While some entrepreneurs are independently wealthy and have no need for a day job, most of them aren’t. That’s why Marta Diana Koziarska and Borys Musielak created ReaktorX, an accelerator for folks who are working or have no time or acumen for creating a business from scratch and want to connect with like-minded professionals. Koziarska and Musielak also run Reaktor Warsaw, a… Read More
According to Internet security team Volexity has detected an active spear-phishing effort by Russian hacker groups including Cozy Bear and the Dukes. The targeted phishing emails feature subject lines like “The “Shocking” Truth About Election Rigging” and a false “FYI” from the Clinton Foundation. You can read about the efforts on Volexity’s own site… Read More
Facebook has been putting a big effort into growing Messenger as a bot platform this year. Now there are 34,000 of these bots in existence, built to automatically feed you news and entertainment, let you shop, and more — expanding Messenger’s use beyond simple chats with friends. And today, that strategy is getting a significant boost: Facebook says it will now let… Read More
Fans of cross-platform coding will be happy to know that Visual Studio, “a true mobile-first, cloud-first development tool for .NET and C#,” will arrive for Mac during the Connect() conference in November. The move places Microsoft’s IDE on Macs. The IDE follows Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s code editor, to OS X. Why is Microsoft seemingly abandoning the quest for… Read More
Amazon’s new on-demand, streaming music service, Amazon Music Unlimited, has taken its first steps abroad after launching last month in the U.S. to go head to head with Apple Music, Spotify, Google and the rest. The service — which offers some 40 million songs on tap — is now live in the UK and will also go live in Germany and Austria later today, a spokesperson tells me. Read More
Apple and top automakers could be among the U.S. businesses that suffer if President-elect Donald Trump plays hardball with China over trade. Read More
Samsung is increasing its focus on the connected car after the Korean firm announced plans to buy auto product maker Harman in an all cash deal worth $8 billion. Read More
Someone across the room throws you a ball and you catch it. Simple, right? Actually, this is one of the most complex processes we’ve ever attempted to comprehend – let alone recreate. Inventing a machine that sees like we do is a deceptively difficult task, not just because it’s hard to make computers do it, but because we’re not entirely sure how we do it in the… Read More
Disney and Netflix are logical dance partners. And, just as we saw with the 50/50 cash and stock financial engineering that enabled AT&T to buy Time Warner, ever-creative Disney undoubtedly has the talent to pull it off. Read More
Naver, the company behind U.S.-Japan-listed chat app Line, has teamed up with SoftBank to launch a global investment fund worth $43 million to help two of its promising services push on. Read More
The next Snowden probably will not leak classified details of the NSA’s illegal spying programs. Rather, he’ll use those programs to dig up compromising intel — phone recordings, location histories, web browser histories, emails, credit card purchases, Uber routes — on domestic political enemies of the Trump regime. Read More
Most people associate drones with troops and mad scientists tinkering around in their backyards. Thanks to technological breakthroughs — including longer and safer flights — and new federal guidelines enacted this year, drone use is expanding beyond military and consumer markets and is seeping into the enterprise. Read More
AI has fascinated mankind for more than half a century, with the first public mention of computer intelligence recorded during a London lecture by Alan Turing in 1947. Once a plot device for science-fiction tales, AI is becoming real — and human beings are going to have to define their relationship with it sooner rather than later. Read More
In case you missed it, last night Mark Zuckerberg published a response to accusations that “fake news” on Facebook influenced the outcome of the U.S. election, and helped Donald Trump to win.
The CEO claimed that at least 99% of news content on Facebook was “authentic.” Zuckerberg wrote:
“Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is… Read More
If you have an account on AdultFriendFinder, Cams.com, Penthouse, Stripshow and/or iCams.com — and reused it on other sites — you should probably change your password. FriendFinder Networks, the parent company of those sites, has reportedly been hacked, resulting in the leak of of over 412 million accounts, according to Leaked Source (h/t to CSO). For context of just how big… Read More
With podcasting growing rapidly as a medium, a new generation of audio-recording tools are appearing. Zencastr is a great example. The company’s new product, launched today, is designed to make it easier to record high-quality audio for interviewees based anywhere in the world. Read More
Facebook may have built an influence so large that it’s cracking under the weight of the power and influence of its News Feed. Mark Zuckerberg began an interview on stage at Techonomy16 discussing the evolution of the News Feed and Facebook’s impact on the election. Post-election, journalists politicians, and pundits have questioned Facebook’s role in shaping the… Read More
UPDATE: The Big Sur Snapbot is sold out, so if you’re looking to grab a pair, you’ll have to wait for the next popup location.
Spectacles are on sale again, in their second ever pop-up location (the first was at Venice Beach in LA on November 10) – and people in and around Loma Vista near Big Sur state park are the new lucky lotto winners who can now purchase a pair of… Read More
Integration companies, while not glamorous, can build market power by positioning themselves at the center of an ecosystem and creating an “ecosystem network effect”, whereby they become a de facto standard. Okta and Segment are both on their way to achieving this. Read More
Secret, the anonymous sharing app developed by David Byttow and Chrys Bader-Wechseler, looks to be on its way to resurrection. The app was part of a wave of anonymous apps like Whisper and YikYak but shut down April 2015 after facing a lot of criticism over privacy and cyberbullying. Secret allowed anyone to post snippets of text like a rumor or piece of gossip on an anonymous basis. Many… Read More
