Tech Digest daily roundup: Google Pixel Watch ‘to launch in 2022’
Google is reportedly totally definitely doing a Pixel Watch this time. Unlike the many, many, many, countless other times this was rumored, this time it’s totally happening! – says the report that’s all about how it’s happening. Forgive us for being skeptical, after having been exposed to way too many Pixel Watch rumors over the years, none of which ever panned out. Anyway, in 2022 the thing is totally going to appear and exist and be sold (presumably in the handful of countries where Google sells Pixel phones). The upcoming wearable is said to be codenamed Rohan, and execs “have told employees they plan to launch the watch next year”. The watch is going to run Wear OS 3 to “showcase the latest version of Google’s smartwatch software to customers and partners” who presumably haven’t heard about the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 existing and running that software too. GSM Arena
A 22-year-old British entrepreneur has created a paper fortune of tens of millions of pounds after one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors led a $40m (£30m) investment into a Christianity app he invented in church. Ed Beccle, the chief executive of Glorify, said the funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm that has backed Airbnb, Twitter and Facebook, valued the app at $250m. Andreessen Horowitz has joined SoftBank and celebrity investors including Michael Buble and Kris Jenner in funding Glorify, which was set up by Mr Beccle and his friend Henry Costa only last year, in February. The pair retain a majority stake in the company, making their combined stakes worth more than $100m. Telegraph
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk has sold another 934,091 shares of the electric vehicle maker worth $1.01 billion to meet his tax obligations related to the exercise of options to buy 2.1 million shares, regulatory filings showed on Thursday. In early November, the world’s richest person tweeted that he would sell 10% of his stock if users of the social media platform approved. A majority of them had agreed with the sale. Since Nov. 8, Musk has exercised options to buy 10.7 million shares and sold 10.1 million shares for $10.9 billion. Following a flurry of options exercise, Musk still has an option to buy about 10 million more shares at $6.24 each, which expires in August next year. Reuters
A Sky News investigation has found antisemitic, racist and white supremacist material in podcasts on one of the most popular streaming services, Spotify. The company said it does not allow hate content on its platform. But we found podcasts totalling several days’ worth of listening promoting extreme views such as scientific racism, Holocaust denial and far-right antisemitic conspiracy theories. And while some of the most shocking material was buried inside hours-long episodes, in some cases, explicit slurs could be found in episode titles and descriptions while album artwork displayed imagery adopted by white supremacists. Spotify removed the content after we reported it to the streaming giant. Sky News
Some Virgin Media customers were left without access to TV services for more than 10 hours, after the firm suffered a nationwide outage. The issue began at about 10:30 GMT prompting thousands of viewers to report problems. The firm told customers its engineers were trying to fix the problem, which hit cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham and Manchester. Virgin Media apologised, and said it would fix it “as soon as possible”. The issue had been caused by “a major power outage”, the firm said. BBC
