Likability, intuition, and a strong work ethic is a potent combination in any business, and many in Silicon Valley think seed-stage investors Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson have all three in spades. They “complement each other,” says investor Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital, who invested in the Series A round of DoorDash, the restaurant delivery company, after they seeded… Read More
Intel moved full-throttle into the VR space with the announcement of an all-in-one virtual reality headset alongside a new Intel Merged Reality platform at the Intel Developers Forum. An announcer teased the dramatic reveal with the phrase, “what if you could move freely without any restriction on what you do next?” Project Alloy is completely wireless, something that… Read More
Apple CEO Tim Cook is currently visiting China. According to Reuters, he used this opportunity to announce that the company would build a new research & development center in China before the end of the year. Other than that, we don’t know much. It’s unclear what engineers in China will work on, but it’s safe to say that they might be better positioned to work on… Read More
Microsoft wants everyone to know the joy that is low latency wireless gaming peripheral connections. The company is making the Xbox Wireless connection tech it uses between Xbox One and official controllers available to PC OEMs and accessory makers, starting with Lenovo’s new Cylon-like gaming rigs. Xbox One controllers can be used with PCs now, but you need a dongle to make them talk… Read More
Microsoft’s answer to Steam’s Early Access is coming to Windows 10. Xbox Game Preview will be available on Microsoft’s desktop OS beginning soon, staring with Rockfish’s Everspace later this year. Game Preview gives players a chance to try games while they’re still cooking, as work-in-progress titles complete with warts. It’s not something everyone enjoys,… Read More
Google is making a number of announcements around its Cloud Platform today. Most of these focus on its various cloud database services, but the company is also making a major update to its low-cost Nearline cloud storage service for cold data, making its disk volumes faster, and allowing its users to bring their own encryption keys to Cloud Storage. The overall message Google is clearly… Read More
Bugs be gone! That’s the philosophy behind Appknox, a mobile security startup from Singapore which has raised $640,000 in a pre-Series A funding round. Read More
Anonymity has proven a dangerous path for startups like Secret, so Yik Yak is pushing a soft pivot towards connection with people close by. You can still share anonymous quips on the sagging college app, but now it’s forcing you to add a handle and photo. Then it wants you to post status updates about what you’re doing that day, and browse and contact nearby Yakkers. Changing course… Read More
A startup called Polybit has introduced what it’s calling the Standard Library of the Internet in open beta, a resource to make back-end coding easy for developers, even beginners. The Standard Library, or the “stdlib” as the startup is calling it, allows developers to upload the functions they write to the cloud, and make their “microservices” or logic portable,… Read More
You asked for an extension on cheap tickets to Disrupt SF 2016, and we delivered. But the clock is still ticking. You now have just four days left to save $1,000 by purchasing early-bird tickets to Disrupt for just $1,995 apiece, so get on over to our ticketing page to score your deeply discounted tickets before the price jumps to $2,995 after the 19th. Read More
In what Edward Snowden deems “not unprecedented” hackers calling themselves the Shadow Brokers have collected NSA-created malware from a staging server run by the Equation Group, an internal hacking team. The Shadow Brokers published two chunks of data, one “open” chunk and another encrypted file containing the “best files” that they will sell for at least… Read More
Ultrathin laptops help you find information, but writing things down, on paper, in a notebook, helps you learn and remember. Wireless headphones make your music better and more portable, but earplugs ensure sleep. And though your smartphone is the camera you always have with you, an instant camera creates actual moments you share with just one person, not the world (on purpose or accidentally). Read More
Google has rolled out an update to search aimed at helping U.S. users find out how they can vote in the upcoming November election. This includes information on what sort of ID you need to bring with you to your polling places, voting deadlines, details on early voting and mail-in ballots and more. The added guides will appear in Google search when certain phrases are googled, like “how… Read More
The big risk of Facebook launching the Messenger platform was that spammy bots could drown out your friends. Now Facebook is formalizing rules to prevent that. Messenger API experiences may only respond to users who initiate conversations. They can only reply within 24 hours, and once more after that for reengagement. Subscription Messaging that requires an opt-in to spontaneously ping people… Read More
Vettery, a startup offering an alternative to the traditional recruiting process, has raised $9 million in Series A funding. On the Vettery website, the company pairs potential job-seekers with a “talent executive” who helps them through the process of creating a profile and looking over interview requests from employers. If they accept a job, Vettery will give them a $1,000… Read More
Your speech-recognizing friends at Nuance are back with a major update to their flagship app, Dragon. The popular productivity software is now in its 15th version, an update that promises some substantial improvements in accuracy courtesy of the company’s own deep learning tech, which forms the basis of its speech engine. According to Nuance, this latest upgrade brings… Read More
Amazon this morning announced that, for the first time ever, it will begin distributing its Original Series from Amazon Video to social media sites, including Facebook and YouTube. Pilot episodes from ten primetime and kids series are now available in both places, in their entirety, allowing anyone – including non-Amazon Prime members – to watch.
While the company has before… Read More
DraftKings has been in the news a lot over the last 12 months. But almost everything you’ve read has probably been about their efforts in passing legislation to explicitly legalize daily fantasy sports – an industry that had sort of an identity crisis a year ago when state governments around the nation decided they weren’t sure exactly how to regulate it.
And now that the… Read More
The Third Industrial Revolution is already happening. We now have a choice: Do we take advantage of technology and create an incredibly better world for the entire human race, or do we let all of the gains continue to consolidate and grow societal conflict to the breaking point? Read More
