Category: Tech news

Plus: the rise of electric, dockless bike-sharing, Tesla’s crypto currency kerfuffle, and more car news you missed this week.

All the filmmaking firepower in the world wouldn’t make up for skin that didn’t look quite right in the light of the Wakandan sun.

 Intel has announced that the fix is out for its latest chips affected by Spectre, the memory-leakage flaw affecting practically all computing hardware. The patch is for the Skylake generation (late 2015) and newer, though most users will still have to wait for the code to be implemented by whoever manufactured their computer (specifically, their motherboard). Read More

 Magic 8-Balls have been known to hold some disappointing, trivial answers to teenage life’s hardest questions, but one LA startup is hoping to find success in them. Hear360 has just begun shipping pre-orders of 8ball, a souped-up binaural 360 microphone rig geared toward professionals that are all about experimenting in new immersive mediums. Read More

 Investors don’t want their portfolio companies to pay you too much, or too little. So they pay Advanced-HR for its compensation data pulled from 2,500 startups. With a generic name, the service has flown somewhat under the radar since launching 20 years ago.
As startups grow more professional while staying private longer, they’re getting serious about how they structure equity… Read More

 KitSplit, which operates amarketplace for creative equipment, is announcing that it’s raised $2.1 million in seed funding. The equipment available for rental can include cameras, lights and lenses, but also VR gear and drones. Renters get access to this equipment for a lower price, while the equipment owners get to make some extra money from equipment when they’re not using it. Read More

 Ford today announced the departure of Raj Nair, Ford’s president of North America and former executive vice president, Product Development and chief technical officer. According to a press release, he is leaving the company following a recent internal investigation that found certain behavior by Nair was “inconsistent with the company’s code of conduct.” Nair worked at… Read More

 Despite surpassing analyst expectations for the quarter, Roku disappointed Wall Street when it shared its fourth-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday. The digital streaming business fell about 18% in after-hours trading, in the minutes following the news release. Roku posted $188.3 million revenue, when Yahoo! Finance estimates showed $182.5 million. It’s also up from $147.3… Read More

 The pixel-peepers at DxOMark have shared some of the interesting metrics and techniques they use to judge the quality of a smartphone’s artificial bokeh, or background blur in photos. Not only is it difficult to do in the first place, but they have to systematize it! Their guide should provide even seasoned shooters with some insight into the many ways computational bokeh varies in quality. Read More

 Perhaps the most surprising thing I learned about Signal when I spoke with Moxie Marlinspike, the app’s creator, last year at Disrupt, was that it was essentially running on a shoestring budget. A tool used by millions and feared by governments worldwide, barely getting by! But $50M from WhatsApp founder Brian Acton should help secure the app’s future. Read More

 I’ve had a number of conversations with blockchain-focused people over the past few weeks. In some of those conversations there is a palpable excitement and a belief that this technology is going to end up being their life’s work. I’ve also had significantly more morose conversations with investors who are starting to lose faith in blockchain as a medium for investment returns. Read More

 It’s a gloomy time in media, with frequent announcements of layoffs and shutdowns (it even happened today). That’s why it seems remarkable for an established publication to announce ambitious plans for newsroom expansion. The publication in question is The Atlantic, the magazine in which Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective bought a majority stake last year. The… Read More

 The micro venture firm UpWest Labs was founded nearly six years ago in Palo Alto with one mission in mind: to bring Israeli founders to the U.S. when their companies are still nascent and provide them with enough financial and other resources to get going. Read More

 How much can customer service be automated? Onward has some straightforward targets — 40 percent of tickets and 40 percent of messages should be automated, and average response times should be 40 seconds on average. Read More

 If you own a car or home, one of the biggest challenges you’ll face is finding the right insurance plan that’ll cover everything you need and save you some money — but those plans are always changing, and consumers are getting stuck footing a bill they don’t necessarily need, according to Hanno Fichtner. That’s why he started Gabi. Read More