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Showing posts from May, 2020

Google postpones launch of Android 11 beta version amid unrest in the US

The event was originally scheduled to take place virtually on June 3. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2MiNTg0

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos invests in UK digital freight forwarder Beacon

The startup, formed by two former Uber Technologies Inc executives two years ago, is already backed by Uber founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, along with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2TXWZTJ

Samsung to add new memory chip line in South Korea

The world's largest memory chip maker is targeting the second half of next year to mass produce the chips, used for storage, on the added line in its plant in Pyeongtaek city, which is within a two-hour drive from the capital Seoul. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3ezmaUz

SpaceX Crew Dragon delivers two NASA astronauts to International Space Station

It also marked the first time that commercially developed space vehicles - owned and operated by a private entity rather than NASA - have carried Americans into orbit. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3cpz0TM

India rejects Walmart-owned Flipkart’s proposed foray into food retail business

The Indian government has rejected Flipkart’s proposal to enter the food retail business in a setback for Walmart, which owns majority of the Indian e-commerce firm and which recently counted its business in Asia’s third-largest economy as one of the worst impacted by the global coronavirus pandemic. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), a wing of the nation’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, told Flipkart, which competes with Amazon India, that its proposed plan to enter the food retail business violates regulatory guidelines. Flipkart’s proposed food retail business, called Flipkart FarmerMart, cannot be structured on a 100% foreign direct investment, the Indian agency said. Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer at Flipkart, told TechCrunch that the company was evaluating the agency’s response and intended to re-apply. “At Flipkart, we believe that technology and innovation driven marketplace can add significant value to our country’s

Life is on hold in one of the last coronavirus-free places on Earth

The isolated Pacific island nation of Vanuatu cut itself off to prevent Covid-19 from reaching its shores. Then a devastating cyclone hit from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2XRzCw8

Reddit’s r/LastImages is a shrine for those lost to coronavirus

People whose loved ones have died during the pandemic are turning to strangers on the internet for support from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2MgnK1r

The confusing, lonely reality of having a baby during lockdown

Tens of thousands of new parents are navigating the challenges of raising a child without the usual support networks from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2MnaVCl

Google Meet is free. Here’s how to master its most useful features

Google has watched Zoom usage soar from ten million daily meeting participants to 300 million in just four months. So now it’s made Meet free from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2Xnnvbo

These are the 10 biggest shareholders of Indian IT giant TCS

from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2Bf0qyM

Singapore’s micromobility startup Beam raises $26 million

Beam, a Singapore-headquartered micromobility firm that offers shared e-scooters, has raised $26 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprint in Korea, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. Sequoia India and Hana Ventures led the two-and-a-half-year-old startup’s Series A financing round, while several more investors from Asia Pacific region participated, Beam said without disclosing their names. The startup has raised $32.4 million to date, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Beam , like Bounce and Yulu in India , offers electric scooters in the aforementioned five markets. Electric and gasoline scooters have become popular in several Asian nations and elsewhere as people look for alternative transportation mediums to move around faster and at less cost. While these vehicles make inroads into various markets, it’s also not uncommon to find these scooters abandoned carelessly in the streets. Beam said unlike other startups, it incentivizes its riders th

Nevada home to 246M-year-old fossil of pregnant ichthyosaur

Autumn was closing in fast on northern Nevada when Martin Sander took one last look around the excavation site in the Augusta Mountains 150 miles (241 kilometers) east of Reno. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2ZXZadJ

SpaceX's historic encore: Astronauts arrive at space station

SpaceX delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Sunday, following up a historic liftoff with an equally smooth docking in yet another first for Elon Musk's company. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2TTn9H2

Moscow bemused at US space 'hysteria' as Musk taunts Russia

Moscow space officials on Sunday said they were puzzled by "hysteria" around the successful SpaceX flight as Elon Musk taunted Russia and US President Donald Trump vowed to beat it to Mars. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2Av5ui3

The Station: Amazon eyes Zoox, Aurora goes back to school and Cabana hits the road

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The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation.  Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox . Hi and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B. I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. The mobility world got busy this week. Really. busy. This is gonna be a long one, buckle up. Take a look at the most recent survey we conducted with a bunch of venture capitalists about mobility and what areas interest them most. We talked to Ernestine Fu with Alsop Louie Partners, Stonly Baptiste and Shaun Abrahamson with Urban Us, Shahin Farshchi with Lux Capital, Kate Schox with Trucks VC and Jeff Peters of Autotech Ventures. Reach out and email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenk

6 VCs share their bets on the future of work

As tech companies like Twitter and Facebook gear up for longer-term remote work solutions, the future of work is becoming one of the more exciting opportunities in venture capital, Charles River Ventures general partner Saar Gur told TechCrunch. And as loneliness mounts with shelter-in-place orders implemented in various forms across the world, investors are looking for products and services that foster true connection among a distributed workforce, as well as a distributed society. But the future of work doesn’t just entail spinning up home offices. It also involves gig workers, freelancers, hiring tools, tools for workplace organizing and automation. The last couple of years have particularly brought tech organizing to the forefront. Whether it was the Google walkout in 2018 or gig workers’ ongoing actions against companies like Uber, Lyft and Instacart for better pay and protections, there are many opportunities to help workers better organize and achieve their goals. Below, we

SpaceX’s first crewed spacecraft successfully docks with the International Space Station

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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon ‘Endeavor’ successfully docked with the International Space Station as planned on Sunday morning, marking another key milestone during this historic Commercial Crew demonstration mission it’s conducting with NASA. On board Crew Dragon were NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, the test pilots selected to be the first ever humans to fly on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, and the first people ever to make the trip to orbit aboard a spacecraft built by a private company. The docking process was handled completely autonomously by Crew Dragon itself, which is designed by SpaceX to operate on autopilot from the moment of launch throughout the course of the entire mission. The spacecraft is able to dock with a newer automated international docking adapter installed on the ISS, unlike the original cargo version of Dragon, which required manual capture by the robotic Canadarm 2 controlled by astronauts on the station. The updated cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon are desig

Watch live as SpaceX’s first astronaut-carrying spacecraft docks with the International Space Station

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Today at around 10:30 AM EDT (7:30 AM PDT), SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will dock with the International Space Station, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board. The two have been in flight on orbit since launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida yesterday at 3:22 PM EDT, a historic launch that made SpaceX the first private space company to fly people to orbit . You can watch the livestream above to see the approach and docking maneuver, as well as the transfer process once the hatch opens and Hurley and Behnken make the short trip over from their spacecraft to the ISS. The astronauts will then serve on board the orbital lab for a shortened tour of duty, but taking part in all the activities a regular ISS rotation astronaut would do, before eventually heading home to Earth back aboard Crew Dragon in a few weeks. This milestone mission is the first crewed flight for NASA’s Commercial Crew program, which will certify SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for regular operatio

Our grimdark meathook cyberpunk now

Jon Evans Contributor Jon Evans is the CTO of the engineering consultancy HappyFunCorp; the award-winning author of six novels, one graphic novel, and a book of travel writing; and TechCrunch's weekend columnist since 2010. More posts by this contributor Living and working in a worsening world Why are people who cite videos always wrong? Ten years ago, the joke was: “It’s weird how, once everyone started carrying phones with cameras all the time, UFOs stopped visiting, and the cops started beating everyone up.” It was darkly funny, then. Now it feels something more like despairing. Imagine pitching today as a setting for science fiction, back then: “ The year is 2020. A pandemic that will kill millions ravages the planet. America is masked : some because of the new virus, others as a ward against police surveillance . A global wave of implicit & explicit xenophobia and white supremacy has carried the UK out of Europe, and a narcissistic reality TV star to the p

For Russia, SpaceX success is 'wakeup call'

Russia has lost its long-held monopoly as the only country able to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station following the flawless manned launch by US company SpaceX. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2XMgmAb

Twitter takes on a new kind of task for fact-checking

Twitter has added fact-checking labels to thousands of other tweets since introducing the alerts earlier this month. These posts are mostly on coronavirus. The company is not partnering with independent fact-checking organisations like Facebook and Google to debunk viral posts. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3dlzhbD

OnePlus India engineers help to improve OS, camera, 5G

Today, the OnePlus team of over 300 engineers at Hyderabad, led by Ramagopala Reddy, is seen to have more than lived up to Lau’s expectations. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2XjFxeE

Remote hiring is surging; here’s how to ace it

The remote hiring tech is built on three principles. One, the interview experience of a developer should be as good as the onsite one. Two, the company can trust the solution completely because an offer is made without even seeing the candidate in person. Three, help developers prepare for jobs by providing them resources. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3exX2NV

Basketball helped Wabtec's Sujatha Narayan up the game in a man’s world

Sujatha Narayan thinks this exposure made her comfortable in a man’s world early on. Today, she is a standout woman leader in the country’s manufacturing industry and the rail sector in particular. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3dpQb9i

Realme launches its first TV, smartwatch; Apple iPad Pro goes on sale in India and more top tech news of the week

from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3cn7q9z

The best bike helmets for the road, trails and commuting

Our selection of the best bike helmets will keep you safe and (sometimes) stylish from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2XJNp8b

This is what the OnePlus 8 Lite should look like

OnePlus is returning to form and has plans to release a more affordable phone. There’s certainly room for one from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2zDowTH

Netflix’s plan to auto-cancel subscriptions makes total sense

Not used your accounts in two years? Netflix will cancel it for you. Genius from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/36Nm4Ws

Here’s how pubs can finally reopen

The industry is on its knees as a result of coronavirus. When they do reopen, many pubs are going to rely heavily on apps from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/36MhVCv

15 games you can play without downloading

from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3gFo7R2

SpaceX rocket ship lifts off with 2 Americans

A rocket ship designed and built by Elon Musk's SpaceX company has lifted off with two Americans on a history-making flight to the International Space Station. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/36Mt2LK

SpaceX begins final countdown for Saturday launch

SpaceX began fueling its Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday as it prepared to send two veteran NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in a historic first crewed mission by a commercial company. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2XJiVmB

Startups Weekly: Remote-first work will mean ‘globally fair compensation’

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Editor’s note:   Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here . Most tech companies base compensation on an employee’s local cost of living, in addition to their skills and responsibilities. The pandemic-era push to remote work seems to be reinforcing that — if you only skim the headlines. For example, Facebook said last week that it would be readjusting salaries for employees who have relocated away from the Bay Area. But Connie Loizos caught up with a few well-placed people who see something else happening. First, here’s Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic (WordPress), which has been almost entirely remote for its long and successful history. “Long term, I think market forces and the mobility of talent will force employers to stop discriminating on the basis of geography for geographically agnostic roles,” he told Connie for TechCrunch .  Mullenweg went on to detail how the process was still complic

Huawei’s terrible week

When news broke Friday morning that Britain is looking to propose an alliance of democracies to build a 5G alternative to Huawei , you might think that that was the worst thing to happen to the controversial Chinese telecoms giant this week. In fact, it just caps off a series of fast-moving events that surely makes this one of the most decisive weeks yet in the global fight over next-generation 5G networks. So let’s go back a step. After all, readers who have been following the Huawei debate might recall that not long ago the UK had controversially agreed to allow Huawei to attain up to 35% market share in “non-core areas” of its 5G network. So what was behind London’s sudden about-face? The answer is politics. There was always a loud group of China-skeptic dissenters in Parliament, but anger over China’s handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic pushed more MPs from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s own Conservative Party into the anti-Huawei camp and made the government’s position u

Original Content podcast: ‘The Lovebirds’ has charming leads and not much else

“The Lovebirds” was originally slated for a theatrical release, but with movie theaters closed, Paramount decided to release the film through Netflix instead . But even without a global pandemic, a Netflix release was probably the right call. As we discuss latest episode of the Original Content podcast , this doesn’t feel like a movie that would have done well in theaters. It is, to be clear, a funny and watchable, thanks in large part to the charming performances of Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae as a couple who have hit a rough patch in their relationship — right as they’re also embroiled in a murder mystery. (There seems to be a whole subgenre of movies about couples who are inadvertantly caught up in crime stuff.) The plot, on the other hand, is pretty thin, and it becomes even more perfunctory as the movie tries to wrap everything up at the end. That’s particularly disappointing since “The Lovebirds” reunites Nanjiani with his “Big Sick” director Michael Showalter — do not e