September 2018

Bumble is officially serving the papers in the suit against Tinder parent, Match Group. Bumble had said in March it was filing a suit of $400 million against Match Group…

Bumble is taking Match Group to court, says it’s pursuing an IPO

Groups of UberEats couriers are continuing to strike over pay and calling for a minimum £5 per delivery fee. Several strikes have been reported in London over the past few…

UberEats UK couriers striking over pay changes

Microsoft, SAP and Adobe today announced a new partnership: the Open Data Initiative. This alliance, which is a clear attack against Salesforce, aims to create a single data model for…

Microsoft, SAP and Adobe take on Salesforce with their new Open Data Initiative for customer data

A new feature in the latest version of Google Chrome that logs users into the browser when they sign in to a Google site has come under fire. Until recently,…

Security experts say Chrome 69’s ‘forced login’ feature violates user privacy

This wild, 3D-printed self-solving Rubik’s cube is amazing. To make it work, a Japanese inventor used servo motors and Arduino boards to actuate the cube as it solves itself. Sadly,…

Watch this self-solving Rubik’s cube march its way across a table

International shipping has changed little in the last century – it’s slow and opaque, with many processes carried out manually and on paper. Most supply chain teams still rely on…

Zencargo raises a Seed Plus round led by London’s LocalGlobe to tackle global freight

Apple and Salesforce are both highly successful, iconic brands, who like to put on a big show when they make product announcements. Today, the two companies announced they were forming a…

Salesforce partners with Apple to roll deeper into mobile enterprise markets

During last September’s Ignite conference, Microsoft heavily emphasized its quantum computing efforts and launched both its Q# programming language and development kits. This year, the focus is on other things, and…

Microsoft’s Quantum Development Kit adds a chemical simulation library

Microsoft Azure is getting a number of new storage options today that mostly focus on use cases where disk performance matters. The first of these is Azure Ultra SSD Managed…

Microsoft Azure gets new high-performance storage options

Ross Lipson, the chief executive officer and co-founder of the on-demand marijuana and cannabis delivery service, Dutchie, had thought he was done with the online delivery business. Instead, he’s launched a new…

VC firms of Kevin Durant and Snoop Dogg back Dutchie, a new cannabis delivery service

In a world dominated by Alexa and the Google Assistant, Cortana suffers the fate of a perfectly good alternative that nobody uses and everybody forgets about. But Microsoft wouldn’t be…

Microsoft hopes enterprises will want to use Cortana

If you live and work in the Microsoft Office ecosystem but often use a Mac, here is some good news: OneDrive Files On-Demand is now available in public preview for…

Microsoft OneDrive’s on-demand files come to the MacOS Finder

The Surface Hub 2, the successor to Microsoft’s first set of giant Windows 10 touchscreen displays for collaboration, will launch in Q2 2019, the company announced today. Previously, the company…

Microsoft’s massive Surface Hub 2 whiteboards will launch in Q2 2019

Cosmos DB is undoubtedly one of the most interesting products in Microsoft’s Azure portfolio. It’s a fully managed, globally distributed multi-model database that offers throughput guarantees, a number of different…

Microsoft updates its planet-scale Cosmos DB database service

Roku is expanding its lineup of streaming media players in an attempt to bring down the cost of 4K-ready devices, and plug every hole in the market. The company announced…

Roku brings down the cost of 4K streaming with its new Premiere players

AWS has its Snowball (and Snowmobile truck), Google Cloud has its data transfer appliance and Microsoft has its Azure Data Box. All of these are physical appliances that allow enterprises…

Microsoft wants to put your data in a box

Microsoft Office gets smarter

6:00 am PDT • September 24, 2018

Microsoft used its Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, today to announce a number of new features that are coming to Office 365. Given the company’s current focus on AI, it’s…

Microsoft Office gets smarter

If you’ve ever attended a video meeting and wished that the speakers used really expensive cameras and lenses that allowed for that soft classy background blur of a portrait photo,…

Microsoft Teams gets bokeh and meeting recordings with transcripts

It’s time for the next version of SQL Server, Microsoft’s flagship database product. The company today announced the first public preview of SQL Server 2019 and while yet another update…

Microsoft’s SQL Server gets built-in support for Spark and Hadoop

It’s a big day for Microsoft, which announced a slew of updates across virtually all of its product lines at its Ignite conference today. Unsurprisingly, one theme this year is…

Microsoft’s machine learning tools for developers get smarter

Microsoft Azure bets big on IoT

6:00 am PDT • September 24, 2018

At its Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft today announced a plethora of new Internet of Things-focused updates to its Azure cloud computing platform. It’s no secret that the amount…

Microsoft Azure bets big on IoT

There are plenty of third-party solutions for running a Windows desktop in the cloud, but until now, Microsoft itself seemed hesitant to offer the same kind of user experience. Today,…

Microsoft’s new Windows Virtual Desktop lets you run Windows 10 in the cloud

We all have more passwords than we can count — or remember. Unless you have just one, in which case, please get yourself a few more. But passwords alone are…

Microsoft does away with more passwords

French startup Qonto has raised a $23 million funding round for its fintech product. The company is trying to make business banking cheaper, faster and more efficient. Existing investors Valar…

Qonto raises $23 million to improve business banking

India is the new tech outsourcing destination for ride-hailing companies. Southeast Asia’s Grab and Go-Jek both have sizable engineering teams in the country, and now that duo is joined by…

Middle East’s Careem is the latest ride-sharing unicorn to get an India-based tech team

There’s a changing of the guard, and a new strategic partnership, over at Tile, the startup that helps you keep tabs on the location of your things by way of…

Tile names GoPro vet CJ Prober new CEO, adds Comcast as investor and new product partner

SiriusXM and Pandora have announced acquisition plans before the stock market opens. SiriusXM is offering to acquire Pandora for $3.5 billion in stock, or $10.14 per share. Pandora would continue…

SiriusXM to acquire Pandora for $3.5 billion

Following widespread criticism of the way its service is used to spread false information and news in India, WhatsApp has hired a “grievance officer” for the country. U.S-based Komal Lahiri is…

WhatsApp hires ‘grievance officer’ to help combat false information in India

Yubico, the company behind the popular Yubikey security keys, today announced the launch of its 5 Series keys. The company argues that these new keys, which start at $45, are…

Yubico’s new security keys now support FIDO2

The best games and gear for game night

3:00 am PDT • September 24, 2018

Hosting an old-fashioned game night is a welcome break from everyone’s tech dependent lives. Whether you could use party-friendly gear recommendations or ideas for interactive games, we’ve pulled together a…