On this week’s episode of Technotopia I talked to Bre Pettis, former CEO of Makerbot and the founder of Bre&Co. Pettis has been thinking about new manufacturing chains, the rise of the local maker, what what happens when a country falls into disrepair. Pettis is an optimistic realist. He’s been watching Venezuela with great interest and has a few pieces of advice for tech folks… Read More
We know there are more men than women in tech careers, and we know there’s a wage gap. But as professionals age, the gender gap decreases. The problem starts when professionals enter the field, and that means factors as early in the process as job posts can influence this trend. That’s right — job posts can launch and perpetuate the wage gap in tech. Here’s how. Read More
As the nation’s capital prepared to celebrate the inauguration of the nation’s 45th President, Senators confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominees for Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Retired Generals James (“Mad Dog”) Mattis and John F. Kelly were approved by votes of 98-1 and 88-11, respectively. Attorney General… Read More
Apple is suing Qualcomm for $1 billion, the hit app Meitu may be collecting too much data, Whitehouse.gov removes LGBT, climate change and more and Kristen Stewart appeared as a co-author on an AI paper. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
A number of Twitter users tonight are claiming their accounts have somehow automatically followed the Twitter accounts, @POTUS, @FLOTUS and @VP – now in the hands of the Trump administration – even though they had never followed the White House accounts, had unfollowed these accounts before the transition, or had the accounts blocked. This appears to be a glitch related to… Read More
You can’t try this at home, even if you wanted to. Today’s premiere of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibit proved there are vivid opportunities for a third kind of virtual reality beyond tethered and mobile: VR installations. Outside the headset, custom art and physical effects set the scene before you enter, deepen the immersion while you’re enveloped… Read More
It’s a wait and see moment for wrist-worn devices. After a few years of betting heavily on the space, this most recent CES didn’t offer much; save for two or three smartwatch announcements, some partnerships and a couple of middling bands, the industry seems to have largely shifted its focus toward the connected home and the seemingly attainable dream of sticking Alexa in… Read More
Who likes gadgets? You do! Here’s a nice one. It’s a cute wireless keyboard with round, friendly buttons and a shiny, happy look to it. It has no agenda but to be pretty and useful. Everything is fine. Read More
2016 was an extraordinary year. A record number of security breaches affected billions of people worldwide, including cyber attacks that dramatically impacted the course of businesses and governments. The Unites States, the world’s most connected nation, and the rest of the world will face a deficit of 1.5 million cyber professionals over the next five years whose jobs are essential… Read More
U.K. startup Lobster is gearing up to scale its user-generated content licensing marketplace, as it closes a £1 million Series A. It’s expecting to have closed out the round next week, with 85 per cent of the funding committed at this point and only its decision on the last few investors outstanding. Read More
Travel tech startup FLYR raised $8 million in Series A funding for technology that predicts the price of airfare by applying artificial intelligence to a database of both open industry data and a proprietary collection of years of past prices and fluctuations. The funding round was led by a Peter Thiel fund, and, according to an SEC filing, Thiel Capital principal Phin Upham was involved in… Read More
Former ( ) President Obama is heading off for a well-earned vacation, but before going to his undisclosed but hopefully sunny and isolated location, he took to his old personal Twitter handle, @BarackObama, to promote the launch of his new website, Obama.org. Read More
Remember “Bang With Friends?” The controversial app, which later rebranded as Down, was acquired by Singapore-based dating startup Paktor (they’re, um… hooking up). The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’re told it was several million. After raising just $1 million, it was a “positive outcome” for investors like Tim Draper. Paktor has pulled… Read More
Originally positioned as a medium for projects to garner modest seed funding from a diverse group of supporters, crowdfunding platforms have evolved. Yes, crowdfunding has produced some inspiring success stories. However, it also has facilitated the transfer of significant sums of money to teams that ultimately proved themselves to be incompetent, leaving backers with nothing. Read More
Twitter just can’t seem to let go of Vine. The company announced last fall it would close the video-sharing community site and its accompanying mobile applications, which it then did just days ago. But it also has taken several steps to ensure that the content created in Vine would not be lost, by offering tools to export videos, both online and in its app. Today, in another move to… Read More
Amazon’s latest (physical) Dash button is like a “I’m Feeling Lucky” for candy.
When pressed, the button will send you a box with a random assortment of small-batch candy made by “artisans from across the nation.” The box will cost $18 (with two-day free Prime shipping, of course) and can be ordered as many times as you want.
The program is called Prime… Read More
What started as a rough week for Qualcomm just got worse. Apple is piling onto the lawsuit train just ahead of the weekend, following in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s footsteps with a roughly billion-dollar suit against the San Diego-based mobile chipmaker.
Apple was specifically named in the recent FTC filing, which accused Qualcomm of engaging in an anti-competitive “no… Read More
President Trump is officially the 45th president of the United States. Minutes after the inauguration, the White House’s LGBT rights page disappeared, as well as any mention of the terms “climate change” and “global warming.” The @POTUS Twitter account has been handed over to Trump and the first thing he tweeted was a Facebook link. Read More
Hey do you want to go far, far away from this place right now for some reason? Check out Pluto – it’s far. NASA created a video (via Gizmodo) made up of around 100 images snapped by the New Horizons probe, which launched in 2006 and which completed a flyby of the dwarf planet in 2015. The video includes photos shot by New Horizons, but scientists took the black and white originals… Read More
A new website called Track Trump has launched to monitor the progress President Trump makes on fulfilling his promises for his first 100 days in office. At the end of October, Trump released a plan called “Donald Trump’s Contract With The American Voter,” which focuses on cleaning up Washington, protecting American workers, and restoring the rule of law. The plan’s… Read More
