BMW had a story to tell at CES this year, a story of what our lives might look like when there’s more continuity between what we do at home and what we do in our cars, thanks to new features coming to market, including connectivity and self-driving capabilities. I became a part of that story as I drove a prototype 5 series (fun even in manual mode) onto a public Las Vegas highway, pressed… Read More
Centrifuges are found in medical labs worldwide. But a good one could run you a couple grand and, of course, requires electricity — neither of which are things you’re likely to find in a rural clinic in an impoverished country. Stanford researchers have created an alternative that costs just a few cents and runs without a charge, based on a children’s toy with surprising… Read More
The first sequencing of the whole human genome in 2003 cost roughly $2.7 billion, but DNA sequencing giant Illumina has now unveiled a new machine that the company says is “expected one day” to order up your whole genome for less than $100. Illumina’s CEO Frank deSouza showed off the machine, called the NovaSeq, onstage at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in downtown… Read More
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s nominee for the position of U.S. attorney general, is being grilled by the Senate today about voting rights, immigration, civil rights, prosecutorial ethics and his own voting record. But when asked about issues related to technology — including hacking, surveillance, encryption, and law enforcement access to data — Sessions’ answers… Read More
Tesla has a new vice president heading up Autopilot efforts — Chris Lattner, whose departure from Apple was reported only earlier today. Lattner worked at Apple for 11 years, where his chief contribution was creating Swift, Apple’s most recent programming language, which is relatively easy for beginners to pick up and begin using to create apps for macOS, iOS and beyond. The role… Read More
What does artificial intelligence have in common with the price of eggs? At the store, you may find one carton drawing your eye with promises of being “all natural.” This is meaningless, of course: no one has defined what “natural” is, so anyone can put it on there. The same problem is now happening in tech — but with AI. Read More
After nearly a decade and a half as the chief executive officer of the hardware company he co-founded, John MacFarlane has announced his resignation as the head of Sonos. The move had reportedly been planned for some time, with the executive citing a number of personal reasons. That decision was delayed, however, due in part to increased and unexpected competition by Amazon’s line of… Read More
If you want to cure all disease and educate everyone, you’re going to need the government’s help, even if you’re as rich as Mark Zuckerberg. Today, he and his wife Priscilla’s philanthropic vehicle the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced it’s hired away Uber’s chief advisor and former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to lead its policy and advocacy team. Read More
Roi Carthy has been a mover and a shaker in the Israeli tech scene for years. Most recently he joined as head of marketing for Shine, a smart ad blocker for mobile. This week on Technotopia we talk about the future of media, where revenue comes from and the prospect of peace in the Middle East. It was a far-reaching conversation and one of my favorite chats. You can subscribe to Technotopia… Read More
One of my favorite things to do is riff on Bay Area real estate and tech — of all kinds, residential, commercial, retail … and Justin Bedecarre has been working with San Francisco founders for almost a decade in the commercial real estate market. He’s now a founder of HelloOffice, a technology-powered commercial real estate brokerage. We talk about what 2017 holds for… Read More
As you watch your favorite adult films – I particularly enjoy My Dinner With Andre – I suspect you often wonder how foreign porn dialogue (“Yur kumberbund haz gefallent unto minna lutefisk,” for example) is translated, dubbed, or subtitled properly (“Take me now, you hunk of fermented fish,” in this example.) Well now you know. After visiting an adult show… Read More
There’s no arguing that electric skateboards aren’t efficient and fun. But most modern electric skateboards like the Boosted Board and InBoard M1 are operated by hand-held controllers that connect to the board via Bluetooth. But ZBoard, a Los-Angeles based startup, focuses on boards that eschew a controller and can be operated by sensors in the board itself. We last looked at… Read More
Arcimoto brought the eighth iteration of its three-wheeled electric vehicle, the SRK, to CES 2017. This is the version that will be produced this spring in Eugene, Oregon, where the company has its headquarters, and that the first buyers will have delivered to their doors by summer 2017. It’s been a long road for Arcimoto, which was founded in 2007 in Eugene. For nearly a decade, it… Read More
Daniel Gross, the founder of YC-backed Cue, a search engine for personal content, is joining Y Combinator as a partner. Coming hot off a stint as a Director at Apple focusing on machine learning, Gross will be bringing some fresh AI flair to to YC’s existing team. Gross first found his way to Apple after Cue, formally called Greplin, was acquired by the company for $40 million back in… Read More
Walk the Green Carpet in style! One lucky winner will be able to invite a friend on a whirlwind trip to San Francisco to rub elbows with founders, VCs and the tech community at the 10th Annual Crunchies Awards. We’ll provide you with a $1,000 travel credit and set you up at Axiom Hotel provided by Surface Hotels for three nights. To top it all off, you’ll get a one-of-a-kind… Read More
As VR and AR mature, they’ll borrow more of each other’s expertise; from the one, more immersive environments; from the other, intelligent means of walking the line between virtual and real. One example of such a crossover is the D3-U, a physical camera made for taking pictures in VR. Read More
DoubleDutch, a startup providing mobile apps and analytics for events and conferences is downsizing again. The company has just announced another round of layoffs, affecting roughly 40 percent its workforce, TechCrunch learned and DoubleDutch confirmed. Around 70 positions were eliminated, including those in senior leadership roles. DoubleDutch’s CFO, CCO, VP of Customer Success and… Read More
You don’t hear the words “industrial espionage” get tossed around too liberally at a show like CES. But Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan invoked them yesterday in a post about a pair of the company’s crazy new laptop prototypes that apparently flew the coop from its booth, at the tail end of the event on Sunday afternoon. Tan said in a Facebook post that Razer has been working… Read More
Ten years ago, Montenegro became an independent country, separating from Serbia by a narrow margin of less than 1 percent of required votes in an independent referendum. This new independence meant many changes for a country that’s roughly the size of Connecticut. One of those important changes was something few expected: the country’s new domain name extension. Read More
GoFundMe has made a name for itself as a go-to platform for individuals looking to raise money for good causes — a business that has been a big success, raising $3 billion since 2010 from 25 million+ donors across over 2 million campaigns. Now, the company is expanding: GoFundMe has acquired CrowdRise, a fundraising platform for charities and other non-profits, as well as… Read More
