Latest Technology News & Updates

The takeout shakeout continues apace. Since going public in 2014, Rocket Internet has been trying to simplify and reorganize the tangle of e-commerce startups funded and grown by the Berlin-based incubator to make the main business more profitable. Today comes the latest move on that front. Rocket Internet is selling food takeaway operations in Spain, Italy, Brazil and Mexico to Just Eat for €125 million ($140 million) — with the admission that they are all “non-core operations that are not market-leading”, in the words of Rocket. The operations in Brazil and Mexico accounted for less than 5% of foodpanda’s revenues in 2015, Rocket noted. Just Eat, based in London, competes with the likes of Delivery Hero and others in online food ordering and delivery services. It went public in 2014 at a $2.4 billion valuation and has been steadily growing, currently valued at $3.7 billion. Rocket Internet is valued at $4 billion. Its losses have been widening and the stock has been trading at...

Indian officials say a meteorite struck the campus of a private engineering college on Saturday, killing one person. If scientists confirm the explosion was due to a meteorite, it would be the first recorded human fatality due to a falling space rock. According to local reports, a bus driver was killed on Saturday when a meteorite landed in the area where he was walking, damaging the window panes of nearby buses and buildings. Three other people were injured. On Sunday, various Indian publications, including The Hindu, reported that the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa, issued a statement confirming the death: "A mishap occurred yesterday when a meteorite fell in the campus of a private engineering college in Vellore district's K Pantharappalli village." Tamil Nadu is located in southern India, and has a population of more than 70 million people. There have been no confirmed human deaths due to meteorite strikes, although there have been a number of int...

Oh my god. Uber has finally done it. They’ve made my dreams come true. Uber wants you to "paws whatever you're doing," because in honor of this week’s Puppy Bowl, the company is teaming up with Animal Planet, the SF SPCA, Peninsula Humane Society, and Berkeley Humane Society to deliver on-demand puppies to your house to hang out with you for a bit. The puppy packs will be available this Wednesday, February 3 from 11am-2pm for $30 in an understandably limited supply. The “PUPPY” option will be available in the Uber app for users in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, New York, Denver, and Washington DC. The puppies are sure to have a fun time too as the promotion is being supported by some pretty respectable animal organizations that will have helpers there to be sure everyone’s being treated well.  A post on Uber’s blog specified that if you’re selected a “puppy squad and their coaches will come by for a cuddle huddle.” The promotion is part of Uber’s lar...

Apple has been ordered to pay $625 million to notorious patent troll VirnetX after a U.S. court judged that the iPhone-maker had infringed on patents used in its iMessage and FaceTime services. VirnetX, which is commonly referred to as a troll because it makes almost of its revenue from patent licensing and lawsuits, has sued a number of tech companies over the past decade. It settled a 2014 dispute with Microsoft over patents used in Skype, pocketing $24 million in the process, and made $200 million from the Redmond-based company via a 2010 case. “The jury saw what we have been saying all along: Apple has been infringing VirnetX’s patented technology for years,” the legal firm that represents VirnetX said in a statement. Apple said it would appeal the decision. The company argued that the patents in question are not valid. “We are surprised and disappointed by the verdict and we’re going to appeal. Our employees independently designed this technology over many years, and we...

Now Facebook has its own holiday it calls “Friends Day”. On February 4th, the social network turns 12 years old. But in typical self-less Zuckerberg fashion, Mark said “rather than having this birthday that focuses on us, we should make sure that the world focuses on what’s important”. Namely, its users. So today Facebook is sending everyone a Friends Day video card featuring photos them and their friends. Similar to its year in review videos, you can edit the clip if you want to nix anything awkward and then share it. There’s some Friends Day stickers too. Facebook’s also reminding people how close it makes everyone in the world. It’s doubled in size from 750 million to over 1.59 billion users since 2011, but its network has actually grown denser. That means the average two users are just 3.57 degrees of separation away from each other now, if you were playing that Kevin Bacon game, down from 3.74 degrees away in 2011. That might sound like a silly stat but it’s pretty remark...

Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired SwiftKey — a startup based out of London that makes keyboard apps for Android and iOS devices and is already installed and used on some 300 million devices. The terms of the deal are not being disclosed but sources close to the deal tell us it’s $250 million in cash after Microsoft beat out other interested buyers, which we’ve heard also included Apple. The deal will see Microsoft make further inroads into mobile productivity services — an area where it’s already made other acquisitions to gain ground, such as Wunderlist and Acompli. But from what we understand, SwiftKey may also become part of another Microsoft ambition. Microsoft wants to grow use of its Cortana digital assistant on Android, and by integrating Cortana into SwiftKey, some believe that it could be the gateway ramping up Cortana use without having to install a standalone app. (Cortana, incidentally, is being integrated elsewhere, too.) The news of the upcoming sale ...

Today the Orion capsule, NASA’s spacecraft designed to bring humans to Mars, starts its next phase of development at Kennedy Space Center. The remarkable part is that just this morning, that large spacecraft was at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. In order to carry Orion from New Orleans to Cape Canaveral, NASA recruited their Super Guppy aircraft. The Super Guppy has a cargo area that is 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long. The jumbo plane can carry over 26 tons worth of cargo and is often used by NASA to ferry large components around the country that would take too long (or be impossible) to ship by land or by sea. The Super Guppy’s history dates back to the Apollo program. It was used in the 1960’s to carry parts of the Saturn V rocket from California to Florida. The other option NASA had was to ship rocket stages through the Panama Canal, which would often take weeks or months longer.

In case you needed another reason to buy Amazon’s Internet-connected speaker, the Amazon Echo: the device can now order pizza for you, following your verbal command. Have all my dreams come true? Yes. Yes, they have. The feature is actually being made available by way of a third-party application from delivery chain Domino’s, which has been experimenting with new digital ordering systems over the past year, including the option to order pizzas by tweeting an emoji. Domino’s is now the first company in the pizza and quick-serve restaurant industry to support ordering by way of Amazon Echo’s virtual assistant, Alexa. Similar to its other efforts, the process of ordering via Echo will first require that Domino’s customers set up a “Pizza Profile.” This is a personal profile where you enter in your name, address, and payment information, as well as your “Easy Order” preference – that is, your favorite Domino’s order – like a large pepperoni, for example. The Pizza Profile is what’...