Tech Boys

Who doesn't have a love-hate relationship with exercise?  In a perfect world, you'd have evenly toned extremities and six-pack abs without ever leaving the couch. The problem is that working out isn't fun. Ever. Who wants to go on a run when there are so many television shows to watch and snacks to devour?  If you're looking to inject a bit of fun into your workout routine, Rock Solid's Whole Vibration Fitness Machine  is here for you. Simply turn on the platform so it begins to vibrate, then use it to step, stand, or lunge. (What, you thought we were talking about a different type of vibrator ?) Read more... More about Exercise , Mashable Shopping , Shopping Stackcommerce , Tech , and Consumer Tech from Mashable https://ift.tt/2OZ7oKt via IFTTT

Earlier this year, Norway's minister of international development visited Ghana. Minister Nikolai Astrup had a simple request: He wanted to spend some time with his team collecting trash from beaches in the developing nation.  His team assured him that could be arranged. Then he was asked the most telling question of all: Where would they put the trash once it was collected? "That's the point," he responded.  Developing countries like Ghana lack the necessary infrastructure to properly dispose of waste, meaning that trash ultimately ends up in rivers and streams that dump into the ocean.  Now, Norway is trying to change that.  Read more... More about United Nations , Oceans , Marine Science , Sustainable Development Goals , and Ocean Plastic Pollution from Mashable https://ift.tt/2xMkkg8 via IFTTT

In a time of volatile politics and chaotic news cycles, it can be hard to separate the signal from the noise, to stay informed without getting completely and totally overwhelmed.  Which is why, despite recent talk of a " podcast bubble ," the medium is exactly what we need right now. Podcasts can slow down and really study a topic or event, bringing in the kind of nuance that's too often lacking in our current discourse. SEE ALSO: 15 podcasts guaranteed to tell you a fantastic story Sure, partisan political podcasts — from the Crooked Media/"Pod Save America" crew on the left to Ben Shapiro's show on the right — are still incredibly popular, as are news podcasts that dip into politics, like the New York Times ' " The Daily ."  Read more... More about Washington Post , Slate , Npr , Podcasts , and Culture from Mashable https://ift.tt/2RbsZ3M via IFTTT

Go to business school, they said. It will widen your network, boost your credibility, and enhance your earning potential, they said. While all these things ring true, going to B-school requires shelling out Big Bucks and dedicating a few years of your life to hitting the books, attending classes, and breaking your back completing dissertations — which to some people might seem like a Very Bad Idea™ indeed. If you don't think the MBA route is right for you, there are still a myriad of options available that can aid in enhancing your business skills. Here are some of the online classes that can get you started: Read more... More about Online Learning , Mashable Shopping , Shopping Stackcommerce , Shopping Onlinelearning , and Mba from Mashable https://ift.tt/2xYrNrH via IFTTT

The UK Conservative party is learning a hard lesson about the importance of basic security measures in mobile apps. Users have discovered that you could log into the party's conference app using only an attendee's email address, providing access to a... from Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/2NT0eKY via IFTTT

Since McKinsey released a report on how best to use prizes to incentivize innovation nearly a decade ago, an entire industry has grown around social innovation challenges. The formula for these “save the world” competitions has become standard. Drum up a lot of buzz around an award. Partner with big names to get funding and high-profile judges. Try and get as many submissions as possible from across the world. Whittle down the submissions and come up with a list of finalists that get to pitch at a glitzy event with a lot of media attention. On the final stage, based on pitches that last mere minutes, pick a winner that can get upwards of millions in prize funding. Don’t have a software platform to run a challenge of this kind? No worries, numerous for-profit vendors have sprung up that can do all the work for you—for anywhere from ten to a few hundred thousand dollars. The growth has been so exponential that prizes awarded through competitions has grown from less than $20 million in

Dressed in a Naruto t-shirt and a hat emblazoned with the phrase “lone wolf,” Ne-Yo slouches over in a chair inside a Holberton School  classroom. The Grammy-winning recording artist is struggling to remember the name of “that actor,” the one who’s had a successful career in both the entertainment industry and tech investing. “I learned about all the things he was doing and I thought it was great for him,” Ne-Yo told TechCrunch. “But I didn’t really know what my place in tech would be.” It turns out “that actor” is Ashton Kutcher, widely known in Hollywood and beyond for his role in several blockbusters and the TV sitcom That ’70s Show,  and respected in Silicon Valley for his investments via Sound Ventures and A-Grade in Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Bird and several others. Ne-Yo, for his part, is known for a string of R&B hits including  So Sick , One in a Million  and Because of You.  His latest album,  Good Man,  came out in June. Ne-Yo, like Kutcher, is interested in pursuing

Tesla CEO Elon Musk will step down as chairman of the electric automaker and pay a $20 million fine under a settlement reached with the U.S Securities and Exchange commission. Musk will remain CEO and he will still keep a seat on the board, just not as chairman. The agreement settles what could have turned into a bitter and potentially damaging fight for Musk, the company, and Tesla shareholders. Musk will resign from his role as chairman of the Tesla board within 45 days of the agreement, which was filed Saturday. He has agreed to not seek reelection or accept an appointment as chairman for three years. An independent chairman will be appointed, under the settlement agreement. Tesla will pay a separate $20 million penalty, according to the SEC. The SEC said the charge and fine against Tesla is for failing to require disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets. Musk doesn’t have to admit or deny the SEC’s allegations as part of the agreement. Tesla has also agre

Google’s big hardware event, scheduled for October 9 , is expected to feature the new Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL phones. But now we know that Google will probably reveal a third-generation model of Chromecast, thanks to one recent Best Buy customer who discovered the device on store shelves. Whoops. “GroveStreetHomie” detailed his experience on a Reddit post entitled “I think I bought the 3rd gen Chromecast too early.” According to the Reddit post, the customer went to Best Buy earlier to pick up a Chromecast for a new TV. That’s when “GroveStreetHomie” noticed the packaging and design was different from an earlier version. The cashier wasn’t able to scan the item because it wasn’t in the system yet. The release date was labeled October 9 — the same day as the 2018 Google hardware event. “But since I already had it in my hand and was the same price as the 2nd generation Chromecast, they let me have it under the old SKU,” the post read. This new unannounced Chromecast is apparentl

The BMW i3 is getting an upgraded battery — plus a bunch of other improvements —that will give the 2019 model about 153 miles of range. That’s roughly a 30% improvement from the previous model. The boost in range is noteworthy, yet it still lags behind the Chevy Bolt and the Tesla Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles. And it’s only a smidge better than the much cheaper Nissan Leaf. The upshot: it’s a steady improvement that expresses some continued investment and interest in the i3 brand. But will it be enough to keep this city car in the EV mix ? When the BMW i3 first went into production in 2013 it had a 22.6-kilowatt hour battery pack containing 60 ampere hours (Ah) batteries. That first i3 had range of 81 miles, according to EPA estimates. The company’s second-generation battery, introduced in 2016, grew to 33 kwh of gross energy (94 amp hours) and had a range of about 115 miles under the EPA cycle. Now the 2019 model, which will comes with 120 Ah batteries in a 42.2-kWh-bat

May Mobility launched its first low-speed autonomous shuttle service in Detroit this summer. By March, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company will be operating in at least three U.S. cities. The company, which just announced plans to expand to Columbus, Ohio , is planning to add another route in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s a rapid acceleration for a company that was founded less than two years ago. May Mobility is different from other companies racing to deploy autonomous vehicles at a commercial scale. The startup, which was founded by veterans in the self-driving and automotive industry , has developed low-speed autonomous shuttles that are designed to run along a specific route in business districts or corporate and college campuses. The company said it will bring four of its six-seat electric shuttles to Grand Rapids. The one-year pilot will begin March 2019. This latest shuttle launch is part of a broader effort called the Grand Rapids Autonomous Mobility Initiative, a coalit

Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor Getting personal: Funding rises for software-driven tastemakers The alumni of these universities raised the most VC in the past year A lot of people still get paid to sit in offices and do repetitive tasks. In recent years, however, employers have been pushing harder to find ways to outsource that work to machines. Venture and growth investors are doing a lot to speed up the rise of these worker-bots. So far this year, they’ve poured hundreds of millions into developers of robotic process automation technology, the term to describe software used for performing a series of tasks previously carried out by humans. Process automation funding activity spiked last week with a $225 million Series C round for one of the category leaders, New York-based  UiPath . Sequoia Capital and Alphabet’s CapitalG led the financing, which brings total capital raised by the 13-year-old company to more than $400 million, with a most r

At a Senate hearing this week in which US lawmakers quizzed tech giants on how they should go about drawing up comprehensive Federal consumer privacy protection legislation, Apple’s VP of software technology described privacy as a “core value” for the company. “We want your device to know everything about you but we don’t think we should,” Bud Tribble told them in his opening remarks. Facebook was not at the commerce committee hearing which, as well as Apple, included reps from Amazon, AT&T, Charter Communications, Google and Twitter. But the company could hardly have made such a claim had it been in the room, given that its business is based on trying to know everything about you in order to dart you with ads. You could say Facebook has ‘ hostility to privacy ‘ as a core value. Earlier this year one US senator wondered of Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook could run its service given it doesn’t charge users for access. “ Senator we run ads ,” was the almost startled response, as

For hobbyist photographers like myself, Hasselblad has always been the untouchable luxury brand reserved for high-end professionals. To fill the gap between casual and intended photography, they released the X1D — a compact, mirrorless medium format. Last summer when Stefan Etienne reviewed the newly released camera, I asked to take a picture. After importing the raw file into Lightroom and flipping through a dozen presets, I joked that I would eat Ramen packets for the next year so I could buy this camera. It was that impressive. XCD 3.5/30mm lens Last month Hasselblad sent us the XCD 4/21mm (their latest ultra wide-angle lens) for a two-week review, along with the X1D body and XCD 3,2/90mm portrait lens for comparison. I wanted to see what I could do with the kit and had planned the following: Swipe right on everyone with an unflattering Tinder profile picture and offer to retake it for them Travel somewhere with spectacular landscapes My schedule didn’t offer much time fo

The Pentagon is going to make one cloud vendor exceedingly happy when it chooses the winner of the $10 billion, ten-year enterprise cloud project dubbed the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (or JEDI for short). The contract is designed to establish the cloud technology strategy for the military over the next 10 years as it begins to take advantage of current trends like Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and big data. Ten billion dollars spread out over ten years may not entirely alter a market that’s expected to reach $100 billion  a year very soon, but it is substantial enough give a lesser vendor much greater visibility, and possibly deeper entree into other government and private sector business. The cloud companies certainly recognize that . Photo: Glowimages/Getty Images That could explain why they are tripping over themselves to change the contract dynamics, insisting, maybe rightly, that a multi-vendor approach would make more sense. One look at the Requ