We humans are hunter-gatherers domesticated into becoming farmers. Around 10,000 years ago, we discovered the wonders of agriculture. To make farmers out of hunters, we used social norms and sanctions. This tension of our origins is described in the fable of Cain and Abel, which ends with Cain the farmer slaying his brother, and God’s favorite, the hunter-gatherer Abel. Read More
Tagboard announced today that it has acquired Capture, another startup in the social media and user-generated-content business. Tagboard helps marketers find and create displays for social media conversation around a brand or topic. (When I covered the company a couple of years ago, I described it as a “cross-platform hashtag aggregator,” which is both accurate and… Read More
If you’re kind of an ass when you drive, autonomous cars are going to be great for you, a new study from the London School of Economics and Goodyear has found (via GeekWire). Basically, self-driving cars will opt on the side of safety and caution, which means aggressive jerks who drive like morons will be able to bully them all over the road. The study found that, surprisingly, drivers… Read More
Facebook rolled out a new feature today that lets users endorse presidential candidates, a move that will probably bring even more acrimonious comments about this election cycle into your News Feed. Yay. Here’s how it works: You can go onto any candidate’s Facebook page — yes, this includes third-party candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson; no one is getting left… Read More
Maybe you’ve heard of LeEco (nee LeTV). Maybe you’ve seen some news about the company’s phones or its plans to launch a car. If you live in the U.S., however, odds are pretty good that your knowledge of the company doesn’t extend beyond the occasional passing mention. But the company’s big, and only getting bigger. Early today, research firm Strategy Analytics… Read More
Yves Behar, designer of many round-edged objects, has at last turned his attention to the piece of furniture rated “most restful” by babies: the crib. His robotic, Wi-Fi-enabled creation, called Snoo, also puts to rest the classic “what’s snoo with you” joke, since now everyone will know what snoo is and won’t ask. It had a good run, but it was probably time. Read More
So I’ve been hearing for weeks now that Apple has been waffling a bit on a date for its late-October Mac event. But, according to my sources, a date has been picked: Thursday, October 27th. So those looking for a new MacBook, hold your horses. And if you’re a journo, flights are getting iffy but hotels are pretty cheap still.
I reached out to Apple for a comment on their secret… Read More
There’s a new remote-controlled Star Wars droid on the way, but it might not be the one at the top of most people’s gift lists. The R/C Mouse Droid (via Gizmodo) is about as basic as a bot can get, but the tiny scene stealing droid will be very familiar (and possibly even cherished) by fans of the original series, where it had a pivotal role expressing very animal-like terror… Read More
Two taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) have docked to the Chinese space station, Tiangong-2, kicking off the nation’s longest human spaceflight mission to date. Watch LIVE: #Shenzhou11 and #Tiangong2 set for orbital docking #Today at 19:30UTC https://t.co/6LJ8qJnY0O cc: @Astroguyz pic.twitter.com/hOsiWR3BWX — Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 18, 2016 Over the course of 30 days,… Read More
Who’s copying Amazon? Everyone! But especially Walmart. Speaking of which, the retailer giant announced today the launch of its own video streaming service, called Vudu Movies on Us. The service at launch will include thousands of titles, which will be available in HD and can be streamed for free. To generate revenue, Vudu Movies on Us will be ad-supported. While Amazon’s Prime… Read More
Intel today reported its Q3 earnings, and while the company beat estimates on both revenues and earnings, it also said that it would be raising its restructuring charges to an eye-watering $2.3 billion, as it continues to shift its business away from PC processors and into chips for the next generation of computing in devices like drones and self-driving cars. It also provided a forecast for… Read More
Yahoo made slightly more money than Wall Street expected — and no one cares at this point. The company reported its third-quarter earnings, basically falling a hair above what everyone was looking for on its earnings and in line with revenue. But at this point the company is in the process of getting acquired by Verizon. As such, stock prices and whatnot like that don’t… Read More
It’s a red-letter day at Microsoft Research: a team working on speech recognition has hit a serious symbolic goal with a system that’s as good as you at hearing what people are saying. Specifically, the system has a “word error rate” of 5.9 percent, on par with professional human transcribers. Read More
On September 7, 2016, Evercar sent out a press release announcing that it had expanded from its Los Angeles home base to San Francisco and Oakland and had financing for buying up to 3,000 vehicles in the next year. Almost exactly a month later, the service that rented EVs and hybrids to drivers for ride hailing services shut down. The company had launched at the 2015 Los Angeles Auto Show,… Read More
Last week, when we reported on how PayPal has considered acquiring crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, we noted that the startup was on a growth tear and “printing money”. Today, GoFundMe is releasing some numbers that speak to just how big that is for the company right now. GoFundMe has now passed the $3 billion mark in terms of funds raised on its platform — an impressive… Read More
Well-received TV series including “Orange is the New Black,” “Casual,” “The Royals,” “Mad Men,” and “Weeds” are now available for sale on Vimeo, which today launched its own television storefront in partnership with Lionsgate and STARZ. The store will feature nearly the entire Lionsgate catalog of TV shows, which includes the above,… Read More
Update: The NFL and Microsoft both issued statements to TechCrunch, which are at the bottom of the post. Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots, really hates the Microsoft Surface tablet. Belichick hates these tablets so much he’s even thrown them at things before. These are the tablets provided by Microsoft that the NFL arranged for teams to use on the sideline… Read More
If you’ve been looking for cycle clothing, chances are you’ve seen some of Rapha’s items. Rapha isn’t just a utilitarian clothing company and focuses on design to make cycle clothing a bit more sylish. And interestingly, Rapha’s head of design Alex Valdman has become a big Apple Pencil advocate. Apple has jumped on this opportunity to produce a good-looking short… Read More
More than seven years after the financial crisis began, economies worldwide are growing. Much of the recovery has been led by government spending, including massive sums on infrastructure projects, which typically involve interaction between governments and local partners, especially in emerging markets. While that has helped those economies grow, it has also driven worldwide growth in compliance. Read More
