Category: Tech news

 Okta is setting an increasingly ambitious target for its IPO, now officially pricing it at $17 per share set for its debut tomorrow — and looking to raise as much as $187 million in the hopes that it can capitalize on the newly open IPO window. Read More

 Many toys today include high-tech and interactive components that keep kids in front of screens. But when it comes to health and educational development, studies have found that kids benefit from things like building with blocks, playing with both hands and looking away from screens at least every 20 minutes. Osmo has dedicated itself to designing toys that bridge the digital and physical. Read More

 New legal documents show that Twitter is taking the Department of Homeland Security to court to protect the true identity of an account that claims to be run by employees of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The account, @ALT_USCIS, is one of many “alt” government agency accounts that began appearing in the early days of the Trump administration. The filing… Read More

 YouTube is taking measures to help ensure its user-generated content doesn’t end up positioning ads by big brands next to questionable content. The social network will not allow ads on channels that have fewer than 10,000 views total, across all their posted videos. YouTube told The Wall Street Journal that the measure has been in development since November, and that it’s intended… Read More

 After postponing its IPO last year, Elevate Credit, the venture-backed lending company, went public on the New York Stock Exchange today. Elevate priced at $6.50 per share, closing the day up over 19 percent at $7.76, but this was still well below the expected range of $12 to $14. They decided to go through with the offering to take advantage of an open “IPO window,” with a… Read More

 Azure Stack is one of Microsoft’s most ambitious projects in the data center space. The goal of Azure Stack is, at its core, to bring many of the features of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform into the enterprise data center. While there are some obvious advantages to using public cloud services like Azure, AWS or Google Cloud, after all, for many customers, running their… Read More

 In mid-January, the ongoing race for AI put Montreal-based Maluuba on our radar. Microsoft acquired the startup and its team of researchers to build better machine intelligence tools for analyzing unstructured text to enable more natural human computer interaction — think bots that can actually respond with reasonable intelligence to a text you send. The team dropped its first paper… Read More

 Thank you for joining me, ladies, gentlemen. Researchers have created a “stabbing machine,” with which they intend to “simulate stabbing events,” with the further intention of getting to the heart of knife-related crimes. Now, I don’t have a problem with teaching robots knifeplay per se, but we must be circumspect. We must be careful. We must not teach them poorly. Read More

 You have already read the news. But we thought we would also use this opportunity to share a transcript of the interview with Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing; Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering; John Ternus, Vice President of Hardware Engineering. Bill Evans from Apple PR was also in attendance. It was lightly edited for length and… Read More

 Fitbit has eight different fitness trackers on the market right now. And while the company’s financials are downright troubling, it’s still shipping more product that every other wearable company. That’s due in part to tremendous name recognition, solid product design and mainstream appeal. The company offers eight different tiers of products, but they’re all design… Read More

 The Food and Drug Administration finally gave 23andMe a long sought-after green light today to sell to consumers genetic tests and their accompanying health risk reports for up to 10 diseases, including late-onset Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Read More

 AeroMobil, a European company that hopes to bring a flying car to market, has raised an additional €3 million ($3.2 million US) to help fund the production and demonstration of a new physical model of its vehicle, following the successful development and testing of the craft’s mathematical and geometric design.
The company has already been demonstrating the ability of its craft to… Read More

 Adobe has a tendency to show early demos of the technologies it’s working on but isn’t quite ready to launch publicly. The latest of these is a selfie app from Adobe Research the company outed on its YouTube channel earlier today. Read More

 Lyft has just raised a big new round, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The round brings in over $500 million in new funding, and sets the valuation for the ride hailing company at $6.9 billion (pre-money), which is well north of their $4.5 billion (again, pre-money) valuation from their previous funding round in January of last year. Even at $6.9 billion, Lyft is still worth… Read More

Alienware’s new 13.3-incher is the first gaming rig on the market with an OLED display. The post Review: Alienware 13 Gaming Laptop appeared first on WIRED.