Eric David
Latest from Eric David
Snapchat ex-employee accuses company of faking growth numbers
Disposable-messaging app Snapchat has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years, but a former employee claims Snap Inc. has been lying about its growth figures in order to attract investors. In a wrongful termination lawsuit recently filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Snapchat ex-employee Anthony Pompliano claims that the company ...
Apple App Store broke $240M in sales on New Year’s Day
Apple Inc. started 2017 off with a bang with an impressive $240 million in App Store sales on New Year’s Day alone, the highest-earning single day the App Store has ever seen. According to Apple, the Jan. 1 sales follow an incredibly successful year for the App Store, which raked in over $20 billion for developers in ...
Slack adds 11 more bot startups to its $80M investment fund
Slack Technologies Inc. has revealed the next 11 startups that will receive part of its $80 million Slack Fund, which is aimed at bringing even more developers to the company’s already robust app ecosystem. The fund’s latest cohort includes tools that address a wide range of needs, from sending out automated alerts based on Salesforce.com Inc. services or Google Analytics ...
Google’s AlphaGo AI has been secretly dominating online Go players
Last year, Google Inc.’s artificial intelligence unit DeepMind proved that that its AlphaGo AI was a match for the best human Go players in the world. Now, it looks like AlphaGo’s journey did not stop there. DeepMind Chief Executive Demis Hassabis today confirmed on Twitter that a new version of AlphaGo has been secretly playing against ...
IBM Watson replaces 34 employees at Japanese insurance firm
It has been less than two weeks since a White House report warned that automation has the potential to disrupt millions of jobs, and this week a Japanese insurance firm proved how close that future might be. According to Japanese news publication Mainichi Shinbun (via Quartz), Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co. will be replacing roughly 30 percent of ...
Tesla begins rolling out autopilot updates for newer cars
Tesla Motors Inc. has finally started rolling out software updates that will activate the missing autopilot features in its newest vehicles, bringing the cars up to speed with the older models that already had those features. Tesla’s newer hardware 2 or “HW2” vehicles, which were manufactured after October 2016, include a wide range of new sensors and other ...
Amazon patents flying drone fortress to make deliveries
Drones may be one of the next big things in tech, but today’s flying robots have one major flaw: Their range is terrible. Now, Amazon.com Inc. may have come up with a clever solution for this problem: a flying drone fortress. Earlier this year, Amazon filed for a patent for what it calls an aerial fulfillment ...
Panasonic invests $256M in Tesla’s solar production
Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic Corp. has announced that it will invest over 30 billion yen, roughly $256 million, in Tesla Motors Inc.’s solar cell production. According to the two companies, Panasonic’s investment will allow Tesla to dramatically expand its manufacturing base in Buffalo, N.Y., adding more than 1,400 jobs to the area, including more than ...
Why Star Citizen switched to Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine
Cloud Imperium Games has announced that its long-awaited space simulator, Star Citizen, has just undergone a major change: The game now runs off Amazon.com Inc.’s Lumberyard game engine. A game engine is a software framework that gives developers all of the tools they need to create a game, from graphics rendering to networking to artificial intelligence ...
Losing battle over self-driving cars in SF, Uber moves tests to Arizona
Uber Technologies Inc., forced to suspend its self-driving car pilot program in San Francisco after the California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the registration on the company’s vehicles, said Thursday it’s moving the pilot to Arizona. “We’ll be expanding our self-driving pilot there in the next few weeks, and we’re excited to have the support of ...
