James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Apple CEO Tim Cook promises ‘great’ desktop Mac computers are coming
Hoping to mollify impatient fans of Apple Inc.’s desktop Mac personal computers, Chief Executive Tim Cook Monday said the company has “great desktops in our roadmap.” Admirers of the Mac desktop had every reason to feel Apple was no longer interested in the PC given the lack of upgrades and the thriving business of powerful ...
Out of the warehouse, onto the street: Seegrid maps another route to self-driving cars
Seegrid Corp.’s vision-guided autonomous vehicles have been working alongside humans in the manufacturing industry – think of them as driverless pallet trucks – for 13 years now. Now, the company is looking at moving its Vision technology toward the broader self-driving car industry. Pittsburgh-based Seegrid’s vehicles for industrial markets differ from the traditional automated guided ...
Tech companies unite against creating Trump’s proposed Muslim registry
Tech giants such as Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. have expressed that they are opposed to the idea of building a Muslim registry. Just days after many of the big names in tech met with President-elect Donald Trump, a string of tech companies have issued statements regarding their disapproval of building a database ...
Facebook treads thin black line in battle against fake news
In response to a salvo of criticism aimed at Facebook Inc. for disseminating fake news, the social network said Thursday that it has begun working on a series of solutions, including fact-checking by news and other organizations. A few weeks ago, Facebook announced that it planned to use artificial intelligence to flag offensive live videos with an ...
At Donald Trump’s meeting with top tech execs, a conciliatory tone
Despite widespread disdain among many technology executives for Donald Trump before he was elected president, their meeting Wednesday at Trump Tower in New York appeared to produce no fireworks. Indeed, by all reports, both Trump and the executives struck a conciliatory tone, one at odds with some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and rank-and-file at Valley companies who ...
Google no longer developing a driverless car of its own: Welcome to Waymo
Google Inc.’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., has turned heel regarding its plan to develop its own car without a steering wheel or pedals and instead created a new independent unit to make self-driving car technology available to automakers. At a press event in San Francisco today where Waymo, as the new unit is called, was unveiled, Alphabet said ...
Uber is spying on celebrities, politicians, ex-girlfriends, says fired security employee
A former forensic investigator for Uber Technologies Inc. says that user information at Uber has been used by employees to track celebrities, monitor the movement of high-profile politicians and even keep track of employees’ lovers and spouses. The former investigator, 45-year-old Ward Spangenberg, says he suffered age discrimination at Uber but was also pushed out ...
Top players in tech meet with President-elect Donald Trump today
Donald Trump will hold a roundtable meeting Wednesday at his Trump Tower in New York that will include many of the biggest names in tech – some of whom supported his rival Hillary Clinton. According to a report in USA Today, the arrangement, which surely will be awkward given the varying political views of the ...
A software bot is coming for your job. What will you do now?
One of the overriding concerns about technology today is that artificial intelligence and robots will soon take many of our jobs away. Even technology leaders are stoking those fears. Only a few weeks ago, Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk talked about the end of the workforce as we know it, alluding that a Marxian ...
With deal done, Microsoft wants LinkedIn to empower the public
Microsoft Corp. has finally closed the deal on its LinkedIn Corp. acquisition, using the occasion to announce lofty intentions to empower a disaffected public. Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said he was excited and enthusiastic about the $26 billion deal finally coming together after a series of regulatory clearances, and in a blog post he outlined ...