Month: April 2021

Enlarge / Yahoo logo at the 2014 International CES conference in Las Vegas. (credit: Getty Images | Ethan Miller )

Verizon is reportedly ready to give up on Yahoo and AOL after spending a combined $9 billion on the once-dominant Internet brands that fell from prominence years before Verizon bought them.

"Verizon is exploring a sale of assets including Yahoo and AOL, as the telecommunications giant looks to exit an expensive and unsuccessful bet on digital media," The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The sale process involves private-equity firm Apollo Global Management and "could lead to a deal worth $4 billion to $5 billion," the Journal wrote, citing "people familiar with the matter."

We asked Verizon if it has a response to the WSJ report today, and a spokesperson told us the company has "nothing to add."

Google demoed the process in a new video (embedded above). Press a button in the Google Assistant contact section to have the Assistant listen to your pronunciation of a name, and the Assistant will update its records. Google says the feature doesn't keep a recording of your voice.

Teaching the Google Assistant correct pronunciations will boost voice recognition accuracy as well, which should help when you tell the Assistant to call someone. Google says the feature will be available in English in "the next few days," with the "hope to expand to more languages soon."

Enlarge / A shortage of qualified tanker truck drivers may lead to rising gas prices this summer. (credit: Driendl Group/Getty Images)

There are more than 1.8 million truck drivers in the US, but even so, it's not enough. On Tuesday, the National Tank Truck Carriers raised the alarm, warning that if more people don't start driving trucks soon, the nation might experience fuel shortages and price increases.

In a more normal year, perhaps 10 percent of the country's fuel tankers might be idle, but NTTC says that number is between 20–25 percent in 2021. "We've been dealing with a driver shortage for a while, but the pandemic took that issue and metastasized it," Ryan Streblow, NTTC's executive VP, told CNN.

Driving a tanker full of fuel requires more training than hauling bulk cargo in a class 8 truck, but the pandemic sidelined drivers as fuel demand dropped, causing many more drivers to leave the industry. And the schools that could train new drivers were obviously closed for public health reasons, compounding the labor shortage.