Facebook announced in November that it would stop advertisers from targeting users by race for ads that focused on housing, employment, and credit opportunities, in response to a report that found that Facebook’s tools could be used to place discriminatory advertisements. Today, the social network provided a progress update on the matter, disclosing what actions it has taken since… Read More
Self-driving cars require self-driving car software, and Udacity’s helping to feed that need with its nanodegree program in the field. Now, the online education company is also making available its self-driving car simulator via open source license, allowing anyone with a working knowledge of Unity to gab the assets, load its preexisting scenes and create their own tracks for virtual… Read More
Rothenberg assigned the firm the name Frontier Tech Ventures in September 2016 after a series of events tarnished the brand, starting with an SEC investigation, which opened in July of 2016. What drew the agency’s attention: Rothenberg himself, whose lavish spending to market his fund began to concern employees, as well as his 176 investors — almost all of them wealthy… Read More
SpaceX has a new date for its next launch – February 18, when it’s hoping to make its first launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at pad LC-39A. The first launch from the Florida facility was originally set for January 29, and was set to be a mission to deliver a commercial EchoStar satellite into orbit, but that was pushed back to a target of the end of February when… Read More
A password may soon be required to enter the country — the applicant’s Facebook password, that is. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly suggested the measure to the House Homeland Security Committee today during talks around Trump’s embattled executive order on immigration. Read More
While creating content for kids on tablets has been largely the preserve of smash games like Clash of Clans, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and another way may be to wrap it in hardware. That’s the thinking behind the Cinemood, an appealing, portable mini-cinema projector which comes bundled with content, and number of other features, for young kids. It’s now raised… Read More
GM-owned Cruise Automation wants you to be able to see the progress it’s making with its self-driving car tests, in a way that’s more tangible than looking at boring lists of disengagement reports. That’s why it’s been publishing videos of its Cruise test cars navigating real city streets, and a new episode of that video series is available now, showing a Bolt EV… Read More
Facebook’s stripped-down but speedy Lite app is growing fast and adding countries so it can keep connecting people and building the company’s business in the low-bandwidth world where revenue increased 52% this year.
Facebook Lite launched in June 2015, it rocketed to 100 million monthly users by March 2016, and now it’s doubled in size to 200 million users, Mark Zuckerberg says. Read More
Samsung has seemingly put its on-going Galaxy Note 7 issues behind it, courtesy of a couple of recalls, an expensive investigation and promises to implement stricter standards. But the company’s battery woes aren’t yet fully behind it, as it was no doubt reminded earlier today when a small fire broke out in a plant located in Tianjin, China.
The company reported that the fire… Read More
Londoners in the unfun position of needing to find a new flatmate — and lacking the easy options of friends or family to move in with — can get a little algorithmic help from a UK startup with the no-frills name of Ideal Flatmate. Read More
Pinterest is looking to continually decrease the friction from finding something they’re interested in and drilling further into newer products and ideas, and it now has another product to try to close that gap. The company today said it’s launching a new feature that allows users to find and jump to additional products within a photo they’re currently viewing. So, for… Read More
After years of accepting tips from alumni, Y Combinator has decided to open up its recommendation network to everyone. The goal is to help increase the number of startups connected to YC by allowing professors, mentors, early customers and anyone else familiar with a team to submit recommendations to YC on their behalf. Kat Manalac, a partner at YC, explained that a lot of founders are afraid… Read More
Jonathan Budd sees solar power as a money-making opportunity. His new company, Powur, essentially lets people add solar to their homes with no upfront costs. While there isn’t much technology in his solution he does have some interesting ideas about the future of solar. In this podcast we talk about when he expects solar to overtake fossil fuels – not for a long time – and… Read More
Slowly but surely, Revolut is getting closer to building an actual bank. The startup just announced the launch of current accounts — you can now get a personal IBAN, and the company plans to add other features soon. In addition to current accounts, Revolut is also introducing a chatbot to handle support requests. Revolut isn’t technically a bank account, it’s more or less… Read More
Pinterest said today it’s launching three new products today that will point out specific elements in pictures — whether viewed live through a camera or through a typical image search — and use them as a jumping point for search. All of these are designed to keep Pinterest coming back over and over to discover ideas based on images. Pinterest has been increasingly trying… Read More
Very little productivity seems to be taking place in VR on the consumer side right now, and to keep that trend alive, Hulu is updating its VR app to ensure that you can watch Seinfeld alongside your virtual reality friends with no friction whatsoever. Today, Hulu is updating its Gear VR and Rift apps to support Oculus’ latest social features. On Gear VR, users will soon be able to check… Read More
Beginning with 2013’s Snowden leaks, the Obama administration publicly wrestled with various thorny issues at the intersection of technology and government surveillance. When, how, and for what purposes should the government collect personal communications and other data? Is it ever appropriate for the government to exploit software flaws for intelligence gathering or crimefighting,… Read More
Google is officially launching Android Wear 2.0 today — the biggest update to the company’s wearable operating system since its launch in 2014. If you’re not a Wear aficionado who has been patiently waiting for this release, you probably remember Wear 2.0 from its Google I/O announcement last May. Even though in day-to-day use, the updated version feels very much like the… Read More
The next time you go to your favorite restaurant or cocktail bar, talk with the manager about bookkeeping. Chances are that they’ll tell you that they waste a ton of time collecting and recording various documents. German startup Zeitgold wants to automate this pesky process so that you can spend more time on your actual business. The startup was founded by two of the co-founders… Read More
After months of waiting, Android Wear 2.0 is finally upon us. And it’s arrived with two ambassadors in tow – both designed by LG. The Watch Style and Sport are two sides of the same coin, separated my $100, a handful of key features and a significant chunk of wrist real estate. The Style is the more subtle of the two options, a slim and (as the name implies) nice looking… Read More
