Daily Tech Headlines – September 19, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – September 19, 2016 | |
| Number | 73 |
| Broadcast Date | SEPTEMBER 19, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 8:28 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Lyft’s self-driving vision, new GoPro drone, Samsung says it didn’t start this fire.
Headlines
- Lyft president John Zimmer posted to Medium about his company’s vision for autonomous cars. Zimmer described three phases. The first would see self-driving cars available to Lyft customers in 2017 along fixed routes. The second phase a few years later would have more open routes but at speeds lower than 25 miles per hour. And the third pegged to being around 2021 would have all Lyft rides completed by autonomous cars. Zimmer believes that personally owned cars in major US cities would become virtually non-existent by 2025.
- Oracle unveiled its second generation cloud infrastructure at Oracle’s OpenWorld Conference in San Francisco Sunday. Oracle gave an example of a Dense IO Shape VM it is making available for $5.40 an hour with 10 times the input-output capacity of Amazon’s i2.8xlarge instance. Oracle targeted Amazon as its competition though IBM, Microsoft and Google are also established in the cloud space. VentureBeat notes Oracle spent $96 million on cloud infrastructure in its most recent quarter, compared to AWS’s $2.02 billion.
- Oracle also announced it is buying Palerra, a cloud security venture started by former Oracle employees Rohit Gupta and Ganesh Kirti. Palerra provides security automation for enterprise apps as data moves across services including APIs. The service covers breach discovery, compliance, insider threat detection and incident response. The company intends to continue to serve existing customers after the acquisition.
- Saleforce announced the launch of an artificial intelligence platform called Einstein Sunday that will be implemented into its cloud services. The company also announced the creation of a Salesforce Research unit for deep learning, natural language processing and computer vision, led by Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher. Salesforce acquired Socher’s company MetaMind earlier this year.
- GoPro announced its quadcopter Karma Monday. It has fold-up wings and comes with a backpack for portability. It comes with a three-axis camera stabilizer which can be removed from the quadcopter and attached to the Karma Grip for in hand stabilized shooting. It also has its own touchscreen controller. You can get it without the camera for $799 compatible with Hero4 and Hero5 or bundled with the Hero5 Session camera for $999 or with the Hero5 Black camera for $1099. The new Black is $399 with a touchscreen or the Session without touchscreen is $299. Both are waterproof up to 10 meters without extra housing and can shoot 4K video at 30 fps.
- Samsung said Monday that a reported Note 7 that caught fire in China was not caused by a flawed battery. Samsung China said that tests determined damage to the device in one case was caused by external heating and believe the same was true of another report. Samsung claims most Note 7s in China do not have the recalled battery. However stores began pulling the phones from shelves in China anyway. Batteries of the phones sold after launch in China were made by Amperex. Samsung SDI is the manufacturer of the battery for phones being recalled.
- A report from Bloomberg notes sources say Samsung rushed the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in order take advantage of a lack of compelling features anticipated in Apple’s new iPhone. The USPC said the faulty batteries were slightly too big for the compartment which put pressure on plates within the battery cells causing a short circuit. It is unclear if the accelerated timeline led to the mistake.
- Game maker Digital Homicide has filed a lawsuit against reviewers on Steam and issued a subpoena requesting Valve reveal the identities of 100 users who posted harsh reviews some which may have included death threats. Valve has pulled all of Digital Homicide’s games from the Steam store. Digital Homicide is also suing YouTuber Jim Sterling over videos critical of the company’s practices.
- Nintendo launched the Pokemon Go Plus wearable for $35 which pairs with your phone and allows the user to play the game while keeping the phone in a pocket or bag. The wrist device vibrates and lights up to indicate a pokestop or pokemon. You can press a button to either collect items from a stop or attempt to catch the creature. It can also track steps for hatching eggs and buddy training.
- Google announced a travel planner app called Trips Monday for Android and iOS. Trips can organize your plane tickets, hotel reservations, offer editorial guides and make personalized recommendations based on your Google History. You can download information including maps and directions for offline use.
- ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft cut 220 jobs in London and 300 mostly in the Redmond area as part of 2,850 cuts announced in July. The London cuts are reportedly consolidation of engineering positions in Skype and Yammer. The Financial Times reported Friday that Microsoft plans to close its Skype operations in London.
- 21st Century Fox filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court against Netflix for poaching executives. The lawsuit involves the hiring of former Fox21 vice president of creative affairs Tara Flynn and promotion executive Marcos Waltenberg. Netflix hired both while still under contract to Fox, and offered them indemnification from breach of contract. Fox claims the departures caused "great and irreparable harm", and is seeking a permanent injunction against Netflix hiring executives under contract.
- Twitter saw a total of 2 million people tuning in for its debut stream of Thursday Night Football. According to Nielsen ratings, Twitter averaged 243,000 viewers at any given minute, while the conventional TV networks averaged 15.4 million. Overall, Nielsen estimates 48.1 million viewers watched the game on TV.
- The venerable Apple II received its first software update in 23 years. Developer John Brooks released ProDOS 2.4, and supports all of the various Apple II configurations. The release includes a menu driven program launcher called BitsyBite, a BASIC interpreter, and disk imaging software to move floppies to USB drives. The entire disk image fits on a 140kb 5.25" floppy. An emulated version is available at Archive.org.
- Sports broadcaster ESPN announced a multi-year deal with the Drone Racing League to broadcast races on ESPN and ESPN2. The 2016 season will be broadcast October 23rd, with the world championships scheduled for 2 episodes on November 20th. The DRL competitions will also air internationally on Sky's Sports Mix channel in the UK and Ireland, and on 7Sports, which serves Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
- Google acquired the mapping company Urban Engines. The company, founded by former Google employees in 2014, specializes in using data analytics to aid in urban planning, specifically urban congestion and commuting times. As part of the deal, Urban Engines will be rolled into the Google Maps team. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – September 16, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – September 19, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – September 20, 2016" |