Airobotics scores authorization to fly autonomous drones in Israel

 A startup based in Petah Tikva, Israel, Airobotics, has scored the right to fly drones autonomously for business purposes in Israel. The Civil Aviation Authority of Israel (CAAI) was the first in the world to authorize commercial, fully unmanned drone flights in their nation’s airspace. Read More

Samsung will sell a refurbished version of the Note 7 to address environmental concerns

 The final chapter of Samsung’s lengthy Note 7 saga apparently has yet to be written. Following pressure from environmental groups that culminated with a on-site protester at the company’s Mobile World Congress press event, Samsung has confirmed its intentions to re-release the Note 7 back into the wild in refurbished form. Read More

ESA shows off sweet new renders of the Exomars 2020 rover

 Late last year the European Space Agency doubled down on its Mars mission, dedicating half a billion euros to the next phase of its Exomars 2020 program — and now we are seeing the benefits of that enormous investment: a pretty awesome new render of the rover they plan to deploy to the Martian surface. Read More

Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

 Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk has a new company — Neuralink — focused on developing the capabilities of the brain through technological augmentation. It’s been known for some time that Musk was working on brain-computer interface tech as a means to help ensure humans can keep pace with the accelerating development of artificial intelligence. Read More

See you on Wednesday in Boulder

 A reminder that I’ll be holding a micro-meetup at Boomtown on Broadway in Boulder, Colorado on Wednesday, March 29th at 7pm. Companies will have 2 minutes to pitch in front of two local judges and then 2 minutes of questions. No slides, no props, no costumes (Ok, maybe costumes.) Boomtown is at 2060 Broadway B1 in the basement. To get there, park around Spruce and Broadway and it’s… Read More

Google is fighting with Symantec over encrypting the internet

 Google, which has accused Symantec and its partners of misissuing tens of thousands of certificates for encrypted web connections, quietly announced Thursday that it’s downgrading the level and length of trust Chrome will place in certificates issued by Symantec. Encrypted web connections — HTTPS connections like those on banking sites, login pages or news sites like this one… Read More

Facebook hires Apple veteran to lead virtual reality hardware efforts at Oculus

 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants the company to own the future of virtual reality, and in the short term that means putting a lot of VR headsets on a lot of faces. To do so, the company is hiring Michael Hillman, a 15-year veteran of Apple, to lead the VR product roadmap for Oculus as head of VR hardware. Read More

Google Play pilot test in US introduces a ‘free app of the week’ section

 Apple began offering a “free app of the week” back in 2012 as a means of highlighting some of the App Store’s best titles and encouraging users to start downloading. Google, belatedly, is following in Apple’s footsteps with its own newly launched “free app of the week” section on Google Play. However, we understand that Google has not yet committed to… Read More

With a service that donates to the ACLU when Trump tweets, Make Tweets Great Again is a prime example of apps as activism

 Earlier this month, Sarah Silverman tweeted about a new website called Make Tweets Great Again that had sprung up to give money to the ACLU every time President Donald Trump dropped a tweet bomb from his personal account. The project is a prime example of a newfound “apptivism” from coders and developers across the Web. Read More

Faraday Future cancels plans to build an assembly factory in California

 Faraday Future, the would-be Tesla rival facing well-documented challenges in terms of capitalization and efforts to bring its first production vehicle to market, has scrapped plans to construct an assembly facility and “experience center” (read: showroom) in Vallejo, California on Mare Island. Read More

Apple opens lottery registration for WWDC 2017

 Developers, let’s see if you’re in luck this year and get a ticket for Apple’s developer conference, WWDC 2017. While tickets cost $1,599, there are just too many people who want to go to the conference to accommodate them all. For the past few years, Apple has run a lottery to select ticket holders. The lottery is opening now for WWDC 2017. You have until March 31 at 10 AM… Read More

Android creator Andy Rubin teases first look at Essential’s bezel-less smartphone

 We finally have a peek at the smartphone that Android co-founder Andy Rubin and his team have been building. Today, Rubin tweeted out a teaser photo of the yet-to-be-named device emerging from his stealth startup.

I'm really excited about how this is shaping up. Eager to get it in more people's hands… pic.twitter.com/LRzQCFSKTm
— Andy Rubin (@Arubin) March 27… Read More

PlayStation 4 Pro’s Media Player gets 4K MP4 video support

 The PlayStation 4 Pro just got an update that makes it an even better companion for a 4K TV set. An update to the native PlayStation Media Player app will enable 4K video playback, for files in mp4 format saved on either a USB drive or kept in a home server the PS4 Pro hardware con communicate with. Not that if you’ve got a drive attached to your PS4 Pro that’s formatted to act as… Read More