The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists was held in Jerusalem on March 19, 2017. The awards recognized the innovation and excellence of early career scientists and engineers. The awards look […]
As iPhone sales declined for the second straight quarter, Apple CEO Tim Cook peeled back the curtain ever so slightly on its work in artificial intelligence and augmented reality, aiming to reassure investors that the company is ready to ride the next wave of technology. Raving about hit smartphone game Pokemon GO, Cook stressed that Apple is “high on [augmented reality] for the long-run” and investing heavily. Augmented reality, in which computer-generated content is overlaid on the real world, is one of the latest fixations in the technology business, with Pokemon GO among the first applications to catch on.
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google has no plans to expand its partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV to create a self-driving car, the program chief at the Alphabet Inc unit said on Thursday, affirming that the technology company was still in talks with other potential partners. Earlier this month, Google and Fiat Chrysler agreed to work together to build a fleet of 100 self-driving minivans in the most advanced collaboration to date between Silicon Valley and a traditional carmaker. Google said it was not sharing proprietary self-driving vehicle technology with Fiat Chrysler, and that the vehicles would not be offered for sale.
By Rory Carroll NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (Reuters) – A car-sized sled powered by electromagnets rocketed to more than 100 miles (160 kph) an hour through the Nevada desert on Wednesday in what the Los Angeles company developing the technology said was the first successful test of a futurist transit system called hyperloop. Hyperloop One is among several companies competing to bring to life a technical vision by Elon Musk, the founder of rocket maker SpaceX and electric car company Tesla Motors, who suggested sending pods holding passengers and cargo inside giant vacuum tubes between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government and Apple Inc will be able to cross-examine the other's witnesses in a court hearing next week on whether the technology company must help federal investigators unlock an encrypted iPhone tied to one of the San Bernardino killers, Apple said. The hearing, set for Tuesday, is the latest development in a showdown between Apple and the government that has become a lightning rod in the national debate over digital privacy and what kind of data on phones and personal devices should be accessible to law enforcement. All the witnesses have given written declarations in the legal briefs already filed in the case, said an Apple lawyer who spoke to reporters on a conference call on Friday, on condition of anonymity.
Britain said it will begin trialing driverless cars on motorways for the first time in 2017, as it moves toward its goal of allowing autonomous cars to take to the streets by 2020. The government said last year there were no legal barriers to the technology being tested and gave the go-ahead for vehicle trials to start on some local roads. Finance minister George Osborne will announce plans on Wednesday to test vehicles on motorways and say the government will bring forward proposals to remove regulatory barriers to the technology, the Treasury said.
By Dan Levine and Lawrence Hurley SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has been locked in internal wrangling over what position to take in high profile litigation between two American technology giants, Google and Oracle, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. It faces an end-of-May deadline to decide whether to take sides in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that will have wide implications for the technology industry. The case involves how much copyright protection should extend to the Java programing language. Oracle won a federal appeals court ruling last year that allows it to copyright parts of Java, while Google argues it should be free to use Java without paying a licensing fee. Google, which used Java to design its Android smartphone operating system, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
SurveyMonkey CEO and husband of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Dave Goldberg, died unexpectedly on Friday night, his brother wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday. “It’s with incredible shock and sadness that I’m letting our friends and family know that my amazing brother, Dave Goldberg, beloved husband of Sheryl Sandberg, father of two wonderful children, and son of Paula Goldberg, passed away suddenly last night,” Robert Goldberg wrote.
Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and state-owned China Telecom Corp Ltd have tied up to sell inexpensive smartphones aimed at boosting mobile commerce in smaller cities and rural areas. The phones, dubbed “Tianyi Taobao Shopping Handsets”, will come installed with either an app for easy access to Alibaba's flagship Taobao online shopping platform or its home-grown YunOS mobile operating system, it said in a statement late on Friday. The partnership is a bid to deepen Alibaba's e-commerce base in less developed parts of the country and promote its mobile operating system in a shrinking, cut-throat handset market. Mobile Taobao is China's most popular mobile shopping app with more than 200 million monthly active users, it said.
(Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp reported a 12 percent fall in first-quarter revenue as the technology company continues to shed unprofitable businesses to focus on cloud-computing initiatives. It was the 12th straight quarter that the Armonk, New York-based company reported a drop in quarterly revenue, including the effects of currency. IBM's revenue has been shrinking for three years now as the company sheds low-profit businesses such as cash registers, low-end servers and semiconductors and focuses on emerging areas such as security software and cloud services, but the new businesses have so far failed to make up for revenue lost to divestitures. Some top shareholders have sought help from activist investors to shake up the company, Reuters reported earlier this month IBM did say that it has generated $7.7 billion in total cloud revenue over the past 12 months, up sharply from the year before.