Eric David
Latest from Eric David
UN probe says Facebook ‘substantively contributed’ to hate speech in Myanmar
Facebook Inc. has always struggled with keeping hate speech off its platform, and now a team of United Nations investigators has blamed the social network for spreading hate speech and inciting ethnic violence in the southeast Asian country of Myanmar. Myanmar, which is located just west of Thailand, is under investigation by the U.N. for ...
Apple acquires digital magazine service Texture
Apple Inc. today announced it has acquired Texture, a digital newsstand service that will expand Apple’s media library and boost the company’s role in news publishing. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Often referred to as the “Netflix of magazine publishing,” Texture operates a monthly subscription service that provides users with unlimited access to more ...
Waymo self-driving trucks begin hauling for Google’s data centers
Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s autonomous vehicle company, is finally ready to put its self-driving trucks to work. The company announced today that it has launched a new pilot program in Atlanta, where its driverless trucks will be transporting cargo to Google data centers. Waymo, formerly part of Google X, started working on self-driving cars back in 2009, ...
Google wants its AMP web-speeding technology to become a mobile standard
Google LLC wants to remake the mobile web in its image. The company announced today that it’s launching a project to set new web standards based on the technology behind its fast-loading Accelerated Mobile Pages framework. AMP is Google’s open-source web publishing technology, which the company says “enables the creation of websites and ads that are consistently ...
Atomwise raises $45M for AI that helps doctors discover new drugs
Discovering new drugs requires a lot of trial and error, which is both slow and expensive. Deep learning startup Atomwise Inc. is hoping to cut out a big chunk of that process with artificial intelligence, and the company got a major boost today in the form of an early-stage $45 million funding round. The Series A round was led ...
Microsoft kills Windows 10 S, folds its features into the new ‘S Mode’
Microsoft Corp. has decided to pull the plug on Windows 10 S, a lightweight operating system designed for devices used in schools. Reports of the company’s decision surfaced last month, but the rumors were finally confirmed today by Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows 10 at Microsoft. “We use Win10S as an option for schools or businesses ...
YouTube AI can swap out video backgrounds without a green screen
Many YouTubers change their video backgrounds to set a certain mood or simply to hide their messy apartment, but not every creator has the editing skills or the living space to use a green screen to do that. To solve this problem, Google LLC’s engineers have turned to their duct tape of choice: artificial intelligence. Google software engineers Valentin ...
Amazon cloud power outage temporarily knocks out more than 240 online services
Amazon Web Services Inc. suffered what initially appeared to be a major cloud outage today that affected more than 240 online services, including major cloud customers such as Atlassian, Twilio and Slack. The outage at Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit even affected Amazon Alexa, rendering the company’s Echo devices temporarily mute. “There was a loss of ...
Report: Snap still hasn’t given up on its failed Spectacles idea
Snap Inc. really wants to make its “Spectacles” a thing. The odd-looking video recording glasses failed to make a splash last year, but a new report by Cheddar says Snap is giving Spectacles a second chance with a hardware refresh expected to launch later this fall. First released in 2016, Spectacles were supposed to be a way for particularly obnoxious ...
Facebook ends experiment to split publishers into their own news feed
Facebook Inc. has made a lot of changes to its news feed in the last few months, but the social media giant has decided to abandon one experimental feature that would have split the platform in half. Facebook had been toying with the idea of splitting news feed into two channels. Posts from friends and family ...