I’ve talked about the concept of “office martyrdom” and explained why it’s an easy trap to fall into yet potentially very destructive.
“Classical liberals” are heralded by today’s conservatives, despite having little in common
It has been almost 100 days since the last White House press briefing, which is pretty much an abomination when you consider how and why…
Amazon has reportedly acquired Isreali storage tech startup E8 Storage, according to Reuters, CNBC and Globes. The acquisition will bring the team and technology from E8 in to Amazon’s existing Amazon Web Services center in Tel Aviv, per reports.
E8 Storage’s particular focus was on building storage hardware that employs flash-based memory to deliver faster performance than competing offerings, according to its own claims. How exactly AWS intends to use the company’s talent or assets isn’t yet known, and Amazon did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
AWS acquisitions this year include TSO Logic, a Vancouver-based startup that optimizes data center workload operating efficiency, and Israel-based CloudEndure, which provides data recovery services in the event of a disaster.
A Lyft electric bicycle was spotted smoldering in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Lyft's new bike-sharing system in the Bay Area, dubbed Bay Wheels, includes black-and-pink electric-assist bicycles powered by a battery on the bike's frame. These units used to be part of bike-sharing program Ford GoBike, similar to New York City's Citi Bike. Now, it appears some are becoming a bit too hot to handle.
The San Francisco Examiner reported on Wednesday that a passerby saw flames coming from a bike parked in an official Bay Wheels dock in the Lower Haight area around noon. Apparently a separate Lyft e-bike caught fire over the weekend, also in San Francisco, with the fire emanating from its battery. Read more...
More about Lyft, Bike Sharing, E Bike, E Bikes, and Tech
Lyft is pulling its e-bikes from the streets of San Francisco, as well as from those in the South Bay Area in light of two recently catching on fire. The first reported fire took place over the weekend, with the second happening today, according to the San Francisco Examiner.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we are temporarily making the ebike fleet unavailable to riders while we investigate and update our battery technology,” a Lyft spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Thanks to our riders for their patience and we look forward to making ebikes available again soon.”
The timing couldn’t be worse for Lyft, which recently obtained the right to deploy its dockless pedal-assist bikes in the city following a lawsuit against San Francisco. But with its bikes catching on fire, it surely does not help its argument that it should be the sole provider of bike-share services in the city.
“It is unfortunate that this incident occurred and we are currently monitoring the situation,” an SFMTA spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We encourage Lyft to put customer safety first. We have an inquiry into Lyft as to the circumstances surrounding this incident as well as to how they intend to prevent any future fires and ensure the safety of customers and the ongoing operability of the bikesharing system. Bikeshare is an important part of the SF transportation system. The Agency is working to ensure that our residents can consistently rely on the safety and availability of bikes.”
This also isn’t the first time Lyft has experienced issues with its e-bikes. In April, Lyft paused its e-bike operations in New York and San Francisco due to injuries associated with overly responsive brakes. It wasn’t until June when Lyft deployed its newly branded e-bikes in San Jose, Calif.
It’s worth noting that Lyft is not the only micromobility service to experience apparent battery issues. Both Skip and Lime have had to pull their electric scooters in light of the vehicles catching on fire.
LightSail 2 is faring much better than its ill-fated predecessor. The Planetary Society has verified that LightSail 2 successfully raised its orbit using solar sailing, making it the first small spacecraft to demonstrate the concept (though Japan's...
YouTubers get a bad rep for constantly shilling their merch, but this family channel's commitment to getting personal with fans is on another level.
The Inghams, and their 1.2 million subscribers, welcomed their fourth child Jace into the world in March. His birth was documented and shared in a video titled "EMOTIONAL LIVE BIRTH - LABOUR AND DELIVERY!"
But for subscribers who weren't satisfied with being invited to Jace's delivery room, parents Chris and Sarah Ingham went even further. They designed a lifelike baby doll, modeled after Jace at two weeks old, that followers can buy and take care of for only £279.00, or about $340. Read more...
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The world's largest telescope is one step closer to completion. This month, the team working on the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) completed the second of seven primary mirror segments, a process that began in January 2012.
After spending 50 years on display in a museum, the world’s largest steam engine is finally getting to stretch its wheels and blow the cobwebs out of its steam whistle for a journey across the Midwest. Big Boy, as the locomotive is known, is sparking delight in all the towns he visits. The Union Pacific Railroad restored the historic train engine to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
I have a two-year-old son, so as you can imagine I read a lot of books about trains. Often the same book about trains, over and over again, until it basically has scrambled my brain. Now I’ve been tasked with writing my own children’s story about trains, in honor of Union Pacific locomotive No. 4014, aka Big...
Millions of people have been signing up to receive what they think is a $125 cash reimbursement from Equifax for its criminal mishandling and exposure of their personal and financial data. But the FTC warns that you may see only a small fraction of that, if any, because of the way the $575 million settlement with the company actually breaks down.
In the settlement, Equifax set aside $300 million to pay for credit monitoring for everyone affected by the historic hack (rivaled perhaps only by this week’s of Capital One), and you’re due that if you want it.
But say you already had credit monitoring set up because of, say, yet another of the various hacks and leaks that have plagued the careless stewards of our data in recent years. In that case you can state this is the case and receive up to $125 as an alternative claim.
There’s just one problem: Equifax only set aside a paltry sum of $31 million for these cases, which is just enough for about a quarter of a million people to receive that $125 — well under the millions that are now submitting claims. So the pie, already a small one, gets sliced even thinner than before.
If even one in 10 of the victims asks for the alternative payout method, that nets them about two bucks each. Meanwhile, the CEO received a $20 million (conservatively) golden parachute after overseeing one of the largest and most damaging hacks in history, which was called “entirely preventable.” He wasn’t fired, you know — he retired. Overall the company is in pretty good shape!
There is more money set aside for people who have out-of-pocket expenses for hack-related issues, like identity theft that resulted in the loss of a loan and such. You’ll need to document that, though, and relatively few people will be able to take advantage of it.
The FTC’s Robert Schoshinski explains that the credit monitoring is the more valuable option anyway:
If you haven’t submitted your claim yet, think about opting for the free credit monitoring instead. Frankly, the free credit monitoring is worth a lot more – the market value would be hundreds of dollars a year. And this monitoring service is probably stronger and more helpful than any you may have already, because it monitors your credit report at all three nationwide credit reporting agencies, and it comes with up to $1 million in identity theft insurance and individualized identity restoration services.
Fair point, and given the ongoing failure of financial institutions, social networks and other companies to protect your data, it might be nice to know that you’re protected.
Of course, the credit monitoring is provided by Equifax. But don’t worry, I’m sure they learned their lesson.
Hyperloop, the futuristic and still theoretical transportation system that could someday propel people and packages at speeds of more than 600 miles per hour, has been designated a “public infrastructure project” by India lawmakers in the state of Maharashtra.
Wrapped in that government jargon is a valuable and notable outcome. The upshot: hyperloop is being treated like any other public infrastructure project such as bridges, roads and railways. In other words, hyperloop has been plucked out of niche, futuristic obscurity and given a government stamp of approval.
That’s remarkable, considering that the idea for hyperloop was first proposed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in a nearly 60-page public white paper just five years ago.
It also kicks off a process that could bring hyperloop to a 93-mile stretch of India between the cities of Mumbai and Pune. The Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority will begin the procurement process in mid-August when it starts accepting proposals from companies hoping to land the hyperloop contract.
The frontrunner is likely Virgin Hyperloop One-DP World, a consortium between the hyperloop company and its biggest backer that pitched the original project to India. The MahaIDEA Committee earlier approved Virgin Hyperloop One-DP World Consortium as the Original Project Proponent.
Under the VHO-DPW proposal, a hyperloop capable of transporting 200 million people every year would be built between Pune and Mumbai. That stretch of road now takes more than three hours by car; VHO says its hyperloop would reduce it to a 35-minute trip.
“This is history in the making. The race is on to host the first hyperloop transportation system in the world, and today’s announcement puts India firmly in the lead. This is a significant milestone and the first of many important steps toward bringing hyperloop to the masses,” Virgin Hyperloop One CEO Jay Walder said in a statement Wednesday.
The hope is that India’s government will award the contract by the end of 2019, a VHO executive told TechCrunch. If that occurs, Phase 1 of the project — an 11.8 kilometer (or 7.3 mile) section — would begin in 2020.
The cost of building Phase 1 will be covered by DP World, which has committed $500 million to this section. The government is covering the cost and logistics of acquiring the land for the hyperloop.
Phase 1 will initially act as a certification track, which will be used to certify the hyperloop technology for passenger operations. VHO wants this certification track built and operating by 2024. If this section meets safety standards it will become part of the larger hyperloop line between Pune and Mumbai.
There is a lot of work to do, and technical milestones to meet, before hyperloop is whisking people in pods through a tunnel. But if it works and is built, the region’s economy could be transformed, supporters insist.
Once commercialized, the hyperloop will transform the Pune-Mumbai corridor into a mega-economic region, according to Harj Dhaliwal, managing director of India and Middle East at Virgin Hyperloop One.
Today, some 75 million people travel between Pune and Mumbai each year, and forecasts suggest that number could rise to 130 million annually by 2026. The VHO-DPW consortium says its hyperloop will have the capacity to handle 16,000 passengers day, or about 200 million people annually.
Why you should lose the modesty and expose your authentic self in writing
With the gap between rhetoric and reality growing ever wider, how can the radical populist right be stopped?
The Democrats must learn what they can from the Mueller Investigation and move on.
It was one of the first days of shooting the film, From Dusk Till Dawn, and the director Robert Rodriguez wiped the sweat from his neck…
Fledgling POC journalists are sick of the faux pas. If we don’t reform, they might just leave the industry.
Fledgling POC journalists are sick of the faux pas. If we don’t reform, they might just leave the industry.
Are you starting out your career and wondering how you can make the biggest impact possible? Are you well into your career but feel like…
EA Sports has been unusually silent about NBA Live 20 -- the game's absence from EA Play even sparked fears that it was slated for cancellation. Luckily, fans only have to wait a few more months. Polygon noted that EA released a financial report on T...
Paige Thompson is accused of stealing the financial records of over 100 million Americans, but a self-described longtime friend says the situation is significantly more complicated than it first appears.
The Department of Justice on Monday announced the arrest of Thompson, a 33-year-old former Amazon employee. Federal authorities alleged in a criminal complaint that she exploited a misconfigured firewall to access millions of Capital One customers' records via a cloud company's servers.
"She had no malicious intent and was not targeting anyone," her friend insisted.
We got in touch with the friend, who we are not identifying by name, via a now-deleted Slack workspace that appears to have been set up by Thompson. Read more...
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NASA has opened up a call for companies to join the ranks of its nine existing Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) providers, a group it chose in November after a similar solicitation for proposals. With the CLPS program, NASA is buying space aboard future commercial lunar landers to deliver to the surface of the Moon its future research, science and demonstration projects, and it’s looking for more providers to sign up as lunar lander providers. Contracts could prove out to $2.6 billion and extend through 2028.
The list of nine providers chosen in November 2018 includes Astrobotic Technology, Deep Space Systems, Draper, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express and OrbitBeyond. NASA is looking to these companies, and any new firms added to the list as a result of this second call for submissions, to deliver both small and mid-size lunar landers, with the aim of delivering anything from rovers, to batteries, to payloads specific to future Artemis missions with the aim of helping establish a more permanent human presence on the Moon.
NASA’s goal in building out a stable of providers helps its Moon ambitions in a few different ways, including providing redundancy, and also offering a competitive field so they can open up bids for specific payloads and gain price advantages.
At the end of May, NASA announced the award of more than $250 million in contracts for specific payload delivery missions that were intended to take place by 2021. The three companies chosen from its list of nine providers were Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and OrbitBeyond, although OrbitBeyond told the agency just yesterday that it would not be able to fulfill the contract awarded due to “internal corporate challenges,” and backed out of the contract with NASA’s permission.
Given how quickly one of their providers exited one of the few contracts already awarded, and the likely significant demand there will be for commercial lander services should NASA’s Artemis ambitions even match up somewhat closely to the vision, it’s probably a good idea for the agency to build out that stable of service providers.
Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge
During this afternoon’s call with investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company aims to assemble the 2019 Mac Pro in the United States — just as it did with the previous “trash can” design of the high-end desktop. Apple highlighted the US assembly of that device and even made a video promoting it. But the company made no mention of having the same plans for the Mac Pro it revealed at WWDC in June.
Yet according to Cook, US assembly is exactly why Apple requested an exclusion from the US government’s tariffs on importing goods from China. If Apple gets hit with an added fee for those parts, it might consider the whole plan unfeasible.
“In terms of the exclusions, we’ve been making the Mac Pro in the US. We want to continue to do...
As promised, Google is ready to make websites respect Incognito mode whether they like it or not. The company has released Chrome 76 for Linux, Mac and Windows, closing a loophole that let sites detect private browsing by looking for the presence of...A few years ago, investors heralded the arrival of a future with robots in the home. Robots like Jibo, Anki’s Cozmo and Mayfield Robotics’ Kuri attracted buzz and hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. All three companies have since shut down, prompting Kidtech expert Robin Raskin to recently ask, “Has the sheen worn off the tech toy world?”
With the demise of these robots and their makers, it’s fair to wonder if and when there will be a time when robots have a real place in our lives. But some robots are finding a home in a counterintuitive place: schools.
Because for robots to succeed, they need to find an application that integrates with human needs — solving real problems — and sustains their use. At home, the current wave of robots may provide children with a few hours of entertainment before they are tossed aside like any other new toy.
In schools, however, robots are proving that they can serve a purpose, bridging the divide between the digital and physical worlds in ways that bring to life concepts like coding. Savvy teachers are finding that robots can help to bring project-based learning alive in ways that supports development of valuable critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
It would not be the first time that K-12 schools paved the way as early adopters of technology. Forty years ago, the Apple II was widely adopted in schools first, before desktop computers colonized the home. Laptops famously gained early momentum in schools, where their light weight and portability were tightly aligned with the rise of in-class interventions and digital content. Schools were also early adopters of tablets, which, despite a few high-profile failures, are now seemingly ubiquitous in K-12 classrooms.
The rise of robotics in K-12 schools has been buoyed by not just intrigue with the potential of new gadgets, but an increased focus on computer science education. Just a decade ago, only a few states allowed computer science to count toward STEM course requirements. Today, nearly every state allows computer science courses to fulfill core graduation requirements, and 17 states require that every high school offer computer science.
The growing importance of computer science at the high school level has, in turn, trickled down to elementary and middle schools, where teachers are turning to robots as an effective way to introduce students to states’ new K-12 computer science standards. In California, the state’s board of education now suggests that schools use robots to satisfy five of its standards.
Educators are recognizing the potential of robots, not as toys, but as powerful tools for learning.
From a design level, classroom robots are fundamentally different than those at home. Learning necessitates that — instead of bite-sized, shallow experiences, robots must provide experiences that have the depth and variety needed to keep students engaged over months and years. To succeed in the classroom, they must be accompanied by thoughtful curricular content that teachers can incorporate into their instruction. Because robots are relatively expensive, teachers need robots they can reliably use for a long time.
It’s a trend that hasn’t been lost on companies like littleBits and Sphero, which are quickly pivoting to focus on a K-12 market dominated by legacy players like Lego. Wonder Workshop robots, which gained popularity through retail channels like the Apple Store and Amazon, are now being used in more than 20,000 schools across the world. Although they currently penetrate just a fraction of the K-5 classrooms in the U.S., their success is not only drawing increased interest from investors, but fueling innovations that could have implications for pernicious equity gaps that still plague STEM classrooms — and high-tech fields.
While the toy industry has long marketed its products differently to boys and girls in ways that actually reinforce stereotypes through product design and advertising, robots designed for the classroom must appeal to all students. Earlier versions of Wonder Workshop’s Dash robot, for example, rolled around on visible wheels.
During its initial user studies, the company learned students equated wheeled robots with cars and trucks. In other words, they viewed Dash as something meant for boys. So, Wonder Workshop covered up Dash’s wheels. It worked. Today, nearly 50% of participants in the company’s Wonder League Robotics Competition are girls, with many of the winning teams each year being all-girl teams.
So while the national narrative often imagines a dystopian future where robots come for our jobs, classroom robots are actually helping teachers meet the needs of increasingly diverse classrooms. They are helping students improve their executive function, creativity and ability to communicate with others.
Educators are recognizing the potential of robots, not as toys, but as powerful tools for learning. And children as young as kindergarten are using robots to better and more quickly understand mathematical concepts. Students who have the opportunity to learn from — and with — robots in the classroom today may develop a generation of robots that can play a role in our lives well into the future. They will grow up not merely as consumers of technology, but creators of it.
Sony has warned that PlayStation consoles will become more expensive if the Trump administration goes ahead with higher tariffs on more Chinese exports, the WSJ reports. The Trump administration, which raised tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods this past May, is now threatening to expand tariffs to an additional $300 billion of Chinese exports, which would include video game consoles.
In preparation for the potential expansion of tariffs, Sony says it’s now considering its options, including passing the cost of production onto its consumers. (The WSJ paints the price increase as a necessary step if the tariffs continue, though one Sony exec clarified that nothing has been decided yet.) “We...
NASA has selected 13 companies to partner with on 19 new specific technology projects it’s undertaking to help reach the Moon and Mars. These include SpaceX, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin, among others, with projects ranging from improving spacecraft operation in high temperatures to landing rockets vertically on the Moon.
Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin will work with NASA on developing a navigation system for “safe and precise landing at a range of locations on the Moon” in one undertaking, and also on readying a fuel cell-based power system for its Blue Moon lander, revealed earlier this year. The final design spec will provide a power source that can last through the lunar night, or up to two weeks without sunlight in some locations. It’ll also be working on further developing engine nozzles for rockets with liquid propellant that would be well-suited for lunar lander vehicles.
SpaceX will be working on technology that will help move rocket propellant around safely from vehicle to vehicle in orbit, a necessary step to building out its Starship reusable rocket and spacecraft system. The Elon Musk-led private space company will also be working with Kennedy Space Center on refining its vertical landing capabilities to adapt it to work with large rockets on the Moon, where lunar regolith (aka Moon dust) and the low-gravity, zero atmosphere environment can complicate the effects of controlled descents.
Lockheed Martin will be working on using solid-state processing to create metal powder-based materials that can help spacecraft deal better with operating in high-temperature environments, and on autonomous methods for growing and harvesting plants in space, which could be crucial in the case of future long-term colonization efforts.
Other projects will tap Advanced Space, Vulcan Wireless, Aerogel Technologies, Spirit AeroSystem, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Anasphere, Bally Ribbon Mills, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Colorado Power Electronics and Maxar; you can read about each in detail here.
NASA’s goals with these private partnerships are to both develop at speed, and decrease the cost of efforts to operate crewed space exploration, as part of its Artemis program and beyond.
Snapchat is finally growing again, and it's using that momentum to engage in some (not so) subtle trolling of its biggest rival: Instagram.
Snap introduced a new ad campaign that's all about promoting Snapchat as the home for "real friends." The implications, of course, being that other platforms aren't about "real friends." Think that's too subtle? Well, just in case there was any question of what they really meant, Snap kicked off the campaign. on none other than Instagram.
Snap doesn't have its own presence on Instagram, so it worked with dozens of "quotefluencers" — high-profile accounts that primarily post inspirational quotes. Together, these accounts flooded Instagram with cheery quotes about friends using the "#realfriends" and "#friendshipquotes" hashtags. The posts were all on a yellow background, complete with Snapchat's ghost logo and "brought to you by Snapchat" captions. Read more...
More about Tech, Instagram, Snapchat, Snap Inc, and Social Media Companies
While the company has made a point of its privacy-protection measures, it turns out that it engages in the practice of having humans…
Even before pitching onstage at Y Combinator, Indian car refueling startup MyPetrolPump has managed to snag $1.6 million in seed financing.
The business, which is similar to startups in the U.S. like Filld, Yoshi and Booster Fuels, took 10 months to design and receive approval for its proprietary refueling trucks that can withstand the unique stresses of providing logistics services in India.
Together with co-founder Nabin Roy, a serial startup entrepreneur, MyPetrolPump co-founder and chief executive Ashish Gupta pooled $150,000 to build the company’s first two refuelers and launch the business.
MyPetrolPump began operating out of Bangalore in 2017 working with a manufacturing partner to make the 20-30 refuelers that the company expects it will need to roll out its initial services. However, demand is far outstripping supply, according to Gupta.
“We would need hundreds of them to fulfill the demand,” Gupta says. In fact the company is already developing a licensing strategy that would see it franchise out the construction of the refueling vehicles and regional management of the business across multiple geographies.
Bootstrapped until this $1.6 million financing, MyPetrolPump already has five refueling vehicles in its fleet and counts 2,000 customers already on its ledger.
These are companies like Amazon and Zoomcar, which both have massive fleets of vehicles that need refueling. Already the company has delivered 5 million liters of fuel with drivers working daily 12-hour shifts, Gupta says.
While services like MyPetrolPump have cropped up in the U.S. as a matter of convenience, in the Indian context, the company’s offering is more of necessity, says Gupta.
“In the Indian context, there’s pilferage of fuel,” says Gupta. Bus drivers collude with gas station operators to skim money off the top of the order, charging for 50 liters of fuel but only getting 40 liters pumped in. Another problem that Gupta says is common is the adulteration of fuel with additives that can degrade the engine of a vehicle.
There’s also the environmental benefit of not having to go all over to refill a vehicle, saving fuel costs by filling up multiple vehicles with a single trip from a refueling vehicle out to a location with a fleet of existing vehicles.
The company estimates it can offset 1 million tons of carbon in a year — and provide more than 300 billion liters of fuel. The model has taken off in other geographies as well. There’s Toplivo v Bak in Russia (which was acquired by Yandex), Gaston in Paris and Indonesia’s everything mobility company, Gojek, whose offerings also include refueling services.
And Gupta is preparing for the future as well. If the world moves to electrification and electric vehicles, the entrepreneur says his company can handle that transition as well.
“We are delivering a last-mile fuel delivery system,” says Gupta. “If tomorrow hydrogen becomes the dominant fuel we will do that… If there is electricity we will do that. What we are building is the convenience of last-mile delivery to energy at the doorstep.”
Civil liberties campaign group Liberty has lost its latest challenge to controversial U.K. surveillance powers that allow state agencies to intercept and retain data in bulk.
The challenge fixed on the presence of so-called “bulk” powers in the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act (IPA): A controversial capability that allows intelligence agencies to legally collect and retain large amounts of data, instead of having to operate via targeted intercepts.
The law even allows for state agents to hack into devices en masse, without per-device grounds for individual suspicion.
Liberty, which was supported in the legal action by the National Union of Journalists, argued that bulk powers are incompatible with European human rights law on the grounds that the IPA contains insufficient safeguards against abuse of these powers.
Two months ago it published examples of what it described as shocking failures by U.K. state agencies — such as not observing the timely destruction of material; and data being discovered to have been copied and stored in “ungoverned spaces” without the necessary controls — which it said showed MI5 had failed to comply with safeguards requirements since the IPA came into effect.
However the judges disagreed that the examples of serious flaws in spy agency MI5’s “handling procedures” — which the documents also show triggering intervention by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner — sum to a conclusion that the Act itself is incompatible with human rights law.
Rejecting the argument in their July 29 ruling, they found that oversight mechanisms the government baked into the legislation (such as the creation of the office of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to conduct independent oversight of spy agencies’ use of the powers) provide sufficient checks on the risk of abuse, dubbing the regime as “a suite of inter-locking safeguards.”
Liberty expressed disappointment with the ruling — and has said it will appeal.
In a statement the group told the BBC: “This disappointing judgment allows the government to continue to spy on every one of us, violating our rights to privacy and free expression.
“We will challenge this judgment in the courts, and keep fighting for a targeted surveillance regime that respects our rights. These bulk surveillance powers allow the state to Hoover up the messages, calls and web history of hordes of ordinary people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.”
This is just one of several challenges brought against the IPA.
A separate challenge to bulk collection was lodged by Liberty, Big Brother Watch and others with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
A hearing took place two years ago and the court subsequently found that the U.K.’s historical regime of bulk interception had violated human rights law. However, it did not rule against bulk surveillance powers in principle — which the U.K. judges note in their judgement, writing that consequently: “There is no requirement for there to be reasonable grounds for suspicion in the case of any individual.”
Earlier this year Liberty et al were granted leave to appeal their case to the ECHR’s highest court. That case is still pending before the Grand Chamber.
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge
We’re still a few months away from Apple announcing its 2019 iPhones, but rumors have already started for next year’s models, with the ever-reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claiming in his latest report that two of the 2020 iPhones will feature a rear time-of-flight (ToF) 3D depth sensor for better augmented reality features and portrait shots, via MacRumors.
It’s not the first we’ve heard of Apple considering a ToF camera for its 2020 phones, either. Bloomberg reported a similar rumor back in January, and reports of a 3D camera system for the iPhone have existed since 2017. Other companies have beaten Apple to the punch here, with several phones on the market already featuring ToF cameras. But given the prevalence of Apple’s...
Photo: Film Frame / Marvel Studios
Disney has made more money in the first seven months of 2019 than any studio has ever made in a single year, earning $7.67 billion to date at the worldwide box office. It’s an understatement to call that a major accomplishment for the House of Mouse. It’s more like a testimony to how powerful Disney has become as a monolith.
But it’s an achievement that inevitably won’t roll over into 2020. 2019 is an anomaly for Disney. A big part of that impressive number comes from the record-breaking success of Avengers: Endgame, which pulled in more than $2.8 billion worldwide and usurped Avatar as the highest-grossing movie of all time. Captain Marvel was another unusually high earner, the sixth-highest-grossing Marvel movie of all time, crossing...
Google today announced a new partnership with VMware that will make it easier for enterprises to run their VMware workloads on Google Cloud. Specifically, Google Cloud will now support VMware Cloud Foundation, the company’s system for deploying and running hybrid clouds. The solution was developed by CloudSimple, not VMware or Google, and Google will offer first-line support, working together with CloudSimple.
While Google would surely love for all enterprises to move to containers and utilize its Anthos hybrid cloud service, most large companies currently use VMware. They may want to move those workloads to a public cloud, but they aren’t ready to give up a tool that has long worked for them. With this new capability, Google isn’t offering anything that is especially new or innovative, but that’s not what this is about. Instead, Google is simply giving enterprises fewer reasons to opt for a competitor without even taking its offerings into account.
“Customers have asked us to provide broad support for VMware, and now with Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple, our customers will be able to run VMware vSphere-based workloads in GCP,” the company notes in the announcement, which we got an early copy of but which for reasons unknown to us will only go live on the company’s blog tomorrow. “This brings customers a wide breadth of choices for how to run their VMware workloads in a hybrid deployment, from modern containerized applications with Anthos to VM-based applications with VMware in GCP.”
The new solution will offer support for the full VMware stack, including the likes of vCenter, vSAN and NSX-T.
“Our partnership with Google Cloud has always been about addressing customers’ needs, and we’re excited to extend the partnership to enable our mutual customers to run VMware workloads on VMware Cloud Foundation in Google Cloud Platform,” said Sanjay Poonen, chief operating officer, customer operations at VMware. “With VMware on Google Cloud Platform, customers will be able to leverage all of the familiarity and investment protection of VMware tools and training as they execute on their cloud strategies, and rapidly bring new services to market and operate them seamlessly and more securely across a hybrid cloud environment.”
While Google’s announcement highlights that the company has a long history of working with VMware, it’s interesting to note that at least the technical aspects of this partnership are more about CloudSimple than VMware. It’s also worth noting that VMware has long had a close relationship with Google’s cloud competitor AWS, and Microsoft Azure, too, offers tools for running VMware-based workloads on its cloud.
Reports have swirled for days of Google paying people $5 in gift certificates to scan their faces, and now it's clear just why: it's for the Pixel 4. Google has confirmed to The Verge that the paid scans were meant to improve the accuracy of the Pix...
Earth's skyrocketing CO2 levels are now rising at rates that are unprecedented in both the historic and geologic record.
Already, levels of the potent heat-trapping gas are the highest they've been in at least 800,000 years, but more likely millions of years. Acknowledging that airliners emit prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg announced Monday that she will journey across the Atlantic Ocean to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit (and Mashable's Social Good Summit) upon a technologically-advanced sailboat, the Malizia II.
But Thunberg won't stop there. She'll continue on to a crucial UN climate conference in Chile. Read more...
More about Science, Global Warming, Climate Change, Greta Thunberg, and Social Good Summit 2019
