Samsung just recorded its best quarter of business for three years, but the same can’t be said of fellow Korean electronics firm LG. LG just carded a KRW 258.80 billion ($223.98 million) net loss for Q4 2016 — its first company-wide loss for six years — on account of another poor performance from its mobile division, as revenue fell by nearly one-quarter over the… Read More
Cuvva, the Scottish startup that reckons it’s spotted a gap in the market by offering hourly car insurance sold through a mobile app, is set to launch a novel and potentially disruptive new type of car insurance designed for infrequent drivers. It’s well known that many people who own a car drive it less and less these days, especially those who live in a city, and yet conventional… Read More
India is in the midst of a revolution: the Chinese smartphone revolution. For the first time on record, there were no Indian companies ranked among the top five smartphone sellers in the country during the most recent quarter of business. Samsung and a glut of ambitious, young companies from China have been busy pushing their devices in India, one of the few global markets that has… Read More
Applications management company AppDynamics was just wrapping up the final touches on its initial public offering when it learned that Cisco was interested in discussing a potential deal. Preliminary talks were abandoned in November, but the discussion just picked up again last week. The deal was announced today and the IPO was slated to price tomorrow. Although many… Read More
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative acquires Meta search engine, Alibaba hits a home run with its earnings report, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies opens up a new facility in Toulouse, France, and a new Find My Airpods feature from Apple. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Security remains one of the top unresolved challenges for businesses. Billions of dollars have been spent on security technology over the last 30 years, yet hackers seem to be more successful than ever. Every organization is now under extreme threat, all the time. Here are some lessons that data scientists have learned and to which security professionals need to pay attention. Read More
Cisco said today that it would acquire AppDynamics, which helps companies monitor application performance, for a whopping $3.7 billion. And now, it would seem that AppDynamics’ long-awaited IPO (this week!) has been called off in favor of a giant acquisition. It isn’t Cisco’s first major acquisition in recent memory — in fact, the company has been quite active —… Read More
The Bolt is designed to be approachable and at least a little familiar at first, even though it’s actually a very different kind of car under the hood, thanks to its 60 kWh battery and electric motor. Chevrolet knows that a lot of its owners will be first-time EV buyers, and that there’s a learning curve when you’re coming from a long history of driving gas-powered cars. Bolt… Read More
There will be no shortage at Toy Fair next month of robots and gadgets promising artificial intelligence — and generally falling short. But a more modest approach from an actual AI researcher has produced a clever and accessible way to create lifelike behavior through a simple and elegant modification of a popular existing robot. Read More
Livestream is getting closer to allowing live video created on its platform to get broadcast anywhere online. Specifically, the company announced that premium and enterprise customers will be able to simulcast to non-Livestream video services that support RTMP. That means a publisher could simultaneously show a live video on YouTube, Periscope, Twitch and elsewhere. CEO Jesse Hertzberg… Read More
Google hasn’t quite made this official yet, but after its Firebase and Google Developers Twitter accounts posted a link to a few puzzles earlier today, the boffins over at Hacker News quickly figured out when and where Google’s 2017 I/O developer conference will take place. Just like last year, the Shoreline Amphitheater — and a bunch of big tents around it — will… Read More
Speculation that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could run for president has been brewing in recent weeks. His personal goal for 2017 is speaking with people from all 50 states. He fought to stop government service from being considered a voluntary company resignation. And on top of all that, he’s been distancing himself from atheism. Though these signs scream politically… Read More
Tesla and SpaceX CEO met with Donald Trump on Monday, and just a day later, he’s expressing optimism about Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. On the surface, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Tillerson as Secretary of State would be at odds with Musk’s worldview, given the former’s 40+ years of service at a company… Read More
Amazon today unveiled a new subscription program aimed at parents called STEM Club, which delivers educational toys to your home for $19.99 per month. The retailer says it will hand-pick which toys are shipped, and will ensure the items are age-appropriate. And by “STEM,” of course, Amazon means the toys will be focused on the areas of science, technology, engineering and math.… Read More
Chevrolet said it was going to bring an affordable, long-range electric vehicle to market – and it did, with the 2017 Bolt EV. I visited Palo Alto to find out more about the Bolt EV, and the tech behind it, speaking to the car’s lead engineers and designers.
The Bolt itself was present, too, of course, an impressive car currently shipping to customers that offers an equally… Read More
I was in grad school in the 1990s, working on a project for Michigan’s Advanced Technology Lab in their EE department. We were trying to make telerobots controllable over unreliable networks. I got a taste of how technology could mediate everyday life in strange, unexpected and compelling ways… including the feeling of being somewhere faraway and interacting with remote environments. Read More
Doppler Labs is growing its executive team as it prepares to ship its first major product release. Today, the company announced that Brian Hall, former Corporate VP of Devices at Microsoft, will be joining Doppler Labs as its COO. Hall joins the smart earbud company after 20 years at Microsoft where he was most recently tasked with working on products like the Microsoft Surface, Surface Hub… Read More
Vestiaire Collective is slowly but surely turning into a giant e-commerce platform for clothes and fashion accessories. Think about it as a sort of eBay for fashion items, but with a premium positioning. The French startup just raised $62 million (€58 million). Vitruvian Partners is leading the round, with existing investors Eurazeo and Idinvest also participating in the round. Overall,… Read More
It’s easy to get caught up in all the technology being built into cars of the future — ADAS, autonomous capabilities, V2X, and on and on. It’s also easy to forget that so far — until we get our flying cars — there are four points of contact between most vehicles and the road. The tires. Goodyear has of course not forgotten this, and it sees the writing on the… Read More
Apple is finally going to give its developers a way to respond to customer reviews on its App Store and Mac App Store – a feature that’s long been available to Android developers on Google Play, much to the chagrin of the Apple developer community. According to developer documentation for the iOS 10.3 beta, when this version of Apple’s mobile operating ships,… Read More
