Tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter will once again face Congress this week to testify in the Russian election meddling investigation. Daniel Ives, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Technology Research at GBH Insights and Scott Kessler, Director of Equity Research and Analyst at CFRA join The Long and The Short to discuss which platform will be affected the most from this trial.
Facebook announced a new News Feed where "meaningful content" will take priority over "relevant content." Ives says that this change could actually be good for the company in the long term. He doesn't believe it will impact publishers or user growth as much as people are afraid it will. When it comes to testifying on Capitol Hill, Kessler believes Facebook will be on the defense and take a firm stance on defending its platform.
Plus, Twitter's stock spiked after Facebook announced it was changing its News Feed. Kessler thinks Twitter is the one company that hasn't answered questions from Congress regarding Russian meddling in the election. He talks about Twitter's long road to improve upon certain operations.
SpaceX launched its first all commercial-crew mission to the International Space Station on Friday. Cheddar News speaks with Jim Cantrell, CEO and President of Phantom Space Corporation why this launch is a big leap for space tourism.
Nautilus Labs closed $34 million in funding from investors including the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund. The company plans to use its funding to improve shipping industry efficiency with its software. Nautilus CEO Matt Heider joined Cheddar News to talk about how it tackles the carbon emissions in the global supply chain. "We've seen on 10-day voyages saving $60,000 worth of fuel just by managing speed with greater confidence around the future. The environmental impact of that is also huge," he said. "Saving that amount of fuel is a kind of taking over 1000 cars off the road this year."
A Glassdoor study reports that internship programs at companies like Roblox, Uber, and Salesforce offered the highest compensation levels in 2020 — nearly $10,000 a month. Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at Glassdoor, joined Cheddar News to talk about why big tech companies are paying top dollar for their interns. "I think what we're seeing is that companies are pushing more aggressively to engage with these candidates before they’ve even graduated, really because of the level of competition that they are facing, especially for these very high-value STEM graduates," he said.
Dubbed the "Ethereum Killer," Solana is known for its super-fast, low-cost transactions, which has proven attractive to defi companies looking to scale up quickly.