Leading venture capitalists, scientists and CEOs all have the same prediction for AI: machines will take jobs away, “eat the world” and, ultimately, overthrow humanity. These histrionics have driven a widely accepted negative narrative about this technology’s potential impact on humanity. That needs to change. Bringing AI into the mainstream world should be met with hope… Read More
Etsy users had another bad week as payment processor Worldpay continues to cause problems. Late last week, some Etsy users began reporting that they had experienced duplicate charges. The forum on Etsy for duplicate charges is approaching one thousand posts. In a statement, Worldpay admitted to causing the duplicate charges for Etsy users in its attempts to rectify the problem.… Read More
If you were wondering what a mottled sculpin looks like, there are plenty of pictures available online. But while they may satisfy a curious tidepooler, the discerning ichthyologist demands more. That’s why a professor at the University of Washington is getting full 3D scans of every fish in the sea — every species, anyway. Read More
Cars are one of the top contributors to greenhouse gas emissions globally, and cars in cities can be especially heavy with their contributions, owing to traffic and population density. And while encouraging everyone to bike or use public transit probably isn’t going to convince everyone to ditch car ownership, car sharing services seem to be winning more city denizens over, and a new… Read More
Leslie Jones, the star of the new “Ghostbusters” reboot and a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” announced she was leaving Twitter after trolls bombarded her with racist comments.
“I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart,” Jones tweeted before going silent on her account, where she’d spent the last several days battling trolls. Read More
A team of physicists and electrical engineers at Facebook published a new idea for using luminescence to improve signal detection in free-space optical communication today. Facebook, in a partnership with Internet.org, has been developing drones to deliver basic internet access to remote locations around the globe. Last year, the company came out with a plan, codenamed Project Aquila, to… Read More
“They’re going to hit some challenges and marketers are gonna start to ask questions when they get out of the experimental budget phase,” Facebook’s head of adtech said about Snapchat today. While Facebook tries to collect as much data about users as possible to prove its ads work, Snapchat has tried to avoid being creepy, despite that hindering its potential… Read More
I still love books, and I still have a fair amount of trouble finding new ones to read that I’ll actually enjoy. Helping with discovery is the idea behind Reco, a new mobile app from Canadian bookseller and retailer Indigo, which provides users with a social network based around books, and people’s love thereof. “We have a kind of obsessive focus on who our customers are,… Read More
Microsoft today reported earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2016, its first earnings report after announcing its proposed acquisition of LinkedIn. The company’s earnings came in at a non-GAAP revenue of $22.6 billion ($20.6 billion GAAP) and $0.69 of non-GAAP per-share profit ($0.39 GAAP), and were well above expectations. Like in previous quarters, the results reflect strong… Read More
Google has been working to create a faster news reading experience through its Accelerated Mobile Pages project. Now it’s bringing something similar to online ads. AMP is an open framework for creating articles that load more quickly, particularly on mobile. (They also can be sped up by loading from Google’s cache.) At the time the program was announced, Google said it would… Read More
Think back on your college experience and you may recall the presence of an on-campus residence set aside for international students. The fact that there was likely only one house for all the students probably made you think your school didn’t have a large international contingent. Now consider the fact that nearly 1 million foreign students attend colleges and universities across the U.S. Read More
Hyperloop One filed a countersuit against co-founder and former CTO Brogan BamBrogan today, claiming he was part of a group of four employees engaged in misconduct and abusive behavior.
The transportation startup developing a high-speed shuttle is suing the plaintiffs for at least $250 million in the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County.
Hyperloop One’s countersuit says… Read More
If you like poking, prodding, and proving big corporations wrong, has FCA US got a challenge for you. FCA US is the umbrella company for Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram, and it wants you to find potential vulnerabilities in their vehicles’ cybersecurity systems. And they’ll give you money for it.
FCA US put its bounty program up on Bugcrowd, a community of cybersecurity… Read More
My daughter is almost eight. She likes princesses and Harry Potter and doll houses and making videos to Taylor Swift songs and she has a few very clear influences and/or heroes. Mal from the Descendents. Hermione. My wife. Me. Her great-grandmother Sadie. And now I want her to be influenced by the Ghostbusters. The new Ghostbusters, not the version with Murray and Ackroyd. I want her to love… Read More
Imagine a lawyer with a client who lives in one county and works in another. Or even a lawyer who litigates in multiple states. Both common occurrences, but situations that make it very hard to keep track of legal documents. Essentially, it should be easy to keep track of court records from multiple counties and states – but it’s not. In fact, it’s pretty awful.… Read More
Volkswagen is trying to mash the dash into the future, but its ongoing emissions scandal remains its biggest roadblock. And it doesn’t look like the trudge from the crisis will be sliding into the rearview mirror anytime soon.
On Tuesday, the embattled automaker confirmed with the Wall Street Journal that it plans to build electric vehicles in North America by 2020 in an attempt to… Read More
Theranos is now steeped in an avalanche of legal woes, including a suit filed Monday, July 19 by an ex-customer alleging the company’s faulty blood tests caused him to have a heart attack.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Arizona, and first reported in Ars Technica, is now one of at least nine civil suits Theranos faces after an onslaught of investigations into the… Read More
Flying is expensive. So Airfordable is launching from Y Combinator’s Summer ’16 batch to let you book flights and pay over time before you take off. Here’s how it works: Travelers find their preferred flight online (using any travel site they want) and upload a screenshot with their flight details. Once you are approved, the startup calculates a payment plan (up to 3… Read More
Prisma morphs your photos into fine art like Picasso or Mondrian, and it’s blowing up the iOS app charts. Today it came out in unofficial APK beta on Android. But what will be the fate of this red-hot social product? We’ve heard Prisma is in talks with investors about raising funding, but it might make more sense as an acquisition for Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat. When… Read More
Brazil’s battle with Facebook over its encrypted messaging app, WhatsApp, continues to rage. A Brazilian judge ordered telephone companies to cut off access to WhatsApp in the country after Facebook declined to provide chat logs related to a criminal investigation, Globo reports. Because WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, Facebook cannot access users’ messages… Read More
