Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes said on Friday that he doesn’t recall Mark Zuckerberg ever discussing the Iraq War during the early days of the company, contradicting recent comments from the CEO tying the war to his views on free speech. “I had never heard that before, and the internet had never heard that before,” Hughes said an event with the Bay Area Chapter of the American Constitution Society. Unlike other social media companies, Facebook has said it won’t ban political advertising nor wi

At its peak, DVD sales reached $16.3 billion and were 64% of the U.S. home video market. These days, DVD sales account for less than 10% of the total market, with total sales hitting $2.2 billion in 2018. It’s likely that Blu-Ray sales fractionally impacted the decline of DVD sales, but the fact that DVD sales still outpace Blu-Ray sales shows it’s not the real culprit. So after hitting a high of $16.3 billion in DVD sales in 2005, there was a 3% drop in 2006. In the meantime, DVD sales continue

Friday’s is going public again. The casual dining chain is planning on merging with Allegro Merger, a special purpose acquisition company with ties to investment firm Crescendo Partners, the two companies announced Friday. Special purpose acquisition companies have no assets but use the proceeds from an IPO, combined with bank financing, to buy and take privately held consumer companies public. If the deal closes, T.G.I. Earlier this year, Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company scrapped a deal with a

The trade war between the United States and China has most big tech companies really worried about whether tariffs could cut into their bottom linesBut one company was able to thread the needle between a volatile American president and the world’s biggest consumer market. More than any other tech leader, Apple CEO Tim Cook has spent a lot of time charming the Trump administration. And it seems to be paying off. Apple did not return requests for comment. Watch the video to learn how Apple’s CEO n

President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Dallas, October 17, 2019. The S&P 500 was higher for a fifth week, up 0.9%, and is now up about 1.8% for November so far. “President Trump is always unpredictable, so we’ll have to see what he says,” said Ed Keon, chief investment strategist at QMA. Keon expects a trade agreement of some sort in the near future, and that should help risk markets to advance. So I don’t know if we’ll get major progress on the thornier issues in the first deal,” Keon

On Friday, he said that political ads should be fact checked, which is not the company’s current policy. Cox also said that Facebook is investigating “microtargeting,” a practice that lets campaigns pay Facebook to display different ads and messages to targeted groups of people. Facebook currently publishes all of the political ads it runs, but Cox said that there can be so many different versions of various ads that it can be tricky to analyze. Cox left Facebook in March, a decision he said he

Southwest Airlines will remove all Boeing 737 Max planes from its flight schedule through March 6, delaying the plane’s return longer than any other U.S. carrier, the airline announced Friday. Separately, American Airlines also announced after the bell Friday that it will continue its 737 Max cancellation through March 4, resuming commercial service on March 5. Southwest had previously grounded the plane through Feb. 8, while American Airlines cut the 737 Max from its flight schedule through Jan

Facebook on Friday issued an apology following an anonymous blog post complaining about a racist culture toward black, Hispanic and female Asian employees at the social media company. The blog post was written anonymous by a group claiming to be past and present Facebook employees. “Racism, discrimination, bias, and aggression do not come from the big moments,” the anonymous employees wrote. CNBC has previously detailed how Facebook’s performance review system is often used by employees to penal

The broad stock market rally that’s lifted U.S. indexes to record highs has been very good to Big Tech. All three tech giants reported better-than-expected revenue in their latest earnings report last month, and Microsoft and Apple also beat estimates on profit. On Friday, Microsoft gained 1.2%, Apple inched up 0.3%, and Alphabet rose 0.2%. But the company had the best week among the Big Tech crew, with the stock rising 2.9%. The other two mega-cap tech companies are still off their record highs

“I think Bloomberg was a great mayor, but I think he’s making a mistake. Other Biden supporters are skeptical that Bloomberg will actually be a viable candidate. Some Biden supporters painted Bloomberg as an indecisive, wavering politician. As mayor of New York, Bloomberg was first a Republican and then later became an independent. If he could pick up Joe Biden’s supporters, [Pete] Buttigieg supporters, Kamala Harris supporters, Amy Klobuchar supporters, Cory Booker’s supporters, those aren’t tr

WeWork released Friday a “90-day game plan” that details sweeping changes to its businesses, including a divestiture of all “non-core businesses” and a reduction in headcount. WeWork plans to focus on the core office-sharing desk business, in an effort to turn around the struggling company, as well as “re-energize employees” and “realign performance incentives.” Specifically, the company plans to turn its focus toward enterprise customers, rather than the small and mid-sized businesses, such as

Law enforcement experts cite LinkedIn as the biggest target of spiesCNBC’s Eamon Javers details reporting that LinkedIn is a huge target for spies, and the company is trying to combat it.

The massive rotation into value stocks that rocked investors two months ago is going to extend into 2020, according to J.P. Morgan’s quant guru Marko Kolanovic. The quant, whose reports have moved markets in the past, predicted rotation, going so far as to call it a “once in a decade” trade. The rotation into value and out of momentum has been quite impressive in the past month. The iShares Edge MSCI USA Value Factor ETF, one of the biggest exchange-traded funds focused on value factor, surged m

But what if you could retire with $5 million by the time you were 67? Personal finance site NerdWallet crunched the numbers, broken down by age group, to demonstrate how much you’ll need to stash away every month. The math assumes you are starting with no money in savings, that your investments will earn 6% annually and that you retire at 67. You will need to take advantage of tools like your employer’s 401(k), which is a tax-advantaged retirement savings account, or a Roth individual retirement

THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, was found in 23 of the 29 samples tested, officials said Friday. “We are in a better place than we were a few weeks ago in terms of finding a culprit.” Most patients have reported vaping THC, according to the CDC. The CDC is recommending that consumers stop vaping, particularly THC and especially anything bought off the street. Until the relationship of vitamin E acetate and lung health is better characterized, it is important that the compound not be add

The suspension follows an investigation and a Eurogamer report on big-name pros working together behind the scenes. FIFA 20 includes a global ranking system, which groups players of similar skill levels into several tiers. The Discord channel, according to Eurogamer, came to light in late October in a YouTube video by Nick Bartels, a streamer and top FIFA player with a large following. EA Sports acknowledged the collusion in handing the two-round suspension to Christopher Holly, who plays as NYC

We know, for instance, that you can kill everyone in your path and still complete the game. As Hinckley found out late last month, The Outer Worlds does indeed afford pacifists plenty of room to breathe. At one point during his challenge, Hinckley was tasked with using a computer to finish his quest. Once in combat, the game decided it was no longer going to play the cutscene and Hinckley could go forward with the next portion of the game without trouble. “Doing a challenge that does away with o

It’s Friday and that means that Apple Arcade, Apple’s iOS game subscription service, has a few new releases for subscribers to check out. Rogue Game’s Sociable Soccer is about what it sounds like, a soccer game you can play on your phone. The game will let you play matches yourself, with touch screen controls or a controller, or you can watch the game play out as the manager. As with all Apple Arcade releases, these games are free for anyone who subscribes to the service. All three games are ava

You see, everyone who dies, no matter what their beliefs or actions in life, is being sent to Warcraft’s mega hell. This means that every piece of official World of Warcraft content is changed, and I’m here to explain why that’s actually very funny. Everyone in World of Warcraft has various religious and philosophical beliefs that, up until now, have largely been abstract. A very few souls, the worst of the worst, are sent to The Maw, where they’re tortured for eternity. With all of this in mind

The upside case for World Wrestling Entertainment’s stock far outweighs the downside, according to Citi. The firm upgraded the struggling stock to buy from neutral, saying the risk-reward “looks attractive” and “compelling.” Citi calculates WWE only has 15% more to fall in a downside scenario, while the shares have 45% upside.