Praveen chintu

With the launch of the Echo Show 5 and new Alexa voice deleting tools, we look at what Amazon should do next to improve its privacy offering. Hint: there's a lot from WIRED UK http://bit.ly/2QBUzY4

Both Tottenham and Liverpool have used data science to punch above their weight in world football and reach the Champions League final. The numbers make Liverpool clear favourites from WIRED UK http://bit.ly/2JS2csE

In Osmosis, a startup finds a way to match people with their soulmate using nanobots inserted into people's skulls – but, inevitably, things get complicated from WIRED UK http://bit.ly/2QD2rby

Like the book Good Omens? Then you'll definitely like the new series from WIRED UK http://bit.ly/2JSognc

A single ant isn't very smart. But huge colonies of ants are capable of complex feats of organisation – and it's all thanks to their clever biological algorithms from WIRED UK http://bit.ly/2QEucAL

In an ominous but vague warning, China said Friday that it was drawing up a list of "unreliable" foreign companies, organizations and individuals for targeting in what could signal retaliation for U.S. from Gadgets Now http://bit.ly/2Xiv8NK

Amazon seen spreading its tentacles to 5G with T-Mobile interest from Gadgets Now http://bit.ly/2KirKyL

Officials from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission, both of which enforce antitrust law, met in recent weeks to give Justice jurisdiction over Google from Gadgets Now http://bit.ly/2WFXGDA

from Gadgets Now http://bit.ly/2XqNIDz

Good news: Apple now allows you to download bigger apps over a cellular connection than it used to. Bad news: there’s still a cap, and you still can’t bypass it. As noticed by 9to5Mac , the iOS App Store now lets you download apps up to 200 MB in size while on a cell network; anything bigger than that, and you’ll need to connect to WiFi. Before this change, the cap was 150 MB. And if you’ve got an unlimited (be it actually unlimited or cough-cough-‘unlimited’) plan, or if you know you’ve got enough monthly data left to cover a big download, or you just really, really need a certain big app and WiFi just isn’t available? You’re still out of luck. That 200 MB cap hits everyone. People have found tricky, fleeting workarounds to bypass the cap over the years, but there’s no official “Yeah, yeah, the app is huge, I know.” button to click or power user setting to toggle. The App Store being cautious about file size isn’t inherently a bad thing; with many users only getting an allotment...

Three new Dyson patents reveal some technical plans for the company's first electric car. It still won't be launched until 2021 though from WIRED UK http://bit.ly/2MkCXl4

Netflix has announced that prices for subscribers in the UK will increase – following a rise for US customers at the start of the year. The company needs to raise prices to survive from WIRED UK http://bit.ly/2wsOu71

Tesla’s big bet on China-based production is key to a new effort to lure Chinese consumers with cheaper prices. Today the U.S. firm revealed that its incoming Model 3, which will be produced in China, will sell from 328,000 RMB — that’s around $47,500 and some 13 percent cheaper than its previous entry-level option. The company opened pre-orders for the vehicle today, although it only broke ground on its Shanghai-based factory in January of this year. Customers who do plonk down cash for a pre-order this week — deposits start from 20,000 RM — can expect to receive their vehicle in 6-10 months, according to Tesla. Despite the competitive prices, the higher spec Model 3 will continue to be shipped from the U.S, according to Reuters . The publication added that it isn’t clear if the made-in-China Tesla will qualify for EV subsidies from the government. Beyond China, the Model 3 also went up for pre-order in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland and Macau, the company said...

Foursquare just made its first acquisition. The location tech company has acquired Placed from Snap Inc on the heels of a fresh $150 million investment led by the Raine Group. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Placed founder and CEO David Shim will become President of Foursquare. Placed is the biggest competitor to Foursquare’s Attribution product, which allows brands to track the physical impact (foot traffic to store) of a digital campaign or ad. Up until now, Placed and Attribution by Foursquare combined have measured over $3 billion in ad-to-store visits. Placed launched in 2011 and raised $13.4 million (according to Crunchbase) before being acquired by Snap Inc. in 2017. As part of the deal with Foursquare, the company’s Attribution product will henceforth be known as Placed powered by Foursquare. The acquisition also means that Placed powered by Foursquare will have more than 450 measureable media partners, including Twitter, Snap, Pandora, and Waze. Moreover, m...

The company sought to completely change how we interacted with computers, but now Leap Motion is selling itself off. Apple reportedly tried to get their hands on the hand-tracking tech which Leap Motion rebuffed, but now the hyped nine-year-old consumer startup is being absorbed into the younger, enterprise-focused UltraHaptics. The Wall Street Journal first reported the deal this morning, we’ve heard the same from a source familiar with the deal. The report further detailed that the purchase price was a paltry $30 million, nearly one-tenth of the company’s most recent valuation. CEO Michael Buckwald will also not be staying on with the company post-acquisition, we’ve learned. Leap Motion raised nearly $94 million off of their mind-bending demos of their hand-tracking technology, but they were ultimately unable to ever zero in a customer base that could sustain them. Even as the company pivoted into the niche VR industry, the startup remained a problem in search of a solution. I...

If you’re a cannabis investor or a founder working on a cannabis-related startup, you’ve probably heard of Poseidon Asset Management . The San Francisco-based investment firm is one of very few that is focused narrowly on the industry, which remains fairly insular for now. Poseidon has also been at it longer than most outfits, having begun making bets on cannabis-related companies six years ago. More, Poseidon has managed to stuff checks into some of the fastest-growing companies in the sector, including the cannabis vaporizer company Pax Labs and the e-cigarette company Juul , whose founders created the Pax vaporizer before peeling off to win over smokers. Indeed, because Poseidon has largely invested the money of high-net-worth individuals and family offices, it hasn’t been constrained by the same vice clauses — or restrictions by backers like pension funds and other institutions — that can impact where venture capitalists invest. Poseidon is notable for yet another reason, too. ...

Salil Deshpande Contributor Salil Deshpande serves as the managing director of Bain Capital Ventures. He focuses on infrastructure software and open source. More posts by this contributor The crusade against open-source abuse Commons Clause stops open-source abuse Amazon’s behavior toward open source combined with lack of leadership from industry associations such as the Open Source Initiative (OSI) will stifle open-source innovation and make commercial open source less viable. The result will be more software becoming proprietary and closed-source to protect itself against AWS, widespread license proliferation (a dozen companies changed their licenses in 2018) and open-source licenses giving way to a new category of licenses, called source-available licenses. Don’t get me wrong — there will still be open source, lots and lots of it. But authors of open-source infrastructure software will put their interesting features in their “enterprise” versions if we as an indust...

Uber’s ride-hailing business is growing more slowly than its newer bets. In Uber’s Q1 2019 earnings, the company reported gross bookings growth of 230% for its other bets, while ridesharing grew just 22% compared to the same quarter last year. Gross bookings are the revenue earned minus things like taxes, tolls, fees, wages paid to drivers, restaurants and so forth. Other bets, with gross bookings of $132 million for Q1 2019, includes freight and new mobility, which entails bikes and scooters. Uber did not break out specifics for new mobility, but Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on an investor conference call that gross bookings for new mobility “grew strong quarter over quarter.” Meanwhile, Eats continues to be a revenue driver for Uber, with gross bookings growth of 108% to $3.07 billion. Slowing growth of Uber’s core business is to be expected. At TC Disrupt last year, Khosrowshahi said ride-hailing will make up less than 50% of Uber’s business transactions . Uber lost anot...

Good news! Maine lawmakers have passed a bill that will prevent internet providers from selling consumers’ private internet data to advertisers. The state’s senate unanimously passed the bill 35-0 on Thursday following an earlier vote by state representatives 96-45 in favor of the bill. The bill, if signed into law by state governor Janet Mills, will force the national and smaller regional internet providers operating in the state to first obtain permission from residents before their data can be sold or passed on to advertisers or other third parties. Maine has about 1.3 million residents. The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission voted in 2017 to allow internet providers to sell customers’ private and personal internet data and browsing histories — including which websites a user visits and for how long — to advertisers for the biggest buck. Congress later passed the measure into law . At the time, the ACLU explained how this rule change affected ordinary Am...

Last year’s WWDC was a rare step away from hardware for the company, without a single device announcement. In fact, Apple’s gadget lines have largely been the subject of quiet releases over the past year. Ahead of the big Apple TV unveil, the company issued several press releases highlighting minor updates to flagship lines. Just last week , it did the same for the MacBook, with a quiet announcement around the latest attempt to resolve longstanding issues with the malfunctioning keyboards. Next week’s developer show, on the other hand, is shaping up to be something altogether different. All signs point to a load of big announcements, including, potentially, some Pro hardware. After a fairly slow I/O and Build, Apple could really make a splash here. The company’s not immune from larger industry trends, and is at a kind of crossroads at the moment. Its last financial call highlighted a shifting focus away from hardware, toward services and content. It makes sense — after all, smartpho...

Uber posted losses of $1 billion on revenue of $3.1 billion for the first quarter of 2019 in what was the company’s first earnings report as a public company. Gross bookings rose 34% to $14.6 billion in the same time period, as Uber Eats continued to show notable growth. Amid both positive and negative stock predictions, NYSE: UBER fluctuated ahead of the news, ultimately closing down .25% at $39.90 per share. Analysts anticipated an adjusted net loss per share of 76 cents on earnings of about $3.1 billion, according to FactSet. Uber, in its IPO paperwork, said it expected first-quarter losses to fall between $1 billion and $1.1 billion. “Earlier this month we took the important step of becoming a public company, and we are now focused on executing our strategy to become a one-stop shop for local transportation and commerce,” Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement. “In the first quarter, engagement across our platform was higher than ever, with an average of 17 million t...

Drawing inspiration from games of yore but with dog and cat protagonists that signal light adventures rather than grim, dark ones, Gato Roboto and Dig Dog are easy to recommend to anyone looking to waste a couple hours this weekend. Not only that, but the latter was developed in a fascinating and inspiring way. Both games share a 1-bit aesthetic that goes back many years but most recently was popularized by the inimitable Downwell and recently used to wonderful effect in both Return of the Obra Dinn and Minit . This is a limitation that frees the developer from certain concerns while also challenging them to present the player with all the information they need with only two colors, or in Dig Dog’s case a couple more (but not a lot). In the latter game, you play as a dog, digging for bones among a series of procedurally generated landscapes populated by enemies and hazards. Dig Dug is the obvious callback in the name, but gameplay is more bouncy and spontaneous rather than the slow...

Ferrari has finally cracked open the door for electrification. The Italian supercar manufacturer unveiled the SF90 Stradale, its first plug-in hybrid. Purists might turn their noses up to Stradale’s mere 15.5 miles of all electric range. But it’s a milestone for Ferrari nonetheless, and marks a shift in the company’s views and portfolio. Now, some of the important nuts and bolts. The Stradale has a V8 turbo engine that produces 780 cv (or about 769 horsepower), which the company says is the highest power output of any 8-cylinder Ferraris in its history. Another 216 hp is produced by three electric motors. The motors are located between the engine and 8-speed dual clutch transmission on the rear axle, and two on the front axle. When combined, the vehicle can travel from 0 to 62 miles per hour in 2.5 seconds. You can check out the video below to see the supercar in action. Wait — and listen — for the moment when the driver switches to electric power. The driver can place the Strad...

Audi just completed a trial with Israeli company Fleetonomy as part of a potential wider rollout of the Israeli company’s fleet monitoring and management services designed to improve utilization. Using Fleetonomy’s tools that provide predictive analytics of fleet utilization, Audi was able to improve the overall efficiency and utilization of its on-demand services. “Audi has always aspired to provide a great experience by advancing through innovation and technology. By taking an innovative multi-service approach, Fleetonomy’s platform showed great success in improving fleet efficiency while simultaneously reducing costs associated with utilization and operation according to fleet constraints,” said Nils Noack, Mobility Strategy, Audi Business Innovation GmbH. “We’re looking forward to exploring further the opportunity to leverage Fleetonomy’s AI-based fleet management platforms and to pushing Audi’s vision of innovative mobility services.” Car companies around the world are roll...

On Wednesday, Google rolled out new policies around kids’ apps on Google Play following an FTC complaint claiming a lack of attention to apps’ compliance with children’s privacy laws, and other rules around content. However, kids’ apps weren’t the only area being addressed this week. As it turns out, Google also cracked down on loot boxes and marijuana apps, while also expanding sections detailing prohibitions around hate speech, sexual content and counterfeit goods, among other things. The two more notable changes include a crackdown on “loot boxes” and a ban on apps that offer marijuana delivery — while the service providers’ apps can remain, the actual ordering process has to take place outside of the app itself, Google said. Specifically, Google will no longer allow apps offering the ability to order marijuana through an in-app shopping cart, those that assist users in the delivery or pickup of marijuana or those that facilitate the sale of THC products. This isn’t a huge surp...

Let’s rewind a decade. It’s 2009. Vancouver, Canada. Stewart Butterfield, known already for his part in building Flickr, a photo-sharing service acquired by Yahoo in 2005, decided to try his hand — again — at building a game. Flickr had been a failed attempt at a game called Game Neverending followed by a big pivot. This time, Butterfield would make it work. To make his dreams a reality, he joined forces with Flickr’s original chief software architect Cal Henderson, as well as former Flickr employees Eric Costello and Serguei Mourachov, who like himself, had served some time at Yahoo after the acquisition. Together, they would build Tiny Speck, the company behind an artful, non-combat massively multiplayer online game. Years later, Butterfield would pull off a pivot more massive than his last. Slack, born from the ashes of his fantastical game, would lead a shift toward online productivity tools that fundamentally change the way people work. Glitch is born In mid-2009, forme...

Susan Fowler’s forthcoming memoir, titled “Whistleblower,” is scheduled to hit bookshelves March 3, 2020. The book will be available for pre-order beginning June 12. In late 2017, Penguin Random House imprint Viking Books acquired the rights to the memoir, which chronicles the harassment and discrimination Fowler faced during her tenure as a site reliability engineer at Uber. Her memoir “will expose the systemic flaws rampant in the startup culture,” with “previously unreported details of what happened after she went public with the harassment and discrimination she faced [at Uber],” according to Viking. Additionally, it will touch on themes such as women’s role in the American economy, navigating challenging work environments, with an “eye-popping depiction and broad indictment of a work culture where a woman can do absolutely everything right and still encounter tremendous obstacles.” Twenty-eight-year-old Fowler is best known for her infamous blog post, “Reflecting On One...

Disney has been cranking out live-action remakes of its animated library for the past few years — in fact, Tim Burton’s “Dumbo” just left theaters, and Guy Ritchie’s take on “Aladdin” is currently at the top of the box office . But these distinctions get tricky with the growing reliance on computer-generated visual effects. “The Jungle Book,” for example, mostly features a single live actor (Neel Sethi as Mowgli) interacting with CGI animals. And “The Lion King” — scheduled for release on July 19 — takes that approach even further: Everything you see onscreen has been created on a computer. I got a chance to visit the production in Los Angeles back in December 2017, where I participated in a group interview with “Jungle Book” and “Lion King” director Jon Favreau . When asked whether he considers this a live-action or animated movie, he said, “It’s difficult, because it’s neither, really.” “There’s no real animals and there’s no real cameras and there’s not even any performance that’...