German startup Lilium has unveiled a new “flying taxi” that can vertically take off and be the basis for an on-demand air service within six years. The Guardian reports: The electric jet-powered five-seater aircraft is designed to travel up to 300km, a journey that would take it an hour at top speed. While a smaller version of its novel plane flew…
Tag: service
Alphabet’s Wing Drone Deliveries Are Coming To Finland
Google’s autonomous drone delivery service is spreading its wings. After starting deliveries last month in Australia’s capital city, Canberra, Project Wing is now moving into Finland’s capital, Helsinki. TechCrunch reports: Drone deliveries will start next month — which may just make the “spring” time frame it announced late last year. Like the Australian deliveries, this is considered a “pilot” program, with…
Net Neutrality Supporter Sentenced For Death Threats To FCC Chairman Pai
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A California man was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Friday after pleading guilty for threatening to kill the family of U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai over the regulator’s successful effort to repeal net neutrality rules. The Justice Department said Markara Man, 33, of Norwalk, California, sent the email threats…
A Large Chunk of Ethereum Clients Remain Unpatched
The Ethereum ecosystem is no different than the Windows or IoT landscape, where security flaws remain unpatched for long periods of time, despite the availability of public patches. From a report: In a report shared with ZDNet today, security researchers from SRLabs revealed that a large chunk of the Ethereum client software that runs on Ethereum nodes has yet to receive…
Microsoft Launches Decentralized Identity Tool on Bitcoin Blockchain
Microsoft is launching the first decentralized infrastructure implementation by a major tech company that is built directly on the bitcoin blockchain. From a report: The open source project, called Ion, deals with the underlying mechanics of how networks talk to each other. For example, if you log onto Airbnb using Facebook, a protocol deals with the software that sends the personal…
US Telecom Operators Say They’ve (Mostly) Stopped Selling Your Location Data To Shady Middlemen
In a collection of letters published by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on Thursday, representatives of T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon all said they had ceased or significantly curtailed the sale of their customers’ location data to companies whose shady practices brought to light triggered alarms among privacy advocates and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. From a report: The companies were responding to…
Teach the World: Listening to the Learner
By Rupal Nayar On April 3rd, 2019, Thomas Friedman kicked off the 2019 Coursera Partners Conference quoting Dov Siedman: “When you press pause on a machine, it stops. But when you press pause on human beings they start — start to reflect, rethink assumptions, and reimagine a better path.” For the dynamic world of online […]
The post Teach the World: Listening…
Some of China’s ‘996’ Tech Tribe Quit, Seek Less Stress
An increasingly growing number of millennials in China are beginning to question the value of working long hours in the tech sector and deviate from the longstanding 996 work environment (working 9am to 9pm for six days a week) that many local companies religiously follow. From a report: In April, protests from tech employees against excessive overtime surfaced online, sparking an…
Ralph Nader: Engineers Often the First To Notice Waste, Fraud and Safety Issues
McGruber writes: In Scientific American, Ralph Nader writes about the decades of struggles by conscientious engineers — whether employees or consultants — who strive to balance professional ethics with occupational survival. Nader writes: “[T]oday’s engineers are working in an improved environment for taking their conscience to work. Yet much more remains to be done to safeguard the ability of engineers to…
Class-Action Lawsuit Says TurboTax Tricked Taxpayers Into Paying For ‘Free’ Tax Prep
Less than a week after ProPublica found that TurboTax lied to taxpayers about its free filing program, “a new class action lawsuit against TurboTax maker Intuit claims the tax service breached its agreement with the Internal Revenue Service by intentionally obscuring its free filing service and charging qualifying taxpayers anyway,” reports Gizmodo. From the report: The complaint was filed Sunday in…