Technology

WASHINGTON — Two of the technology industry’s leading figures descended on Washington on Thursday as their companies face growing political pressure. The executives, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, showed up for different reasons, and in different places. Mr. Bezos led a morning event at the National Press Club, announcing a commitment […]

BBC Click’s Lara Lewington looks at some of the week’s best technology stories including: An ex-Google engineer, who worked with the US military programme Project Maven, calls for ban on “killer robots” in war zones An algorithm designed to spot bullying on Twitter has a 90% accuracy rate say researchers A robotic fish has been

Online shopping giant Amazon revealed a carbon footprint Thursday that rivals that of a small country and vowed to reduce the damage to the planet by cutting its use of fossil fuels. The company, which ships more than 10 billion items a year on fuel-guzzling planes and trucks, said it has ordered 100,000 electric vans

SAN FRANCISCO — Even though high-flying start-ups have met a cool reception on Wall Street in recent months, the willingness of investors to make big bets has not exactly slackened. Stripe, a start-up that helps businesses do the wonky work of taking payments, announced on Thursday that it had pulled in new investments that gave

The Senate’s most vocal critic of the tech industry offered a challenge Thursday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Sell your WhatsApp and Instagram properties to prove you’re serious about protecting data privacy. It may have been more than Zuckerberg expected from his private meeting with Sen. Josh Hawley, a conservative Republican from Missouri, in his

“We are in desperate need of facts and evidence,” he said during a news briefing with the C.D.C. on Thursday. He said that there were multiple compounds showing up in the vaping mixtures, including Vitamin E acetate and other additives. He said that Vitamin E did not appear to be the sole factor but did

Airbnb Inc. said Thursday it plans to go public in 2020, a long-awaited move by the home-sharing company that is both loved and reviled for its disruption of the accommodation sector. Airbnb disclosed the news in a brief statement. It didn’t give a target date for the initial public offering or say why it thinks

SAN FRANCISCO — Airbnb said on Thursday that it planned to go public in 2020, becoming one of the last of a generation of prominent technology start-ups to aim for the stock market, even as some of its brethren have struggled since listing their shares. The online room rental company gave little detail about when

Tens of thousands of dead fish have been found on the banks of a lake in a protected nature reserve in northern Greece after high temperatures and drought conditions caused a severe drop in water levels. State environmental officials said Thursday that the water level at Lake Koroneia has dropped by more than 70% percent

WASHINGTON — Amazon committed on Thursday to meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years ahead of schedule and be carbon neutral by 2040, in the company’s most ambitious push yet to combat climate change. Jeff Bezos, the company’s chief executive, said that the promises were part of a new effort called the