TikTok is rolling out its comment dislike button globally to all users, the company announced on Friday. The short-form video app started testing the dislike button in April as a way for users to identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate. If you click the dislike button on a comment, the dislike won’t be public and commenters won’t be notified that their comment has been disliked. Commenters and other users also won’t be able to see how many times a comment ...read more

In context: Last year, Apple released a security update that restricted third-party apps from attempting to track user data and behavior. While most apps adhered to the restrictions, Meta reportedly circumvented the boundaries with Facebook, allegedly tracking users well beyond what Apple allows. Despite being past its prime, Facebook remains one of the most downloaded programs on the App Store. Apptopia stats show that users downloaded the Facebook app over 416 million times across all devic ...read more

General Motors is partnering with a Canadian battery recycler to produce new batteries from recovered battery materials, as it aims to scale EV production in North America amid supply shortages and rising costs. The automaker invested through its GM Ventures arm in a Series A financing round for Lithion Recycling, a developer of advanced battery recycling technology. Together, the two companies will work toward establishing a circular ecosystem for recycling EV batteries, a critical bottl ...read more

What just happened? Next year's Super Bowl halftime show will have a new main sponsor. The NFL has announced Apple Music as its new halftime show sponsor, replacing Pepsi which has been the show's sponsor since 2013. Terms of the multi-year partnership were not disclosed although sources familiar with the negotiations said the NFL had been shopping the deal around in the $50 million range. The deal represents a shift in strategy for Apple as the company rarely sponsors events it does not cont ...read more

Ford broke ground Friday at its $5.6 billion BlueOval City complex in Tennessee, the epicenter for its future electric vehicles and a key milestone toward its goal to sell 2 million EVs annually by late 2026. BlueOval City is slated to begin building advanced batteries for future Ford and Lincoln EVs in 2025, including the F-150 Lightning and a second battery-electric pickup. The automaker calls BlueOval City its “largest, most advanced auto production complex” in the company’s 119- ...read more

In a nutshell: The Alliance for Open Media will launch a new brand to promote a royalty-free audio-video experience on consumer hardware, something Google has already achieved with the recently adopted AV1 codec. Should Dolby worry about the new venture? Google has a plan to compete with the most recent and popular standards for audio and video contents controlled by Dolby, and it is internally known as "Project Caviar." During a presentation held behind closed doors for hardware manufacturer ...read more

TL;DR: If you played Call of Duty: Vanguard on PC, you should probably expect similar performance from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II open beta. Activision has raised the CPU recommendations somewhat but maintained the same GPU requirements as Vanguard. Activision and Infinity Ward recently released the system requirements for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II open multiplayer beta, which starts this weekend. Customers who pre-ordered the game can play the early access beta now, but it ...read more

from the disruptive,-it-ain't dept Fri, Sep 23rd 2022 05:31am - Karl Bode We’ve noted a few times that Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband service is great if you have no other options. It’s also great if you’ve spent an eternity stuck on an expensive 3 Mbps DSL line straight out of 2003, or a traditional, capped, expensive satellite broadband connection. Being able to get 100 Mbps in the middle of nowhere is a great thing, assuming you can afford it. But most Starlink press coverage ...read more

WTF?! A Tesla owner has seen his TikTok video about the car's apparent shortcomings go viral. Mario Zelaya said that he had been locked out of his Tesla Model S after the battery died, which would have cost him $21,000 to replace. Zelaya, who lives in Toronto, Canada, said he paid $140,000 (Canadian) for the brand-new car back in 2013. According to Elon Musk, the batteries in these cards are designed to run for 300,000 to 500,000 miles or about 21 to 25 years before they have to be replaced. ...read more

DocuSign announced today that it has hired Allan Thygesen as its next CEO, effective October 10. Thygesen was most recently at Google where he was president of the Americas and global partners. He was in charge of Google’s $100 billion advertising business in the Americas, a rather significant business by any measure, and a position that should prepare him for his new job. He joins a company that continues to lead the e-signature business, but one where the stock price has taken a sign ...read more