Tech News Today for October 18, 2016
Tech News for Tuesday October 18, 2016
According to the Intercept, 50 civil liberties and human rights groups have sent a letter to the Department of Justice demanding an investigation into the widespread use of facial recognition technology by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. This comes in response to the new report by the Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology claiming that half of US adults are in the face-recognition database, one quarter of the nation's law enforcement agencies have access to to these databases, and their use is by and large unregulated. Read more at theincercept.com.
Yahoo reported its earnings and really, that’s about it. In other words, there was no conference call for investors after the report, which makes sense if what you want as a company is to not have to answer hard questions about the hacking of 500 million+ accounts, when CEO Marissa Mayer knew about the breach, or negative affects it might have on the pending buyout by Verizon. None of this was on the table, but Yahoo did report that it beat expectations of 14 cents per share with reported earnings of 20 cents per share. Not bad for a company with a huge black cloud drifting overhead. Read more at recode.net.
Intel also reported earnings today. Quarterly revenue of $15.8 billion, up 9 percent year over year with an operating profit of 4.5 billion dollars. Revenue was up from data center chips and the Internet of Things group. The company still faces challenges that might be alleviated, but have not been solved by the roughly 12,000 jobs the company eliminated earlier this year. Read more at wsj.com.
So what exactly happens when someone shows up to the airport with a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in hand? They are legally prohibited to take them on the plane, so one can envision the TSA forcing flyers to toss them in the trash along with that bottle of water. Samsung is reportedly setting up customer service desks inside high-traffic terminals, prior to security screening where they can choose to swap those devices out for another device, complete with assistance in data transfer between phones. Read more at theverge.com.
If you ordered a Tesla Model 3 back in the spring, you only have a little over a year to wait for yours. But if you just decided to order it now, you'll be waiting until mid 2018 for the mass market version of the luxury electric car. Eagle-eyed followers of Tesla noticed a change on the company's website stating that production would begin in late 2017, when it previously said delivery would begin in late 2017. Telsa says the update does not signal a change in plans and that its only an update to reflect the timeline for new and future orders. But speaking of moving timelines, Elon Musk tweeted that he'd have a big announcement yesterday, which he now says will come tomorrow. Read more at cnet.com.
Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Miguel Helft, San Francisco Bureau Chief at Forbes, to discuss Prelude Fertility, a startup to allow parents to wait to have children without the risks of infertility that comes with age. Tech News Today streams live at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. Subscribe to the show and download it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.
