Category: Tech news

 Matibabu, which is competing in our Hardware Battlefield at CES today, isn’t looking to cure any diseases. Instead, the Uganda-based company is looking to make it easier to diagnose malaria so those who are infected can get the right help faster. I actually first ran into Matibabu back in 2013 when the team competed in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup finales. Back then, the team won the… Read More

 Nvidia already announced a partnership at CES to bring a AI self-driving car to production, and now Mercedes-Benz is also teaming up with the GPU-maker on a vehicle with AI on board. Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz are also setting an ambitious timeline for their goal; the two will field this new vehicle within the next 12 months, Nvidia confirmed to TechCrunch. The news came out on stage at a… Read More

 Today the U.S. intelligence community released a report claiming that the Russian government was behind hacks of American political organizations during the 2016 election cycle and that the hackers acted with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct approval. The new report is a joint effort backed by the CIA, FBI and NSA and draws on intelligence gathered by all three agencies. A… Read More

 Ford announced an updated Fusion Hybrid development vehicle for its autonomous driving testing late in December, and the car was on display at CES this year. The new vehicles include both a new platform in the base Fusion vehicle, and a new virtual driver system, which covers sensors arranged around the car, the sensor fusion system that combines all the data the car collects into one picture… Read More

 Draw with your face? Conference call ping pong? Not any more. Google today quietly revealed that it will shut down the Hangouts API, preventing new apps from being built and shutting off existing apps on April 25th. There was no blog post about this, just an updated FAQ and email notification to developers active on the API, forwarded to us by one of these devs. Some examples of experiences… Read More

 Everything that moves, says a16z partner Frank Chen, will go autonomous.
But what does that really mean? In this presentation from the a16z Summit, Chen goes over the 16 most commonly asked questions about autonomous cars, and what their answers might be:  Will we progress level by level, or go straight to Level 5, i.e. full automation? Will they use LIDAR or not? What blend of software… Read More

 Hand-holding video always seems like such a good idea until you’re watching the footage back in the editing suite. Wobblycam is a pain in the backside and can take forever to fix in post-production. That is, in theory. Until SteadXP came along. Except not quite. Read More

Mayfield Robotics, a startup owned by Bosch, shows off the Kuri robot, Intel buys 15% of Here mapping business and electric bus company Proterra raises $140 million. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 At a very big event in Las Vegas ahead of CES, Faraday Future held a huge event where it showed off the FF 91 — its first production car — and show off a few of its features. Faraday Future has been in the news a lot lately, but not necessarily for good reasons. In November, the company’s factory construction was paused and putting its targeted ship date at risk among a host… Read More

 Just when you thought wearables were dead, Plume Labs is coming up with an interesting wearable device focused on tracking pollution around you. It’s a sort of Fitbit for air quality. The Flow tracker works both inside and outside and could be particularly useful if you live in a polluted city. It tracks particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide, ozone, volatile organic compounds… Read More

 For all the grandiosity of its ancient Grecian name, the Draco is a fairly unassuming thing. It’s surprisingly small and unimposing in fact — and if it weren’t for those four rotors, it would fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. But UVify’s little drone has tremendous zip when pushed. In fact, the little quadcopter can hit a top speed of 100 miles an hour –… Read More

 Faraday Future is a company whose future is incredibly uncertain, and it’s about to show us its stuff at CES 2017. The electric carmaker (or potential carmaker) has been in the news lately a lot for turmoil at the top and negative reports about its finances, with a supposed factory construction stoppage to boot. Now we’ll see if there’s any substance behind the young… Read More

 Being a technology enthusiast and early adopter means being intimately familiar with the rate it takes for new technology to drop in price to a level where it’s sustainable as a true consumer product. Right now we’re seeing this happen with VR – in just a few years the barrier to entry has decreased to a point where you can get full-fledged VR (an Oculus and a computer to… Read More

 French hardware company Netatmo is announcing a bunch of new products for your home. Interestingly, some of these products go beyond the usual connected lightbulbs and cameras. With a brand new approach and a wide range of products, Netatmo is slowly but surely becoming one of the most prominent advocates for the smart home. Let’s have a look at what they have in store. First, the company… Read More

 At CES on Tuesday, Alarm.com revealed that it is developing a smart home security drone alongside its other IoT devices and software.
The idea is that if you hear something go bump in the night, you can just grab your smartphone and watch a live video stream of what’s happening because your drone has automatically gone to check things out.
Lots of companies — like Y Combinator… Read More