SpaceX 'anomaly' leads to rocket and payload loss: It's The Daily Crunch.

Thursday, September 1, 2016 Posted by bloggerdaddy 0 comments
THE DAILY CRUNCH
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 2016 By Darrell Etherington

The Daily Crunch 09/01/16

It's September! So that means summer's over? I don't know how else it's significant, but SpaceX is going to remember this day for a long time to come. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for September 1, 2016. And Instagrammers, you can FINALLY zoom.

1. SpaceX rocket explodes on launch pad

SpaceX had another major setback this year, this time pre-launch. A rocket set for a mission on Sept. 3 to launch a communications satellite exploded this morning on its launch pad in Cape Canaveral. The good news is that no injuries have been reported, but the bad news is that this represents another stumbling block for SpaceX following the in-flight explosion of another Falcon9 rocket earlier this year.

2. Baidu has a new dance partner in self-driving

Baidu has a strong co-pilot when it comes to self-driving car tech. The Chinese tech giant is working with Nvidia, and they're both super pumped about the arrangement, with Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang appearing on stage at Baidu World to announce the deal. The two will work together to make an end-to-end autonomous driving system, which it sounds like it'll then aim to sell to carmakers as well as commercial fleet operators. Meanwhile, California will be the first place in the US to see the fruits of this partnership, since the DMV there just approved Baidu for self-driving tests.

3. PC makers are trying some weird-ass things

Hey HP, things okay over there? The PC OEM unveiled a speaker computer of some kind at IFA. It even has Bang & Olufsen branding. Masquerading your PC tower as a stylish speaker isn't a bad idea, I guess, especially if it's actually a decent speaker as well. Also, Lenovo's trying to revive the Microsoft Courier. Do what you need to do to turn those PC sales numbers around, I guess.

4. Salesforce's spending spree

Hey Salesforce why don't you acquire me? The enterprise software giant has spent over $4 billion in acquisitions in the past six months, including the $110 million it spent for BeyonCore last month, and the $2.8 billion it dropped on Demandware. Follow lighted path to the exits, I guess.

5. The Note 7's not-so-great secret feature is explosion

Luckily no one was hurt in the SpaceX explosion today, and no one has been hurt yet per se by another exploding piece of tech, but Samsung still halted sales of the Galaxy Note 7, some of which were apparently prone to blowing up. Still seems like a decent phone if you get a non-exploding unit.

6. Zoomstagram

Hey you can zoom on Instagram photos! We've all tried to do it before, don't pretend. Now it'll actually work, and you won't look like an idiot. The update that enables this is out now for iOS, and works on both photos and videos. Android version to follow soon, per Insta.

7. Facebook's news bots aren't great reporters, but they're decent poets

Facebook is still having trouble with its bot-driven Trending section, which is reaching new levels of ridiculous thanks to all the humans being canned. But there's a wonderful byproduct: Found poetry. With a little help from Oakland writer Anna Pulley, these robots really have some writing chops.

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What Dropbox didn't disclose: It's The Daily Crunch.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016 Posted by bloggerdaddy 0 comments
THE DAILY CRUNCH
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31 2016 By Darrell Etherington

The Daily Crunch 08/31/16

Dropbox tells some, but not all, in a 2012 security breach, and Nest's bird has flown. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for August 31, 2016. Also if you're picking sides between Uber and Google, consider that Google builds huge agile dog-like robots, at least until it finds a buyer for Boston Dynamics.

1. Dropbox drops the ball on security

Wow, 60 million is a lot of user credentials floating around, Dropbox. The worst part is, it happened four years ago in 2012, when an employee's weak password led to the leak. Dropbox made a semi-disclosure at the time, but did not come anywhere close to revealing the extent of the leak, which means 60 million user email logins have been floating around on the dark web unbeknownst to users since then. Oof. At least the passwords the hackers got were hashed and salted, and it looks like that security measure wasn't cracked.

2. Uber and Google gear up for a fight

Uber and Google are on this sort of slow-mo collision course that is ramping up, as Google prepares to extend its Waze-based peer-to-peer car sharing service to all users across the San Francisco area. Waze opened up its service in Israel previously, and said this was part of its eventual plan, but the pilot is about to expand to the general public, which means we'll start to see some real competition between the two tech titans. Ding ding.

3. Leaving the Nest

Google's Nest lab is also in a kind of slow-mo process, but this one is more like a gradual collapse. After founder and CEO Tony Fadell departed in June, it was clear things were changing. Now led by Marwan Faraz, the smart home company is losing a group of engineers to Google's Internet of Things platform team, which is being led by Android SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer. Everyone's staying well within the larger Alphabet org, but it might be a sign of greater business unit rationalization to come for Mountain View.

4. Cars without humans at the wheel are coming to a street near you

It's almost time: You're probably going to pull up to a car where there's no one technically driving eventually, but two states are in a legislative race to allow testing of fully self-driving vehicles without a human safety minder at the wheel. Michigan seems especially hot on the idea – the state has a hearing today to let the public chime in on its bipartisan bill, which would allow testing on all state roads.

5. Google now searches inside apps

Apps are islands unto themselves, but Google is offering a kind of ferry service between those islands via its search app on Android. Google now has an "In Apps" search mode on the platform, which allows you to look inside your silos for contacts, messages, music and way more. At launch, it only works with Gmail, Spotify and YouTube, but Google is looking to ramp up app indexing to give it much further reach in the near future.

6. Another swing and a miss for Theranos

Theranos borked it again, this time with its new Zika test. The company proudly debuted said product in the wake of its ongoing implosion around prior blood tests, but the FDA found flaws in that, too, and now it's withdrawn its request. Womp to the very loud womp.

7. iPhone likely to get 256GB of storage and Lightning EarPods

The upcoming iPhone 7 is widely expected to ditch the headphone jack, and a new leak suggests we'll see a boost in the top-end capacity to 256GB, as well as Lightning EarPods included in the box, as well as an additional 3.5mm-to-Lightning adapter for your other headphones. If true, it really seems like Apple wants to make the transition as smooth as possible in this brave new 3.5mm-less world.

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