Apple shareholder Tony Maldonado is calling on Apple again to implement an “accelerated recruitment policy” in order to increase diversity at the senior management level and board of directors, according to Apple’s latest proxy statement. The proposal, co-written by shareholder Zevin Asset Management, specifically calls for an increase in the number of Hispanic, black,… Read More
Clarifai — a startup that gives companies and developers a way to implement visual search into their products — said today it was hiring former Google Brain developer Andrea Frome as the company’s new head of research. Frome received her Ph. D. from Berkeley and worked at Google for more than seven years — 3 years of which were working on street view figuring out how… Read More
Some Snap Inc stats have leaked ahead of its expected IPO filing today, and they show strong progress in earning money, but slowed user growth. The Information (paywalled) reports that Snapchat has 160 million daily users, up from 130 million at the end of Q1 2016, and the 150 million number Bloomberg reported in June. Their source indicated user growth slowed in the second half of 2016.… Read More
What’s the best way to get on the new president’s good side if you’re a tech company? Open a manufacturing plant in the States. Or at the very least, have someone report that you’re considering it. Samsung’s pretty noncommittal about a new Reuters report that the South Korean electronics giant is looking to open a new US-based plant for manufacturing… Read More
Propulse Analytics is launching today with $1.4 million in seed financing to equip retailers with deep learning for product recommendations. Backed by Wobemail Online Services LLP and Stradigi Ventures, the Canadian startup is leveraging the features of product images to better grasp customers’ tastes and ultimately increase sales for retailers. The inspiration for Propulse came… Read More
Microsoft isn’t ending its general opposition to Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration from last week, but it is more formally requesting the granting of immediate exceptions that would help its own employees, as well as the employees of other tech companies who are lawful visa holders but still affected by the ban. In a blog post, Microsoft President and Chief Legal… Read More
There’s a bit of confusion over how cable operator Comcast will treat Roku devices on its network, in terms of the pricing. As Variety spotted when the new Xfinity TV app went live earlier this week, it appears that additional fees would be levied for those using Roku devices to access Comcast’s TV service, thanks to a note on the support pages on Comcast’s website.… Read More
Last week, we learned that Dropcam cofounder Greg Duffy has headed over to Apple. Today, Felicis Ventures, the early-stage venture firm, is disclosing it has brought aboard Dropcam’s other cofounder, Aamir Virani, as its newest partner. The move seems a perfect fit for both sides. Felicis wrote one of the earliest checks to Dropcam, an internet-connected security camera company that… Read More
IDrive is probably best known for its consumer and small business backup service, but the company has also long offered Vault, an enterprise version of its software and a matching hardware appliance that companies could install behind their firewalls and in their private clouds. Today, it’s launching an addition to Vault that allows its users to save backups to Amazon cloud storage… Read More
MapAnything, a software service built on top of Salesforce for developing location-based workflows, announced a $33.1 million Series B funding round today. The round was led by Columbus Nova, with participation from ServiceNow Ventures. The latter is particularly important because the company intends to make its product available on the ServiceNow platform soon. Previous investors… Read More
Nintendo is selling a heck of a lot of NES Classics, its tiny retro Nintendo Entertainment System gadget with built-in games. The company revealed that it has sold more than 1.5 million to date, a figure that probably could’ve been a lot higher — the retro reboot console was a hot holiday seller, and was consistently unavailable despite immense demand. Even now, it’s hard to… Read More
Rocket Internet, the publicly-listed German company builder and investor, has quietly launched a new startup in Berlin called Pflegetiger (“care tiger”), joining a host of other upstarts entering the huge and potentially lucrative home care services market. Read More
Apple is already using an ARM-based chip in the latest MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar and Touch ID sensor. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the company could go one step further and use the co-processor to offload some tasks. But first, let’s talk about the co-processor in the MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar and how it currently works. Called the T1, the chip was designed by Apple and… Read More
In another interesting example of what happens when you don’t manage your backups correctly, the Licking County government offices, including the police force, have been shut down by ransomware. Although details are sparse, it’s clear that someone in the office caught a bug in a phishing scam or by downloading it and now their servers are locked up. Wrote Kent Mallett of the… Read More
Social media plays a large role in politics today, from the election of Donald Trump to those now resisting his policies, such as through the grassroots-born movement that was the Women’s March on Washington. The movement began as a Facebook page for frustrated voters, then morphed into an event that drew in an estimated 5 million participants, thanks to its sister marches beyond D.C.… Read More
Faraday Future is scaling back some of its ambitions, according to Reuters, taking its planed product portfolio from seven electric vehicles to just two, and also reducing the size of its planned assembly factory in Nevada. The factory size reduction was confirmed by a North Las Vegas city manager, and will see the facility occupy less than a third of its original planned footprint. The… Read More
Initially used to improve the experience for visually impaired members of the Facebook community, the company’s Lumos computer vision platform is now powering image content search for all users. This means you can now search for images on Facebook with key words that describe the contents of a photo, rather than being limited by tags and captions. To accomplish the task, Facebook… Read More
August’s Smart Lock gets a bit more useful today, thanks to newfound integration with connected home app, Wink. The app is already compatible with a number of third-party smart home devices, including a couple of connected locks from Kwikset. Compatibility with August means that owners of the lock will be able to monitor their locks remotely and lock or unlock the thing from afar.… Read More
Disruptor Beam has raised another $8.5 million to turn some of the best-known entertainment franchises into mobile games. It released its first title, Game of Thrones Ascent, in 2013, with Star Trek Timelines following last year. (The latter offers a particularly novel approach to Star Trek, combining space combat with roleplaying elements as characters from different Trek TV shows and… Read More
Just when you thought it was safe to slip your card in a slot ATM skimmers have gotten just a bit smarter. New devices called Shimmers can now read your card number and, in certain instances, access your card’s chip. While the technique isn’t new – Shimmers began appearing in 2015 – they are still a huge security hole and far more dangerous than standard skimmers.… Read More
