Category: Tech news

 Tesla is working on self-driving technology specifically tied to its forthcoming electric semi-truck plans, according to a Reuters report. The tech would allow the transport trucks to move in convoy formation with a lead vehicle providing guidance for autonomous follow trucks, according to emails discovered by Reuters in which Tesla discusses the work with the Nevada DMV. Read More

 For the average American, the name SoftBank doesn’t mean much. It’s neither soft nor, technically, a bank. It’s a sprawling Japanese mobile carrier, ISP and holding company. And its investment arm has bankrolled some of the world’s largest and most successful upstart technology companies. So where does that cash go, and how is it doled out to startups across the globe? Read More

 Long the gold standard for bragging rights about your blazing broadband speeds, Speedtest.net has plenty of data to work with. Now, it wants to open up a new segment of that data to everyone, allowing users to compare aggregate speed reports from countries around the globe. The data will be compiled into a monthly report called the Speedtest Global Index, available now. Read More

 For the third installment of this season’s Founder’s Corner podcast, I sat down with Jessie Woolley-Wilson, the inspiring edtech leader who is transforming the way students learn with DreamBox Learning. Read More

 Starcraft II has been a target for Alphabet’s DeepMind AI research for a while now – the UK AI company took on Blizzard’s sci-fi strategy game starting last year, and announced plans to create an open AI research environment based on the game to make it possible for others to contribute to the effort of creating a virtual agent who can best the top human StarCraft players in… Read More

 FaceApp, ignoring its own previous missteps and those of others, has wandered back into controversy with a new update launching today that adds “ethnicity change filters,” allowing users to see what it would look like if they were Caucasian, Black, Asian or Indian. Read More

 Rumor is that Amazon’s AWS cloud computing platform will soon launch its own Kubernetes-based container management service. Those rumors are getting a bit more concrete because AWS today joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the open-source home of the Kubernetes project, as a top-level Platinum member. Read More

 Curbside, a startup powering same-day shopping experiences for traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, including CVS, is today announcing a new partnership with Yelp that will allow consumers to shop in Yelp’s app, then pick up their items locally. Read More

 Snapchat’s powerful but hidden Story Search feature is finally making itself useful by giving us a behind-the-scenes glimpse inside Apple Park, Apple’s new spaceship-like campus that will open soon.
Typing “Apple Park” into Snapchat’s search bar will show you the Apple Park Story, which is a collection of videos taken on the property. The full Apple Park story… Read More

 Netflix is going to be home to the first television show created by the Coen Brothers, the directing duo that’s behind The Big Lebowski, Fargo, True Grit and many more films. The show is called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and is described as a “Western anthology” that will follow six different stories about America’s Wild West. Read More

 Even the best shows take time to hit their stride. Who had high hopes after watching the first episode of The Office, a virtual shot for shot remake of its UK counterpart, defanged for American audiences? It seems unfair to judge Carpool Karaoke from a single episode, but there isn’t a whole hell of a lot present to give the viewer hope that the series might someday become more than the… Read More

 Last week, Apple accidentally released an early build of the HomePod firmware. Guilherme Rambo has been digging around a library file to spot strings and references that hint at future products and features. In particular, he just noticed that the next iPhone will be able to detect when you’re looking at the screen so that it can silence your notifications. I looked around the… Read More

 Meet Teleport: An app that’s using a trained neural network to power a selfie-editing feature that lets you change the color of your hair at the touch of a button.  Read More

 Intel is moving quickly to ramp its autonomous driving technology efforts now that it has closed its acquisition of Mobileye, the Israeli self-driving sensor and computing company. The plan is to build a fleet of over 100 test vehicles with SAE Level 4 capabilities (fully self-driving) with the first of those hitting roads later this year.
The test fleet is designed to show off Intel and… Read More

 “Cloaking” sounds sci-fi, but it’s actually a trick used today by spammers to show content moderators or search engine spiders an innocent-looking version of their site while real visitors just see ads and scams. Read More