Category: Tech news

 Google’s self-driving car project is losing Chris Urmson, who served as the unit’s CTO and lead technical resource after going the company from Carnegie Mellon. Urmson has considerable status among roboticist in the world of autonomous vehicles, but said in a Medium post announcing his departure that he was “ready for a fresh challenge,” without specifying what… Read More

 One of these days we’re going to see aircraft go electric, just as cars are — but not for a while. In the meantime, we can’t slack off when it comes to the research that will make it possible. NASA has announced five research projects that may help make planes more efficient and green. Read More

 I’ve never been a big motorcycle guy. I have the hand/eye coordination of a sleepy toddler, and I’m pretty sure I’d hurt myself within about two minutes of firing up the engine. This bike wants me to give it a try anyway. Built by Wisconsin-based machining/customization shop Vintage Works, it’s a custom bike modeled after the mostly-impossible ride of every 80’s… Read More

 Toronto-based B corporation Komodo OpenLab thought Pokémon Go using its Tecla product, an assistive hardware device designed to make it easier to use smartphones, tablets and users for people who might not generally be able to interact with these gadgets, including, for example, wheelchair users with spinal injuries or multiple sclerosis.
As you can see from the video above, the Tecla… Read More

 The team from a startup called Eyegroove, a “musical selfie” app, has joined Facebook. According to a message on the company’s website, most of the small team who worked on the app will now be focused on building new experiences for Facebook users that will help them to “create, share and connect.” Founded in late 2013, the Eyegroove application was the… Read More

An Intel engineer just tweeted out a photo of a new VR sensor prototype and suggested that VR would play a large role in the company’s developer conference late this month. In the since-deleted tweet, Dimitri Diakopoulos, a senior prototyping engineer at Intel, showed off what he referred to as a depth-sensing prototype attachment for the HTC Vive. At least visually, the sensor… Read More

 Speedtest has released its mid-year broadband speeds report, and there’s actually quite a bit of good news in there. Speeds are steadily increasing despite machinations within the industry, and in fact the average in the U.S. just went north of 50 megabits for the first time ever. Read More

 It’s been a rough couple of months for Amazon competitors. First Canada’s Shop.ca declares bankruptcy and essentially has a fire sale, then Jet.com, which accumulated big funding and big hype pre-launch, is apparently in talks with Wal-Mart re: an acquisition. A Wal-Mart exit isn’t the upstart victory against an industry giant originally foretold in Jet’s creation… Read More

 In light of Dollar Shave Club’s recent sale, I started thinking about other industries that haven’t yet rethought the customer relationship by leveraging the cloud. A significant majority of FDA-approved medical devices — and their associated business models — should be rethought around the idea that the cloud is a core feature of the product. Read More

 Tesla missed its Q2 earnings targets today in a report released after the close of the market. Tesla executives are not wavering on yearly targets, despite a slower than expected quarter. All of this comes amidst a seemingly never-ending wave of Tesla headlines dominating Silicon Valley over the last few weeks. The energy company born out of an automobile company reported non-GAAP Q2 revenue… Read More

 Jack Dorsey really needs a hit. After Twitter’s weak second-quarter showing, and both stocks not performing well in the past year, Dorsey — as the lead of both companies — needs to show investors his strategies are working (and that he can run both companies).
Well, he certainly got one today. Square reported its second-quarter earnings, where it brought in $439 million in… Read More

 Basis Peak, a fitness watch tracking your health and sleep habits, is now being recalled by the company after reports of overheating.
The Intel subsidiary first sent a statement about the overheating issues in mid-June and is now asking customers to stop wearing their watches and is shutting down service “immediately.”
“We had hoped to update the software on your watch… Read More

 The field of artificial intelligence is so huge, and the potential applications so numerous, that it would be folly to try to explain it all in one — no, wait, IBM just did. Read More

 Lyft is seeing record ridership, including an all-time high of 13.9 million rides during July, first reported by Recode and confirmed by TechCrunch via sources familiar with the matter. In addition to the total ride increase, along with a new record for monthly active riders of over 3 million, Lyft also saw significant growth in the use of its Concierge service, a bulk booking service similar… Read More

 Owlchemy Labs wants you to reach out and grab VR content with your hands. The Austin-based VR studio just secured a $5 million Series A led by Qualcomm Ventures with participation in the round also coming from HTC, The VR Fund, Colopl Next and Capital Factory. Right now the studio, founded in 2010, is best known among those in the VR community for building the game Job Simulator, which was… Read More