I know its a change, I know its a bit of a pain, but I think its a transitional pain. He went on to say, I think that people will over the long run be excited not to have their posts appear aggressively cropped. Instagram already had offered a somewhat TikTok-like view of users profiles under the Reels tab, but the latest move gives photos on the main grid the rectangular treatment too (only on the grid though, theyll expand to normal size when you click them individually). On making Reels longer, Mosseri said in a separate post that while Instagram has long focused on short-form video, weve heard the feedback that this is just too short for those who want to share longer stories. Instagram previously only allowed Reels of up to 90-seconds long, though you could work around this by sharing a longer video as a non-Reel post. TikTok, which also began with a focus on short-form, extended its post length to three minutes several years ago, and later upped this to 10 minutes in 2022. If TikTok really does shut down, users are going to be looking for a new home for that type of content.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-swoops-in-with-3-minute-reels-and-rectangular-profile-grids-as-the-tiktok-ban-gets-real-201316339.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Bang & Olufsen announced its new $499 premium earbuds, the Beoplay Eleven, back in November, touting among other things their replaceable batteries for sustainability and alignment with the EUs impending device repairability requirements. But an iFixit teardown tells a more complicated story about actually replacing those batteries, describing the process of just getting the case open as a very onerous and labor intensive task even for a trained technician. And inside, the battery is affixed to other components in ways that require heat to remove it, which in itself wouldn't comply with the EU's upcoming rules. Given all the work involved, the earbuds scored an abysmal 1/10 on iFixits repairability scorecard. Bang & Olufsen said the earbuds design allows for battery replacement by service, which, as iFixit notes, suggests that this isnt meant to be a repair you can do yourself at home. It did ultimately turn out to be possible to take one of the earbuds apart without damaging any of the electronics inside, but the laborious teardown calls into question how feasible and sustainable battery replacement would be even when carried out at a B&O service center. After opening up the case and finding a plastic weld mark barring access to the battery, iFixits Shahram Mokhtari notes in the video that, at a minimum, any battery replacement service would need to dispose of the plastic housing completely. Id love to see B&Os process for changing these batteries out, Mokhtari wrote in the blog post. Im willing to bet its neither cheap nor waste-free but I would love to be proven wrong. The teardown also revealed the Beoplay Eleven to be a carbon copy of the 2022 Beoplay EX internally. Even the peel-away film on the rear of each earbud says Beoplay EX not Beoplay Eleven, Mokhtari wrote. Yikes.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/bang-and-olufsens-new-earbuds-with-replaceable-batteries-dont-seem-to-be-very-repairable-174949894.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||