Google pay discrimination lawsuit is moving forward

A class-action lawsuit alleging pay discrimination at Google based on gender is moving forward, California Superior Court Judge Mary E. Wiss recently ordered. The original suit was dismissed in December due to the fact that plaintiffs defined the class of affected workers too broadly. In January, the plaintiffs filed a revised lawsuit, which added Heidi […]

Microsoft adds file protection and email encryption to Office 365

Protecting yourself (and your documents) from cyberattack is only getting more important, so Microsoft is introducing new security features for the Home and Personal versions of its Office 365 suite. These aim to protect customers from the usual cust...

Mission Bit receives $1 million to expand computer science education in SF

Mission Bit, a nonprofit organization that teaches high school students computer science, has received a $1 million five-year grant from the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families. Each semester, Mission Bit offers after-school computer science classes to high school students. The fall and spring courses run for 13 weeks, requiring four hours […]

Careship, the German marketplace for in-home care, scores further €6M funding

Careship, the German marketplace for in-home senior care, has raised €6 million in further funding. The round is led by Creandum, the European early-stage investor best known for being an early backer of Spotify, and will be used by the Berlin startup to further expand nationally. In addition to Creandum, European ‘impact’ investor Ananda Ventures […]

3 tests show Facebook is determined to make Stories the default

Facebook isn’t backing down from Stories despite criticism that it copied Snapchat and that Instagram Stories is enough. Instead, it’s committed to figuring out how to adapt the slideshow format into the successor to the status update. That’s why today the company is launching three significant tests that make Facebook Stories a default way to […]

Stripe launches a new billing tool to tap demand from online businesses

As more and more spending moves online — whether that’s shopping or subscribing to services like Netflix and Spotify — there’s increasing demand for tools that allow those companies, especially smaller ones, to start getting paid. Stripe has made its name by providing developers with a simpler way to start charging customers and handling transactions, […]

Xprize is relaunching its Moon challenge without Google, but they need a new sponsor

The deadline for Google’s Lunar Xprize passed just days ago without a winner, but the lengthy 10-year competition to send a robot to the Moon’s surface had known for months that none of the five teams were ready for launch by the extended deadline of March 31, 2018. As a result, back in January, Google […]

Twitter claims more progress on squeezing terrorist content

Twitter has put out its latest Transparency Report providing an update on how many terrorist accounts it has suspended on its platform — with a cumulative 1.2 million+ suspensions since August 2015. During the reporting period of July 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017 — for this, Twitter’s 12th Transparency Report — the company says a total […]

Virgin Galactic successfully tested its rocket-powered spacecraft today for the first time since 2014

Virgin Galactic took to the skies today for the first test of its rocket-powered spacecraft in over three years. The SpaceShipTwo launch platform deployed the USS Unity at a set altitude where the space craft will fire its engines for as long as 30 seconds bringing the craft to 1 1/2 the speed of sound. […]

GitLab gets a native integration with Google’s Kubernetes Engine

GitLab, one of the most popular self-hosted Git services, has been on a bit of a roll lately. Barely two weeks after launching its integration with GitHub, the company today announced that developers on its platform can now automatically spin up a cluster on Google’s Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and deploy their applications to it with […]

Google Cloud gives developers more insights into their networks

Google Cloud is launching a new feature today that will give its users a new way to monitor and optimize how their data flows between their servers in the Google Cloud and other Google Services, on-premises deployments and virtually any other internet endpoint. As the name implies, VPC Flow Logs are meant for businesses that […]

Apple will ship its redesigned Mac Pro in 2019

If you were budgeting for the redesigned Mac Pro this year, you'll want to earmark that money for something else. Apple has revealed to TechCrunch that the modular workstation is now slated to ship in 2019, rather than sometime in 2018 as many expect...

Olympus' chic 4K mirrorless E-PL9 arrives in the US for $600

With 4K and three-axis in-body stabilization, the Olympus E-PL9 is a good example of how mirrorless cameras are winning consumers by offering pro features for not much cash. The retro-styled model aimed at the tourist market has now arrived in the US...

Virgin Galactic completes first powered test flight since 2014 crash

Today, SpaceShipTwo completed its first powered test since the horrific crash in 2014 that killed one of its pilots. The craft, VSS Unity, took off from Mojave Air and Space Port aboard a plane called CMS Eve, and was piloted by two people. According...

Amazon offers remote access to FreeTime parental controls

Last year, Amazon launched a Parent Dashboard to go along with its FreeTime subscription service for kids. The dashboard allows parents to see how much time their kids spend on the service and what they've read, watched or played. It also gives paren...

Dropbox Smart Sync is finally available to all business users

It's been a few years since Dropbox first started talking about Smart Sync, a feature that lets users see everything stored in their Dropbox in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer, regardless of whether that file is available locally or stored in the...

NASA may use swarms of robotic bees to study Mars

It's hard to exaggerate just how successful NASA's Mars Rover program has been. These little vehicles have crawled over different parts of the Martian landscape, sending back invaluable data. But these rovers have some limitations: They move incredib...

Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro will be shaped by workflows

A year ago, I visited the Apple campus in Cupertino to figure out where the hell the new Mac Pro was. I joined a round table discussion with Apple SVPs and a handful of reporters to get the skinny on what was taking so long. The answer, it turns out, was that Apple had decided […]

'Firewatch' is the latest indie game headed to Nintendo Switch

The folks at Campo Santo are bringing Firewatch to the Nintendo Switch. The developers have been busy stripping the game "down to the studs" to improve performance. Specifically, optimizing load times for textures and geometry. "We know what a good S...

Botanalytics offers analytics for conversational interfaces and chatbots

The rise of chatbots and smart speaker-powered voice assistants, such as Alexa and Google Home, has produced the need for specialist analytics so that developers can track how well those conversational interfaces are working. Hoping to take a chunk of this nascent market, including competing with Google’s own chatbot analytics product Chatbase, is Istanbul and […]

The Lunar Xprize will continue, but without the $20 million reward

Earlier this year, the Lunar Xprize competition ended in an anticlimactic way, as Google opted not to extend the competition for a $20 million prize beyond the March 31st deadline. This meant that the contest ended without a winner. But now, Xprize h...

Twitter has removed over 1.2 million accounts for promoting terrorism

Twitter released its biannual Transparency Report today and it shared stats on how it continues to handle terrorist content. Overall, since August of 2015, the company has removed over 1.2 million accounts that promoted terrorism. During the second h...

'Spyro Reignited Trilogy' reaches PS4 and Xbox One on September 21st

After years of speculation and more than a little teasing, it's official: the Spyro series is getting a remake. Activision and Toys for Bob have unveiled the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, which reworks the first three Insomniac-made games (Spyro the Drag...

HP's convertible ZBook x360 features a six-core Xeon CPU

HP's ZBook computers have always been targeted at power-hungry professionals, but with last year's X2 detachable hybrid, the company started exploring new form factors. Now HP is adding a convertible PC to its pro family, the ZBook Studio x360 G5. Ju...

UberX to be parked in Greece after law change

Uber is suspending another international service while it assess whether there’s a business case to continue operations after regulatory changes. In a blog post announcing the impending suspension of its UberX service in Athens, the company writes: “New local regulations were voted on recently with provisions that impact ridesharing services. We have to assess if […]

MoviePass’ parent company acquires Moviefone

Helios and Matheson Analytics, which already owns movie ticket subscription service MoviePass, has acquired Moviefone. Despite the old-school name, Moviefone is now a digital media business with trailers, movie information and ticketing via Fandango — it says it reaches 6 million unique visitors each month. Moviefone was previously owned by Oath, the Verizon subsidiary formed […]

Spotify’s challenge is to prove it’s a real business, not a fantasy

Three months after quietly filing to become a public company, Spotify finally made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday. It was a big day for the Swedish music-streaming giant, to say the least, and it ended up exceeding expectations from...

Here is why nobody has succeeded at running IoT on the blockchain

From the permissioned blockchain networks of IBM to the newly introduced Hashgraph technology, some of the largest technology and financial conglomerates have been testing the applicability and potential of blockchain with the Internet of Things (IoT) market since the beginning of 2016. Yet, with nearly $4 billion invested in blockchain research and development, not a single company has been able to demonstrate the successful integration of blockchain technology with IoT. In order to integrate with IoT, blockchain developers must treat each device as a unique user of the blockchain; as such, every piece of data transmitted from the IoT device is…

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Benchmark just funded Chainalysis, the crypto intelligence company that helped crack the Mt. Gox case

When the virtual currency exchange Mt. Gox collapsed into bankruptcy in 2014 following the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins and tens of millions of dollars, those who lost money were understandably furious. For a small group of people, however, the theft — likely masterminded, we now know, by a Russian cybercrime suspect who […]

How esports redefined athleticism

Whereas our ancient ancestors had to hunt for their food, our modern tribes simply visit the supermarket. With all this free time left on our hands, we invented a pastime: sports. A current trend to simulate sports is to participate in esports, a large industry that’s currently growing up around competitive online gaming. Here’s how esports is taking the ‘sports’ world by storm. Games as sports In the early days of video games, showing off your skills and competing with other players was a matter of going to the arcade and challenging someone in person. At first, it was about…

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