Billionaire tech investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is backing a company developing an Ethereum blockchain-based platform that claims to be the future of online communications. Called the “Mercury Protocol,” the blockchain platform uses distributed record-keeping and a token system that supposedly protects privacy while also encouraging positive contributions in place of trolling. On the ...

Kanoa Inc., a San Francisco-based company that promised to sell wireless earbuds that competed with Apple Inc.’s AirPods, has shut down without filling customer orders despite having raised approximately $150,000 in a crowdfunding campaign. The company, which went public with its campaign in 2015, originally promised to deliver its wireless earbuds to customers in April 2016, ...

Drones using artificial intelligence will be deployed off beaches in New South Wales, Australia, to detect sharks and warn swimmers. The new drones will patrol beaches and use artificial intelligence to detect sharks in the water. It’s not the first time drones have been used in Australia to detect sharks, but what makes the new drones interesting ...

Five weeks after Uber Technologies Inc. co-founder Travis Kalanick resigned from the company following ongoing sexual harassment scandals, Expedia Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi has been named the ride-hailing giant’s new CEO, according to reports published Sunday. Recode, citing unnamed sources, noted that Khosrowshahi (pictured) was a dark-horse candidate for the position, one whose name was not leaked as ...

Animals are lesser beings than humans. That’s the biggest takeaway from a newly proposed law in Germany that defines ethical standards with self-driving cars. The new law, proposed by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, attempts to define how artificial intelligence technology behind a self-driving vehicle should prioritize damage control, which is ...

Co-working space provider WeWork Inc. has raised a staggering $4.4 billion in a venture capital round raised from Japanese telco giant the SoftBank Group and its venture capital subsidiary, the SoftBank Vision Fund. The round is split a couple of different ways. Some $3 billion of the $4.4 billion is being invested directly in WeWork’s parent company, while the ...

A study of top companies in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia has found a majority have not yet implemented basic protections designed to protect against phishing attacks. More specifically, they haven’t embraced Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, or DMARC, which can help detect and prevent phishing, a method of impersonating people that targets know ...

Gamers are being warned that a dangerous newly discovered trojan virus downloader is being bundled with popular online games downloaded from other sites. Dubbed “Joao” by researchers at security firm ESET spol. s r.o, the trojan was found in the wild bundled with versions of online role-playing games from Aeria Games, including the massively multiplayer online ...

Network operations monitoring startup Forward Networks Inc. has raised $16 million in a Series B round led by DFJ, along with investment from Andreessen Horowitz and A.Capital Ventures. Founded in 2013, the company offers a platform that provides network visibility, policy verification and change modeling. Designed to allow enterprises to eliminate network outages, the company’s platform enables network ...

Despite a seemingly never–ending stream of negative publicity, Uber Technologies Inc. continues to speed down the ride-hailing road in both revenue and number of riders. For the second quarter ended June 30, Uber reported that the number of riders rose 17 percent over the first quarter and 150 percent over the second quarter of 2016 to ...