Category: Tech news

 How did a former comedy writer and marketing executive wind up tackling the thorny problem of our politically fragmented modern society? For Daniel Ravner, the 41-year-old founder of The Perspective, the answer was in the last election. The concept is relatively simple — basically create a media and opinion site that is predicated on the now-quaint notion of the fairness doctrine. Read More

 CRV, an early-stage venture firm that made headlines last year for its stance on then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign, is looking to get out a new (non-political) message: It’s diving more deeply into the business of AI-driven biotech. Read More

 Baidu’s artificial intelligence research team has achieved a significant milestone: teaching a virtual agent “living” in a 2D environment how to navigate its world using natural language commands, by first teaching it language through positive and negative reinforcement. Read More

 Palmer Luckey is out at Facebook. The Oculus co-founder, who helped kickstart the recent VR craze with a prototype headset built out of his parents’ garage, has left the company after a year that heralded the launch of the consumer Oculus Rift but also a number of lawsuits and a pro-Trump meme scandal. Read More

 RydenGo is cooking up a new model for ride hailing. Rather than taking a commission, RydenGo will charge drivers a flat $20 per month subscription fee. The driver keeps the fare they charge and any tips they earn. Read More

 At this very moment, there’s someone working away in a factory somewhere in Shenzhen or at a manufacturing plant in Israel, or maybe even a facility in Gaithersburg, Md., prepping the assembly of one of the 10,000 robots that a small Israeli company wants to bring into the world this November. Read More

 You might have missed it amidst Snap’s noisy consumer debut, but enterprise-facing IPOs put points on the board during the first quarter of 2017, even more than their consumer-focused siblings. In fact, the group may be set to dominate the year’s offerings. For startups working to sell to large corporations, their investors and their tens of thousands of employees, it’s… Read More

 Sen. Marco Rubio announced during a Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing today that members of his former presidential campaign were targeted by hackers from IP addresses located in Russia. Thomas Rid, a professor at King’s College, also testified at the hearing that Russian attacks on the Clinton campaign were more widespread than previously known. Read More

 Google is contributing to the $150 million going into The Vector Institute, a new initiative housed at the University of Toronto, guided by chief scientific adviser Geoffrey Hinton. The Institute is getting started today, with significant investment from the governments of Canada and the province of Ontario. Google’s contribution is around $5 million, but it’s likely the future of… Read More

 Preteen unicorn Dropbox needs some cash real quick, so the company just secured a $600 million credit line according to a new Bloomberg report. This could be the company’s last “funding” round before its initial public offering. According to Bloomberg, Dropbox is thinking about going public before the end of the year. According to what we’ve heard, the timeline… Read More

 Want to remember to tell a friend happy birthday, good luck or congratulations? Had a follow-up question for a client that just occurred to you at 1 AM? Want to write a heartfelt thank you to be texted at a later date? Unfortunately, neither SMS nor most messaging apps – including iMessage – allow you to draft a text in advance and schedule it to be sent out on a later date. But… Read More

Apple’s AirPods aren’t the only wireless earbud game in town. The post Review: Earin M-1 Wireless Earbuds appeared first on WIRED.

The creator of Android, Andy Rubin, teases a photo of a new smartphone his company has been working on, Facebook officially launches Town Hall for contacting government reps and Spotify buys content recommendation startup MightyTV. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 It goes without saying that working with robots and heavy machinery is more than a little dangerous. While better practices and ethical companies are still less common than they should be, smarter robots are another, parallel solution. German research outfit Fraunhofer suggests an intuitive model for human-robot collaboration in industrial settings. Read More

 The always reliable Emojipedia (they have one job and they do it well (actually it’s a complex beat)) has posted the final list of emoji that will be included in the Unicode 10.0 release this June. There’s a bunch of great stuff in here if you like fantasy creatures and inclusion. But there are a couple clunkers, too. Let’s look at the best and worst of today’s emoji crop. Read More