Looks like people really do like animal videos. The team at The Dodo (an online publisher focused on those aforementioned animals) told me their videos were viewed 1 billion times in November. That’s an increase of more than a tenfold from January, when Dodo videos received a mere 80 million views. The Dodo follows a “distributed” media strategy, which means that the majority… Read More
Baidu is demonstrating some of its most recent tech advancements in novel ways, including a partnership with KFC China (yes, the fried chicken KFC). The search giant sometimes referred to as the ‘Google of China’ partnered with KFC to open a new “smart restaurant” in Beijing, which employs facial recognition to make recommendations about what customers might order,… Read More
Hit UK FinTech startup Nutmeg has raked in another $14.6m (£12m) for its Series D round, bringing the total to $51m (£42m). The £12m comes from the Taipei Fubon Bank, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s second largest financial services firm. Last month it announced a £30m raise led by Convoy, Hong Kong’s largest listed independent financial advice firm and existing backers including… Read More
Newer Tesla Model S and Model X owners get a big benefit vs. their predecessors – all the sensors and computing power onboard needed to achieve full self-driving when the software’s ready. But they also had to deal with a temporary inconvenience, since they shipped without the majority of Tesla’s current Autopilot features, which provides advanced semi-autonomous driving for… Read More
The USTR dropped its annual blacklist calling out marketplaces that are rife with counterfeit and pirated goods this week.
Many of the shopping centers and sites listed in this “Special 301” report were absolutely predictable, like Beijing’s Silk Market, St. Petersburg-based social network VK.com, or The Pirate Bay, which was formed by an anti-copyright group in the first… Read More
Jason Kilar’s interest in customer service was sparked by a visit to Disney World when he was 10 years old. The wonder he felt as he walked underneath the train station and out onto Main Street stays with him to this day. Read More
Uber stops self-driving pilot in SF, sweet Tesla Gigafactory drone footage, VW dreams of a self-driving future and Tesla won’t let autopiloters speed. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
The security camera space was different when Canary blew past $1.9 million in pledges on Indiegogo way back in 2013. These days, it’s a packed space with high-profile competition from Nest, Netgear, Blink and Netatmo, to name just a smattering. The original Canary camera was an imperfect but solid debut from the New York-based hardware startup, with good hardware featuring built-in… Read More
Now it’s Twitter copying Facebook… but in the worst way. Following several embarrassing disclosures of inaccurate metrics by Facebook, today Business Insider’s Alex Heath broke news that Twitter overcharged some advertisers. Between November 7th and December 12th, a source tells BI that video ad buyers were overcharged up to 35 percent.
Twitter apparently informed these… Read More
Uber responded today to reports that its app continues to check users’ locations even when they hadn’t used the ride-hailing service for days or weeks. The company explained that the issue is being caused by the iOS operating system itself, not direct tracking by its app. Many users had realized that Uber’s app appeared to have recently checked their location, according… Read More
Nearby Friends didn’t turn into the Foursquare-killer it could have been, but Facebook is still trying to help people meet up in person… with a few changes. Facebook has removed the precise location-sharing feature from Nearby Friends, which now only lets you opt-in to broadcasting your approximate distance from friends and current neighborhood. Unmapped Previously, you could select… Read More
PwC released the results of its latest survey on the future of automotive technology, and it seems Americans are coming around to the idea of autonomous cars, ride hailing and car sharing. So much so that 66 percent of respondents said they think autonomous cars are probably smarter than the average human driver. PwC, a global provider of professional services, directly surveyed 1,584 people… Read More
Airbnb can find you a well-appointed place to crash during your next big trip, but it’d really prefer to hang out every step of the way. To that end, in 2017, we can expect Airbnb to expand its horizons considerably, moving well beyond the vacation rentals that it’s remained synonymous with since launching in 2008. As the company confirmed last month, its plans to expand… Read More
An Uber employee has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of misleading employees about their equity compensation. Uber “devised a fraudulent scheme to recruit highly sought software engineers,” according to the case. The lawsuit claims that Uber promised a more tax favorable type of options at the time employees were hired and then later changed the plan. The… Read More
Tesla has claimed the top spot in Consumer Reports’ annual owner satisfaction survey, which polls subscribers about their cars and their feelings toward the brands that make them. Ninety-one percent of Tesla owners polled would buy another Tesla vehicle in the future, the survey found. Consumer Reports’ survey pool covered more than 300,000 different vehicles, and Tesla regained… Read More
The gulf between “human” and “machine” is closing. Machine learning has enabled virtual reality to feel more “real” than ever before, and AI’s replication of processes that were once confined to the human brain is ever-improving. Both are bringing technology into ever-closer proximity with the human body. Things are getting weird. And they are going to… Read More
In an industry such as automotive where technology is pouring in at an unprecedented rate, incipient trends are multiplying like vehicles on the roadways at rush hour. Some trends for 2017 are inevitable given developments in recent years while others are more disruptive, bleeding into multiple areas. Consider how Uber disrupted the taxi market and fundamentally changed the transportation sector. Read More
As mainstream interest in online privacy expands, Signal wants to grow along with it. This week, the app added two features, one a serious response to international censorship and the other a light, fluffy feature set meant to make the app even more user friendly for those who might be new to this whole encryption thing. As detailed in a post on the Open Whisper Systems blog, the latest… Read More
This year, however, it moved it out (and outdoors) to an amphitheater in Mountain View, right next to its campus. Looking back, that move now feels symbolic. In many ways, 2016 was a year of change for Google: It was the first full year after the surprise Google/Alphabet reorg and the year that saw Google get serious about its own hardware, the cloud and the enterprise. Across the… Read More
Uber will be rolling out its third-generation self-driving test vehicles, which are sensor-lated Volvo XC90 SUVs, in Arizona following their loss of registration in California. An Uber spokesperson tells TechCrunch that the cars actually left for Arizona by truck on Tuesday morning, and that they will be deployed there “in the next few weeks” with the full support of state… Read More
