Bunch, a newly-launched startup operating out of Berlin, is aiming to be something akin to a “Google Analytics for company culture”. It offers a SaaS to let companies and company teams quantify internal company culture, and then use this data as the basis to screen job candidates to help ensure that they will also be a good fit. Read More
Intel’s coming up on the one-year anniversary of its Movidius acquisition, and to celebrate it the company has shown off a brand spanking new chip, the Myriad X. The Myriad X seems to be somewhat of a “Pro” version of the Myriad 2, bringing a major redesign to the computer vision-minded chip, while also flaunting some new sophisticated deep-learning capabilities by way of its… Read More
Virtual reality is getting (a bit) cheaper everywhere you look. Today, Sony is the one delivering the deals. In U.S. and Canada, Sony’s PlayStation VR is getting a new bundle which brings the headset and PS Camera together for $399 while the full bundle which includes a pair of Move motion controllers is going to be dropped from $499 to $449. The company will no longer sell the… Read More
While many augmented reality startups are focused on the future that always-on smart glasses can bring to the world, AR could also bring one of the biggest shifts to how we operate our mobile devices that we’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, to date, most of these solutions have been less than accessible to users running any other than the latest and greatest in mobile hardware. 8th Wall, an… Read More
The BMW i3 will soon be available with a sport package that adds a few ponies, sportier wheels and a slightly different look to let other drivers know you’re serious about not using gasoline. The updated model is called the i3s and marks the first time the automaker added a dedicated sport package to the i3 or i7, though the i8 is already sporty enough. This package comes as part of… Read More
Uber’s engineering blog has just posted an interesting piece on the company’s web-based tool for exploring and visualizing data from self-driving car research. It’s a smart look at an impressive platform, and definitely has nothing to do with a long piece published last week lauding a similar platform in use by one of Uber’s most serious rivals, Waymo. Read More
Amazon now owns Whole Foods, but what does that mean for grocery prices at Whole Foods? Let’s take a look at some key grocery items and how the new Whole Foods stacks up against the low-cost Walmart. Read More
Longtime Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has put Iranian and Iranian-Americans in the spotlight. In part, that’s because the 48-year-old, just elected to become Uber’s new CEO, fled Iran with his family at age 9 to escape the Iranian Revolution. In part, his ties to other people of Iranian descent in the U.S. tech world are, well, extensive. Read More
We’ve mostly moved past the point where our Internet of Things devices leak private information to anyone watching via unsecured connections, but that doesn’t mean you can stop being afraid. Never, ever stop being afraid. To top up your paranoia reserves, a new study finds that internet providers can, if they so choose, monitor all kinds of things from your smart home’s… Read More
Amazon closed on Whole Foods today and began slashing the chain’s grocery prices this morning as a result. The goal with the price cuts is to bring Whole Foods more in line with rival stores. But even with Amazon willing to slim its margins on Whole Foods’ groceries, can it really expect to compete with its top competitor Walmart when it comes to affordable groceries? Read More
SpaceX held its second big Hyperloop Pod design competition for student teams on Sunday, and the goal was to field the fastest pod in a race down the mile-long test track SpaceX built near its HQ. Three finalist teams ran their pods on Sunday, aiming to break records. Take a look at what it was like to be there — and watch Elon Musk do a little dance and eat some ice cream. Read More
Western Digital has today announced that it purchased Upthere for an undisclosed amount. Upthere had previously raised $77 million from an impressive list of investors, with KPCB and Western Digital Ventures leading the round. Upthere wants you to think of its service as the canonical location where your data lives. It’s available for OS X/MacOS, Windows, Android and iOS. Read More
The big day is here — sorta. Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods was slated to bring significant price drops to a number of Whole Foods brand products today. Discounts we saw ranged from six percent on the low end for pasta sauce to nearly 30 percent on roast chicken. We took a gander around the Whole Foods in SOMA, San Francisco to capture a number of the price adjustments. Read More
Engineer Julio Vazquez wanted to help his friend Rami Wehbe play the Nintendo Switch after he lost the use of his right hand due to a cerebrovascular accident. Wehbe couldn’t play Breath Of The Wild with the Joy-Con controllers because he needed both hands to manage the two sticks. Vazquez built a few simple prototype solutions and settled on a modular system that lets him play the game… Read More
If you like to keep on top of the latest display tech, you’re probably familiar with Ray Soneira’s exhaustive testing of the screens on the newest smartphones and other devices. His latest target is the Galaxy Note 8, and it turns out Samsung’s phablet sports the best screen they’ve ever seen on a phone. Read More
It’s part of normal discussion in Silicon Valley to claim that Amazon makes no money, or even loses money, in the pursuit of growth. But it’s a trope Amazon bucks on a regular basis for two reasons: It doesn’t have to lose money on large chunks of its business in the name of growth anymore. It has recently (in terms of the life of its business) added a new operating unit… Read More
Fraud detection is a huge problem for retailers and the banking industry. But as companies fortify their defenses against fraudsters, the criminal element finds new weaknesses to exploit. The latest tactic has been phone spoofing, and fraud at the call center itself. Helping to ward off the latest wave of fake accounts is Next Caller, a Y Combinator-backed startup based in New York. Read More
The Uber board offered Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi the new role on Sunday. And according to Bloomberg data, they would have had to pay him a lot of money to woo him. Khosrowshahi, who has been at the helm of Expedia since 2005, had almost $185 million in unvested stock options when the offer was made Sunday. He probably wouldn’t forgo that kind of money unless Uber could offer him more. Read More
Stormfront, the oldest neo-Nazi forum on the web, has been shut down by its name provider, Network Solutions, and the domain officially put on hold. The news followed the shutdown of DailyStormer, another supremacist site. Stormfront began in 1990s as a dial-up BBS and then morphed into a website and forum in about 1995. It has been registered at Network Solutions since 1995. The… Read More
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have welcomed their second daughter into the world, and her name is August. Before you ask, it’s unclear if she was named August because she was born in August. (But I highly doubt it.) In usual Zuck fashion, the Facebook CEO and founder posted the announcement to Facebook along with a letter from him and his wife to the new baby girl. Here’s… Read More
