We are probably still quite some way off from seeing Artificial Intelligence (AI) replace doctors, but there are already lots of proven use-cases where AI is being used to augment the medical profession. One proven area is in medical imaging where AI and computer vision is helping with medical scan and imaging analysis to help support radiologists and other clinicians. Read More
While many of the virtual reality experiences being shown off at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival are pushing boundaries in VR story-telling techniques, “Hallelujah” is perhaps most noteworthy because of the cutting edge tech used to shoot the experience and the story behind it. Lytro has been around for eleven years; raised over $210 million from Silicon Valley’s… Read More
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been known to enjoy ambitious flights of technological fancy, but this may be his flightiest: Bloomberg reports the enigmatic billionaire, who favors dark attire and once leapt out of an airplane wearing Google Glass to promote the launch of the wearable, is now working on a secret airship in a NASA hangar. Read More
Today’s Stories Waymo begins first public on-demand self-driving service test in Arizona Google tweaks Search to help combat ‘fake news’ Facebook shows Related Articles and fact checkers before you open links Netflix enters China via licensing deal with top video streaming service iQiyi Gett in advanced talks to buy Juno for $250M as Uber rivals consolidate Credits… Read More
Today, Airbnb’s design team open sourced its internal library for writing React components that easily render directly to Sketch. Instead of trying to get Sketch to export to code, the Airbnb team spent its time on the opposite — putting the paintbrush in the hands of the engineer.
Everyday engineers and designers have the luxury of operating without design systems, but large… Read More
Jessica Moreno and her co-founder Dan McComas couldn’t find the kind of inclusive online community they were looking for when they left Reddit in the summer of 2015 so they left the Bay Area and headed east to Salt Lake City to start Imzy, a community platform encouraging kinder interactions with like-minded individuals. Moreno and McComas spent six years prior to… Read More
Uber is looking to get Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page to provide a deposition in the ongoing court case between itself and Waymo. The company made the request in court today during a discovery hearing before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, and Waymo opposed the request. Read More
A hacker called The Janitor has created multiple versions of a program called BrickerBot, a system that searches out and bricks insecure IoT devices. A researcher named Pascal Geenens has followed the worm for a few weeks and has seen it pop up and essentially destroy infected webcams and other IoT devices. The devices all used a Linux package called BusyBox and had exposed telnet-based… Read More
If only all algorithmic bias were as easy to spot as this: FaceApp, a photo-editing app that uses a neural network for editing selfies in a photorealistic way, has apologized for building a racist algorithm. Read More
As part of the media push surrounding the premiere of Alien: Covenant (set to debut May 19th), Twentieth Century Fox and its compatriots are offering up a VR teaser — Alien: Covenant In Utero.
This non-Nirvana-related short puts an audience inside the moment of birth for Alien’s eponymous aliens. The short (much like the album from which it does not take its name) is bloody… Read More
Palantir has reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor over a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination against Asian people in the company’s hiring and selection processes for engineering roles. As part of the agreement, Palantir will pay $1.7 million in back wages and other types of monetary relief, like stock value options, to those affected. Read More
I’ve been saying it for a few years now, but I really, really like the Chromecast — Google’s simple little dongle for streaming Netflix/Hulu/YouTube etc. from your devices to your TV with just a tap or two. It does what it’s supposed to do, does it well and doesn’t try to do anything more than that. Well… that’s not entirely true. Read More
Flying cars have been a sci-fi promise for decades, and we’re hearing that they may be a reality soon. Maybe. But are consumers really waiting with bated breath for a flying car? Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle at the University of Michigan’s Sustainable Worldwide Transportation group surveyed 508 Americans to find out what people think of this sci-fi dream becoming reality. Read More
Anthony Levandowski, the engineer at the center of the legal battle between Google and Uber over driverless-car technology, has suffered a setback. Levandowski has broadly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. However, an appeals court has denied his request to extend his Fifth Amendment rights so broadly that Uber could redact documents on Levandowski’s behalf. Read More
Physical tracking in shops has been a global trend since at least 2013. Using a cell phone’s location data and video monitoring, retailers have been tracking customers’ movements through stores in an effort to regain some of the ground lost to the online retail experience. At least, that’s the argument from stores. And now fast food restaurants are picking up the rallying cry. Read More
Tech is uniting against Trump. From 127 tech firms teaming up against Trump’s immigration ban, to Google employees’ massive walkout in response to the immigration ban, to Lyft’s $3 million donation to the ACLU, tech has taken up the language of protest and spoken loud and clear. However, as the tech community’s voice grows louder, it must be strategic in how it directs… Read More
Google and Intertrust today announced the launch of PatentShield, a new program that aims to help defend startups from patent litigation — in return for a stake in those companies. The basic idea here is to give startups that join the program ownership of a selection of patents from Google’s and Intertrust’s portfolio that they can then use as a deterrent against… Read More
YouTube Kids, the application offering a filtered version of YouTube that’s more kid-friendly, is now natively available on the big screen for the first time, Google announced today. Previously a mobile-only application, YouTube Kids will now be offered on a range of smart TVs, including those from LG, Samsung and Sony. Read More
Uber is making its vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) plans more concrete, via new partnerships announced today during its Elevate conference focused on the VTOL industry. The partnerships are with established aeronautics and emerging VTOL players, and will focus on two markets initially, including Dallas and Dubai. Read More
As Uber continues to work through its many layers of turmoil as a business, its smaller rivals are seizing the moment and consolidating to double down on their own ambitions in transportation-on-demand. Multiple sources tell TechCrunch that Gett — the taxi-hailing service backed by $300 million from Volkswagen — is acquiring Juno — one of the latest upstarts on the… Read More
