Chowbotics raises $5 million for salad-making robots named Sally, of course

 Chowbotics Inc. has landed $5 million in a Series A round of venture funding to develop what it’s calling food service robots. These are machines designed to prepare food in restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, or food courts in airports, malls and hospitals. The company’s flagship product, Sally, is a salad-making robot that uses 20 different food canisters to prepare and… Read More

Oculus CTO John Carmack is suing ZeniMax for $22.5 million

 The feud between Oculus and ZeniMax Media is opening back up once again, this time with the CTO of Oculus, John Carmack, suing his former employer for earnings that he claims are still owed to him. The suit is largely unrelated to the $6 billion trade secrets suit which ended last month with a $500 million judgment against Oculus. Instead Carmack is suing Zenimax Media for $22.5 million that… Read More

NASA’s interplanetary radar spots tiny derelict satellite in forgotten lunar orbit

 Radar can detect things like asteroids millions of miles away, and it’s easy to track satellites in Earth’s orbit, but there are middle distances that aren’t so easy to monitor. Lunar orbit is one of them. But because using terrestrial radar to find and track satellites, spacecraft and other objects that have gone dark would be handy, NASA researchers made it work anyway. Read More

Watch ‘High Resolution,’ a video series about design

 Ever wonder how design has helped drive success for businesses like Airbnb, Facebook, Slack and IBM? How about how their teams are structured? How they operate? What their processes look like? High Resolution is bringing clarity to these questions, and we’re doing it 25 times. We’re sitting down with 25 masters of the digital design industry to learn how they approach,… Read More

Done with Uber? Here are some alternatives

 I have to admit I’m pretty reliant on Uber. With a sub par public transportation system, the ridesharing app makes it significantly easier to find my way around San Francisco. Apart from the occasional delay or aggressive driver, the service has been pretty dependable overall. But like many users, as evidenced by the “delete Uber” social media campaign,… Read More

Google’s Cloud Platform improves its free tier and adds always-free compute and storage services

 Google today quietly launched an improved always-free tier and trial program for its Cloud Platform. The free tier, which now offers enough power to run a small app in Google’s cloud, is offered in addition to an expanded free trial program (yep — that’s all a bit confusing). This free trial gives you $300 in credits that you can use over the course of 12… Read More

Astro raises an $8 million Series A for its AI-powered email solution for teams

 On the surface, Astro, launching its public beta today, is a nifty but not completely necessary email client that combines machine intelligence and a bot interface to improve workflows and increase the signal to noise ratio of mail for power users. But the real story is that the startup, backed with a new $8 million Series A led by Redpoint, is gearing up to pitch enterprises on… Read More

The Kairos Society, an organization for young entrepreneurs, has raised its own venture fund

Kairos Society Summit The Kairos Society isn’t just trying to bring the next generation of entrepreneurs together — it’s investing in their companies, too. The organization today announced a seed fund called Kairos Society Ventures, and the portfolio already includes Abaris (which offers a private-sector alternative to social security), Brazilian education startup Me Salva, Colombian… Read More

Snap opens second Spectacles pop-up shop in Venice, LA

 Snap today took another step on its quest to truly become the “camera company” it says it is. Following the November 21st launch and subsequent February 20th close of its NYC pop-up shop, it’s now opening a temporary store on the Venice boardwalk near its Los Angeles headquarters. Of course, would-be camera sunglasses buyers don’t have to trek to a physical location… Read More

Google’s Compute Engine now offers machines with up to 64 CPU cores, 416GB of RAM

 Google is doubling the maximum number of CPU cores developers can use with a single virtual machine on its Compute Engine service from 32 to 64. These high-power machines are now available in beta across all of Google’s standard configurations and as custom machine types, which allow you to select exactly how many cores and memory you want. If you opt to use 64 cores in… Read More

Twitter tests a feature that warns users of profiles with ‘potentially sensitive content’

 Twitter confirmed it’s testing a new feature that flags users’ profiles as potentially including “sensitive content.” When you click on one of these profiles from a link on Twitter, or if you visit the profile’s web page directly, you won’t be immediately shown the users’ tweets. Instead, a warning message displays, reading “Caution: This… Read More

At least Facebook’s unfair Instant Articles now let sites show more ads

 Facebook’s Instant Articles were always a bad deal for news outlets. While quick to load so they drove more readers, the hosted-on-Facebook mobile web format sterilized the design of publishers and severely limited how many ads and other business-critical units they could display. Publishers need paying subscribers, event attendees and loyal daily readers, but they traded those for… Read More

Google makes it easier for companies to transfer data to its cloud

 Onstage today at Google’s Cloud Next conference, the company announced a series of new tools to assist users with data preparation and integration. The updates bolster both the power and agility of Google Cloud for businesses.
The first of these releases is the new private beta of Google Cloud Dataprep. Dataprep makes the data preparation process more visual. The tool includes anomaly… Read More