Technology

In a tweet this morning, Amazon founder (and the worldrichest man) Jeff Bezos announced that he and his wife were creating a $2 billion fund to finance a network of non-profit preschools and donate funds to organizations helping homeless families.

&The Day 1 Families Fund will issue annual leadership awards to organizations and civic groups doing compassionate, needle moving work to provide shelter and hunger support to address the immediate needs of young families,& Bezos writes in a statement.

Therealso a Day 1 Academies Fund which will launch a network of free, Montessori-inspired schools in low income neighborhoods.

Bezos said that the schools will employ the &same set of principles that have driven Amazon .& Which, for Bezos, means an intense focus on the customer.

The funds are called the &Day 1& funds because they align with Bezos& stated philosophy of &maintaining a Day 1 mentality.&

Starting a network of free schools for underprivileged children and giving out money to help organizations that are working to alleviate the needs of the nationhomeless are inarguably good things, but itunclear whether these individual steps can work to address more systemic problems that underly problems of homelessness and a lack of educational opportunity that exists more broadly in the country.

Perhaps Bezos was inspired to battle the nationhomeless plight when he saw this reporton Vickie Shannon Allen, an Amazon employee who became homeless after a workplace accident cost her her job.

Italso a bit rich to see Bezos tackle the issue of homelessness after his company was the mustache twirling arch nemesis of a bill in Seattle that would have created a tax to finance homeless shelters and low income housing.

Fortunehas more on Amazonwork to kill the measure.

Amazonopposed the tax, originally floated at $500 a year for each of its Seattle employees. To signal its displeasure, the company halted construction on a new tower, and suggested it might sublet 722,000 square feet it had just leased in a signature downtown building. When the council approved a reduced $275 tax, Amazon restarted construction on the tower. But it also joinedStarbucksand other local employers to fund a group, No Tax on Jobs, that raised over $300,000 to pay for signature gatherers for a referendum to repeal the head tax. In a statement after the vote, Amazon vice president Drew Herdener said, &Todayvote by the Seattle City Council to repeal the tax on job creation is the right decision for the regioneconomic prosperity.&

With the new fund, Bezos joins a long line of incredibly mega-rich people (cf. Chan-Zuckerberg and Gates Foundations… and Warren Buffett) who are taking it upon themselves to fund programs for social good.

Itpart ofphilanthropylong history of ignoring broader structural issues as a way for billionaires to treat their contributions as a gift rather than an obligation.

HereBezotweet announcing the new funds.

Following reports that Amazon is preparing to launch a new device that would allow Fire TV owners to record live TV, DishAirTV has just done the same. The company announced the launch of a &Local Channels DVR& feature for AirTV customers that lets users watch and record live TV both in and outside the home. The recorded content is made available within DishSling TV application, alongside subscribers other Cloud DVR recordings.

Dish first unveiled its AirTV Player, a 4K media streamer set-top box, at CES 2017, then later began doling out digital antennas to Sling TV subscribers with the AirTV Player as part of deal for pre-paying for the companystreaming service.

This year, it expanded its hardware lineup to include a new device, just called the AirTV, which is a networked TV tuner that doesn&t connect directly to a TV, but rather streams local programming via Wi-Fi.

As with Plex & and, presumably, with Amazonforthcoming plans & being able to record and stream from live TV is one way companies are working around cable providers, or having to make content deals in order to expand their streaming line-ups. It gives cord cutters way to watch hard-to-access programming, like local news and sports, for example.

Dishnew Local Channels DVR feature will require an external storage device in order to work, which is not included.

This means itsimilar to something like TabloOTA DVRfor cord cutters, which has customers attach their own USB hard drive. In AirTVcase, the maximum supported drive size is 2 TB.

The DVR also supports dual-tuner functionality, so customers can record up to two shows at once, or watch one live while recording another.

TV show recordings can also be scheduled by the episode or by the series.

Once AirTV is set up, the recorded content is available through the Sling TV app across platforms, including iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku.

It will be found in the same menu as the Cloud DVR content & where you find the movies and shows you record through Sling TVDVR. But these recordings will have an OTA icon next to them to help users differentiate the AirTV content from the rest.

Upon playback, the content can be paused, rewound, or fast-forwarded. In addition, if watching a recording in real-time, users can pause the live TV stream.

To gain access to the feature, AirTV users will have to update their device and restart their Sling TV app.

iHeartMedia has agreed to acquire Stuff Media, the company that owns the HowStuffWorks podcasting business.

The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but both the Wall Street Journal and Variety are reporting that the acquisition price was $55 million.

According to the announcement, Stuff Media podcasts will retain their branding and the organization will remain headquartered in Atlanta, while President and CEO Conal Byrne joins iHeartMedia as the head of its podcasting division.

HowStuffWorks was originally founded in 1998 and had a number of owners before spinning out as an independent company and raising a $15 million Series A last year. In recent years, its focus has shifted from explainer articles and videos to podcasts, and in fact, it says those podcasts receive more than 61 million downloads and streams each month, with Stuff You Should Know surpassing 500 million downloads this year.

iHeartMedia, meanwhile, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. (The media company was formerly known as Clear Channel.) Prior to announcing the acquisition, it was already working with Stuff Media on its true crime podcast Atlanta Monster.

&Stuff Media is the original trailblazer of the podcasting industry, and we&ve been impressed by its ability to grow a massive, loyal audience over the past decade, led by a strong, experienced and cohesive management team, who we welcome to iHeartMedia,& said iHeartMediachairman and CEO Bob Pittman in the announcement. &This strategic acquisition will pair Stuff Mediawildly popular content and strong creative capabilities with iHeartMediaextensive resources and massive scale through our digital platforms, social reach and broadcast radio stations, introducing podcasts to the vast majority of the country and offering even more unique opportunities for advertisers to reach their consumers.&