Category: Tech news

 Earlier this week news broke of a pair of massive chip vulnerabilities dubbed Spectre and Meltdown (for an explainer see this post). We learned that the larger cloud vendors like Amazon, Google and Microsoft have been in touch with chip vendors and have been working behind the scenes to mitigate the vulnerabilities. But what about smaller cloud hosting vendors like Linode, OVH… Read More

 Wait, what? Yeah, this week a company called SuperMeat announced that it raised $3 million to create chicken in a lab. It requires real chicken cells, Petrie dishes probably and some patience. The benefits for fake (fake real?) chicken are numerous, not the least of which it’s better for the environment. But we wonder how it will taste. Like chicken? Like fake chicken? In the lead-up to… Read More

 As more smartphones get on device AI processing powers it could support a new range of advanced consumer features. But what kind of value exchange might be required for mobile users to tap into these touted ‘AI smarts’? Read More

App revenue reached $60 billion in 2017, Travis Kalanick is selling 29 percent of his Uber shares and GoPro cuts 200-300 jobs. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 The startup assault on the humble neighborhood store continues to intensify.
First came Bodega, the terribly named, and mostly misguidedstartup with its mission to bring the non-perishable necessities available at the corner store to the masses and “disrupt” the corner store.
Now there’s Robomart, which wants to bring the groceries, baked goods and prepared foods of the… Read More

 Panic Inc., the team behind a bunch of excellent iOS/Mac apps (like Coda, Transmit, and Prompt), are about to retire one of their products. Sometime “very soon”, Transmit for iOS will be taken off the App Store. Read More

 The first sentence has been handed down in a case centered on the use of Grindr as a platform from which to perpetrate hate crimes. Nigel Garrett was given 15 years yesterday after pleading guilty to a list of crimes including assault, carjacking, and use of firearms, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported. Read More

 Putting solar panels into our roads isn’t the craziest idea, but we may as well admit that it poses some unique challenges. For instance, people may want to walk away with pieces of it. That’s what happened in China, anyway, just five days after authorities opened up what they claim is the world’s first solar panel-paved highway. Read More

 Just days after President Trump’s tweets antagonized a foreign adversary over who would be first to start nuclear war, Twitter has addressed calls for the company to ban the chatty, often bellicose U.S. president. In a vague post called “World Leaders on Twitter,” Twitter awkwardly sidestepped the controversy over whether Trump’s Twitter account violates its terms… Read More

 Apple has greenlit a new documentary series called “Home,” according to a new report from Variety out today. The series will give viewers an “inside look” at extraordinary homes from around the world — and those who built them — over the course of 10 one-hour episodes. The show is the latest addition to Apple’s growing lineup of original shows, which… Read More

 According to experts, quantum computers will be able to create breakthroughs in many of the most complicated data processing problems, leading to the development of new medicines, building molecular structures and doing analysis going far beyond the capabilities of today’s binary computers. Read More

 Tech companies working with augmented reality and virtual reality technologies raised more than $3 billion in venture funding in 2017. This data comes from analytics firm Digi-Capital and suggests that while the buzz surrounding the AR/VR space has tapered off, the sheer amount of cash getting pumped into the industry is continuing to surge. Read More

 FCC Commissioner Clyburn’s passionate dissent at last month’s meeting left no room for guesswork on her position on the Commission’s plan to eliminate net neutrality. But it wasn’t all she had to say. Today, released alongside the final text of the “Restoring Internet Freedom” order, is an extended statement that goes into further detail and strikes at the… Read More

 Uber finally got its secondary transaction done with SoftBank buying about $8 billion worth of shares last month. Now we’re learning more about who sold what. It was already known that major shareholder Menlo Ventures was looking to sell shares, but we’re  hearing confirmation that it wagered the majority of its holdings and successfully sold close to half of its stake, which… Read More

 African tech in 2017 was about the normalization of market events mostly absent even a decade ago. There were acquisitions, multiple investment rounds, lots of expansion, big strategic partnerships and some surprise failures. Africa is fast becoming home to a dynamic tech sector. Here’s a snapshot of the news that shaped that transition over the last year. Read More