Hot Technology and Science News

Things have not been so rosy for Qualcomm over the past few months, whether you are looking at an ongoing legal dispute between the chipmaker and Apple or Broadcom’s aggressive attempts to acquire the company.

Now, Qualcomm is saying its executive chairman, Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, will no longer serve as executive chairman for the company’s board of directors. He’s going to remain a director, but with all that’s happened related to its dispute with Apple, its attempts to wave off Broadcom, and also its efforts to get through its acquisition of NXP as quickly as possible, it would make sense for at least some move for the chairman to show shareholders that they are aware of the issues and are looking to change things up.

The company said it is discontinuing the role of executive chairman, and also naming a new independent director Jeffrey Henderson who will serve as the non-executive chairman. It’s a lot of weird semantics here, but the end result is that the board is bringing on someone independent as a kind of signal to shareholders that they are ready to make some changes in light of the issues the company has dealt with and Broadcom’s tender offer to buy it.

You might recall some of this happening recently with Uber, where pending the massive investment with Softbank, the company assembled what my colleague referred to as a “Frankenboard.” As Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was on his way out and the company was trying to get fresh funding from Softbank, the board got a lot of new independent directors as it tried to establish some sense appeasement its existing shareholders.

Qualcomm delayed its annual shareholder meeting, which was set to take place Tuesday this week where investors would meet and Broadcom would be making an aggressive stand to work around the company’s existing management in order to acquire it. Throughout the weeks leading up to it, the companies have basically been duking it out of PR statements on their investor relations pages (though this is what we see on the outside), and may now see the need to find some way to appeal directly to the company’s shareholders ahead of the meeting now scheduled to take place in around a month. Qualcomm delayed the meeting pending a regulatory review by the CFIUS, but it still has been part of an ongoing saga.

source:TechCrunch

The storied 911 will not be immune from Porsche’s electrification plans and that could be a good thing. The car company’s CEO recently told Autocar that the hybrid 911 “will be the most powerful 911 we’ve ever had; 700 bhp might be possible.” Count me in (as long as someone buys it for me).

Porsche already makes 911 models above the 700 mark so it’s likely CEO Oliver Blume was referring to a non-performance version of the 911.

There was a time when anything but an air-cooled 911 was considered a disgrace. A hybrid drivetrain will likely be met with similar outcries. In the end, Porsche has to adopt measures to keep up with performance trends and meet fuel economy regulations. A hybrid system can likely do both.

Porsche has been playing with performance hybrid powertrains for several years including the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid that outputs 680 hp thanks to a 136-HP electric motor — that’s up from the 550 hp 4.0-liter V8 also available. Most notable the 2013-2015 Porsche 918 Spyder showed Porsche was able to make a gas, electric car worthy of the Porsche nameplate.

A hybrid 911 would sit alongside Porsche’s upcoming pure EV lineup that currently includes a sedan and crossover.

As far as a hybrid 911, it’s expected after the next version of the 911, which puts its release around 2020 or 2021.

source:TechCrunch

Social planning apps have yet to take the world by storm. A handful of these apps tried and failed years ago, and even Swarm decided to ditch that methodology and focus on location logging.

But a new Y Combinator-backed company seems to be picking up traction. And shockingly enough, the winning ingredient seems to be location! Location! Location!

The startup is called Playbook, and its main focus is to let you see what people around you are doing so you can join them offline. In fact, the company doesn’t want you to spend much time in the app at all. But what differentiates Playbook most is that the app is focused on college campuses.

In fact, you might see some similarities between Playbook and another social app’s runaway success. Just like Facebook, the Playbook founders (Luke Heine, Raphael Rouvinov, and Sean Sullivan) attended Harvard and Heine originally built the app (then just a simple spreadsheet) to see where his friends would be over the summer. The original premise back in 2014 was that students could travel cheaply during the summer if they knew where there friends would be and could crash on the couch a few nights.

Eventually, Heine built out a rough website and expanded the Summer Playbook service to thirteen other schools while still attending Harvard, during which time he met Rouvinov.

In 2016, Heine and Rouvinov rebuilt the site from scratch and started work on an app. Instead of focusing primarily on summer travel plans, the app focuses on what people are doing in their every day lives.

Once a user has signed up for the app, they can post their plans (or, a play) to the rest of the people on campus using the app. Plays can range from going for a run to a party to studying in the library or simply grabbing lunch.

“We saw an opportunity not around scheduling time in advance but spontaneously,” said Heine. “We reckoned that while the 5 friends we message might not be able to play basketball in 15 minutes, someone on campus we know would, if only they knew not only that I was around but also that I wanted to play basketball.”

You can share these plays with specific groups or the entire campus, or even to other schools nearby. The app is being piloted at Harvard (launched in February), and Playbook plans to launch at Princeton, Wellesley, Yale-NUS, and the University of Michigan.

Last summer, around 2400 people from 230 universities across 126 countries signed up for the desktop site, with around 1600 conversations started. Since launching the app on February 11 of this year, there are 244 users on the app with 30 percent checking back every day.

Playbook has raised a total of $120K from Y Combinator.

source:TechCrunch

What’s the biggest motivating factor behind automakers embracing autonomous vehicles and self-driving? You might think ‘safety’ or maybe even consumer demand, but in truth the biggest driver might be China and its incentivization programs for automakers.

Much like China’s rules for qualifying for subsidies and restrictions on selling vehicles in market have led to automakers around the world investing massively in building out and maturing their electric vehicle operations, Volkswagen’s head of its eMobility model line Christian Senger says that China’s forthcoming rules will spur autonomy’s introduction to the market, too.

During a journalist roundtable at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland, Senger noted that indicators suggest an upcoming intelligent vehicle rules from Chinese regulators will provide big incentives in the way of subsidies to automakers who includes specific levels of automation in their production cars. For VW in particular, that’s a huge motivator, since the automaker has 13 percent market share in China as a brand, and 20 percent if you could the Volkswagen Group at large, including sub-brands like Audi and others.

“Right now you need to have electric drive train, a minimum range, and local production and then you get subsidies,” Senger explained. “There are a lot of indicators that this will now change that also the level of automated driving is a required premise to get subsidies. So the future of our market success is also dependent on our self-driving abilities.”

Every automaker in the world right now is rushing to shape up their electric program, even if in past they’ve been a bit laggard in this regard (Toyota is a great example) and the specific cause is the relatively hard line China is taking in this area with regards to subsidies, incentives and in-market sales rules. Per Senger, we should watch very closely for the very same thing to happen with automated vehicles of all levels over the course of the next few years.

The bottom line here is interesting: Where goes China, so goes the automotive industry, at least for the foreseeable future.

source:TechCrunch

It seems like each new feature Square adds to its Cash app brings it one step closer to being a de-facto bank account for its users.

Case in point, the app just rolled out support for ACH direct deposits, meaning users can now get their paycheck or other deposits put directly into their Cash app balance.

Like other features in the peer-to-peer payments app setting up direct deposits is almost too simple. After accepting a disclosure you’re given an account number and routing number, which is all an employer needs to start making direct deposits. Users get a notification when deposits hit their account, and all funds get added to their normal Cash app balance – meaning it can be sent to a friend, spent using a debit card, used to buy bitcoin or withdrawn to another account.

This feature combined with the Cash app’s debit card now means that the app can essentially provide all the basic functions of a bank account, assuming you don’t need to deposit checks or do complex things like wire transfers.

Don’t be surprised to see younger users who are already using the Cash app just use this direct deposit feature instead of opening a traditional bank account when they start their first job. Plus, features like these could also make the app useful for people living in underbanked communities or who those just feel generally underserved (or overcharged) by traditional financial institutions.

Since Square doesn’t (yet) have a bank charter, they’ve had to get creative by partnering with banks to build features like their debit card and direct deposits. While their debit card is issued by Sutton Bank it seems like the direct deposit feature is being powered by Lincoln Savings Bank, which is giving Cash app users a routing number and a new account number to use for deposits. Partnerships like these between FinTech companies and FDIC-insured banks are common, considering how difficult it is for a technology company to get its own bank charter.

source:TechCrunch

Someone at Oculus screwed up pretty badly today: An expired certificate appears to have soft-bricked all of the company’s Rift VR headsets, with users still unable to fire up software on the devices and no word of an incoming fix from the company yet.

Issues were first reported several hours ago on Reddit, where a post on the topic has already garnered hundreds of comments. The problem seems to have resulted from Oculus failing to update an expired certificate with the update, which is now leaving users with an error message saying that the system “Can’t reach Oculus Runtime Service.”

Update: The company has confirmed that the problem is a result of “an issue with our software certification…”

Users are not happy.

Comment from discussion Can't reach Oculus Runtime Service.

The embarrassing issue has left the company’s flagship device unusable. This comes as the company continues to deliver major software updates that it announced at its most recent developer conference. This issue is a bummer to gamers who aren’t going to get to play the titles they’ve purchased until the issue is resolved — but it’s a much less forgivable issue for commercial users who use the headset.

Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell confirmed on Twitter that there was an issue affecting the company’s Rift headset.

We're aware of an issue affecting Rift on PC, and we're working on resolving now. Stay tuned.

— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) 7 Mart 2018

We’ve reached out to Oculus for more details.

Some users are reporting that they’ve been able to get things back up-and-running by messing with their system clock, but this is generally a bad solution and can often screw up a lot of things, so it’s probably best to wait for a patch from Oculus.

An Oculus staffer on the company’s forums further confirmed the issues, apologizing on behalf of the company. “Our teams apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing you and appreciate your patience while we work on a resolution. We’ll share more updates here as we have them. Thanks.”

source:TechCrunch