Imagine the difficulty of trying to inspect a working gas turbine. There is not only intense heat, blades are constantly spinning, making getting a camera inside to examine the operating turbine a huge challenge. A team at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York has been working on several small experimental robots designed to solve some of these issues. Traditionally,… Read More
WhatsApp has quietly beefed up the security of an iCloud backup feature for users of its messaging service — potentially closing a loophole that could enable otherwise end-to-end encrypted messages to become accessible in a readable form. Read More
Target announced this morning it’s now testing a next-day home delivery service called Target Restock. The service, which is currently being trialed with Target employees ahead of a customer-facing pilot this summer, is designed to offer an easy way to shop online for household essentials which will arrive the day after you place your order. The move is clearly meant to compete with… Read More
Kat Holmes is the former principal director of Inclusive Design at Microsoft. In our thirteenth episode, we talk about the definition of inclusive design, take an inside look at her “special ops” design unit, and dive into the best method for deploying human-centered design. Read More
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created a new way to turn almost any surface into a touchpad with just a little conductive spray paint. The system, called Electrick, uses a technique called “electric field tomography.”
Created by CMU Ph.D. student Yang Zhang, Electrick uses small electrodes attached to the edges of a painted surface and it can turn wood, plastic… Read More
Parrot today announced packages for its consumer drones aimed at small businesses. The company has long served the professional market, but this announcement repositions the Bebop and Disco drones as off-the-shelf solutions for 3D modeling, mapping and agricultural uses. After all, drones are most interesting as data capture devices and this move by Parrot reinforces their abilities outside… Read More
Israel is full of companies addressing the growing concern of drone security and we’re excited to announce the CEOs of Convexum and Regulus Cyber will speak on the topic at TechCrunch’s Tel Aviv Meetup + Pitch-off. Consumer-grade drones are increasingly becoming a security concern as their prices drop and capabilities increase. Governments and private organizations are looking for… Read More
Comcast this morning has launched a new service called Xfinity xFi that will allow customers to better manage and control their home Wi-Fi network through an online dashboard, voice control via the TV, as well as through apps for iOS and Android devices. The system is designed to make it easier to perform common tasks, like finding the Wi-Fi password or monitoring activity across the network,… Read More
John Oliver has again fired off his quick wit at the new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the Trump administration for trying to roll back Obama-era Net Neutrality rules. This isn’t the first time Oliver has addressed the issue of an “open internet,” as he touched on the topic back in 2014 during his fifth episode of Last Week Tonight. In that episode, he identified then-FCC… Read More
In order to run complex algorithms on data at any scale you normally need a lot of engineering resources and management. Like, a LOT. Over 50% of the total amount of money spent on processing that oft-remarked thing called Big Data is spent on engineering and developer operations. It’s a big problem to solve, and basically a sitting duck for a startup to attack. The problem is, it’s… Read More
Every American city wishes it could better support technology, entrepreneurship and infrastructure, unfortunately few actually have the resources to set truly ambitious goals into motion. But Columbus, Ohio, having secured $40 million in grants to improve access to transportation and ready itself for autonomous vehicles, is one city actually in a position to take risks. Its latest, a… Read More
Link3D is launching a new service to connect industrial businesses with additive manufacturers around the country. Pitching itself as a more professional alternative to 3D Hubs, Formlabs and Shapeways, Link3D is the fruit of nearly two years of work from founder and chief executive Shane Fox. For Fox, additive manufacturing has three hurdles to overcome before it reaches widespread… Read More
As music streaming continues to grow in ubiquity, a company that’s built a platform to collect royalties on music played across billions of streams is cashing in on the opportunity. Kobalt, the European startup that has built technology and a platform to collect music royalties by tracking when even a sample of a song is played across multiple platforms, has raised another $75… Read More
Human collaboration has been around… a while. But it’s only in the last 10 years that we’ve started begin to work out how to get network effects from it. Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn arose to tackle that, and it would be fair to assume that this “ship” has sailed. Of course, it doesn’t stop others from trying their hand at making networking better… Read More
Microsoft wants in on the Google Home and Amazon Echo party. This Echo-lookalike is made by Harman Kardon and it’s powered by Microsoft’s Cortana voice platform. The device apparently launches this fall and could be officially revealed later this week. Update: Microsoft and Harman Kardon have now confirmed this. The device will go on sale in the fall of 2017. Called the Invoke,… Read More
As open source database architecture continues to grow in popularity, one of the bigger developers in the area has picked up some funding to target the opportunity. MariaDB Corporation, the company that develops solutions and contributes to the open-source SQL fork managed by the MariaDB Foundation, today announced that it has raised €25 million ($27 million) from the European Investment… Read More
More career moves in the world of European VC. This time it’s the turn of David Buttress, ex-CEO of Just Eat, who is joining 83North as a General Partner where he’ll be based in the VC firm’s London office. Read More
Urtasun joins Uber in a senior role at Uber’s ATG, at a time when the organizational unit, which drives most of Uber’s work on autonomous driving, is in need of more stability at the top.
Urtasun’s work on self-driving technology in general, and specifically with perception algorithms that help autonomous vehicles take better measure of their surroundings, have made her an… Read More
There’s good news for foreigners living in, or visiting, China after Didi Chuxing — the local ride-sharing leader — added support for English language and overseas credit cards to its service for the first time.
Didi, which processes more 20 million rides a day across its various services, has always been a tricky one for non-Mandarin speakers and visitors. Personally… Read More
