Category: Tech news

 NASA’s Valkyrie (R5) robot will never slip the surly bonds of Earth. The humanoid space robot is destined to spend the rest of its days on terra firma with the rest of us. But like Robonaut before it, the six-foot, 290-pound piece of machinery represents a link to the future. She’s a first step toward a goal of human colonization of Mars and beyond, a wonderful dream for a… Read More

 The competitive deck appears nearly stacked against the startup, and it seems that every other month a new product launches from a major tech company that’s billed in the tech press as the next “Slack Killer.” What Slack does isn’t actually all that original as startup ideas go. It merely provides an environment for teams to share information inside a chat client. Yet… Read More

 What is augmented reality good for? Product visualization to encourage online shopping, reckons Santa Clara-based startup Apollo Box, which has now opened access to its AR tech to all vendors selling products via its ecommerce marketplace. Read More

Apple investing $500 Million into R&D Centers in China, Walmart acquires Modcloth, and John Mannes reports to us about his trip at South by Southwest. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 As its revenge porn scandal continues to unfurl, the Marine Corps took steps this week to bolster its standards for online behavior. Following a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller signed off on a set of guidelines that expand the definition of sexual harassment to include online activity. Just like with offline infractions, Marines deemed… Read More

 WikiLeaks doesn’t ever make things easy. When it became clear that the organization possessed documents that detail exploits affecting a handful of major tech companies, it looked like Julian Assange would play nice. Now, a week has passed since Assange said he would disclose information about those vulnerabilities to the companies affected — standard practice for the discovery… Read More

 One of the hardest things about Raspberry Pi and Arduino is figuring out where to stick all the pieces. While both of these systems work well alone – you can have a lot of fun with just a board and an Internet connection – it’s also fun to add little things like printers and screens to make fun projects. That’s where the Atomo comes in. This modular kit comes from… Read More

 Humans, especially Americans, are kind of slobs. We mess up the Earth by throwing out about 4.5 pounds of garbage per person on average every day. Two-thirds of that waste could be composted, but isn’t. And half of the rest of it could be recycled, according to research from the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment, corroborated by studies from the Global Footprint Network and… Read More

 The League, a dating app that users have to apply to join, has a new feature that could help with one of the most agonizing parts of the online dating process — wondering if someone’s deliberately ignoring you or if they just haven’t opened the app in a while. Specifically, The League is importing an idea from other messaging services — read receipts, which tell you… Read More

 We spend a lot of time and words on what autonomous cars can do, but sometimes it’s a more interesting question to ask what they can’t do. The limitations of a technology are at least as important as its capabilities. That’s what this little bit of performance art tells me, anyway. Read More

 We all have our opinions about art (even if that opinion is just I don’t get it) — but what about art as an investment? Arthena, which is part of the current batch of startups at Y Combinator, says it can help investors make money reliably from art. Founder and CEO Madelaine D’Angelo said Arthena first launched as an equity crowdfunding platform for purchasing… Read More

 It’s the first enterprise tech IPO of the year and it’s off to the races. MuleSoft, which helps businesses like Netflix and Spotify with their APIs, closed at $24.75, a 46% premium to its IPO price of $17. This was after pricing above the expected range of $14 to $16. The company was able to raise $221 million in the IPO, but they could have raised a lot more if they priced it… Read More

 Here’s your cool sports hardware demo of the week: ShotTracker, the Kansas City-based startup whose team-focused offering can track and collect analytics from an entire basketball game in real-time, is demoing for all 31 games of the NAIA D1 Men’s National Championship tournament this week in Kansas City. It’s the first time automated, real-time stats have been available… Read More

 Tesla’s new solar energy storage facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai does what most solar power plants cannot: it stores energy from the sun during peak times for use when the grid (and its customers) needs it most. The facility is unique, with 52 MWh of storage capacity and 13 MWh of generation via its field of panels. We spoke to Tesla CTO and co-founder JB Straubel, who oversees… Read More

 This week four people were accused of hacking at least 500 million Yahoo accounts, Spotify partnered with Waze and Intel bought computer vision company Mobileye. These are the top stories of the week, and you can also get this post as a weekly newsletter in your inbox, if you prefer. 1. The U.S. Department of Justice accused of two Russian FSB officers and two criminal hackers of… Read More