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The U.S. Senate voted 51-50 mostly along party lines to begin debate on a bill to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act. But just hours later, Republican leaders suffered a setback when their most comprehensive plan to replace the current health law fell far short of the Senate votes it needed.
[Thomas Kaplan and Robert Pear / New York Times]
House Republicans have asked the CEOs of Facebook, Google, AT&T, Comcast and other tech and telecom giants to testify at a hearing on net neutrality. Also invited were Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Netflix’s Reed Hastings and other tech chiefs — all advocates for strong net neutrality regulations — who can either subject themselves to a potential public grilling on Capitol Hill — or sit out the showdown and take the political heat from supporters and opponents alike.
[Tony Romm / Recode]
Facebook reports Q2 earnings today, and Wall Street think its revenue growth may slow down, in part because it is running out of places to drop ads. Meanwhile, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg fends off Elon Musk on the topic of AI, he’s been traveling across the U.S. to learn about users. Some cafeteria workers who live near his Menlo Park-based company struggle to make ends meet, and wonder: “Is he going to come here?”
[Kurt Wagner / Recode]
Gawker.com is up for sale. Gawker Media’s sites were acquired by Univision last year, without the flagship site, and advisers overseeing the bankruptcy liquidation plan will start fielding offers for the remaining property. The site has been dormant since August. You have to wonder if Peter Thiel is considering.
[Jonathan Randles / The Wall Street Journal]
Uber is on a campaign to decrease driver turnover. The ride-hail company recently rolled out an in-app tipping feature, and the list of “driver friendly” revised policies includes quicker fare fixes and protection from bad ratings by passengers. Uber is still searching for a CEO to replace founder Travis Kalanick, and HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman is on the short list, but an HP rep says she is “fully committed to HPE.”
[Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Adobe is finally killing off Flash, the once-ubiquitous plugin that helped power internet browsers for more than a decade. HTML5 standards have been implemented across all modern web browsers — Safari, Chrome and Microsoft Edge have been blocking Flash over the past year. Adobe will remove support for it by the end of 2020. [Tom Warren / The Verge]
Nielsen has added skinny bundles from Hulu and YouTube to its traditional TV ratings, the latest step to modernize live and time-shifted viewer metrics as digital consumption increases. Nielsen’s ratings had already included digital viewing from SlingTV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue.
[Alexandra Bruell / The Wall Street Journal]
Recode presents ...
Uber SVP Frances Frei talked with Recode’s Kara Swisher about the future of the beleaguered ride-hailing company. Frei came to Uber from Harvard Business School, where she studied leadership and diversity, and during a live recording of the Recode Decode podcast, she said the company’s problems are neither unusual nor unfixable. Uber’s employees want to do the right thing, Frei said, but have been historically let down by management and not given an outlet to call out bad behavior.
Top stories from Recode
Mark Zuckerberg thinks AI fearmongering is bad. Elon Musk thinks Zuckerberg doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Ah, another classic debate about artificial intelligence.
Twitter faces new criticism from Congress amid charges that it briefly blocked net neutrality critics.
The company said the incident was a glitch and fixed it, but GOP lawmakers sent them a nasty note anyway.
Netflix is getting a big boost in subscribers from mobile.
Teeny-tiny screens aren’t the deterrent we thought they’d be.
Why is Stitch Fix’s second-most powerful executive leaving right before an IPO?
Julie Bornstein has been COO for two-plus years.
Bill Gates joins the roster of big names behind trucking startup Convoy.
It’s part of a $60 million funding round.
We have unrealistic expectations of a tech-driven future utopia.
It’s time to talk about the potential value of limits on technology.
This is cool
Taco Bell has found a new marketing vehicle — it’s called Lyft. The fast-food chain is testing a venture with the ride-sharing company that will allow Lyft passengers to request rides that incorporate a stop at a Taco Bell drive-through between 9 pm and 2 am. The option will appear as “taco mode” in the Lyft app during the next two weeks around a Newport Beach, Calif., location, with plans to expand the program nationally next year. [Sarah Maheshwari / The New York Times]
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
