Category: Tech news

Southern California was a tinderbox even before it was a megalopolis. Add urban sprawl and a booming population and you get infernos every year.

The honor didn’t go to a person—it went to the “silence breakers” and #MeToo movement.

The SF Board of Supervisors voted to severely restrict the machines, which roll on sidewalks and autonomously dodge obstacles like dogs and buskers.

 Qualcomm teased its new flagship smartphone chip at day one of its Summit in Maui, and, as expected, the company’s got a lot more to offer us on day two. The Snapdragon 845 is the latest premium processor, due out next year. And like its predecessor, the 835, you can expect the thing to be nearly ubiquitous on 2018’s flagship handsets — not to mention a few Windows PCs. Read More

 Mr. Robot’s email service of choice just expanded its support for a handful of popular email clients. ProtonMail just introduced a new tool, called ProtonMail Bridge, that could expand its relatively niche appeal to more mainstream users who aren’t yet comfortable with giving up their email client habits.
ProtonMail, built around the encryption standard known as PGP (Pretty Good… Read More

 Today, Sundance Film Festival announced its lineup for next month. Included yet again were the entrants for the festival’s New Frontiers program, which hosts VR content. Virtual reality may not be the technology du jour in Silicon Valley as much as it was the past couple of years, but there are still plenty of milestones being traversed in the cinematic VR community. Read More

 It’s been a bad few months for internet freedom in China (and really, a bad few decades, but who is counting?). The government brought into force a broad-ranging “cybersecurity law” earlier this year that empowers Beijing to take unilateral control over critical internet infrastructure, while also mandating that foreign companies keep all citizen data local inside China. Read More

 After a Senate vote on Tuesday, Kirstjen Nielsen has been confirmed as John Kelly’s replacement to lead the Department of Homeland Security. The top position at the DHS has remained open since Kelly left to join the White House as chief of staff in late July. Nielsen previously served on the Homeland Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. Read More

AlphaZero can teach itself to be the world’s best at chess, Go, or Shogi in eight hours or less.

 You can now find Leesa mattresses, one of the many mattress-in-a-box startups, at Pottery Barn online.
Pottery Barn parent company Williams-Sonoma announced the partnership today, saying in a press release, “Starting today, Pottery Barn customers can purchase Leesa’s American-made and expertly designed mattresses online at PotteryBarn.com/Leesa, marking Leesa’s growing… Read More

Everipedia, a two-year-old online encyclopedia, will become a decentralized, peer-to-peer, user-owned resource.

 Lyft is beginning its self-driving car pilot with self-driving car company nuTonomy in Boston as it looks to ramp up its self-driving efforts, and is now matching its riders with self-driving vehicles in parts of Boston, nuTonomy said today. Lyft announced its partnership with nuTonomy in June this year, indicating that the pilots would begin in the coming months. Read More

 We love our fur babies in Silicon Valley, and there’s plenty of tech to support them, feed them and keep them occupied while we’re away. We could give you a pet gift guide full of these tech gadgets, as we’ve done in the past. But some of what’s out there is just downright ridiculous… and because we all need a laugh, that’s our focus this year. Read More

 Sonos and Ikea just announced a new collaboration to “create future home sound experiences”. The companies say they want to make it easier to play music anywhere in the home – which makes sense, since Sonos’ main benefit is how easy their software makes it to set up and manage a system of speakers throughout your home. “Together with Sonos we want to democratize… Read More

 The Duke of York will be at St. James’s Palace today for #pitchatpalace Global.
Pitch@Palace Global brings together entrepreneurs from 2017 Pitch@Palace events that took place in Africa, China, Singapore, Australia, United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
Watch the live stream above starting at 5:30 p.m. GMT/9 a.m. PT. Read More