Software maker Panic unveils Playdate, a Game Boy-like device with a hand crank control and 12 bundled games released over time, coming in 2020 for $149
Little, yellow, different — Panic made its name through high-end Mac software, but more recently, the company moved into gaming …
Source: Amazon is working on a wearable voice-activated health and wellness device that works with a mobile app and can recognize human emotions
- Described as a health product, it would work with a mobile app — Machines that can understand emotions are a sci-fi staple
Google says around 25% of calls placed using its Duplex AI service started with a human; calls to ~12 restaurants found people made 3 of 4 successful bookings
In a free service, bots call restaurants and make reservations. The technology is impressive, except for when the caller is actually a person.
GitHub launches Sponsors, a tool that lets users pay their favorite open source contributors; developers can opt in to a “Sponsor me” button on repositories
GitHub today launched Sponsors, a new tool that lets you give financial support to open-source developers through recurring monthly payments.
Leaked memo: ARM has told staff it must suspend business, including all active contracts, support entitlements, and pending engagements, with Huawei
UK-based chip designer ARM has told staff it must suspend business with Huawei, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC.
A breakdown of Huawei's supply problems after the US ban, using its latest flagship phone as an example, from hardware to software to building an app ecosystem
Huawei's hardware independence is actually pretty good! The software, though... President Trump's Huawei ban is in full effect …
Researcher shares zero-day Windows 10 local privilege escalation exploit that grants full control over files reserved for full-privilege users
A Windows zero-day exploit dropped by developer SandboxEscaper would allow local privilege-escalation (LPE), by importing legacy tasks from other systems into the Task Scheduler utility.
Walmart launches a line of Android tablets under its Onn store brand starting at $64, which ship with Play Store and Google apps, unlike Amazon's Fire tablets
Earlier this year it was reported that Walmart was working on bringing its own Android tablets to the market to compete with Amazon's popular Fire tablets.
Samsung researchers detail a machine learning method that can recreate lifelike motion from just a single image of a person's face
Machine learning researchers have produced a system that can recreate lifelike motion from just a single frame of a person's face, opening up the possibility …
Sources: US is considering blacklisting as many as five Chinese video surveillance companies, including Hikvision and Dahua Technology, from buying US tech
and that the United States must stop it https://www.nytimes.com/... Colin Kahl / @colinkahl : What happens in Xinjiang matters, not only because of the millions of people under repression, but also be...
GDPR has helped big tech companies cement their dominance in the data economy while smaller companies have suffered from relatively high compliance costs
The region's data protection overhaul was supposed to help citizens. Instead, it's helped Big Tech.
Google begins rolling out an updated mobile search design with a black “ad” label and favicons for all organic results
The new look brings some branding to the search results, and preps the mobile search for more types of content and actions for users to take right from the search results.
Lenovo reports Q4 profit of $118M, up 389% YoY, on revenue of $11.7B, up 10.1% YoY, helped by strong PC sales, says production is unaffected by trade war
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tech giant Lenovo Group Ltd on Thursday reported a market-beating three-fold surge in quarterly profit helped …
Future, a $150/month fitness app which assigns users a human trainer who builds personalized workouts and proactively checks progress, raises $8.5M Series A
Push button, get healthy — The only way to beat laziness is with guilt, so that's what Future sells.
Facebook says it won't pay commissions to employees who sell political ads; source: Zuckerberg decided to keep selling political ads after an internal debate
Company leaders considered dropping such ads, which are now viewed as a headache — Facebook Inc. said it stopped paying commissions …
Ireland's Data Protection Commission, the lead EU supervisory authority for Google, announces investigation into Google's online advertising data collection
KEY POINTS — Ireland's Data Protection Commission says its probe will examine whether Google's processing of data in advertising transactions breaches EU privacy rules.
Federal judge rules in favor of FTC in antitrust case against Qualcomm, says its licensing practices for modem chips have strangled competition; stock drops 10%
and analysts 'don't know what will happen next' Tweets: Neil Cybart / @neilcybart : Qualcomm lost its FTC court case. Judge found Qualcomm violated antitrust law. Qualcomm must negotiate or renegotiat...
Rotten Tomatoes says it will now calculate the Audience Score using only ratings or reviews from users whose ticket purchase has been verified through Fandango
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is taking additional steps to confirm that audience members actually see a movie before leaving a rating or review.
The Wikimedia Foundation has filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights over Turkey's ban on Wikipedia since April 2017
Wikipedia is taking Turkey to Europe's top human rights court as it escalates a two-year battle to overturn the country's ban on its website. See also Mediagazer
Cala Health, an SF-based startup developing wearable electronic devices to tackle chronic disease, raises $50M Series C from investors including GV
Cala Health, a medical technology company that develops “wearable therapies” to tackle chronic disease, has raised $50 million in a series C round …
Robinhood launches trading for seven cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ethereum, in New York after receiving a BitLicense from regulators in January
Robinhood, the popular stock and crypto investing app, has officially launched bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrency trading in New York.
A look at Amazon's AI research centers in Germany, which employ hundreds of researchers, stirring concerns about an “internal brain drain” to foreign companies
US juggernaut is tapping German PhDs to crack some of the toughest problems in artificial intelligence — to the dismay of politicians. Tweets: @matthausk , @rikefranke , @carolinegreer , and @politico...
Researcher: since at least October, web source code for thousands of Instagram profiles leaked the user's contact info; the issue was fixed in March
Laura Hautala / CNET :
IHS reports cloud-based gaming earned $387M in 2018, with Sony's Playstation Now responsible for 36% of that total, and predicts it will grow to $2.5B by 2023
Giancarlo Valdes / VentureBeat :
Samsung files emergency motion to redact details of its settlement with Qualcomm last year, revealed to be $100M, made public in the FTC v. Qualcomm ruling
Phonemaker Samsung on Wednesday filed an emergency motion to redact “highly sensitive and confidential” details of its settlement … Tweets: @financialtimes and @whatthebit Tweets: @financialtimes : Sa...
Deutsche Bank says a software glitch has, for almost a decade, prevented some potentially suspicious transactions from being flagged to law enforcement
Olaf Storbeck / Financial Times :
Despite support from 7,500+ employees, Amazon shareholders voted down a proposal asking Jeff Bezos to produce a comprehensive climate change plan
through their local governments and elected officials — are empowered to decide how surveillance technologies like facial recognition are used — if at all. https://www.nytimes.com/... @aclu : Amazon r...
EE says it will roll out the UK's first 5G network on May 30, beating Vodafone by a month, in six cities, including London, Edinburgh, and Belfast
Jon Porter / The Verge :
Indiegogo CEO and President David Mandelbrot steps down, citing personal reasons, will be replaced by Andy Yang, former Reddit core product lead and 500px CEO
Indiegogo pioneered the crowdfunding industry … Matt Burns / TechCrunch : Indiegogo hires Reddit's Andy Yang as new CEO Tweets: Gamer Wife / @bijanstephen : small end of day scoop from me about @indie...
Cardinal Analytx, which develops predictive analytics software for health care payers and providers, raises $22M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat :
Testing finds Tesla's updated Autopilot software, designed to make changing lanes “more seamless”, does not work well and could create safety risks for drivers
Keith Barry / Consumer Reports :
Source: Block.one, which raised ~$4B in its ICO, has made $174M in VC investments and bought back 10% of its stock, rewarding early investors like Peter Thiel
but probably none as unusual as this one https://www.bloomberg.com/... Bloomberg Crypto / @crypto : “They designed a very clever mechanism to hoover up as much capital as possible” https://www.bloombe...
Researcher: devices can be tracked across apps and sites with info from sensors like gyroscope; patched on iOS; a minor issue on Android, given poor calibration
This clever attack allows someone … Kevin Murnane / Forbes : All iPhones And Some Android Phones Are Vulnerable To A New Device Fingerprinting Attack Tweets: Catalin Cimpanu / @campuscodi : Apple now ...
Razer says it will shut down its Ouya and Forge TV services on June 25, marking the official end of the crowdfunded Android game console, discontinued in 2015
Owen S. Good / Polygon :
Google says it's experiencing indexing issues that may cause stale search results; users searching for fresh news from sites including NYT or WSJ get no results
Michael Novinson / CRN :
Modsy, which combines computer vision tech with human designers to help users design their homes, raises $37M Series C led by TCV, bringing total raised to $70M
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch :
Instawork, a platform that connects hospitality workers with employers, raises $18M round led by Spark Capital, GV, and Burst Capital to expand across the US
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat : Tweets: @bgurley Tweets: Bill Gurley / @bgurley : Congrats to @sumirmeghani and the entire team @instawork on their new fundraising. Really powerful flywheel effect. If y...
Source says Medium has 200K-400K paying subscribers, which at $50 per user amounts to a minimum of $10M per year from subscriptions alone
Alex Heath / Cheddar :
Apple unveils Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution, aimed at preserving user privacy without reducing effectiveness of ads, coming soon to Safari
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch :
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Zoho CRM Plus in 2025: A year of thoughtful CX improvements
2025 marked 11 years of building a customer experience platform designed to support organizations as customer expectations, channels …
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Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.