Author: TechBrunch
When Alex Hawkinson was CEO of SmartThings, a consumer connected device company he co-founded and sold to Samsung for about $200 million, he realized that Internet of Things (IoT) technology could potentially solve bigger problems. I kept thinking that maybe it was. He left SmartThings in 2018 to understand where connected devices can have the greatest impact. He co-founded IoT company BrightAI in 2019 with Nathan Hanks, Douglas Berman, and Robert Parker. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Hawkinson, who is now CEO, said it became clear that infrastructure was where BrightAI's focus should be. “Experiencing that downtime during the…
The US government has secured the extradition of a suspected Russian hacker who allegedly served as the primary administrator of the massive Phobos ransomware operation. Prosecutors announced Monday that Evgeny Putitsyn, 42, was recently extradited from South Korea and appeared in Maryland federal court on Nov. 4. Petitsyn is accused of managing the sale, distribution and operation of Phobos, a type of ransomware operation. Cybercriminals launch a cyberattack that extorts at least $16 million from more than 1,000 public and private victims worldwide. The newly unsealed indictment reveals that these victims include a Maryland-based company that provided accounting and consulting…
Two months after the self-driving car technology startup changed its business strategy to license its AV technology to automakers and mobility providers, Nuro has , is deploying a test fleet of driverless and passengerless R3 vehicles in the Bay Area and Houston. This large-scale demo expands on the areas Nuro is currently testing and is designed to demonstrate Nuro's technology to potential customers. This startup has two proposals. For OEMs, Nuro hopes to sell self-driving products for passenger cars and commercial vehicles. For companies offering goods delivery or ride-hailing services, Nuro's fully driverless technology (including hardware and software) is on…
Amazon announced Tuesday that Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers will be able to access one audiobook from the Audible catalog for free each month. The move is aimed at countering Spotify's growth in the audiobook space and encouraging some Amazon Music subscribers to buy Audible books and plans. The company said subscribers to its top plan in the US, UK and Canada can listen to audiobooks of their choice. Users can continue listening to their selected audiobooks through subsequent billing cycles or choose new titles. “Today, Amazon Music is introducing the audiobooks category to a whole new audience by making Audible's…
After building Google Lens to make it easier for users to shop online, Google is now helping users shop while in-store by providing product insights, price comparisons, and local availability. We are updating the product to make it possible. Alongside this news, the company is introducing new shopping features to Maps and adding more Google Pay features ahead of the holiday shopping season. The Google Lens update builds on the efforts Google already has through its Google Shopping space. The idea is that people need to make similarly informed shopping decisions in the real world, and Google Lens (Google's visual…
Enabling AI requires creating connections between vast amounts of data. That's where technologies like graph databases come in. Graph databases handle rapidly changing, interconnected data better than traditional databases designed to store strictly structured information. Of course, graph databases require management to take advantage of them. Many companies sell products for this purpose, and one of the leading vendors is Neo4j. Neo4j's roots date back to the early 2000s, when founders Emil Eifrem, Johan Svensson, and Peter Neubauer discovered problems with traditional database technology. The trio developed a prototype of Neo4j, which later became the company's graph database management software…
Microsoft plans to allow Teams users to clone their voices and speak similar to their own voices in other languages during meetings. At Microsoft Ignite 2024 on Tuesday, the company announced Interpreter in Teams, a tool for Microsoft Teams that provides “real-time voice-to-voice” interpretation capabilities. Starting in early 2025, users using Teams for meetings can use an interpreter to support up to nine languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese, and Spanish. You will be able to simulate speech in your language. “Imagine sounding just like you in another language,” Microsoft CMO Jared Spataro wrote in a blog…
If Windows in Mixed Reality sounds like your idea, rejoice! Microsoft announced Tuesday at Microsoft Ignite 2024 that it will bring “full functionality” of Windows 11 to Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S in December as part of a public preview. “Full-featured” in this context means that your Quest headset can access your local Windows PC or a cloud instance of Windows (via Windows 365). Microsoft says the connection takes just “seconds” and likens the experience to “a large, private, high-quality multi-monitor workstation.” We are the ones to judge that. Apps supported in this new Windows modality extend into 3D…
Microsoft on Tuesday announced new custom chips aimed at powering workloads on its Azure cloud and increasing security, especially new hardware accelerators that can manage data processing, networking, and storage-related tasks. Azure Boost DPU is Microsoft's first data processing unit and is designed for “high-efficiency, low-power data-centric workloads,” the company says. Microsoft expects future DPU-powered Azure servers to run storage workloads with four times the performance of existing servers and consume one-third the power. “Azure Boost DPU, designed for scale-out, composable workloads on Azure, delivers efficiencies in storage, networking, acceleration, and more for cloud infrastructure,” Microsoft said in a blog…
In the wake of CrowdStrike's devastating failure in July of this year, Microsoft vowed to do better, even as it claimed the incident was outrageous. Clearly not wanting to take any chances (or risk further damage to its reliability), the company on Tuesday revealed during Microsoft Ignite 2024 what changes it has made to Windows to prevent similar incidents. I shared what I was doing. Many of these changes will not go into effect for some time. Quick Machine Recovery, a new feature released in early 2025, will allow IT administrators to remotely fix certain software even if a Windows…