Netflix has canceled Space Force, according to Deadline. The comedy series from Parks and Recreation co-creator Greg Daniels won’t get a third season. The cancelation comes only weeks after season two of Space Force premiered on February 18th. Very much inspired by the Trump administration’s decision to create a space force, the series starred Steve Carell as a four-star general. And despite surrounding Carell with a star-studded cast that included the likes of John Malkovich and Ben Schwartz, the show never lived up to its premise.
Deadline reports Netflix caned Space Force for its usual reasons. The series failed to attract enough of an audience to justify its production budget. The cancelation comes mere days after Netflix laid off a significant number of the writers and editors it had hired to run its Tudum fan site website. On April 19th, the company revealed it lost about 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, its first such loss in a decade.
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Much like they did in Texas, Lyft and Uber have pledged to cover drivers sued under Oklahoma’s forthcoming SB1503 law. The so-called Heartbeat Act prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy – a timeframe before many women know they’re pregnant.
And like its Texas counterpart, SB8, the legislation allows private individuals to sue anyone who assists a woman attempting to skirt the ban, including rideshare drivers who face fines of up to $10,000. The Oklahoma House passed SB1503 on Thursday, and Governor Kevin Stitt is expected to sign the bill sometime within the next few days.
On Friday, Lyft CEO Logan Green said the company would extend its commitment, first announced in September, to cover 100 percent of legal fees for drivers sued under SB8 to include those impacted by SB1503. Additionally, Green said Lyft was working with healthcare providers to create a program to cover the cost of rides for out-of-state abortion care. The company also plans to cover travel costs for insured employees, if those laws force them to travel more than 100 miles to find care.
“Women’s access to health care is under attack again, this time in Oklahoma,” Green said on Twitter. “We believe transportation shouldn’t be a barrier to accessing healthcare and it’s our duty to support both our rider and driver communities.” Women’s health activists
After Green’s tweet, Uber said it would offer similar protections for drivers. “Like in TX, we intend to cover all legal fees for any driver sued under this law while they’re driving,” a spokesperson for the company told CNBC.
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Microsoft has consistently tried to get more people to use Edge. Some of the ways it has pursued that goal have been less well-received than others, but its latest effort to do so could make for a useful addition to the software. In a support page spotted by The Verge, the company revealed it’s adding a free built-in VPN service dubbed Edge Secure Network to its web browser.
The company says the tool will encrypt your internet connection. You can use that functionality to protect your data from your internet service provider. As with most VPNs, you can also use Edge Secure Network to mask your location, making it possible to access services that might otherwise be blocked in the country where you live or are visiting.
If you find yourself frequently traveling, chances are Edge Secure Network won’t replace a paid VPN. The feature limits you to 1GB of data usage per month. It’s also worth noting you’ll need a Microsoft account to use the service. Microsoft has yet to begin testing the VPN. But once the feature is available, you’ll be able to enable it through Edge's three-dots icon. A new option titled “Secure Network” will turn the VPN on. Once you're done browsing, it will automatically turn off again.
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India has seized assets worth approximately $725 million from Xiaomi India after the country’s anti-money laundering agency found the subsidiary had broken local foreign exchange laws. According toReuters, India’s Enforcement Directorate announced Saturday it recently determined Xiaomi had made illegal remittances when it attempted to pass off some transfers as royalty payments.
That money went to three foreign companies, including one under the wider Xiaomi banner. The Enforcement Directorate found Xiaomi designed the payments to benefit itself. "Such huge amounts in the name of royalties were remitted on the instructions of their Chinese parent group entities," the agency said. The Indian Enforcement Directorate began investigating the subsidiary, among a handful of other local Chinese firms, last December. It accused Xiaomi of providing “misleading information to the banks while remitting the money abroad.”
On Twitter, Xiaomi said it believes its payments were legitimate. "These royalty payments that Xiaomi India made were for the in-licensed technologies and IPs used in our Indian version products,” the company stated. “We are committed to working closely with government authorities to clarify any misunderstandings." We’ve reached out to the company for additional information and comment.
As of last year, Xiaomi was India’s leading smartphone manufacturer, with a dominant 24 percent share of the market. But like many Chinese firms in India, it has recently been forced to navigate a regulatory regime that has become less welcoming of Chinese business interests. In 2021, India temporarily banned TikTok following the country’s border dispute with China and later reportedly withheld WiFi device approvals to encourage domestic production.
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New York State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assembly Member Latoya Joyner have introduced a new bill meant to limit production quotas for warehouse workers. The bill, called the Warehouse Worker Protection Act, takes aim at Amazon's labor practices. It expands upon and strengthens the language of a similar bill in California that was signed into law back in 2021, making the state the first in the US to have legislation that regulates warehouse quotas.
Productivity quotas prevent workers from complying with safety standards and contribute to rising injury rates in warehouse, Ramos notes in a statement. She explains that if the bill passes, it can "ease the bargaining process" for workers seeking to make demands for health purposes in their workplace. Warehouses will have to go through an ergonomic assessment of all tasks if the bill becomes a law, and companies could face penalties if they're found to be lacking. The New York State Department of Labor will enforce rules established under the bill.
As Motherboard reports, the Warehouse Worker Protection Act will require employers with at least 50 employees in a single warehouse or 500 workers statewide to describe their productivity quotas in a written description. They also have to explain how their quotas are developed and how they can be used for disciplinary purposes. If the bill passes, it can make sure employees are giving their workers bathroom breaks and rest periods, as well.
Amazon made it to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health's most dangerous workplaces in the US for the third time this year. The advocacy group included Amazon for having an injury rate more than double the industry average and highlighted the deaths that took place in its facility in Bessemer, Alabama. Workers' rights advocates also recently accused the e-commerce giant of using its charity work placement scheme to conceal true injury rates in its warehouses.
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Cat aficionados will have to wait a bit longer to get their paws on Stray. Developer BlueTweleve Studio’s feline simulator won’t release in early 2022 as previously announced. It’s now slated to come out sometime this summer. Sony shared news of the delay in a tweet spotted by The Verge. “Releasing summer 2022,” says the video accompanying the message.
The clip includes footage from the gameplay walkthrough publisher Annapurna Interactive shared last summer. And if you’re curious what Stray is all about, that video provides a few clues. In it, we see the game’s feline protagonist explore a neon-soaked city populated by robots of all shapes and sizes. Gameplay involves using his abilities as a cat to solve environmental puzzles. Partway through your journey, you’ll meet B-12, a drone that will allow you to converse with the city’s inhabitants. Naturally, as the cat, you can also do things like scratch furniture and rub up against the legs of robots you meet.
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Experts and tech industry veterans have long expected the global semiconductor shortage to last for years, but Intel chief Pat Gelsinger now says it could go on longer than previously expected. The CEO told CNBC's TechCheck that he expects the issue to drag on until 2024, because the shortage has now hit equipment manufacturing. That could make it difficult for companies to obtain key manufacturing tools and hit production goals that might be bigger than before due to growing demand.
Gelsinger told the publication:
"That's part of the reason that we believe the overall semiconductor shortage will now drift into 2024, from our earlier estimates in 2023, just because the shortages have now hit equipment and some of those factory ramps will be more challenged."
Lockdowns tied to the COVID-19 pandemic had severely impacted the chip industry at a time when demand was ramping up. It forced not just tech companies, but also automakers like GM and Ford, to limit and even to suspend production. Apple's MacBook and iPad shipments faced delays due to component shortages, and smartphone shipments in general fell in late 2021. This negative impact on the tech and auto industries translated to devastating economic consequences — according to CBS News, the global chip shortage cost the United States $240 billion in 2021 based on expert estimates.
Gelsinger previously said that he believes the situation will last until 2023, which falls in line with analysts' and other industry execs' expectations. After Gelsinger became Intel's CEO, the company had announced several massive investments meant to expand chip manufacturing outside Asia. (To note, a Bloomberg report from back in late 2021 claimed that the White House "strongly discouraged" Intel from ramping up its chip production in China.) Intel said it's spending $20 billion to build two chip factories in Arizona, and another $20 billion at least to build "the largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet" in Ohio.
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Apple recently sent notices to some indie developers, warning them that their app will be pulled from the App Store if it's not updated within 30 days. The tech giant has had a policy in place against outdated and abandoned applications since 2016, but the move suggests that it's now more rigorously enforcing that rule. Some of the letters' recipients criticized the policy for being a barrier to indie developers, what with how tough it is to keep up with platform changes and how much work it takes to roll out even a minor update. Now, Apple has published a post clarifying why some old apps are in danger of being removed, along with the announcement that it's giving developers more time to update their applications.
In the post, the company said that it will only send removal notices to developers whose apps haven't been updated in three years, as well as to devs whose apps have not "been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period." Apple said that dropping outdated apps makes newer ones more discoverable and also ensures users can enjoy games and tools that have been optimized for its latest OS and devices.
As a lot of people know, there are older apps don't work as well on the latest generation of phones, tablets and laptops anymore, delivering a subpar user experience. Still, 30 days might not be nowhere near enough time for smaller developers to conjure up an update. The good news is that Apple has extended its grace period and is now giving them up to 90 days to update their applications. Users will get to keep apps that are already installed on their devices even if they end up getting deleted, and developers can continue earning from them through microtransactions.
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Formula E officially unveiled its Gen3 car yesterday, ahead of this weekend’s Monaco E-Prix. There are some big power and efficiency changes coming when the new cars hit the track next season. Much of the focus on Gen3 has been the massive upgrades to performance, but the car also sports a new overall body design.
Wheel covers are gone, making the new model more of a true open-wheel car, and there are no wings over the rear wheels. Instead, the Gen3 has two jet-like fins on the back, with the new aerodynamic shape inspired by fighter aircraft — an F-18 on wheels. Engadget’s Billy Steele went to take a look in person over in Monaco — life is hard for Mr. Steele. Check out his full report right here — with more stories on the way over the next few days.
Apologies to any listeners of The Morning Edition, Engadget’s early morning news podcast. I lost my voice over the last week, making it, well, impossible to talk into a mic. I’ll make my triumphant return to podcasting next week. I have many vocal exercises planned for the weekend.
And an operating loss of $128 million as Musk deal approaches.
As it prepares itself for the possibility of being owned by Elon Musk, Twitter revealed it overstated its user figures between 2019 and 2021. In its newest financial reports, the platform says users with multiple accounts were inadvertently counted as multiple people. The difference was apparently never more than two million either way.
Activision is rolling out its RICOCHET anti-cheat system to Call of Duty: Vanguard and has also revealed that the countermeasure punishes cheaters with "Cloaking." In a wonderful twist, cheaters will be the ones at a disadvantage. Any detected will be unable to see or hear opponents, even their incoming bullets.
A judge ruled he can't get out of his 2018 SEC deal.
Elon Musk won't be able to get out of his agreement requiring oversight of his tweets about the company. A judge has rejected his request to drop the 2018 deal made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that required a company lawyer to approve any Tesla-related tweets. The judge also denied Musk's request to block an SEC subpoena related to possible insider trading.
Snap has officially revealed its first selfie drone. The pocket-sized device, called Pixy, doesn't even have a controller. Instead, it tracks and trails you. The drone can float, orbit or follow you directly. Once you're done, Pixy lands in your hand — which sounds adorable. Folks in the US and France can buy the $230 Pixy now.
Psyonix is announcing an updated Rocket League Formula One Fan Pack for 2022, giving players a way to unify their passions of cars bumping into one another to score points and… also that. Much like last year’s offering, you’ll get a freshly-updated F1 car model, new audio and Pirelli-branded Wheels. You’ll also be able to deck your ride out in the livery of Alfa Romeo, AlphaTauri, Ferrari, McLaren, McLaren Miami and AlphaTauri's farm team, Red Bull.
The car model will be based on Rocket League’sDominus Hitbox, the same one that’s used to underpin many of its crossover models. Between May 4th and May 10th, to coincide with the Miami GP, players can drop down 1,100 credits to get the Fan Pack, and those who buy now will get two additional updates through the rest of the season thrown in for free. That includes decals for Mercedes, Haas, Williams, Aston Martin and Alpine, while the fall update will include different color variants for the Pirelli wheels.
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Insider is reporting that infamous weight loss app Noom is laying off a significant number of its coaches as it shifts its strategy. The company, which presently enables users to engage in text chat with experts, will reportedly shift to a system of scheduled video calling, reducing the need for so many workers. Internal documents suggest that the people who remain will see higher workloads to cover for the departures. 180 coaches are believed to have already been let go, with a further 315 due to join them in the coming days. Individuals who take voluntary severance can expect eight weeks’ pay, although the site says that Noom will not cover the cost of unused vacation days.
Noom, which garnered $540 million in fresh venture funding in 2021 saw its business surge as a consequence of the pandemic. TechCrunch reported that the platform had earned $400 million in profit across 2020 as users flocked to its promised mix of live coaching and CBT-inspired practices. Its critics, however, believe that Noom’s unique spin on weight loss is nothing more than a standard heavily-restrictive diet, packaged in the language of wellness. In 2021, Noom branched out into mental health coaching under the banner Noom Mood.
As FastCompany outlined last year, Noom’s key metric is calorie restriction, tasking men to limit their intake to around 1,400 calories per day. (There’s a lot of debate about the proper calorie limit for weight loss, but that figure is seen as problematically low and well below what the CDC recommends.) Last year, an Outside investigation found that Noom was not tailoring its recommendations to the age, height and weight of its users, instead issuing a stock limit for the majority of participants. That same investigation found that there is little pre-screening for people who may have lived with disordered eating beforehand. Casey Johnston, who writes She's A Beast, has also called into question Noom's advertising practices, potentially misleading customers as to its effectiveness.
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Apple announced back in February that it's introducing changes that would make AirTags easier to find after several stories of bad actors using the tracker to stalk people came out. One of the upcoming changes it promised is adjusting the sound AirTags emit to be as loud as possible to make them "more easily findable." Now, as MacRumors reports, the tech giant has started rolling out that capability with the device's latest firmware update.
While Apple has published release notes to reveal what the update adds to the tracker, it didn't mention that the company is gradually making the feature available on a staggered basis. According to the publication, only one percent of users received the update when it went out on Tuesday, but it will be delivered to 10 percent of users by May 3rd and to 25 percent by May 9th. Apple expects to complete the rollout by May 13th.
Earlier this April, Motherboard had obtained police data that included 50 cases of women receiving notifications or hearing alert sounds revealing that someone was tracking them with an AirTag. While that's not a particularly large number, it suggests a growing number of cases wherein the trackers are being used for stalking purposes. In an effort to prevent the device from a creepy character's tool of choice, Apple promised a handful of anti-stalking features that include showing people a warning that it's a crime to use the device to track people. The company will also update newer iPhones' precision finding technology to make them capable of displaying the direction and distance to an unknown AirTag.
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For anyone building a PC or looking for accessories like monitors, storage or keyboards, Amazon is having a one-day sale that might be of strong interest. A host of desirable items are significantly marked down, including keyboards, headsets, power supplies, displays, cases and storage, with discounts as high as 48 percent.
There are a few standout deals, but lots of other choice as well. First on the list is the 31.5-inch 2,560 x 1,440 Acer Nitro XV322QU IPS gaming display, with features like DisplayHDR 400, AMD FreeSync, up to a 170Hz refresh rate, 0.5 millisecond lag and 90 percent DCI-P3 color accuracy. With a large size and extreme speed, it's a highly desirable model and is at or near an all-time low of $299, for a savings of 45 percent or $250.
Razer
Speaking of speed, Razer's Huntsman V2 TKS Tenkeyless gaming keyboard (above) offers that in spades, with the "fastest linear optical switches with sound dampeners and an 8,000Hz polling rate," the company says. In other words, it's fast and quiet while offering great durability thanks to the Doubleshot PBT keycaps. It's now on sale for $100, saving you $60 or 38 percent over the regular price.
Finally, you'll appreciate this deal if you're a PC builder. Corsair's HX850 platinum-certified, fully modular power supply is on sale for $120, for a savings of 35 percent of $65. That 850-watt category is the sweet spot for most enthusiasts, and the $65 savings might let you upgrade your CPU or RAM.
CNN is pulling the plug on its streaming service today, April 28th, instead of on April 30th like previously reported. The company has sent out emails to subscribers, and as Digital Trends reports, it clearly states that CNN+ streaming "will come to an end on April 28th." The service launched just a month ago on March 29th, but it was only pulling in 10,000 daily users who were willing to pay $6 a month for live and on-demand news programming, according to CNBC. New CNN president Chris Licht was reportedly the one who recommended its closure, which might come with hundreds of job cuts.
CNN invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the project and recruited talent from other networks to host shows for the platform. While the service was short-lived, CNN itself reported that the network is committed to finding new roles for the hosts of its shows.
Discovery CEO Jean-Briac Perrette informed employees about the closure in a meeting where he said that the situation was avoidable, but that "prior leadership decided to just keep going" with its planned March debut despite the impending merger between his company and CNN owner WarnerMedia. The merged company, Warner Bros. Discovery, had a different strategy in mind — it's also billions in debt as a result of the merging process.
In addition to informing subscribers in an email about the earlier-than-expected closure, CNN has also updated the service's help page. The company stated in the page that all subscribers will receive a full refund. It didn't say why CNN+ is shutting down a couple of days earlier than announced, but Digital Trends notes that it might be because subscriptions are about to renew. Some early adopters were able to sign up on March 28th, a day before the service's official launch date. Whatever the reason is, subscribers can say goodbye to CNN+ today and expect to get their refund on May 28th.
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Robinhood is letting around nine percent of its full-time employees go, company CEO Vlad Tenev has announced. In a blog post, Tenev said the company grew rapidly throughout 2020 and in the first half of 2021, thanks to several factors that include COVID-19 lockdowns. Robinhood's revenue grew from $278 million in 2019 to over $1.8 billion in 2021, and it hired so many new employees to "meet customer and market demands" that its headcount grew from 700 to nearly 3,800.
Tenev explained that the rapid growth in headcount led to "some duplicate roles and job functions" and the the company decided that reducing its workforce is the right move to improve efficiency. "We will retain and continue to hire exceptional talent in key roles and provide additional learning and career growth opportunities for our employees," he said.
The CEO's announcement comes just as the company's stock hit its lowest closing price ($10) since it went public. As TechCrunch reports, it also comes just before Robinhood announces its first quarter results on April 28th and could be a measure meant to preempt investor disfavor in case its results fall short.
Robinhood is known for pioneering commission-free stock trades and, as Tenev said, skyrocketed in popularity in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, its practices had previously drawn criticism, as well. In late 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined the company $65 million for "misleading customers about revenue sources and failing to satisfy duty of best execution." It was also hit with a class action lawsuit after it restricted trading on GameStop and other "meme stocks." And in late 2021, the company was targeted by a cyberattack that exposed the data of as many as 7 million users.
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Spotify has managed to grow despite a high-profile rebellion over its backing of controversial podcaster Joe Rogan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The streaming giant today released updated financial results for the first quarter of 2022, revealing that it grew to 422 million monthly users. 182 million of which pay for Premium, with its stable of exclusive podcasts a big draw and one that Spotify is continually investing in. The company added that three million of that total user figure may have been added as a consequence of a log-in issue, but even taking that into account, growth was still above expectations.
At the start of 2022, Spotify doubled down in support of Rogan who regularly interviews fringe and far right figures on his show. That included Dr. Robert Malone, who claims to have invented the mRNA technology used to create COVID-19 vaccines, a claim widely refuted by the people who actually did. Malone’s episode prompted a complaint from 270 healthcare professionals asking for Spotify to do more to combat vaccine misinformation. That was followed by artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who withdrew their music from the service, and Brené Brown who paused her podcast, in protest at Spotify’s refusal to take down misinformation. The service said it would not drop Rogan, but eventually said it would add a content advisory label to episodes which repeated misinformation.
Not long after, and Spotify announced that it would fully suspend its service in Russia and close its offices in the territory, in protest at the invasion of Ukraine. While Spotify was reportedly the second-largest platform in Russia, it wasn’t a major contributor to the company’s revenue. In the documents, Spotify says that it believes it lost 1.5 million free users and an additional 600,000 which were paying for Premium as a consequence of cutting off the country. It added that those losses were more than compensated for with surging user growth in Latin America and Europe.
News of Twitter's buyout has rattled some users, as Elon Musk indicated he plans to take a much more hands-off approach to content moderation. As is often the case when Twitter makes a change (or infers that one is coming), some users have threatened to leave the platform. Mastodon has been welcoming those that made the jump. Mastodon said it saw “an influx of approx. 41,287 users.”
It’s not the first time Mastodon has benefited from Twitter drama. The company was briefly popular in 2017, following outrage over Twitter’s decision to remove user handles from the character limit for replies — yes, they were more innocent times.
The app already allows you to add Stories above your photo grid.
Instagram recently began testing a feature for you to highlight specific posts above your photo grid. If you’re among the people the company has enrolled in the trial, you can access the feature by tapping the three dots at the top of a post and selecting the new “pin to your profile” option. It’s pretty much identical to the pinned options you get with other social networks, like Twitter and TikTok. But that’s not stopped Instagram taking inspiration from its rivals. Again.
The Roku Channel has signed a multi-year deal with Lionsgate Films that will allow it to stream upcoming blockbusters like John Wick 4 and Borderlandsfor free. Roku will get those films in a timely fashion, too: right after their initial streaming windows on Lionsgate's Starz platform.
Roku has made a steady push into free programming, buying all of Quibi's short-form shows last year and later adding content from the Tribeca Film Festival, IGN, CBC News and AccuWeather.
Elden Ring is famous for its rich open world, but it just got turned into an… ambitious 8-bit rolling adventure demake. It was created by Reddit user Shintendo, who showed off an early demo set in Elden Ring's Chapel of Anticipation. There, a Tarnished faces off against the infamous Grafted Scion boss (and loses, again). Shintendo is aiming to release a demo by the end of May on Itch.io.
Musk's plans for looser moderation are butting up against political reality.
The European Union’s Thierry Breton told the Financial Times that Musk's Twitter will still be subject to EU regulations, including the new Digital Services Act governing efforts to fight misinformation. The Tesla chief is "welcome" but "there are rules" he still has to follow, Breton said. The Digital Services Act requires Twitter and other internet companies to share how they're curbing false claims on their sites. It also bans ads targeting minors as well as specific ethnicities, political affiliations, religions and sexual orientations.
New efficiency standards may help reduce carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons.
The Department of Energy has finalized rules to block sales of many incandescent light bulbs. The measures bring in stricter efficiency standards, targeting light bulbs that emit less than 45 lumens per watt. If this all sounds familiar, it’s because the bulbs turned into a bit of political tennis. The most recent move reverses a decision by the Trump administration in 2019 to roll back stricter standards for bulbs. This was after the Obama administration established rules that would have blocked sales of inefficient light bulbs from January 1st, 2020.
With YouTube's Shorts gathering significant momentum over the past year, Google is now experimenting with ads on the platform, Bloomberg reported. At first, you're likely to see app-install ads and other promotions, according to Google. "While it's still early days, we're encouraged by initial advertiser feedback and results," said Google's chief business officer Philipp Schindler on an investors call.
Shorts launched in September 2020 to counter TikTok offering 15-second videos shot on mobile phones, and expanded to the US in March 2021. The platform now averages over 30 billion daily views, up more than four times over last year. "As we've always done with products, we focus on building a great user experience first, and we'll work to build monetization over time," said Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
YouTube as a whole missed expectations by a good margin, posting $6.87 billion in sales compared to the $7.48 billion investors were expecting, according to Variety. Parent Alphabet also fell a bit short of targets with $68.01 billion in revenue, but that's still up 8 percent over the same quarter last year.
Along with YouTube shorts, a bright spot was the YouTube TV cord-cutting subscription service that "continues to deliver substantial revenue growth," the company said. Pichai also revealed that viewers watch more than 700 million hours of YouTube content per day on connected TVs. He added that YouTube will introduce new smartphone features for connected TVs this year that will make it easier for users to comment and share content.
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One of Jabra's latest pairs of true wireless earbuds, the Elite 4 Active, is another example of how the company's consistently trying to improve its devices by adding more features and making prices more compelling. The $120 midrange buds earned a score of 84 from us, and now you can get them at a new record-low price of $100. Also on sale are the budget-friendly Elite 3 earbuds, which are 25 percent off and down to $60.
As we explained in our review, Jabra packed a lot into these earbuds. They have a familiar, comfortable design that's noticeable smaller than their predecessor, which means they're lighter and don't stick out of your ears as much. Like the rest of the company's Active line, the Elite 4 Active have extra sweat protection and an IP57 water resistance rating so they can withstand even your toughest workouts. While their onboard controls are a bit confusing at first, they are useful to have and work just fine once you get the hang of them. They also have their own Find My feature, which lets you locate a missing earbud using the Sound+ app.
That companion app also lets you do things like customize active noise cancellation, tweak the EQ and more. The ANC on these buds is solid, but don't expect it to be as powerful as that on more expensive earbuds from, say, Sony or Bose. Jabra's HeathThrough mode can also be controlled from within the app and it lets you choose how much of your surroundings you want to hear at any given moment. Sound quality is decent as well with good clarity and solid bass, but as to be expected, you'll get better audio on pricier earbuds.
As for battery life, Jabra estimates up to seven hours of use before the buds need to be recharged, and you'll get an additional three charges with its case. Unfortunately, these don't support wireless charging, nor do you get features like automatic pausing that you'll find in some competitors. However, the Elite 4 Active are a great option if you're looking for a solid, affordable pair of ANC earbuds to be your next workout companion.
If you're looking to spend a bit less, you can't go wrong with the Jabra Elite 3, which we called the standard for affordable wireless earbuds. While you're not getting features like ANC, wireless charging or automatic pausing with these buds, you are getting a comfortable fit, reliable onboard controls, a seven-hour battery life and impressive sound quality. We thought that was a steal at their normal $80 price, so it's even better if you pick them up while they're $20 cheaper.
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Add Jack in the Box to the list of fast food chains experimenting with robots. The company is launching a pilot program that will test Miso Robotics' Flippy 2 (frying) and Sippy (drink-prepping) robots in a San Diego restaurant. Jack in the Box wants to see how much help the automatons can offer to busy staff who may want to spend more time with customers and less time in the kitchen.
The companies didn't say how long the pilot might last. Jack in the Box said it was open to "further integration" in coming months, however.
The restauranteur joins Chipotle, Panera, White Castle and others in using Miso's technology. As with those companies, efficient meal-making isn't the only goal. The robots promise more consistent quality, so there's less risk of receiving an undercooked burger or the wrong drink.
The same perks and pitfalls remain. This could alleviate stress for workers who might be overwhelmed, particularly in an era when restaurant staff shortages are all too common. At the same time, there's a concern operators might use robots like these to automate staff out of jobs or avoid hiring more people. Miso's machines can't completely replace humans at present, though, so a larger automation crisis isn't likely in the near future.
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This morning’s tech headlines are heavy on Musk. While the SpaceX and Tesla boss is still chasing hyperloop glory, yesterday Twitter accepted Elon Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion — more than anyone else would have likely paid for the social network.
Musk has already said he’ll take the company private and added he wants to upgrade Twitter by protecting free speech, open-sourcing algorithms, fighting spambots and "authenticating all humans."
Now, there's no-one the internet and tech media loves to predict or bet against more than Elon Musk. What's odd is that Musk laid out his interest in Twitter so explicitly. He tweets so much. He makes headlines, not only in specialist press but across TV networks and major newspapers, with his casual missives running the gamut from typo-riven banter — how I deal with Twitter, to be honest — to angering America's Securities Exchange Commission and facing repercussions for it.
I’m interested to see how it compares to Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post, which now seems like a sensible, innocuous media purchase in comparison. The Amazon founder has been pretty hands-off, as he said he would be.
Bezos paid $250 million for a journalistic institution. Musk is offering up 176 times more for Twitter. How messy could it possibly get?
Way back in 2018, Blizzard revealed Diablo: Immortal, a game to fill the gaps of the story between Diablo II and Diablo III. However, the fact it was announced as a mobile-only game didn’t exactly go over well with the publisher's hardcore fans — to put it mildly. Nearly three and a half years later, there’s a June release date, and Blizzard announced it’ll also be available on PC after all.
Elon Musk first started the idea of a high-speed hyperloop transport system between cities back in 2013, but he then left it to other companies. Next, in 2017, he announced he would build a hyperloop system after all, starting with a New York to Washington D.C. route. Now, Musk has tweeted The Boring Company will attempt to build a working hyperloop "in the coming years." The company hasn’t completed any significant projects, apart from the Las Vegas LVCC Loop with 1.7 miles of tunnels. (It has announced but shelved or canceled several other projects).
There’s a Lightning Rifle from 'The Matrix' and Channing Tatum's 'Jupiter Ascending' ears.
Filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski have announced they're holding an auction of props from films like The Matrix and Cloud Atlas to raise money for vulnerable trans youth. It comes after a record 238 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in the US this year alone, with roughly half targeting transgender people.
All the money raised will go to the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund, which will distribute the funds to organizations in Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee and elsewhere in the US.
Panasonic launched the GH5 over five years ago, powering a vlogging boom and confirming the potential of mirrorless cameras for video. Its replacement has finally come in the form of the $2,200 GH6. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s very good. But one area it struggles is crucial: autofocus. The GH6 only has contrast detect autofocus, which, while improved, means it lags behind rival Sony and Canon cameras.
One of Chevy's most iconic cars will get the EV treatment. GM has confirmed it's developing a "fully electric" Corvette, and an "electrified" (read: hybrid) version will be available as soon as 2023. The automaker didn't provide more details, and even the video attached to the teaser doesn't offer any clues. A Corvette EV isn't entirely surprising, mind you. GM plans to exclusively sell EVs by 2035, and the car was only going to survive that transition by being electrified.
You have another chance to grab a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 for $200 if you weren't able to get one at a discount earlier this year. The 40mm version of the smartwatch is currently on sale for $50 off its retail price of $250, which is a solid deal if you're looking for a smartwatch that's still getting regular updates. It went on sale for an all-time low of $180 ahead of Black Friday in 2021, but it hasn't been available at this price since February. Meanwhile, the larger 44mm version of the Galaxy Watch 4 is also available for $230, or $50 off its original retail price.
If you prefer the looks of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, though, with its spinning bezel and stainless steel case, you can also get its LTE-enabled version right for now for $299. That's $101 off its retail price and an all-time low for the wearable, putting it at the same price as its Bluetooth-only sibling.
The Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic devices are the first devices to run the "Wear OS powered by Samsung" platform. They're powered by new 5nm processors, have sharper screens than their predecessors and come with upgraded biometric sensors. Samsung also added gesture controls via their new UI that would allow you to answer or dismiss calls by lifting your arm or flicking your wrist.
When it comes to health features, Samsung's new sensor enables bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) for body mass scans and can let you know how many pounds of water, fat and skeletal mass it detected. The devices have improved sleep-tracking features, as well, including continuous blood oxygen detection that the system will consider a factor when it computes your sleep metrics.
While we had an issue with the devices' short battery life, we found the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic the best smartwatches for Android users overall at the time of our review. In case you're also on the lookout for a new Android phone to go with a new smartwatch, Samsung's Galaxy S22 devices have dropped to an all-time low at Amazon. The Galaxy S22 Ultra and the S22+ are both $200 off and are down to $1,000 and $800, respectively, while the standard Galaxy S22 is $100 off.
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Elden Ring is famous for its rich open world, but it just got turned into an 8-bit rolling adventure demake that's... kind of amazing? It was created by Reddit user Shintendo, who showed off an early demo set in Elden Ring's Chapel of Anticipation. There, a Tarnished faces off against the infamous Grafted Scion boss (and loses, again). Gameplay is still pretty rough, but it captures the spirit of the game along with the nostalgic feels of the Game Boy era.
The rolling animation style is a chef's kiss, with the main character doing adorable little rolls through terrain just like in the big game. Meanwhile, the "press B button to attack" and other screens prompts are pure Game Boy callbacks. It also captures the battle style from iconic GB titles like Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
Shintendo explained that the demake was created using GB Studio 3.0 and said that it would be playable on real hardware. He's aiming to release a demo by the end of May on Itch.io, the same storefront that hosts the Bloodborne PC demake that reimagines the game as a PS1 title.
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A record 238 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in the US this year alone (as of last month), with about half of them targeting transgender people specifically. With that in the background, filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski have announced that they're holding an auction of props from films like The Matrix and Cloud Atlas to raise money for vulnerable trans youth, Gizmodo reported.
hi youse! so me and Lana have been doing some spring cleaning at our Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse and have happily decided to pass on some of the best treasures we've been collecting over the years!! no ark of the covenants but some pretty major and magical artifacts!
The Enter the Matrix: The Wachowski Collection held by Potter & Potter Auctions features items from their film canon and the Netflix cult series, Sense8. All the money raised will go to the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund, which will distribute the funds to organizations in Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee and elsewhere in the US.
A number of iconic props and items are up for grabs, like the screen-used Lightning Rifle from The Matrix "as seen wielded by Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) against Tank (Marcus Chong) and Dozer (Anthony Ray Parker)," according to the description. Others include Channing Tatum's screen-worn latex ears and gravity boots from Jupiter Ascending, a purple Segway from Speed Racer, an execution chair from Cloud Atlas, MTV Movie/ACE/Jupiter Awards, platinum records and more.
The auction is taking absentee bids, with a live auction starting on May 12th at 11AM ET. At the same time, Trans Week starts today and runs until March 31st — for information on how to help, visit their website.
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Riot Games has just revealed the newest agent coming to its popular tactical shooter. Shown off during the finals of Valorant’s Masters Reykjavík tournament on Sunday, Fade is a shadowy bounty hunter that hails from Turkey. “I’ve seen your darkest fears,” she declares ominously in her agent trailer. “Mine would eat them alive.”
In designing Fade, Riot’s Nicholas Smith said the studio’s intent was to create a foil to Sova, previously the game’s only scouting-focused agent. “Fade brings recon to a personal level, more potent in a localized area,” Smith said. “Haunt,” one of her primary abilities, allows you to throw an orb that reveals the location of enemy agents caught in its line of sight. Fade also has an ability called Prowler that sends out a creature that seeks out enemy agents. If an enemy player is hit by the nightmare, they’re left temporarily nearsighted. Fade can also temporarily immobilize enemies with her Seize ability.
Fade will join Valorant’s roster with the release of Episode Four, Act Three, which Riot is expected to release next week.
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Apple may have begun more rigorously enforcing its policy against unused and dysfunctional apps. Back in 2016, the company vowed it would go out of its way to remove applications that had stopped working, not kept up with its latest guidelines or become outdated. After not drawing much attention over the last few years, that policy came back into the public consciousness this week. In a series of tweets spotted by The Verge, a handful of indie developers shared an email notice from Apple prompting them to update their games.
I feel sick. Apple just sent me an email saying they're removing my free game Motivoto because its more than 2 years old.
It's part of their App improvement system.
This is not cool. Console games from 2000 are still available for sale.
“This app has not been updated in a significant amount of time and is scheduled to be removed from sale in 30 days,” the company states in the email. “You can keep this app available for new users to discover and download from the App Store by submitting an update for review within 30 days.”
Apple notes developers can continue to earn revenue from microtransactions even if it removes their app or game from the store. Moreover, their programs will continue to work for those who have them downloaded to their devices. Some people who shared screenshots of the notice on Twitter expressed concern that the policy disproportionately affects smaller developers.
“This is an unfair barrier to indie devs,” Protopop Games developer Robert Kabwe said. “I’m sitting here on a Friday night, working myself to the bone after my day job, trying my best to scrape a living from my indie games, trying to keep up with Apple, Google, Unity, Xcode, macOS changes that happen so fast my head spins while performing worse on older devices.”
On a support page dedicated to its App Store Improvements initiative, the company states the policy is designed “to make it easier for customers to find great apps that fit their needs.” It also notes it wants to ensure all the software you found on the platform is “functional and up-to-date.”
Obviously, there isn’t an easy answer to the situation. From the perspective of an iOS user, it’s not great when you buy a new Apple device and find apps that aren’t optimized to take advantage of the hardware. I encountered that situation when I bought my 2020 iPad Air and downloaded Klei’s tactical espionage RPG Invisible, Inc. Playing the game for the first time, I was disappointed when I found out the studio had not updated the game to support the iPad Air’s 2,360 by 1,640 resolution. In fact, Klei hasn’t updated the iOS version of Invisible, Inc. since 2016. That hasn’t stopped me from enjoying the game, but I wish I could play it without black bars letterboxing the interface.
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Twitter may be warming up to the idea of selling itself to Elon Musk. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company is re-examining Musk’s takeover bid after the billionaire announced he had the financial backing to get the deal done. When Musk first announced he was ready to pay $43 billion to buy the social media giant, noting at the time it was his “best and final offer,” Twitter was widely expected to reject the proposal. The company even went so far as to adopt a so-called “poison pill” strategy to ward off a hostile takeover attempt.
But Twitter is now “taking a fresh look” at Musk’s offer and is more likely to engage in negotiations, according to The Journal. The outlet reports the two sides are meeting on Sunday to discuss the proposal, but a handful of hurdles could complicate negotiations. For instance, company executives could insist on Musk agreeing to monetary protections if the deal falls through.
Twitter declined to comment on the report. When Musk first announced his bid, the company said it was committed to a “careful, comprehensive and deliberate review” of the offer. It’s very likely we’ll learn how Twitter plans to proceed sometime in the next few days. The Journal reports the company will weigh in on the situation when it reports its first-quarter earnings on Thursday, “if not sooner.”
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Following multiple delays, 343 Industries hopes to deliver Halo Infinite’s co-op campaign sometime in August 2022, the studio said in a roadmap update released Friday. Campaign co-op was one of the features that didn’t makeInfinite’sDecember 8th release date.
343 Industries
At the time, 343 said it planned to roll out the mode alongside the game’s season two update approximately three months after launch. However, 343 first delayed the debut of season two to May 3rd and later said campaign co-op wouldn’t be available when the season kicked off.
The studio now says it’s targeting an August release date for network co-op, with split-screen co-op coming even later. That means you’ll have to wait to invite a friend over to play the game on a single TV. According to the roadmap 343 shared, couch co-op won’t be available until sometime during season three, which won’t begin until November 8th. What’s more, that’s a tentative plan, with a note on the roadmap indicating the exact release date of the feature is “TBD.”
If there’s a silver lining to the news, it’s that 343 is also targeting an August release date for a feature that allows you to replay campaign missions. Additionally, the studio expects to launch the Forge mode open beta sometime in September.
The delays are likely to irritate Infinite’s already frustrated playerbase further, but Joseph Staten, the game’s head of creative, stressed 343 is doing its best to deliver new features quickly while protecting the health of its team. "We know we need to deliver more content and more features more quickly," Staten said. "Staying true to priority zero means that sometimes we need to slow down in order to stay healthy and move faster later. But we’re also aggressively looking at ways to accelerate.”
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In 2010, Apple software engineer Gray Powell left a prototype iPhone 4 in a bar in Redwood City, California. In an era where nearly every device leaks before it’s officially announced, images of a new iPhone showing up online seem quaint. But at the time it was a big deal and the incident even came to involve US law enforcement. Now, more than a decade later, images of another highly anticipated device have made their way online in much the same way.
Android Central
On Saturday evening, Android Centralshared photos of Google’s long-rumored Pixel Watch. The outlet says it obtained the images you see throughout this post from someone who found the smartwatch at a restaurant in the US. The photos confirm the Pixel Watch will feature a circular face with minimal display bezels. If you look closely, you can see the wearable’s band attaches directly to its case, with a latch mechanism that looks proprietary to Google and reminiscent of the design employed by Fitbit on its Versa and Sense smartwatches (Google acquired the company in 2021).
The watch features a single button next to its crown and what looks like a microphone or altimeter port. On the back of the device, you can see an optical heartrate sensor. Unfortunately, the watch wouldn’t go beyond its boot screen so there are no photos of it running Wear OS 3.
Android Central
According to a report leaker Jon Prosser published in January, Google will announce the Pixel Watch on May 26th. The company recently filed to trademark the Pixel Watch name. Visit Android Central to see more photos of the leaked device.
Android Central
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As with most every other aspect of modern society, computerization, augmentation and automation have hyper-accelerated the pace at which wars are prosecuted — and who better to help reshape the US military into a 21st century fighting force than an entire industry centered on moving fast and breaking things? In his latest book, War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future, professor and chair of the Anthropology Department at San José State University, Roberto J González examines the military's increasing reliance on remote weaponry and robotic systems are changing the way wars are waged. In the excerpt below, González investigates Big Tech's role in the Pentagon's high-tech transformations.
Ash Carter’s plan was simple but ambitious: to harness the best and brightest ideas from the tech industry for Pentagon use. Carter’s premise was that new commercial companies had surpassed the Defense Department’s ability to create cutting-edge technologies. The native Pennsylvanian, who had spent several years at Stanford University prior to his appointment as defense secretary, was deeply impressed with the innovative spirit of the Bay Area and its millionaire magnates. “They are inventing new technology, creating prosperity, connectivity, and freedom,” he said. “They feel they too are public servants, and they’d like to have somebody in Washington they can connect to.” Astonishingly, Carter was the first sitting defense secretary to visit Silicon Valley in more than twenty years.
The Pentagon has its own research and development agency, DARPA, but its projects tend to pursue objectives that are decades, not months, away. What the new defense secretary wanted was a nimble, streamlined office that could serve as a kind of broker, channeling tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars from the Defense Department’s massive budget toward up-and-coming firms developing technologies on the verge of completion. Ideally, DIUx would serve as a kind of liaison, negotiating the needs of grizzled four-star generals, the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, and hoodie-clad engineers and entrepreneurs. Within a year, DIUx opened branch offices in two other places with burgeoning tech sectors: Boston, Massachusetts, and Austin, Texas.
In the short term, Carter hoped that DIUx would build relationships with local start-ups, recruit top talent, get military reservists involved in projects, and streamline the Pentagon’s notoriously cumbersome procurement processes. “The key is to contract quickly — not to make these people fill out reams of paperwork,” he said. His long-term goals were even more ambitious: to take career military officers and assign them to work on futuristic projects in Silicon Valley for months at a time, to “expose them to new cultures and ideas they can take back to the Pentagon... [and] invite techies to spend time at Defense.”
In March 2016, Carter organized the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), an elite brain trust of civilians tasked with providing advice and recommendations to the Pentagon’s leadership. Carter appointed former Google CEO (and Alphabet board member) Eric Schmidt to chair the DIB, which includes current and former executives from Facebook, Google, and Instagram, among others.
Three years after Carter launched DIUx, it was renamed the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), indicating that it was no longer experimental. This signaled the broad support the office had earned from Pentagon leaders. The Defense Department had lavished nearly $100 million on projects from forty-five companies, almost none of which were large defense contractors. Despite difficulties in the early stages — and speculation that the Trump administration might not support an initiative focused on regions that tended to skew toward the Democratic Party — DIUx was “a proven, valuable asset to the DoD,” in the words of Trump’s deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan. “The organization itself is no longer an experiment,” he noted in an August 2018 memo, adding: “DIU remains vital to fostering innovation across the Department and transforming the way DoD builds a more lethal force.” Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis visited Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and Google’s Palo Alto office in August 2017 and had nothing but praise for the tech industry. “I’m going out to see what we can pick up in DIUx,” he told reporters. In early 2018, the Trump administration requested a steep increase in DIU’s budget for fiscal year 2019, from $30 million to $71 million. For 2020, the administration requested $164 million, more than doubling the previous year’s request.
Q BRANCH
Although Pentagon officials portrayed DIUx as a groundbreaking organization, it was actually modeled after another firm established to serve the US Intelligence Community in a similar way. In the late 1990s, Ruth David, the CIA’s deputy director for science and technology, suggested that the agency needed to move in a radically new direction to ensure that it could capitalize on innovations being developed in the private sector, with a special focus on Silicon Valley firms. In 1999, under the leadership of its director, George Tenet, the CIA established a nonprofit legal entity called Peleus to fulfill this objective, with help from former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. Soon after, the organization was renamed In-Q-Tel.
The first CEO, Gilman Louie, was an unconventional choice to head the enterprise. Louie had spent nearly twenty years as a video game developer who, among other things, created a popular series of Falcon F-16 flight simulators. At the time he agreed to join the new firm, he was chief creative officer for the toy company Hasbro. In a 2017 presentation at Stanford University, Louie claimed to have proposed that In-Q-Tel take the form of a venture capital fund. He also described how, at its core, the organization was created to solve “the big data problem”:
The problem they [CIA leaders] were trying to solve was: How to get technology companies who historically have never engaged with the federal government to actually provide technologies, particularly in the IT space, that the government can leverage. Because they were really afraid of what they called at that time the prospects of a “digital Pearl Harbor” Pearl Harbor
happened with every different part of the government having a piece of information but they couldn’t stitch it together to say, “Look, the attack at Pearl Harbor is imminent.” The White House had a piece of information, naval intelligence had a piece of information, ambassadors had a piece of information, the State Department had a piece of information, but they couldn’t put it all together [In] 1998, they began to realize that information was siloed across all these different intelligence agencies of which they could never stitch it together [F]undamentally what they were trying to solve was the big data problem. How do you stitch that together to get intelligence out of that data?
Louie served as In-Q-Tel’s chief executive for nearly seven years and played a crucial role in shaping the organization.
By channeling funds from intelligence agencies to nascent firms building technologies that might be useful for surveillance, intelligence gathering, data analysis, cyberwarfare, and cybersecurity, the CIA hoped to get an edge over its global rivals by using investment funds to co-opt creative engineers, hackers, scientists, and programmers. The Washington Post reported that “In-Q-Tel was engineered with a bundle of contradictions built in. It is independent of the CIA, yet answers wholly to it. It is a non- profit, yet its employees can profit, sometimes handsomely, from its work. It functions in public, but its products are strictly secret.” In 2005, the CIA pumped approximately $37 million into In-Q-Tel. By 2014, the organization’s funding had grown to nearly $94 million a year and it had made 325 investments with an astonishing range of technology firms, almost none of which were major defense contractors.
If In-Q-Tel sounds like something out of a James Bond movie, that’s because the organization was partly inspired by — and named after — Q Branch, a fictional research and development office of the British secret service, popularized in Ian Fleming’s spy novels and in the Hollywood blockbusters based on them, going back to the early 1960s. Ostensibly, both In-Q-Tel and DIUx were created to transfer emergent private-sector technologies into the US intelligence and military agencies, respectively. A somewhat different interpretation is that these organizations were launched “to capture technological innovations... [and] to capture new ideas.” From the perspective of the CIA these arrangements have been a “win-win,” but critics have described them as a boondoggle — lack of transparency, oversight, and streamlined procurement means that there is great potential for conflicts of interest. Other critics point to In-Q-Tel as a prime example of the militarization of the tech industry.
There’s an important difference between DIUx and In-Q-Tel. DIUx is part of the Defense Department and is therefore financially dependent on Pentagon funds. By contrast, In-Q-Tel is, in legal and financial terms, a distinct entity. When it invests in promising companies, In-Q-Tel also becomes part owner of those firms. In monetary and technological terms, it’s likely that the most profitable In-Q-Tel investment was funding for Keyhole, a San Francisco–based company that developed software capable of weaving together satellite images and aerial photos to create three-dimensional models of Earth’s surface. The program was capable of creating a virtual high-resolution map of the entire planet. In-Q-Tel provided funding in 2003, and within months, the US military was using the software to support American troops in Iraq.
Official sources never revealed how much In-Q-Tel invested in Keyhole. In 2004, Google purchased the start-up for an undisclosed amount and renamed it Google Earth. The acquisition was significant. Yasha Levine writes that the Keyhole-Google deal “marked the moment the company stopped being a purely consumer-facing internet company and began integrating with the US government [From Keyhole, Google] also acquired an In-Q-Tel executive named Rob Painter, who came with deep connections to the world of intelligence and military contracting.” By 2006 and 2007, Google was actively seeking government contracts “evenly spread among military, intelligence, and civilian agencies,” according to the Washington Post.
Apart from Google, several other large technology firms have acquired startups funded by In-Q-Tel, including IBM, which purchased the data storage company Cleversafe; Cisco Systems, which absorbed a conversational AI interface startup called MindMeld; Samsung, which snagged nanotechnology display firm QD Vision; and Amazon, which bought multiscreen video delivery company Elemental Technologies. While these investments have funded relatively mundane technologies, In-Q-Tel’s portfolio includes firms with futuristic projects such as Cyphy, which manufactures tethered drones that can fly reconnaissance missions for extended periods, thanks to a continuous power source; Atlas Wearables, which produces smart fitness trackers that closely monitor body movements and vital signs; Fuel3d, which sells a handheld device that instantly produces detailed three-dimensional scans of structures or other objects; and Sonitus, which has developed a wireless communication system, part of which fits inside the user’s mouth. If DIUx has placed its bets with robotics and AI companies, In-Q-Tel has been particularly interested in those creating surveillance technologies — geospatial satellite firms, advanced sensors, biometrics equipment, DNA analyzers, language translation devices, and cyber-defense systems.
More recently, In-Q-Tel has shifted toward firms specializing in data mining social media and other internet platforms. These include Dataminr, which streams Twitter data to spot trends and potential threats; Geofeedia, which collects geographically indexed social media messages related to breaking news events such as protests; PATHAR, a company specializing in social network analysis; and TransVoyant, a data integration firm that collates data from satellites, radar, drones, and other sensors. In-Q-Tel has also created Lab41, a Silicon Valley technology center specializing in big data analysis and machine learning.
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