Tech companies hold the keys to some of our most personal information — payment details, health records, chat logs with our lovers and archives of family photos — and, as we hand over more and more private data, it becomes increasingly important that companies earn our trust by keeping it secure. Over the past five years, most major tech companies have instituted bug bounty… Read More
It’s difficult for tech workers and it’s even more difficult for those not touched by the modern gold rush. One mortgage originator, Opes Advisors, is incorporating restricted stock units (RSU) and private shares to make it easier for techies to move from incubator to nest egg. But what appears helpful to a population that sees housing prices moving out of reach could actually… Read More
One of the most technically advanced features of the HTC Vive virtual reality system is the way it tracks a user’s motions inside their play space. Valve, which collaborated with HTC to build the Vive, just opened its ‘Lighthouse tracking system’ up to third-party hardware developers building on the SteamVR platform to license royalty-free. Read More
Here are four cybersecurity terms that will root many conversations, both on the expo floor and among experts and analysts in the briefing rooms at Black Hat. Read More
Nissan is bringing a working version of the BladeGlider all-electric sport concept it first revealed in 2013 to Rio to ride the hype wave of the Olympics. The car is cool enough to merit hype in its own right, as a performance-engineered zero emission EV from a company that typically stays in the more conservative end of the market with staid offerings like the Nissan Leaf. Read More
One of the perils of text-based communication is the lack of cues that clearly signal irony being employed — no doubt we’ve all had our own mishaps behind this particular issue. Researchers from Portugal have had enough, though, and built a neural network that tries to determine whether you or your virtual interlocutor is being sarcastic. Read More
What’s a good gift for a Martian rover who’s just turning four? Water, obviously. Barring that, however, a fun little mobile game will do. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory enlisted the skills of GAMEE to develop Mars Rover, an adorable little side scroller created in honor of Curiosity’s fourth year on the red planet. Read More
About two days ago, Pokemon Go players noticed a change — and it wasn’t one they’d been hoping for. All of a sudden Pokemon were much, much harder to catch. They dodged more, hopped over your ball more often, and worse yet, if you did manage to get one inside your Pokéball, odds were seemingly higher than ever that they’d bust out and immediately run away. Even the… Read More
For many people, the robot-populated future is a zero-sum game; it’s either going to be us or them running things. Headlines are rife with dire predictions: “Robots will take over most jobs in 30 years” and “The future has lots of robots, few jobs for humans.” Even the arts aren’t safe. “Computer art” (where a computer uses algorithms to create… Read More
Mobile search company Quixey has raised an additional $30 million in debt funding.
The company touts its ability to help users find content within their apps. More recently, it says it has developed technology that can take you straight from the search results to personalized actions like showing nearby friends in Facebook or bringing up your own playlist in Spotify. Read More
Facebook built its own version of Snapchat Stories, called Quick Updates, but will not release it. Though Instagram Stories launched this week, Facebook isn’t going to follow suit. Quick Updates created a special place to share within the Facebook app but outside of the News Feed. Accessible from a button at the top of the feed, Quick Updates would have let people share 24-hour… Read More
LinkedIn has likely ended with a bang its run as an independent company built upon a network of professionals, clearly beating out what Wall Street sought. Of course, this report is largely moot. Earlier this year, LinkedIn announced it would be acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion. Microsoft beat out several bidders in the process, including Salesforce, and that price largely reset… Read More
Zeta Interactive, the marketing-focused big data and analytics firm that recently acquired the CRM division of eBay Enterprise, today announced it has bought Acxiom Impact, Acxiom‘s marketing automation solution for enterprise marketers. Sources close to the companies tell me the acquisition price was just north of $50 million. Zeta Interactive, which was co-founded by David Steinberg… Read More
At the beginning of the year, Amazon flipped the switch on Dash Replenishment, a service aimed at bringing the instant reordering of its devoted product buttons directly to connected devices. The idea being that you don’t have to, say, order ink for your printer or batteries for your smart lock — the devices will do it for you.
The retail giant has already announced a slew of… Read More
The Olympics Committee has always been restrictive in who can use what footage and when, but a couple of new rules introduced for the 2016 games take things even further. The official social media guidelines now prohibit streaming apps, Vines and even the lowly GIF. Read More
With plans for a new brewery and aggressive expansion in the biggest craft beer market in the world, Scottish brewery BrewDog* turned to BankRoll to raise investment to, er, bankroll its U.S. expansion plans, with a hefty $50 million round of equity crowdfunding. The brewery has secured 42 acres of land in Winchester, Ohio (don’t worry, I had to look it up, too), where it is building… Read More
Google announced an interesting little tweak to its search results today that will highlight reviews from reputable critics and best-of list inclusions for bars and restaurants when you search in the Google app. Say you are looking for a fancy place to eat in New York. Google already gives you plenty of information about any given restaurant, including when it’s the busiest and what… Read More
Connected bikes could be huge assets to the future of urban transit, especially as cities and cars grow more connected, too. But smart cycles can be very expensive, and cyclists also tend to be very particular about, and attached to, their bikes. Shoka’s new Shoka Bell is an accessory that adds a heavy helping of intelligence to your bike without requiring the purchase of an entirely… Read More
Insert is the new startup from the team behind app development company Worklight (which was acquired by IBM for $70 million). Today it’s announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding. Insert CEO Shahar Kaminitz said that where Worklight (where he was founder and former CEO) was focused on “the core development of the application,” he’s come to realize… Read More
It seems there’s no limit to the perils being faced by athletes at the Rio 2016 Olympics: not just their competitors, but toxic water, poor accommodations and impressive mobile bills. Add malicious pandas to the menu — virtual ones, at least. A nasty Trojan known as Zeus Panda has made its way to the Olympic host just in time for an influx of visitors. Read More
