Devin Coldewey
Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He first wrote for TechCrunch in 2007. He has also written for MSNBC.com, NBC News, DPReview, The Economist/GE’s Look Ahead, and others.
His personal website is coldewey.cc.
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Latest from Devin Coldewey
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Disney experiments look to make kid-robot interactions more natural
Sooner or later, our children will be raised by robots, so it’s natural that Disney, purveyor of both robots and child-related goods, would want to get ahead of that trend. A trio of studies from its Research division aim at understanding and improving how kids converse with and otherwise interact with robots and other reasonably smart machines. Read More
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Watch a tiny virus take a constitutional under a laser-powered 3D microscope
If you’re anything like me, you spend a significant portion of the day wondering about the paths viruses take when they’re cruising around your internals. Luckily for us, a newly developed microscope from Duke researchers can show the exact path taken by the little critters (?), down to the micrometer. Read More
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These are the 10 companies pitching at TechCrunch’s Seattle meetup
TechCrunch is kicking off the summer with a meetup in my beautiful hometown, Seattle. In addition to the usual hoisting of glasses and something called “networking,” we’ll be hosting a good old fashioned pitch-off with some promising local companies. Read More
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Accessibility and communication apps take FCC honors
It may seem strange to see a headline with “FCC” in it that doesn’t concern net neutrality. But the Commission has a wide variety of responsibilities, among which is promoting and enabling tech that empowers people with disabilities to take advantage of the internet and its many services. Several companies creating such tech just got accolades from the FCC today. Read More
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Actiview aims to streamline movie accessibility for millions of hearing and vision impaired
Most people don’t have to think very hard about going to see the latest movie in the theater, but for millions, things aren’t that simple. If you’re hearing or vision impaired, getting the apparatus to provide you with amplified sound or scene descriptions can be a pain, if they’re even available. Actiview is a startup aiming to make accessibility in movie-going as… Read More
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Facebook will share anonymized location data with disaster relief organizations
A new initiative from Facebook will provide aid organizations with location data for users in affected areas, such as where people are marking themselves safe and from where they are fleeing. It shows the immense potential of this kind of fine-grained tracking, but inescapably resurfaces questions of just what else the company could do with the data. Read More
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Deep analysis of police body cam footage shows pattern of less respectful speech towards black people
Police body cameras don’t just record shootouts and other crises — they’re on all day every day, providing unprecedented detail of officers’ interactions with the public. If you can handle that volume of data, that is. Researchers at Stanford created a method to do just that, and soon found that officers in Oakland consistently used less respectful language when… Read More
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Leaked NSA report names Russia in pre-election hacks, contradicting Putin’s claims of innocence
Attribution is not an easy thing to do in the case of cyberattacks, especially if the actors have been careful. But the NSA seemed confident enough regarding certain pre-election hacks that it has directly named Russian intelligence as the perpetrators — an accusation rather at odds with President Putin’s claims that the country “never engaged” in that type of activity. Read More
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Apple debuts iMac Pro with beefy specs, real ports, $5K starting price
Hardcore Mac fans may have had their fingers crossed for the return of the Mac Pro, but an extra “i” slipped in there somehow, and Apple instead has produced an iMac Pro. It’s a wallet-busting all-in-one workstation, and it looks handsome and sinister in a dark grey finish. Read More
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HoloKit is like Google Cardboard for augmented reality
The revelation behind Google Cardboard was that if you put your phone close enough to your eyes, it’s basically a VR headset — but it’s not quite that simple for mixed reality setups like Microsoft’s HoloLens. Or is it? HoloKit is an extremely clever DIY solution for a quick and dirty augmented reality experience with a bare minimum of equipment. Read More
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Who catches the IMSI catchers? Researchers demonstrate Stingray detection kit
IMSI catchers, devices used to spoof cell towers and intercept communications, are one of the most resented open secrets of law enforcement. Strict non-disclosure agreements prevent them from being acknowledged as existing, let alone being used — but researchers think they’ve found a way to spot the shady signal-snatchers. Read More
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OneLogin admits recent breach is pretty dang serious
OneLogin, a major access management service (think corporate-level password manager) alerted its users yesterday of “unauthorized access” to the data of its US-based users. That kind of thing isn’t always serious… but it turns out this one sure was. An update posted today reveals the hacker may have had very deep access indeed. Read More
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Draper’s DragonflEye cyber-bug takes flight
Back in January we heard about Draper’s efforts to outfit a living dragonfly with a sort of solar-powered mind control backpack. This project, known as DragonflEye, is cruising right along, and the R&D firm just released a video of the modified insect taking flight. Read More
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The reMarkable tablet is original and ambitious, unlike pretty much all the other ones
Years ago I called for a black and white computer, and that strange desire still lives within me today. While no one has yet taken me up on this amazing idea, the monochrome devices that do exist have improved, yet are still frustratingly limited in their capabilities. That’s why the reMarkable tablet is such a pleasure to me. They went full e-paper. Read More
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Senators ask FBI to look into FCC’s cyberattack claims
The FCC claimed earlier this month that the comment system by which people can weigh in on the proposal to kill net neutrality had been on the receiving end of a distributed denial-of-service attack. Today, a group of Senators asked that the FBI look into it. Read More
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Amazon begins offering refunds for unauthorized in-app purchases
Were you one of the many parents surprised to find hundreds of dollars’ worth of Smurfberries charged to your card a few years back? Amazon’s lax in-app purchasing requirements let kids all over the country buy coins and crystals to their hearts’ content, something the FTC frowned on. News that refunds would be available soon broke in April, and the time has come at last. Read More
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Revenue, I choose you! The Pokémon Company’s profits jump by 2,500 percent
It’s been a banner year for The Pokémon Company: Pokémon GO was a global phenomenon and the latest full-on Pokégame for the 3DS sold very well indeed. One would expect the company to be doing well financially — perhaps even doubling or tripling last year’s profits. Well, apparently it quinvigintupled them, which is to say multiplied by 25 times. (I had to look it up.) Read More
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Study suggests last-mile drone delivery could lower carbon footprint
There’s always been talk about how drones could improve the emissions situation produced by our truck-based delivery infrastructure. But you have to look into these things. A new study from University of Washington researchers indicates that drone delivery may indeed lead to a lower carbon footprint — if it’s done properly. Read More
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Commission Impossible: How and why the FCC created net neutrality
The conflict over net neutrality we see playing out today is just the latest part of a complex dance of dispute that has been going on for quite a long time — longer than you might think. In order to understand what’s happening to the internet today and how we can keep it free and open in the future, we have to consult its past. Read More
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This robot arm’s AI thinks like we do about how to grab something
Robots are great at doing things they’ve been shown how to do, but when presented with a novel problem, such as an unfamiliar shape that needs to be gripped, they tend to choke. AI is helping there in the form of systems like Dex-Net, which uses deep learning to let a robotic arm improvise an effective grip for objects it’s never seen before. Read More
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