Tesla’s making a bet on its production process for the Model 3 that defies accepted industry know-how – which is not at all an unusual strategy for the young carmaker. Basically all of Tesla’s success thus far has been due to its ability to defy accepted industry wisdom, but with the Model 3 production line, the risk centers around skipping a step in the manufacturing process… Read More
Can a machine learn aesthetics in a way a human would? Could it then look at a set of photos, and draw on those same aesthetics to reproduce a different set? It’s a big question because it has long-term implications for how AI is going to develop. What are aesthetics anyway? Is it just what you “like”? How does it all work? When you as a human find it hard to express what… Read More
Now that LinkedIn is a part of Microsoft (after closing its $26.2 billion acquisition in December), the social networking site for the working world no longer reports earnings, and the metrics that come with them, as an individual business. So to underscore its growth, today LinkedIn used a blog post to announce that it has now passed 500 million registered users in 200 countries on its… Read More
VideoBlocks made a name for itself a few years ago when it launched its subscription-based stock video service and — later on — a members-only marketplace for buying one-off clips, too. Now, the company is following a very similar model for its expansion into the stock photo space as well. That new service is now open for photographers who want to contribute their images and… Read More
Amazon has made headway in the subscription business with its Subscribe & Save feature for consumers, which offers discounted pricing on products if you agree to buy on a recurring basis. Now, the retailer is looking to expand its subscription footprint with a new program called Subscribe with Amazon, which aims to make Amazon the place to discover, subscribe to and manage a range… Read More
Netflix will raise a little over $1 billion (€1 billion) from “non-U.S. persons” via a new senior notes offering, the company said on Monday. The proceeds of the debt sale will be used to help with general capital expenditures, but also funding content acquisitions, investments, and transactions related to executing Netflix’s strategy. The raise was expected –… Read More
Apple has hired former Google satellite executives John Fenwick and Michael Trela, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The two might’ve been in the market for new gigs, given that Google recently sold off its own in-house satellite imaging business (which came through an acquisition of Fenwick’s former company Skybox) to Planet Labs, apparently happy to act as a client of… Read More
For the past seven years, the Canadian technology developer Komodo Openlabs has been working on a device called Tecla that allow users with limited mobility to control electronic devices. Designed for users who have trouble operating smartphones, tablets, or computers because of limited upper-body mobility caused by spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, ALS, muscular dystrophy,… Read More
The Kitty Hawk Flyer is one of the first aircraft from Larry Page-backed Kitty Hawk, a startup taking aim at creating real, usable flying cars. The company, which is also led by CEO and former Google self-driving car project originator Sebastian Thrun, wants to begin selling the Flyer you see in the video above by the end of the year, so this isn’t a concept depicting a far-flung… Read More
Sling Media, the Dish subsidiary you probably know for its Slingbox and Sling TV service, is announcing its SlingStudio hardware today. With this, Sling Media is entering a completely new market because unlike its previous offerings, which targeted consumers, the $999 SlingStudio is meant for video creators who want to produce live video streams for Facebook Live or YouTube.
Typically… Read More
An obscure request for comments on regulatory standards, released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) last March, has since evolved into a complex turf war between the states and Washington DC. Caught in the middle is the entire online finance industry, raising the question of just what a ‘fintech’ business really is. Read More
Google is announcing that advertisers can now buy traditional TV advertising through the DoubleClick Bid Manager. Bid Manager is the main DoubleClick ad-buying product, so Google is pitching this as a way to manage TV and online ad campaigns from the same place. “Historically, TV and digital advertising have been bought and measured through different systems and currencies,”… Read More
Flux, a London-based fintech startup founded by three early employees of foreign exchange and banking app Revolut, is on a mission to make store receipts truly digital. Read More
Ofo, the Chinese bike-sharing startup that recently claimed unicorn status, announced this weekend that it has added Ant Financial as an investor. In a statement posted to its Weibo account, Ofo said that it will work with Ant Financial, an Alibaba unit, on Internet and credit card payments and its international expansion plan. Read More
Apple is finally adding transit options to its Maps app for the city of Paris. Starting today, you can use Apple Maps to calculate itineraries using public transportation. You’ll find subway, RER and bus lines, and even Transilien lines. Just like in Google Maps, you can look around the map with a new subway layer or you can calculate an itinerary from A to B. If you tap on a station,… Read More
We were just outside the Marriott on the edge of downtown when the conference doors opened. I remember saying something like “Those people… they seem a little different…” And suddenly there was a horrible strident laughter all around us and the street was full of what looked like hairy steampunk neohippies, all vaping and toking and comparing tattoos in clusters around… Read More
There are no hackers anymore — now it’s all about the spies we in the intelligence and security communities are trying to stop. The “insiders” have known this for some time, but it’s becoming more apparent to the business community and now individuals. Read More
Falcon Northwest is a small company, but small can mean focus and care when it comes to device makers. Falcon’s business is PCs, and specifically Windows machines capable of delivering terrific gaming power in a package that won’t take up an entire closet in your house. The Tiki is a compact gaming tower that uses top quality materials inside and out, and if you’re looking… Read More
Uber tracked former users even after they deleted the app from their iPhones, a practice that eventually earned CEO Travis Kalanick a scolding from Apple chief executive Tim Cook, the New York Times reports. Uber is pushing back on the allegations, saying that the tracking is a common industry practice used to prevent fraud and account compromise.
Uber allegedly used a practice called… Read More
Science itself may be non-partisan. But the March for Science this weekend simply couldn’t be. Demonstrators turned out in an estimated 600 cities around the world to rally for science and its role in policy-making, many tech workers among them. The march was organized after the Trump administration proposed and began to implement steep budget cuts to federal science agencies in the… Read More
