Tech Boys

April Fools’ Day falls on a Saturday this year. Seemingly worried that the Internet goes away on weekends, a bunch of companies rolled out their April Fools’ jokes a few days early. Some of them are really, really good. Some of them… are not. Here’s our round-up of the ones worth a laugh, chuckle, or, at the very least, a mildly-amused puff of air through your… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2mWFLYv via IFTTT

There seems to be a lot of excitement for the new "It" movie.  The latest scary adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel had its trailer premiere on Wednesday, and it completely blew up. In the first 24 hours, the trailer was viewed globally 197 million times.  That's a new record, according to Deadline . The previous record holder was "The Fate of the Furious" back in December with 139 million views in a day. According to the trade, 81M views and over 1.8M shares of the "It" trailer came from US Facebook instances alone. The movie about the frightening clown Pennywise and the seven kids who try to destroy him doesn't hit theaters until September, so expect a few more trailers before then. But New Line and Warner Bros. are certainly pleased with the reaction so far. Watch the trailer (again) here:   SEE ALSO:  The best movies and TV shows coming to Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, and more in April Join the conversation about this story » NOW ...

It's been a rough month  for Uber, to say the least, but at the end of the day it's still the most valuable private company  in the world. But as this chart from Statista shows, the rapid growth of Uber and its rivals hasn’t necessarily led ride-hailing apps to be adopted en masse. Instead, it’s just the opposite: According to a recent global survey by Dalia Research , less than 40% of people in most major markets say they’ve ever used an app to hail, rent, or share a ride in some form. In the United States, that figure is 30%. Though that number has grown over the years, it might seem low to anyone living in a major city. Nevertheless, while the auto industry is busy preparing for a future of robot taxis , car ownership is far from over. SEE ALSO:  Uber’s gender gap is not good, but it’s par for the course in tech Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Congress just voted to allow your internet provider to sell your online history and data — here...

 The ACLU reported last year that law enforcement teamed up with Geofeedia, a software company that uses social media data to track and monitor protesters. Many were outraged. Facebook and Twitter cut off Geofeedia’s access to their data. These new rules have far-reaching implications for companies whose business models revolve around utilizing social media data for close observations. Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2okmPDm via IFTTT

Cloud computing — on-demand, internet-based computing services — has been successfully applied to many computing functions in recent years. From consumer-facing, web-based productivity apps like Google Docs to enterprise database management suites, the tools businesses rely on are increasingly moving to the cloud. But developing a cloud strategy is no easy task. Public cloud solutions will likely come to dominate the market over the next decade, but business constraints, such as security concerns and the limitations of existing infrastructure, make it difficult for companies to fully adopt the public cloud right now. That means that hybrid clouds,   in which multiple cloud implementations (including public and private) are connected,   will remain popular for the time being, at least until these constraints are addressed. The tech giants that dominate the IaaS market — Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Google — are constantly expanding their offerings to address current business...

Reddit is continuing its annual streak of using April Fools' Day to run social experiments with " Place ," which challenges the site's millions of users to work together and be creative. Basically, Reddit Place is a huge, collaborative canvas accessible on Reddit for desktop, iOS, and Android. It's almost like a massively multiplayer Microsoft Paint. Every Reddit user gets to paint one pixel, every five minutes. At the time of writing, over 58,400 people were painting on the same canvas at the same time. That time limit means that users are forced to work together to do anything more meaningful than a random scribble. And Reddit users have largely risen to the challenge, managing to team up and make creations like this pretty on-model Mega Man:  Of course, Reddit being Reddit, the trolls are organizing, too: You may notice a somewhat rude word taking shape towards the upper-left hand corner of this canvas. And there's nothing stopping people from paintin...

When tech mogul Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, the rocket company "basically consisted of carpet and a mariachi band," Musk said in September 2016 . "That was it." Today SpaceX employs hundreds of people all over the US, and has vastly expanded its size, scope, and prowess with growing revenues from government and private contracts. The company's ballooning expertise culminated in the first-ever full reuse of an orbital rocket booster — the most expensive part of the rocket — on March 30. "This is going to be a huge revolution for spaceflight. It's been 15 years to get to this point," Musk said during a live broadcast of the launch. "I'm at a loss for words." With that historic launch in the rearview mirror, Musk said SpaceX is looking to make it a routine, if not boring, affair to launch, land, and re-launch within 24 hours. "I'm confident it's possible to achieve a 100-fold reduction" in the cost of getti...