James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Life after automation: Elon Musk echoes Karl Marx, but skeptics don’t believe in Silicon Valley’s goodwill
One of Silicon Valley’s most iconoclastic entrepreneurs, Elon Musk, just told us something we’ve heard countless times over the last few years: The likelihood of a robot doing your job in the future is high. The end is far from nigh, though, according to Musk, who mulled over the advent of a Universal Basic Income and ...
YouTube to clean up the most vulgar part of the web: its own comments section
“Why are YouTube users so rude?” It’s a question we’ve all likely asked from time to time when startled by the ignorance and verbal violence of YouTube users in the comments section. This has not escaped the attention of the world’s better-natured internet users, with Buzzfeed voting YouTube commenters as the nadir of online debate, calling the ...
Slack cautions Microsoft like a passive-aggressive big brother
No sooner had Microsoft Corp. announced Microsoft Teams, a Slack-like collaboration tool rolled into Office 365, than it got a response from the company Teams apparently is targeting. Slack Technologies Inc. fired back at Microsoft in a full-page ad in the New York Times that began, “Dear Microsoft.” The letter starts like a disingenuous compliment from a competing colleague: “Great ...
Otonomo raises $12 million to make sense of a new big data generator: cars
In less than four years, there will be a quarter-billion connected vehicles in the world, each generating a huge amount of data, according to Gartner Inc. And according to other reports Google Inc.’s self-driving car creates around a gigabyte of data per second. Add that up, and it’s clear that cars collectively will be generating mindboggling amounts of data very ...
Study: If you’re black or female, Uber and Lyft drivers may cancel your trip or charge more
Ride-sourcing services such as Uber Technologies Inc. or Lyft Inc. discriminate against customers with African-American-sounding names, as well as female customers, according to a new study released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study produced some detailed data concerning how black customers were treated. The study, “Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network ...
Uber: Get ready for fleets of semi-self-driving flying cars
Uber Technologies Inc. says we could get to work in one of its flying cars within the decade. In a 98-page report Uber said that it planned to cut down on long commute times by developing the vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, part of what the company calls Uber Elevate. Jeff Holden, Uber’s chief product ...
Apple’s new TV app doesn’t have Netflix and Amazon streaming
The app that goes by the name of “TV” could be very useful in helping you sort through and organize the huge amount of content available on Apple TV. Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook has called it a game-changer. Even though Cook says the future of TV is apps, Apple’s new TV app won’t include ...
Microsoft Paint now works in 3D, making it ripe for virtual reality
One of the most iconic of Microsoft Corp.’s apps is Microsoft Paint, the much loved 2D digital sketcher that’s been around since the company introduced the world to Windows 1.0 in 1985. There have been various iterations of the app since then, but only now has the painting feature truly been transformed. Paint 3D, revealed ...
Apple using former Blackberry engineers in Canada to develop self-driving car systems
Apple Inc. is working on an operating system for a self-driving car with the help of a new set of Canadian engineers, according to a recent Bloomberg report. The recently hired engineers previously worked at BlackBerry Ltd. and are presently still working on home turf in a suburb close to the capital city of Ottawa. The ...
Twitter’s woes continue as report says 300+ staff about to be laid off
Twitter Inc. may lay off as many as 300 people this week in the wake of a failed attempt to find a buyer, according to a new report. The job cuts were reported by Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources. The social media platform will lose around 8 percent of its total workforce of 3,860 employees, almost ...
