Category: Tech news

 The massive fight over the fate of Qualcomm, which chipmaker Broadcom seeks to acquire in the largest deal in technology effort, took another dramatic turn this afternoon when the Trump administration said it would block the deal. The move is another chapter in a long story, a culmination of a lot of consolidation activity in the semiconductor space and months over jockeying over whether or… Read More

 This weekend, I published a comprehensive overview of the epic hundred-billion-dollar Qualcomm versus Broadcom merger battle that has taken place over the past few weeks. In that post, I concluded that “… the Trump administration is going to attempt to maintain jurisdiction over the merger regardless of Broadcom’s redomicile process [back to the US], and will likely end up… Read More

 XPRIZE announced today that it’s teaming up with Japanese airline All Nippon Airways on a new $10 million competition.
XPRIZE founder and chairman Peter Diamandis said the ANA team was interested in an XPRIZE around “reinventing travel,” which eventually turned into a prize for developing technology that would actually eliminate the need to physically travel in some… Read More

 In a rare moment of contrition, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe admitted misleading both consumers and advertising execs with statements last week that the company tracks the location of users before and after they go to the movies. “We don’t do the things I described,” he told TechCrunch. As for location, “We don’t record it, we don’t save it, we don’t… Read More

 President Trump has blocked Broadcom’s proposed $117 billion buyout of Qualcomm over security concerns, according to a White House statement. News of the president’s decision was first reported by CNBC. The move could send shockwaves rippling through the broader global economy, as the president continues his push to “put America first” in trade negotiations with… Read More

Actually deleting your social media accounts is more complicated than it looks.

 Out in the desolate wastes of deepest Iceland, magic blooms. The Icelandic sagas tell of fairy houses to magical rings that control the world, and now one of those, the Wave, has landed on the internet. The Wave is a ring that controls sound. It is essentially a wearable MIDI controller that lets you play and modify sounds as it’s made, allowing you to play music in thin air. It’s… Read More

 Paul Vigna, along with his writing partner Michael Casey, are crypto gurus. A crypto critic and Wall Street Journal reporter, Vigna sees through the hype and looks for the value inherent in the crypto system. Vigna and I spoke during this, the 100th episode of Technotopia. Vigna has a lot to say about the market and feels that his new book, the Truth Machine, picks up where his and… Read More

 Stitch Fix, the on-demand fashion styling business, saw its shares quickly fall 6 percent following the bell on Monday, after posting its second-quarter release. 
The company posted a diluted earnings per share of two cents. It also posted an adjusted earnings per share of seven cents. Analysts surveyed by Yahoo! Finance were hoping for six cents.
Revenue for the quarter surpassed expectations. Read More

 The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration over its alleged practices of searching the electronic devices of passengers traveling on domestic flights. “The federal government’s policies on searching the phones, laptops, and tablets of domestic air passengers remain… Read More

 Spotify announced today the launch of a new tool called Line-In that will allow its community members to offer input about the music data it has on file, like genre, mood, explicitness and more. The goal is to leverage the wisdom of the crowds in correcting and expanding Spotify’s data over time, which could give it a competitive advantage against rival services like Apple or Pandora,… Read More

 Lyft made a lot of progress in 2017, helped by strong market expansion within the U.S. and riding some very bad news from its primary rival, Uber. That’s helped it grow revenue to more than $1 billion as measured by GAAP standards for its fiscal 2017, with a particularly strong Q4 during which its revenue outpaced Uber’s by 2.75x, lifted (get it?) 168 percent year-over-year, versus… Read More

 After leading by example for quite a while, Snap is going to start putting AR lenses built by third-party creators front-and-center in the Snapchat app.
The move, first reported by Mashable, will bring creator content to the main stage.

While third-party filters have been a hallmark of the app for quite a while, Snapchat has generally stuck to its own guns when it comes to its lenses. Read More

 Most paleo dieters try to stick to some type of regimen similar to what they think our distant, pre-agricultural ancestors might’ve eaten. Few, however, talk about eating literally what those ancestors ate. Yet for Geltor, a Silicon Valley-backed start-up based in San Leandro, synthethic biology became the ticket for creating just such a literal understanding of the paleo diet.… Read More

 A report commissioned by European lawmakers has called for more transparency from online platforms to help combat the spread of false information online. Read More