Pandora today is rolling out a new feature to its Premium tier that will allow subscribers to continue to listen to music, uninterrupted, when their current track, album or playlist ends. Called, simply, “AutoPlay,” the feature works by shifting users to a personalized radio station based on whatever it is you were listening to before. Read More
A team incubated out of venture firm Kleiner Perkins has created Packagd, which is building a series of mobile apps that combine unboxing and review videos with the ability to instantly purchase the products they talk about. Read More
Every minute spent training a deep learning model is a minute not doing something else, and in today’s fast-paced world of research, that minute is worth a lot. Facebook published a paper this morning detailing its personal approach to this problem. The company says it has managed to reduce the training time of a ResNet-50 deep learning model on ImageNet from 29 hours to one. Read More
Yubico, the company behind the increasingly popular YubiKey two-factor authentication key, has raised a $30 million funding round. This marks the first major institutional funding round for Yubico, which had previously only raised $4.5 million from angel investors. New investors include New Enterprise Associates, the Valley Fund and Bure, a major growth equity firm from Sweden. Existing… Read More
Today, the former FBI director who ran afoul of President Trump appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee in its ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It was James Comey’s first appearance since he was fired from his role as the director of the FBI. Read More
Following allegations of the now-defunct job search startup WrkRiot scamming employees out of wages and its CEO Isaac Choi of misleading former employees about his credentials, the U.S. Department of Justice has announced that Choi has been indicted on charges of five counts of wire fraud. Read More
The next version of Apple’s iOS operating system, iOS 11, is going to make it easier for you to log into your apps. The new mobile operating system’s software will introduce a new feature called “Password AutoFill for Apps,” which will offer easy access to your passwords right from the iOS keyboard when you’re on an app’s login screen. Read More
Yahoo’s shareholders have approved the sale of Yahoo’s operating business to Verizon in a vote held today and confirmed in a press release sent out following the meeting. Read More
Some consolidation is afoot in the world of virtual reality. MindMaze, a startup based out of Switzerland that has been building a VR platform to map and respond to brain activity for applications in healthcare and other fields, is making its first acquisition: Gait Up, a developer of motion analytics used in smart watches and other hardware. Read More
Earlier this year, Facebook announced it would allow publishers to include more ads in their “Instant Articles.” In March, Facebook began testing ad units at the bottom of Instant Article pages — in the related articles section. Today, that test is opening to all publishers on the network, says Facebook. Read More
Revolut, the rather noisy London fintech startup that offers a card and current account features, coupled with low currency exchange, has taken venture debt from U.S.-based Triplepoint Capital, according to a regulatory filing. The amount remains undisclosed, though I understand the financing is to see the company through to a much larger Series B round currently in the works. Read More
Yet more activity in the world of cybersecurity. Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired Hexadite, an Israeli startup that uses AI to identify and protect against attacks. The idea is to expand Microsoft’s existing security portfolio with an infusion of new technology based around new innovations in areas like AI and machine learning. Read More
Former FBI Director James Comey is set to give testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding his relationship with Trump during the Russia/Mike Flynn investigation. Yesterday, his prepared statement went public — a seven-page document that tells the story of Trump’s pressure for loyalty from the FBI. Needless to say, people are anxious to watch the public testimony. Read More
Alexa can already control your Fire TV to help you launch Netflix or find your favorite show, among other things, but today Amazon is announcing a new tool for developers that will allow any cable and satellite TV company, streaming service or other content provider to add the same sort of voice control to their apps, as well. Read More
The revolution will be televised… over the internet. By 2021, 82 percent of all consumer IP traffic will be video, and that growth will be driven by a boon in live streaming, courtesy of services like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Read More
French startup Algolia just raised a $53 million Series B round led by Accel, a couple of years after raising $18.3 million with… Accel also leading the round. So it looks like it’s a love story between the VC firm and the software-as-a-service startup. Read More
The proportion of jobs being made redundant across AOL and Yahoo is around 15 percent globally, we have confirmed with our sources. This shakes out to as many as 2,100 jobs being lost as part of the corporate merger. Read More
London-based Roli has created two of the most compelling music-making devices in recent memory. It was a no-brainer, really, that the company would eventually bridge the gap between the two. Roli’s done the job by creating a modular version of its Seaboard MIDI controller that slots directly alongside existing Blocks, plugging into the system’s magnetic daisy-chained setup. Read More
Addepar, the provider of data collection and monitoring services for the financial industry (it’s Palantir’s somewhat less ethically compromised cousin), has raised a whopping $140 million in its latest round of funding. Think of Addepar as the tool that gives portfolio managers for the world’s super rich a way to see exactly what those super rich own. Read More
Rand Corporation reported in 2016 that autonomous cars would need to be tested over 11 billion miles in order to prove they’re better drivers than humans. With a fleet of 100 cars running 24 hours a day, that would take 500 years. That seems both improbable and impractical, so companies like Cognata are filling the autonomous vehicle testing void with virtual miles. Read More
