Tech News Today for October 17, 2016
Tech News for Monday October 17, 2016
Tesla’s autopilot function has seen its fair share of scrutiny, and the German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt has asked Tesla to change the name of the feature to help with the consumer understanding of it. His ministry called the term "Autopilot" misleading when the feature is merely a driver assistance system and not a fully automated control of the vehicle that could imply that drivers can reduce their own awareness during use. Tesla justified the term in response, stating that aerospace has used the term for decades, and that the company made it clear from the start that drivers should always pay attention while using the feature. Read more at reuters.com.
Ina Fried at ReCode says Apple has hired AI expert Russ Salakhutdinov, whose work focuses on neural networks, voice, and image recognition. The new hire tweeted that he would be joining Apple as a director of AI research, but he would continute his job as a professor of deep learning at Carnegie Melon University. Read more at recode.net.
Samsung isn’t just a phone company with battery issues, it’s also a chip company, and they just announced the new Exynos 7 Dual 7270 chip for wearable devices. For starters, it’s the first 14-nanometer wearable processor, up from 28 nanometers before it, making for a much smaller scale. Not only does the chip manage WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, it’s also packing support for LTE paving the way for smaller footprint… or wristprint for smartwatches that can connect to mobile networks without the need for an entirely seperate LTE chip taking up valuable space inside. Read more at engadget.com.
Netflix reported third quarter earnings today. With 86.74 million current subscribers, the company added 3.57 million global customers in the last quarter and expects to add more than 5 million new accounts over the next three months. The stock is up more than 20% in extended trading in reponse to today's earnings report. Read more at venturebeat.com.
Just in time for those making holiday travel arrangements, Google has improved Google Flights to let users know when a given price is expected to expire and go up so users can snap up good deals before its too late. Users will also get a countdown to the next price fluctuation as well as the price that it's expected to jump to. Google is also recommending alternate routes and dates when a user punches in a destination in an attempt to save the most money, based on historical data. Read more at techcrunch.com.
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