Faraday Future cancels plans to build an assembly factory in California

 Faraday Future, the would-be Tesla rival facing well-documented challenges in terms of capitalization and efforts to bring its first production vehicle to market, has scrapped plans to construct an assembly facility and “experience center” (read: showroom) in Vallejo, California on Mare Island. The car maker had already secured a negotiating agreement with the Vallejo city… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

A win for Apple in Beijing as court overturns iPhone patent ruling

 Apple has bigger fish frying in the world of intellectual property. But it must be a relief that an IP court in Beijing has handed the smartphone pioneers a win. On Friday, the courts overturned a May 2016 ruling that said Apple had violated design patents of a small, and now defunct, Chinese company called Shenzhen Baili. The disputes were over the exterior design of the iPhone 6 and 6… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Sex and Gor and open source

 A few weeks ago, Dries Buytaert, founder of the popular open-source CMS Drupal, asked Larry Garfield, a prominent Drupal contributor and long-time member of the Drupal community, “to leave the Drupal project.” Why did he do this? He refuses to say. A huge furor has erupted in response — not least because the reason clearly has much to do with Garfield’s unconventional… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Lyft to let passengers round up their fare and donate the difference to charity

 Lyft is looking at one of its biggest potential opportunities to make up some ground on its rival Uber, given the latter company’s ongoing and worsening PR crisis. So it makes sense that Lyft would go even further in the opposite direction, with a new program that lets riders top off their fare to the nearest dollar, and donate the difference to one of a group of selected charities. The… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Eligible founder Katelyn Gleason’s plan to upend the billion dollar medical billing industry

 Medical billing is a largely untapped and lucrative industry, potentially pulling in $55 billion globally by 2020. But it’s inner workings are still very murky — most of the time it’s not clear how much something will cost and sometimes you don’t even get the (possibly whopping) bill until months down the road. Founder Katelyn Gleason wants to make it easier to know… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Everything we think we know about the Samsung Galaxy S8

 Next week in New York, Samsung will finally reveal the Galaxy S8. The handset has a lot riding on it — not simply because it’s a brand-defining flagship or because it’s seemingly been pushed back at least once. Next week’s Unpacked event will have even wider ranging implications for Samsung as its first major phone announcement since last year’s Galaxy Note debacle. Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Japanese authorities decry ongoing robot failures at Fukushima

 Six years ago, a massive earthquake, consequent tsunami and nuclear crisis struck Japan. International organizations rushed to help the country’s devastated residents, and to figure out how to clean up Fukushima Daiichi, the wrecked nuclear power plant. Robots offered a ray of hope amid unfathomable loss. At least they did, until recently. As the Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday, members… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Matroid can watch videos and detect anything within them

 If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth that times the frame rate. Matroid, a computer vision startup launching out of stealth today, enables anyone to take advantage of the information inherently embedded in video. You can build your own detector within the company’s intuitive, non-technical, web platform to detect people and most other objects. Reza Zadeh, founder… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch