If you’ve ever ventured into the comment section of a website or spent any time on forums or social media, you’ve probably encountered sockpuppets, fake accounts controlled by a single person — though it’s possible you didn’t know it at the time. New research may help ID these overeager commentators automatically, which is good news for engendering sane… Read More
Okta, the identity management software company, went public on the Nasdaq today, continuing a wave of tech IPOs. After pricing its IPO at $17, Okta raised $187 million by selling 11 million shares in the offering. Read More
Benchmark partner Peter Fenton, who had been on Twitter’s board since 2009, will not seek re-election after his term expires in 2016, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Read More
Slowly but surely, Google is transforming itself into a formidable VR player. This week, the Daydream maker hired Logan Olson, best known as the developer of SoundStage, a well-received HTC Vive title built around a VR music studio sandbox. Read More
This week, a massive international array of the most powerful radio telescopes on the planet set its sights on the most camera-shy subject of all, the black hole. Badassly known as the Event Horizon Telescope, the global web of telescopes seeks to capture the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Read More
Some babies won’t sleep unless they get a nighttime cruise around the neighborhood, as many parents (my own included) can attest. That’s why Ford’s latest creation isn’t a car at all – it’s a small cot for babies called Max Motor Dreams (via CNET) that simulates a drive using sound and motion, along with LED lighting designed to mimic yellow-hued… Read More
Adidas unveiled their latest 3D-printed shoe last night, the Futurecraft 4D. The shoe is a huge improvement on their last 3D-printed runners, which were more of a concept than an actual product. The new version is better suited for mass production – Adidas plans on selling 5,000 pairs this upcoming fall, which will scale up to more than 100,000 pairs by the end of 2018. While the… Read More
Happy belated Equal Pay Day! The U.S. Department of Labor testified in court today that pay inequities at Google are “systemic,” The Guardian reports. Earlier this month, Google said it had closed the gender pay gap globally. Read More
The researchers over at OpenAI were able to use a recurrent mLSTM character-level model trained on Amazon reviews to identify the sentiment of blocks of text. And perhaps more interestingly, the team was able to generate new text with customizable sentiment. Read More
The last time I wrote about Save, the French startup had just raised $16.7 million to prove that you could scale smartphone repair services. It’s been a roller coaster ride since then as the company had to claim insolvency. After this process, Remade Group is picking up Save’s business and employees.
While the startup managed to grow quite rapidly, it was hard to keep up with the pace. Read More
Apple reveals that it will be resetting its approach with the Mac Pro, the Waymo v. Uber lawsuit moves forward and Tesla surpasses GM to become the most valuable U.S. automaker. Here are the top stories of the week. Read More
Less than 24 hours after news broke that Twitter was suing the federal government to protect the privacy of the person or persons behind a popular “rogue” anti-Trump account, the government has backed off. Today in a filing, Twitter dropped its charges against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection after the government withdrew its request to… Read More
Many hot new enterprise technologies are centered around free, “open-source” technology. But how can corporate customers, and investors, evaluate all these new open-source offerings? These questions are especially tough to answer because most open-source companies are still private. That’s why we created a detailed index to track popular open-source software projects. Read More
How do you like your eggs? If you answered “Easter,” you have something in common with billionaire tech visionary Elon Musk, who never tires of building the things into the software for his Tesla vehicles. Now, the CEO is teasing a forthcoming Easter Egg for people he’s heard like Easter Eggs: An Easter Egg with Easter Eggs in its Easter Egg. Musk’s tweet suggests a way… Read More
Facebook today rolled out an improvement to its Instant Articles feature that now lets publishers include call-to-action units in their articles to better connect with readers, including those that encourage email sign-ups and Page Likes. The company also announced it’s testing two more units for publishers interested in offering free trials of their digital subscriptions and another… Read More
Acknowledging that its technology is second-best is a rare move for a competitive startup, but as Uber faces a lawsuit from Waymo, claiming the runner-up title might save its self-driving car program. Uber is also claiming that, although one of its engineering leads is accused of stealing tens of thousands of secret documents from Google, those documents were never uploaded to an… Read More
Netflix quietly launched a new discovery feature this week aimed at promoting its original programming to users who are watching via an app on their television. Now, when you leave the Netflix application idle, a screensaver will eventually appear displaying a rotating selection of Netflix’s Originals.
The company didn’t make a formal announcement about the new addition, which… Read More
Microsoft’s hardware lineup, including Surface Book and Surface Pro devices, are due for a refresh, but we still haven’t heard that much about what’s going to come along with the upgrades. Now, Windows watcher Paul Thurrott has provided a few details on the Surface Pro 5, which sounds like it’ll be an iterative update of the flagship Windows tablet hybrid. The Surface Pro… Read More
Mic has raised $21 million in new funding, which co-founder and CEO Chris Altchek said will accelerate the digital publisher’s investment in video news.
The company says it currently reaches 66 million unique readers and viewers each month, and that 75 percent of its daily views come from video — particularly impressive when you consider that it launched its first video… Read More
At the end of March, Amazon announced it was planning to shut down Diapers.com and all the other e-commerce sites operated by Quidsi – the company Amazon acquired for $545 million back in 2010. However, it didn’t offer any details as to when those sites would eventually shutter their doors. But it now appears the first steps towards closure have been taken – all the Quidsi… Read More
