Techflier

Mazda's compact sedan grows bigger inside with a sumptuous cockpit. The i-ActiveSense Driver safety suite (more complete than Honda, Toyota) is on most models. For fun-to-drive, this is the small sedan to take home with you. The post 2019 Mazda3 Review: The Luxurious Compact Sedan for Track Days appeared first on ExtremeTech . from ExtremeTechExtremeTech http://bit.ly/2RqXEc9 via IFTTT

Intel’s new CEO is Bob Swan, the executive who has been leading the company on an interim basis for the past seven months and who joined as CFO in 2016. Intel’s prior CEO, Brian Krzanich, resigned last June after the company discovered he had violated policies with a “past consensual relationship” with an employee. While Krzanich was an engineer, Swan mostly comes from a line of financial and investing roles. He was the CFO of eBay for nine years, starting in 2006. After leaving, he joined the venture capital firm General Atlantic, which has investments in Slack, Snap, Airbnb, and Uber (also Vox Media, this website’s parent company). Swan was also the CFO, COO, and — for four months — the CEO of Webvan, a grocery delivery startup that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2UvFFTI via IFTTT

Harvard Law School professor Susan Crawford explains how America’s internet connectivity issues and corrosive infrastructure are holding the country back and how we can rally to fix it. She and Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel also discuss the Huawei scandal, politicians’ roles in improving broadband internet, and her new book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It. You can listen to their discussion about the infrastructure of America’s internet in its entirety on The Vergecast right now. Below is a lightly edited excerpt from the interview. Nilay Patel: The last time I talked to you, I think, was like 2007. It was the height of the net neutrality battle. You had just written a book about Comcast and NBC. I... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2TjvdPb via IFTTT

When Foxconn signed a deal with Wisconsin to build a massive plant on-site, it was hailed as an economic breakthrough for a troubled state. Two years later, the deal is a shadow of itself. The post Foxconn Admits It Won’t Build TV Plant in Wisconsin Despite $4B Investment appeared first on ExtremeTech . from ExtremeTechExtremeTech http://bit.ly/2RueIOD via IFTTT

Intel, it seems, didn’t have to look too hard to find its new CEO. Half a year after being named interim CEO, Bob Swan is taking the job full-time. Swan, the seventh CEO in Intel’s 50 year history will also be joining the chip maker’s board of directors. Prior to this gig, Swan was Intel’s CFO, grabbing that gig in late-2016 after holding positions at eBay and Electronic Data Systems Corp. Swan stepped into the interim role as word emerged of then-CEO Brian Krzanich’s “past consensual relationship” with an employee. “In my role as interim CEO, I’ve developed an even deeper understanding of Intel’s opportunities and challenges, our people and our customers,” Swan in a release tied to the news. “When the board approached me to take on the role permanently, I jumped at the chance to lead this special company. This is an exciting time for Intel: 2018 was an outstanding year and we are in the midst of transforming the company to pursue our biggest market opportunity ever.” Todd Underwo

Just to get this out of the way: Yes, Hulu is introducing an ad unit that will show up when you pause a video. But no, the ad won’t be a video. Hulu says it has 25 million subscribers, the majority of them on an ad-supported plan — so they’re used to seeing TV-style commercial breaks before and during their viewing experience. However, Vice President and Head of Advertising Platforms Jeremy Helfand said the company realizes that playing a similar ad as soon as you hit pause would be bad for both viewers and advertisers. For the viewer, “It can be jarring — you think you’ve paused the content, but you’re still seeing sight, sound and motion,” Helfand said. As for the advertiser, they don’t want to create a 30-second ad that the viewer doesn’t see because they’ve left for the kitchen or the bathroom, or because they unpause the show five seconds into the ad. Conversely, he said that during testing, Hulu found that viewers accepted the format “if the ad is subtle and relevant.” The

On the back of a strong showing for portfolio company Spotify going public last year and several biggies like Airbnb also slated to list very soon, VC firm TCV has announced its latest and biggest-ever fund, the $3 billion TCV X, which has now closed and will start getting invested “soon,” the company tells me. TCV’s previous fund — $2.5 billion for TCV IX — was closed in 2016  and focused on growth rounds. The firm says that it has made 21 investments out of that fund to date. Recent investments have included travel platform Sojern , Tour Radar , home-exercise startup  Peloton , activity booking platform Klook , ByteDance, LegalZoom and more. “The amount we raised is about the opportunity in tech investing, it’s large and continues to grow,” Nathan Sanders, TCV GP and COO, said in an interview today about this latest fund. “We are not looking to have explosive growth but we’re increasing our size to meet the opportunity. It’s bigger than what we had before but we will stay focused

China’s internet firms are getting pally with giant state-owned automakers as they look to deploy their artificial intelligence and cloud computing services across traditional industries. Ride-hailing startup Didi Chuxing, which owns Uber China,  announced  earlier this week a new joint venture with state-owned BAIC. Hot on the heels came another entity set up between Tencent and the GAC Group. GAC, which is owned by the Guangzhou municipal government in southern China, announced Thursday in a filing it will jointly establish a mobility company with social media and gaming behemoth Tencent, Guangzhou Public Transport Group alongside other investors. The announcement followed an agreement between Tencent and GAC in 2017 to team up on internet-connected cars and smart driving, a deal that saw the carmaker tapping into Tencent’s expertise in mobile payments, social networking, big data and cloud services. Tencent, which is most famous for its instant messenger WeChat, went through a

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange based on trading volume, will now let you spend money you don’t have after it added support for credit cards from Visa and Mastercard. Credit card usage in crypto is controversial. Aside from the risk — ask anyone who bought crypto last year… —  top exchanges have gone back and forth on support.  Coinbase, for example, stopped allowing credit card purchases a year ago but, when it still allowed them, customers were found to have  incurred additional charges . With many crypto owners getting “rekt” by a slump that has seen the market crash by around 90 percent, with some tokens now effectively worthless, the winds of change in the bear market are interesting to observe. Coinbase is abandoning its conservative approach to the coins that it lists , while Binance — which operates on the opposite scale with support for a glut of tokens — has moved from being crypto-only to  offer fiat currency options to customers. Support for credit cards

Social media platforms are being urged to be far more transparent about how their services operate and to make “anonymised high-level data” available to researchers so the technology’s effects on users — and especially on children and teens — can be better understood. The calls have been made in a report by the UK parliament’s Science and Technology Committee which has been looking into the impacts of social media and screen use among children — to consider whether such tech is “healthy or harmful”. “Social media companies must also be far more open and transparent regarding how they operate and particularly how they moderate, review and prioritise content,” it writes. Concerns have been growing about children’s use of social media and mobile technology for some years now, with plenty of anecdotal evidence and also some studies linking tech use to developmental problems, as well as distressing stories connecting depression and even suicide to social media use. Screen time inhib

I don’t have the time, energy, or attention span to give every email a thoughtful reply. It’s a problem Google has been trying to solve with a Gmail feature called Smart Replies, the automatically generated, prewritten responses that pop up when you’re composing an email. But I worry these simple responses will make us lazy and our language homogeneous. Email’s terrible, but do I now need to worry about it destroying language and cratering our relationships, too? Most short email responses aren’t carefully written as it is, so we aren’t exactly losing out on poetry, says Naomi Baron, a professor of linguistics emerita at American University and author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World . “We like to assume that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2DKwk4V via IFTTT

So you’ve chosen everything that gives you joy and now you have all those bags of tech, clothing, books, and other stuff that you need to get rid of. Where do you go from here? First, keep in mind that just dumping it isn’t an option. Reusing and recycling old and unneeded stuff has become an important aspect of the push to preserve the world’s environment — to the point that junk food manufacturers are testing reusable packaging. Many states and urban areas are mandating the recycling of tech, metals, paper goods, or other substances, but even if you live in an area where the law doesn’t require it, you probably don’t want to add more to the world’s trash. The problem is finding how and where you can get rid of your stuff with the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2UwxmqL via IFTTT

If you’re wondering how good your next phone’s camera is going to be, it’d be wise to pay attention to what the manufacturer has to say about AI. Beyond the hype and bluster, the technology has enabled staggering advances in photography over the past couple of years, and there’s no reason to think that progress will slow down. There are still a lot of gimmicks around, to be sure. But the most impressive recent advancements in photography have taken place at the software and silicon level rather than the sensor or lens — and that’s largely thanks to AI giving cameras a better understanding of what they’re looking at. Google Photos provided a clear demonstration of how powerful a mix AI and photography would be when the app launched in... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2UuqV7W via IFTTT

Intel's 28-core Xeon has broken cover -- and it's surprisingly affordable, as these things go. The post Intel’s 28-Core Overclockable Xeon Finally Available, Put Through Its Paces appeared first on ExtremeTech . from ExtremeTechExtremeTech http://bit.ly/2DNbthH via IFTTT

Next month’s Mobile World Congress is shaping up to be an interesting one for LG, with the South Korean company now rumored to be unveiling two handsets at the show: the LG G8 ThinQ and a second, higher-end, 5G-enabled device, possibly the LG V50 ThinQ 5G. This latter rumor comes from Korea’s ETNews , which says the LG V50 will feature a 6-inch display, 7nm Snapdragon 855 chipset with vapor-chamber cooling, and 4,000mAh battery. More importantly, says ETNews , it’ll have a 5G modem. If the V50 does land at MWC, it’ll be arriving sooner than expected. The V40 and its five cameras only launched last fall , and we weren’t expecting an update to LG’s highest-end line until the same time this year. But, speeding up the launch cadence would make... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2sTP9wy via IFTTT

We’ve written extensively about LG’s struggling mobile business, which has suffered at the hands of aggressive Chinese Android makers, and now that unit has dragged its parent company into posting its first quarterly loss for two years. The Korean electronics giant is generally in good health — it posted a $2.4 billion profit for 2018 — but its smartphone business’s failings saw it post a loss in Q4 2018, its first quarterly negative since Q4 2016 . Overall, the company posted a KRW 75.7 billion ($67.1 million) operating loss as revenue slid seven percent year-on-year to KRW 15.77 trillion ($13.99 billion). LG said the change was “primarily due to lower sales of mobile products.” We’ve known for some time that LG’s mobile business is struggling — the division got another new head last November — but things went from bad to worse in Q4. LG Mobile saw revenue fall by 42 percent to reach KRW 1.71 trillion, $1.51 billion. The operating loss for the period grew to KRW 322.3 billion,

The founders of Dadi — pronounced daddy — think men are in need of a wake-up call. “Men [have] a biological clock just like women, which is something that people don’t talk about,” Dadi co-founder and chief executive officer Tom Smith told TechCrunch. “Infertility isn’t a women’s issue; It’s both a men’s and women’s issue.” Smith believes Dadi, the provider of a temperature-controlled at-home fertility test and sperm collection kit, will encourage men to contribute to family planning conversations and become more aware of their reproductive health. The startup is officially launching its kit and long-term sperm storage service today with nearly $2 million in venture capital funding from London-based seed fund firstminute capital and New York-based Third Kind Venture Capital. “Our mission is to normalize the conversation around male fertility and reproductive health, and empower men with knowledge of fertility so they can have that conversation with their family,” Smith said. Here

Uber is suspending its professional taxi service in Barcelona from tomorrow almost a year after it re-entered the Catalan capital. The move follows the regional government agreeing new regulations for the vehicle for hire (VTC) sector aimed at making sure they do not compete directly with taxis. “The new restrictions approved by the Catalan Government leave us with no choice but to suspend UberX while we assess our future in Barcelona. We are committed to being a long term partner to Spanish cities and hope to work with the Catalan Government and the City Council on fair regulation for all,” an Uber spokesman told us. We’ve reached out to Cabify to ask whether it will also be suspending service in the city tomorrow. The ride-hailing company also said previously that it would have no choice but to leave if the decree was approved. And local press is reporting it will also suspend services across the region tomorrow. The new regional VTC rules, which also come into force across

Programming note: I’m on assignment tomorrow and Friday. The Interface will return on Monday. At around 2:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Facebook sent me an update about the controversial market research program revealed on Tuesday by TechCrunch . Effective immediately, the company said, the program would end on Apple devices . It also took issue with some of the language in TechCrunch ’s report: “Key facts about this market research program are being ignored,” the company said. “Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. It wasn’t ‘spying’ as all of the people who signed up to participate went through a clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2Uvk0v4 via IFTTT

Satellite company Telesat will use Loon’s networking software to manage Low Earth orbit constellations Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2DMZrF3 via IFTTT

Nintendo has cut its ambitious annual Switch sales forecast despite enjoying a strong Christmas Q3 quarter. The Japanese games giant recorded a 104.21 billion JPY ($958 million) profit on revenue of 608.39 billion JPY ($5.59 billion) between October and December 2018. Revenue was up 26 percent year-on-year, which is an impressive feature given that quarter was a successful one  for Nintendo, yielding its biggest operating profit in a Q3 for eight years . The Nintendo Switch is now closing down on lifetime sales of the N64. Nintendo shifted a record 9.41 million consoles during the three-month period, up 30 percent annually, to take it to 14.49 million this financial year, which began in April 2018. However, despite a success last quarter, likely helped in no small amount by Christmas, Nintendo has trimmed its ambitious goal to sell 20 million Switch units this financial year. Instead, the target is 17 million, which means it is estimating around 2.5 million sales during January, F

Meet Sencrop a French startup that wants to empower farmers using sensors, a data platform and a service marketplace. The company recently raised a $10 million funding round. The Series A round was led by Bpifrance with NCI Waterstart, Nord Capital and The Yield Lab also participating. Existing investors Demeter and Breega Capital also reinvested. If you’re a farmer and are getting started when it comes to leveraging data, Sencrop wants to be a one-stop shop for all your digital needs. The company sells connected stations that can measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, windspeed, etc. Each station costs between $340 and $570 (between €300 and €500) and you can have as many as you want. You can install the station yourself — it’s as easy as planting a post. After that, you pay a subscription to access the platform. It costs around $170 to $340 per year (€150 to €300). In addition to live readings of your sensors, Sencrop can help you predict the next steps. “On the other side of

Ultraviolet, one of the entertainment industry’s first attempts at creating a comprehensive digital locker service, is shutting down on July 31st, according to Variety . Users of the service should link their libraries to the service of at least one retailer which can then be used to access their films and TV shows after the shutdown. Ultraviolet’s days were numbered ever since Disney, the only major Hollywood studio not to join, launched its expanded Movies Anywhere locker service in 2017. Not only did it offer broad studio support, it could also be connected to major digital retailers like iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play, unlike Ultraviolet. Walmart’s Vudu, the biggest retailer to support Ultraviolet (and later Movies Anywhere),... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2WxzaBH via IFTTT

It’s been a long year for Nintendo fans waiting on Mario Kart to come to mobile and, unfortunately, more patience is required after the game’s launch was moved back to this summer. Nintendo announced plans to bring the much-loved franchise to smartphones one year ago . It was originally slated to launch by the end of March 2019, but the Japanese games giant said today it is pushing that date back to summer 2019. The key passage sits within Nintendo’s latest earnings report, released today, which explains that additional time is needed “to improve [the] quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch.” The checkered flag has been raised and the finish line is near. A new mobile application is now in development: Mario Kart Tour! #MarioKartTour Releasing in the fiscal year ending in March 2019. pic.twitter.com/8GIyR7ZM4z — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 1, 2018 It’s frustrating but, as The Verge points out , you can refer to a famou

Carl Court/Getty Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Thursday. Apple said it revoked Facebook's enterprise certificates thanks to the social network paying people to sideload the Facebook Research app onto their iPhones . Apple says it took the dramatic step of revoking multiple enterprise certificates from Facebook, compromising not just programs like Facebook Research but also other iOS apps in development internally at Facebook. Apple caused work inside Facebook to grind to a halt by revoking its enterprise certificates .  Employees were unable to communicate with colleagues, access internal information, and even use company transportation, according to an internal memo leaked to Business Insider. Facebook shrugged off its latest scandal with fourth quarter results that smashed expectations . It netted $16.91 billion in revenue in the final three months of the year, growing 30% year-on-year, while its EPS was $2.38. Apple is preparing new iPhones wi

Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool Photo via AP Hello! Here's everything you need to know on Thursday, January 31. 1. Roger Stone likens the Russia probe to a 'speeding bullet' heading for the president's head. The Nixonian fixer believes that Donald Trump's US presidency lies in peril. See the rest of the story at Business Insider NOW WATCH: We compared Apple's $159 AirPods to Xiaomi's $30 AirDots and the winner was clear See Also: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The first-round picks from Tom Brady's infamous 2000 NFL Draft The 10 most important things in the world right now The 10 most important things in the world right now from Feedburner https://read.bi/2DJVnoJ via IFTTT

The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images A White House map that showed Taiwan as a separate country from China is likely to draw as sharp a rebuke from mainland social media hawks even as it excited pro-independence supporters in Taipei. At a White House press conference on Monday dealing with the current crisis in Venezuela, viewers in Asia quickly homed in on a background map that highlighted China but displayed Taiwan as a separate country. China claims Taiwan as its own, while Taiwan views itself as independent from the mainland. China has exerted considerable effort to enforce its view in this matter. At a White House press conference this week dealing with the current crisis in Venezuela , attention in Asia quickly turned to a background map highlighting China — absent Taiwan — in red. This is not a map that actually exists, according to the Chinese Communist Party and its critically important origin story. As the US National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Treasury Secretary

The Internet of Things is fueling the data-based economy and bridging the divide between physical and digital worlds. Consumers, companies, and governments will install more than 40 billion IoT devices worldwide through 2023. The next five years will mark a pivotal transformation in how companies and jurisdictions operate, and how consumers live. Being successful in the digital age doesn’t just require knowing the latest buzzwords; it means identifying the transformational trends – and where they’re heading – before they ever heat up. BI Intelligence Take the Internet of Things (IoT), for example, which now receives not only daily tech news coverage with each new device launch, but also hefty investments from global organizations ushering in worldwide adoption. By 2023, consumers, companies, and governments will install more than 40 billion IoT devices globally. And it’s not just the ones you hear about all the time, like smart speakers and connected cars. To successfully navig

JOSHUA LOTT/AFP/Getty Images Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made a Wednesday night plea to citizens: Turn down natural gas-powered thermostats to 65° or lower until Friday at noon. The request comes as the Midwest is gripped by freezing temperatures caused by a polar vortex. Earlier on Wednesday there was an "unexpected incident" at a gas compressor station in Southeast Michigan in Macomb County, according to Consumers Energy. "We understand the timing of our request is not ideal given today’s cold temperatures, however, without additional reductions, we run the risk of not being able to deliver natural gas to families and critical facilities across Michigan – a scenario none of us want to encounter," Consumers Energy tweeted on Wednesday night. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made a Wednesday night plea to citizens: Turn natural gas-powered thermostats to 65 degrees or lower until Friday at noon. The ask comes as the Midwest is gripped by freezing temperatu

AP Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada railed against the US Department of Energy for what he described as "unacceptable deception," after the agency transported a half-ton of weapons-grade plutonium to Nevada, allegedly without the state's consent. The plutonium was shipped from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina in order to comply with a federal court order in the state, according to a National Nuclear Security Administration official cited in a Las Vegas Review-Journal report. Sisolak said during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon that he did not know how the plutonium was transported or the route the Energy Department took to get to Nevada: "They provided us with no information in that regard." Sisolak said he is "exploring" several options for the plutonium, which was taken to the Nevada National Security Site. The state filed a temporary restraining order on Wednesday to prevent future shipments. Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada railed