Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a form of ransomware that can hit us where it really counts: the water supply. Their program installed itself in a model water plant and allowed the researchers to change chlorine levels, shut down water valves, and send false readings to monitoring systems.
“We are expecting ransomware to go one step farther, beyond the… Read More
YouTube Kids, the app offering a curated selection of age-appropriate videos sourced from YouTube, is launching its own original programming, the company announced today. The four new shows are a part of the YouTube Red subscription service, and were created with the kids’ app in mind. This is also the first time that YouTube Red has invested in creators who are making original shows… Read More
Volkswagen and Mobileye have signed an agreement to see Mobileye’s Road Experience Management (REM) mapping service integrated into VW-brand vehicles starting in 2018. The service from provider Mobileye crowdsources real-time road condition reports from vehicles equipped with the product to help provide intelligent fleet features for use in autonomous vehicles, making sure networked… Read More
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put out a fresh call for tech companies to push for reform of the surveillance regime in the U.S., warning of the added urgency given new U.S. President Donald Trump — who has already been demonstrably hostile to foreigners’ privacy rights in his first few days in office. Read More
Subscription beauty service Birchbox is launching a new, pricier tier to its service, offering customers the ability to better customize their monthly box of products, along with other perks. The service, which is only being offered to current subscribers for the time being, is $14 per month, compared with $10 per month for the original subscription. The launch comes after a time when… Read More
If you still feel like you were somehow “promised” flying cars based on Popular Science magazine covers in the 1960s then you’re in luck, because Dutch company PAL-V is now accepting pre-orders for its Liberty vehicle, which it calls “the first certified commercial flying car ever.” The three-wheeled ‘car’ has a retractable top-mounted rotor, making… Read More
Finding financial data, particularly for private companies, is no small task. It usually requires a solid BS detector for researching online and a network of knowledgeable sources to bounce numbers off of — not something that can easily be done over coffee or in the middle of a meeting. PitchBook, a PE and VC database, is integrating financial data into its mobile app to chip away at… Read More
In what amounts to one of the purest and most interesting experiments in assessing value of Mac OS’s App Store the founder of Rogue Amoeba posted a description of what happened when he pulled his app Piezo. The result? More revenue as a whole without much damage to sales. The impetus for the move came Apple pulled the Dash app off of the App Store. In the 100 day period since the move,… Read More
Famous people! In cars! Singing! Bonus: Shaq at a donut shop in a funny hat and Will Smith lying on a lady’s wedding dress, for some reason! The trailer for Apple Music’s new series is here, and it looks – well, it looks basically like what you’d expect out of a series based on the Late Late Show’s water cooler hit. Timed perfectly to last night’s Grammy… Read More
The D.C. and Miami meetups are just on the horizon, and it’s about time that we introduce you to the companies presenting their products in the rapid-fire pitch-off. We’ll be visiting D.C. on the evening of February 21 and then heading to Miami for a meetup on February 23. At each event, ten companies will have exactly 60 seconds to pitch their wares to the audience and a panel… Read More
Musical.ly, the tween and teen focused lip-syncing app, has just dropped another app onto the App Store. Days ago, the company launched a video messaging app called Ping Pong on the App Store, in what appears to be a test ahead of a public debut. This is the fourth app for the rapidly growing Shanghai-based startup, whose flagship app had over 100 million users as of last fall, and whose… Read More
Dopamine Labs, a small startup in Los Angeles, not just creates tools that can hook users to an app… the company is now also giving people a way to kick their app habit.
Formed by two neuroscientists who received their doctorates from the University of Southern California, the company has developed what it calls a “reinforcement api” based on the duo’s complementary… Read More
How do you avoid getting made obsolete by artificial intelligence in a time when resources and research are largely being funnelled toward improving that area of tech? By merging with the machines, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He’s spoken about the potential of brain interfaces, including a “neural lace,” before, but at the launch of Tesla in UAE during the World… Read More
Apple is now a member of the Wireless Power Consortium. As spotted by 9to5mac, the website has recently been updated to feature Apple as one of the 213 members. This update fuels recent rumors that Apple is going to add wireless charging in the next iPhone. While wireless charging is nothing new, Apple has been very cautious about this feature. The Apple Watch already works with a magnetic… Read More
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty addressed both Donald Trump’s travel ban and her continued participation on his White House business advisory council in an email shared internally with staff, obtained by TechCrunch and confirmed by IBM. In the email, Rometty points to IBM’s history of attempting to remain more apolitical than some of its tech industry peers, while also noting the… Read More
Pretty much every company, to some extent, has to power their algorithms with data and machine learning if they’re going to be competitive with anyone else in their space. The challenge there, though, is that not everyone can have the massive computational power and data of a company like Google — especially not startups. Siddharth Mall and his co-founders started Playment in… Read More
TheTake, a site which launched as a way for consumers to buy that thing they saw in that movie, is set to begin selling an automated version of its service directly to businesses. The New York-based company is pitching studios and entertainment sites on a machine learning system that can identify products and locations as a way to generate revenue from product placements and experiential… Read More
What are you up over President’s Day weekend? If you didn’t answer “searching for exoplanets,” it’s time to seriously reconsider your priorities and head on over to a new dataset released by the Carnegie Institution for Science and MIT. The data dump includes around 61,000 measurements of 1,600 nearby stars.
The information, which was collected by Hawaii’s W.M. Read More
What technology is popular with acquirers, helps save enterprises from expensive breaches, and could even curtail the third-leading cause of death?
If you answered identity management, congratulations. That’s the takeaway from a Crunchbase analysis of the identity management space, performed in the wake of a spate of recent acquisition and large funding rounds for companies in the sector. Read More
Dyson is expanding its footprint in Singapore, with a new Technology Centre opened today by the maker of vacuums and other smart home electronics. The UK company will be investing $561 million as part of its commitment to the new facility, which hosts working labs where research and development teams can pool their cumulative hardware and software know-how to help advance the… Read More
