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Showing posts from April, 2017

Monit’s smart diaper sensor lets parents avoid the sniff test

 New parents are faced with many conundrums and one of the most nerve-wracking is how to check a diaper without waking a sleeping baby. Korean startup Monit’s new Bluetooth sensor wants to make sniff tests a thing of the past by alerting parents as soon as their baby’s diaper is soiled. Later on, the sensor can be turned into a portable air quality and temperature monitor, extending… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2pyCX3W via IFTTT

Imagining five retro technologies as startup pitches

 Silicon Valley is a bubble. Go into any SoMa coffee shop and you’ll hear founders and investors alike singing the praises of Hyperloop and flying cars — sci-fi tropes reincarnated by billionaires with a god complex. This isn’t to say these technologies shouldn’t be pursued, but sometimes it’s healthy to remember that we are effectively pulling a Facebook… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2pygMe3 via IFTTT

The past, present, and future of design in Silicon Valley

 The following is an excerpt from The Way to Design, a guide to becoming a designer founder and to building design-centric businesses. Adapted and reprinted with the author’s permission. Until very recently, success in Silicon Valley required focusing almost single-mindedly on an organization’s technical prowess. It meant having an unimpeachable technical founder, 10X engineers,… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2oWely7 via IFTTT

With AI investments, Taser could use its body camera division for predictive policing

 After announcing that it would shift some of its emphasis away from non-lethal weapons to police body cameras, for a fleeting moment it felt like the company synonymous with sticks that electrocute people was showing an interest in police accountability. Analysis from the Intercept and a 2017 “Law Enforcement Technology Report” by Taser suggest that the reality might be more… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2pMurPM via IFTTT

MPs want tech giants to pay the police to find antisemitic and neo-Nazi content online (GOOG, FB, TWTR)

UK politicians have said that Google, Twitter, and Facebook should pay the Metropolitan Police to find extremist content on their sites, because they're not doing a good enough job by themselves. MPs investigating the tech giants described them as "a disgrace" because they don't delete illegal material quickly enough. The MPs are part of the Home Affairs Committee , which released a report today about hate speech online and its impact on the real world. In the report, they used examples like MPs receiving antisemitic abuse online, Facebook hosting sexualised images of children, and YouTube hosting terrorist recruitment and neo-Nazi videos. Social media companies, they said, should help fund the Metropolitan Police's online counter-terrorism unit to find extremist content online on their behalf. That unit is currently funded by UK taxpayers, and flags hateful content to Facebook, Twitter, and Google. This is what the MPs proposed in their report: "Foot

With the war far from over, privacy activists cautiously celebrate a battle won

 After the NSA’s surprise announcement that it would pull back on a contentious surveillance tactic, privacy advocates found themselves in a strange place in 2017: They’d actually won a thing. With a mix of cautious optimism and rightfully cynical pragmatism, the organizations and figures so often quietly waging a thankless war to protect the online privacy of American citizens… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2qtvMa7 via IFTTT

Hack Harassment adds an interdisciplinary board to tackle online hate

 Hack Harassment, founded by Vox Media, Intel and Lady Gaga’s youth-focused Born This Way organization, will gear up to fight online harassment with the introduction of its first advisory board. Comprised of members from anti-bullying research groups, AAA game developers, and some things in between, the board will bring the collective experience of the multi-disciplinary leadership to… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2qmw1F3 via IFTTT

AAA officially launches its car sharing startup Gig with a giant, sober dance party in Oakland

 Gig, a new car-sharing app created by the emergency roadside assistance service AAA rolled out to the Bay Area today. The startup comes out of A3 Ventures, AAA’s venture arm and the new one-way car sharing service is now active in Oakland and Berkeley, California. Gig is similar to other temporary car share services like Enterprise CarShare or Zipcar. But unlike the traditional car… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2qiUrlx via IFTTT

Wynd’s air purifier has broad ambitions and a short reach

 The Wynd smart air purifier is designed to create “bubbles” of fresh air — small, one-person respites from pollution, allergens and other detrimental particles floating in the ether. It feels almost dystopian, a world in which we’re required to arm ourselves against the air around us, but the product clearly struck a nerve. Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2oYu7t4 via IFTTT

A radical finance firm has an app that'll show you the impact of all of your purchases

Aspiration , a financial services firm founded on the radical idea that clients should pay what they think is fair , wants to help its customer keep track of the impact of their purchases.  The firm announced April 26 it is equipping its checking-account users with a new tool, Aspiration Impact Measurement, that shows them how sustainable their purchases are. The firm has about 100,000 checking-account customers.  Let's say, for instance, an Aspiration checking-account user buys a coffee from Starbucks. When that person checks their account balance they'll see that they spent $X for their grande frappe whatever. But they will also see a score that gauges Starbuck's sustainability on a scale of 1 to 100. In this case, Starbucks has an AIM score of 78, which is the highest of any eatery. The point of the tool is to inform users about a firm's sustainability so that they can make informed choices about spending.  Users can also view their personal AIM score, which esse

The founder of LinkedIn says too many of us are using the site all wrong

If you use LinkedIn, you've undoubtedly received invitations to connect to people that you've never met or may never meet in your entire life. The more you stay on the site and the more you gain prominence in your field, the more requests from strangers you'll get. And while it could seem natural to decline a Facebook friend request from a stranger because you don't want to give them access to your personal information and photos, the dynamic on LinkedIn is much different. You may think that because it's a social network for professionals, you should simply accept all invitations and see which of them stick. It's the approach that " Never Eat Alone " author and management consultant to Fortune 100 companies Keith Ferrazzi took for years. Not long ago, Ferrazzi wrote in the 2014 updated edition of his bestselling career guide, he had the privilege of meeting LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and discussing the site with him. "'You're doin

It's the GMC Canyon Denali and the Honda Ridgeline in a battle of the small pickups (GM)

Small pickups were once an essential part of the truck mix. A lot of young folks enjoyed them as an inexpensive starter vehicle. But gradually, automakers phased them out in favor of crossover SUVs while concentrating on the full-size pickups that are their most profitable products. In the past few years, however, smaller pickups — bigger than the modest Ford Rangers and Chevy S-10s of the past — have staged a comeback. For US carmakers, Chevy's Colorado almost single-handedly revived the segment, which had been filled by trucks like the Toyota Tacoma and the Nissan Frontier. Soon, Ford will bring back the Ranger. Of course, Honda has long had a small pickup in its lineup: the oddball Ridgeline. This wasn't a truck for truck people. It was more of an SUV with a pickup truck bed. The styling was offbeat. But for the latest generation, perhaps sensing that small pickups are the comeback trail, Honda made the Ridgeline into more of a proper truck. We checked it out last year