Technology news

Planned Parenthood's Roo isn't a regular chatbot, its a cool chatbot — designed to answer young people's sexual health questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 
The nonprofit organization teamed up with experts at the digital product agency Work & Co to develop the chatbot, and worked with high school students in Brooklyn to gain feedback and learn what young people want to know when it comes to sexual health, according to a press release. 
SEE ALSO: Sex ed fails teens by

San Jose cannabis company Caliva is proving that weed’s still hot, even as some markets cool off.
The company is announcing a $75 million round of investment that includes participation from former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartzand football legend Joe Montana . If that pair seems unlikely, it just goes to show that cannabis attracts an eclectic mix.
With what the company itself refers to as a “war chest,” Caliva intends to expand its portfolio of products as well as ramping up its effor

The legendary New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the most detailed image yet of MU69 — the most distant object a human spacecraft has ever explored.
At some four billion miles from Earth, and one billion miles past Pluto, MU69 (which also goes by "Ultima Thule") has been an object of mystery since its discovery in 2014. But New Horizons finally swooped by the distant object just after the 2019 New Year, uncovering a frozen, snowman-shaped world, composed of two roundish "lobes" that hav

When one food delivery startup fails, another gets funded.
Chowbus, an Asian food ordering platform headquartered in Chicago, has brought in a $4 million “seed” funding led by Greycroft Partners and FJ Labs, with participation from Hyde Park Angels and Fika Ventures. The startup, aware of the challenges that plague startups in this space, says offering exclusive access to restaurants and eliminating service fees sets it apart from big-name competito

Smartphone numbers are down. In 2018, global shipments dropped 3 percent, and while the long-promised arrival of 5G will help numbers get back into the black, IDC predicts that even then growth will be in the low-single digits.With a few exceptions, handset makers are starting to feel the pain of stagnation, due to a confluence of different forces. There’s slowed economic growth in China and internationally, prolonged upgrade cycles and price hikes as tariffs are levied amid a looming trad

Amazon now has a say in the development of a commonly used smart home standard, giving the company more power as it continues to push smart speakers, cameras, doorbells, and all other kinds of gadgets into its customers’ homes.
As of today, Amazon has a seat on the board of the Zigbee Alliance, which oversees implementation of the Zigbee wireless protocol. Zigbee isn’t nearly as popular as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but you can think of it a lot like them — it’s a wireless prot

AI agents developed by Google’s DeepMind subsidiary have beaten human pros at Starcraft II — a first in the world of artificial intelligence. In a series of matches streamed on YouTube and Twitch, AI players beat the humans 10 games in a row. In the final match, pro player Grzegorz “MaNa” Komincz was able to snatch a single victory for humanity.“The history of AI has been marked by a number of significant benchmark victories in different games,” David Silver,

Swarm Technologies is one of several companies looking to populate low Earth orbit with communications satellites, setting itself apart with the sheer smallness of its devices — and of course with the notoriety of having defied the FCC and earned a fine. But investors are bullish, and the company has just raised a $25 million Series A round to put 150 of its tiny SpaceBEEs in orbit.
There are many communications markets to be served from space: Starlink wants to do mobile broadband; Ubiqui

Remember that massive data leak of mortgage and loan data we reported on Wednesday?
In case you missed it, millions of documents were found leaking after an exposed Elasticsearch server was found without a password. The documents contained highly sensitive financial data on tens of thousands of individuals who took out loans or mortgages over the past decade with U.S. financial institutions. The documents were converted using a technology called OCR from their original paper documents to a compu

Hugh Harsono Contributor Hugh Harsono is a former financial analyst currently serving as a U.S. Army officer. More posts by this contributorWhy the future of Chinese e-commerce is in its rural areas Television content creation in China
China’s fast-paced growth has resulted in it being one of the most extremely flexible nations in terms of technological integration into existing infrastructure. With its relatively newer institutions and organizations, China can easily adapt existing infra

After years of back-and-forth legal rulings, Google is asking the Supreme Court to make the final call in its infamous dispute with Oracle. Today, the company announced it has filed a petition with the Court, asking the justices to determine the boundaries of copyright law in code.The case dates back to 2010, when Oracle first accused Google of improperly using elements of Oracle’s Java programming language to build Android. Oracle said that Google’s use of Java application programi

Viktor & Rolf's Spring 2019 Couture Collection has arrived, and let me tell ya, fashion will never be the same.
During Fashion Week in Paris on Wednesday, ambitious designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren debuted their latest line of tulle-heavy ball gowns on the runway. The expensive and elaborate dresses were each adorned with bold, dramatic statements like "Leave me alone," "Go to hell," "I'm not shy I just don't like you," and a simple yet powerful, "NO." 
For many, the gowns cam

Alexa seems to be everywhere. As of early 2019, Alexa is on 100 million devices around the world (and counting), it has over 15,000 “skills,” and it is quite possibly the first name you think of when a digital assistant comes to mind (which is some really bad news for Siri).
If you haven’t tried Alexa yet, you may be interested in picking up one of Amazon’s many Echo device, or the growing number of Alexa-ready speakers that are made by other companies. At this point, th

March Capital Partners, the Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, has raised $300 million for its latest fund.
It’s another indicator that the Los Angeles technology ecosystem is coming of age, but also a sign that March’s core investment strategies — to invest in companies applying artificial intelligence to business use cases and investing in the next wave transforming computing infrastructure — are paying off.
“We have two major areas and a couple of minor area

The podcaster and pundit Matt Christman tweeted something prophetic on January 20th, 2017, the day Donald Trump was inaugurated as the president of the United States of America: “This is the stupidest day in American history, a record that will be broken by every subsequent day in American history.” Two years later, I can exclusively confirm that he was correct. Each day brings new horrors, a fresh level of hell to navigate. For example, today I learned that the eels in the River Th

Intelshares are down 6 percent after-hours after the company announced a rare revenue miss in its Q4 earnings report and lower-than-expected Q1 guidance. The company reported a Non-GAAP EPS of $1.28 on revenue of $18.66 billion (up 9 percent year-over-year). Wall Street was expecting an EPS of $1.22 on revenue of $19.01 billion.
The company projected that it would haul in $16 billion in revenue in the next quarter, sharply contrasting analyst expectations of $17.4 billion.
Intel’s PC-centr

Sen. Ted Cruz and his weird beard just got called out on the U.S. Senate floor by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet over the fight to reopen the federal government. 
On Thursday, Cruz claimed that obstruction by Democrats was the only thing keeping the government from reopening and getting federal workers like Coast Guard employees their paycheck. His remarks came ahead of a vote on a bill that could have brought an end to the current government shutdown by giving President Trump his demanded $5

MaaS Global, the company behind the all-in-one mobility app Whim, which offers a subscription service for public transportation, ridesharing, bike rentals, scooter rentals, taxis or car rentals, will be making its U.S. debut later this year.
The company will choose its American launch city from Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Miami, according to Sampo Hietanen, the company’s chief executive.
The Whim app is currently available in Antwerp, Birmingham, U.K., Helsinki and Vienna, accordin

Okay, I’ll admit it: Sometimes, I write stories because I think they’re going to be popular. And sometimes, those stories fall flat anyway.
It makes sense — both on a cosmic level, because life isn’t fair, but also in the more specific sense that some topics are simply over-covered. Yes, people seem to like reading about Apple, but are they going to read my Apple post if it’s the fiftieth story published on the same topic?
Analytics company Parse.lyis trying to addr

If you’re wondering why the vaguely generic-looking family adventure movie The Kid Who Would Be King is receiving surprisingly positive reviews, look no further than writer-director Joe Cornish. He isn’t a major marquee name in the United States, but he wrote and directed the 2011 film Attack the Block, which gave a low-budget alien / monster feature a distinctly English, class-conscious spin. His film credits since then have been scant but enviable: he co-wrote Steven Spielberg&rsq

Nothing says romance like small round capsules filled with tomato goo. That's the new Heinz motto, probably.
Why? Well, for starters the condiment company is celebrating Valentine's Day with a fancy new product called Ketchup Caviar, which is, essentially, exactly what it sounds like.
Think regular caviar, then remove the delicacy of fish eggs, replace it with balls filled with ketchup, and you have Ketchup Caviar. You OK? Alright, good.America’s favorite ketchup presents America’s f

Until now, we’ve seen our fair share of details on Motorola’s upcoming G7 line through FCC filings that revealed photos and specs of the Moto G7 Power and Play. But nearly everything about the rest of the G7 line was leaked last night by Motorola Brazil’s website, which accidentally revealed product images and specs. The pages were quickly taken down, but not before screenshots and photos were spotted by CNET.
All four variants in the G7 line will have slim bezels, notched dis

FacebookMoments, the standalone mobile app designed to let users privately share photos and videos, is shutting down next month.
Facebook confirmed the app’s services will end February 25. Facebook decided to end support for the app, which hasn’t been updated in some time, because people weren’t using it.
“We’re ending support for the Moments app, which we originally launched as a place for people to save their photos. We know the photos people share are important t

People are increasingly interested in finding a way to participate in the cannabis industry, and for good reason. It’s growing like a weed (yes, we said it). According to a San Francisco-based research company, Grand View Research, the global legal marijuana market is expected to reach $146.4 billion by the end of 2025.
Still, it isn’t easy for potential recruits to know where to look for both temporary and permanent jobs, and it’s just as challenging for companies to find cand

Payback is best served extremely hot. 
I didn't know that this was the video I've been waiting all my life, but  First We Feast's show Hot Ones released their season 8 pilot starring none other than Gordan Ramsay. 
For those not familiar, host Sean Evans asks celebrities questions as they feast on hot wings that get progressively hotter.
So who can really blame me for letting out a guttural and hearty evil laugh as Ramsey opened up and started chugging a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Th

The U.K. is experiencing a significant and drastic fall in the volume of business-to-business transactions, according to the CEO of one of the world’s largest B2B payments and supply chain logistics platforms.
In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, TradeshiftCEO and co-founder Christian Lanngsaid: “We see the numbers. There has been a huge drop in the purchase orders in the U.K. in December last year. Especially in retail. But it&

Facebook Moments was launched back in 2015 as a new way to manage pictures of you and your friends by uploading them all to the app, where the company’s facial recognition software could easily identify and let you share them with friends. Unfortunately, development of the app seems to have stopped there, and today, Facebook announced that it’ll be pulling the plug on Moments on February 25th, via CNET.Not enough people used the app, according to Facebook
Moments was an interesting

When BGF Ventures, the London-based early-stage venture fund of BGF, had a change in “strategy” in early 2018, seeing partners Harry Briggs, Rory Stirling and Wendy Tan White step down, it was always going to be interesting to see where the VC trio would land.
Earlier this week, this publication broke news that Tan White — who previously co-founded and exited SaaS website builder Moonfruit, and was also a general partner at Entrepreneur First — has joined Alphabet’s

Young people living in liberal states consume more marijuana, but have lower rates of marijuana dependence, according to a new study from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Crucially, this finding is true regardless of whether the state legalized medical marijuana, suggesting that the broader political climate affects how people use the drug. It also serves as a reminder that the effects of legalization will look different in different states.Right now, 33 states have

On this day in 1984, the computer that launched a thousand nerds was born.
SEE ALSO: How the Mac's Power Has Changed in 3 Decades
Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a happy birthday message on Twitter to the original Macintosh, which debuted 35 years ago today.35 years ago, Macintosh said hello. It changed the way we think about computers and went on to change the world. We love the Mac, and today we’re proud that more people than ever are using it to follow their passions and create the futurepic.