Tech News Today for August 9, 2017
Tech News for Wednesday August 9, 2017
If you’ve been wondering where the heck that Essential smartphone that was announced by Andy Rubin a few months ago went, well, continue to wonder… but the company just announced that Amazon’s Alexa Fund and Tencent have invested a cool $300 million into the company. As could be expected, the phone will be sold on Amazon when it finally gets its release. It was unveiled on May 30 with Rubin later noting that it should hit the market in 30 days, but that never happened. Read more at wsj.com.
Intel finalized its acquisition of Mobileye, and now plans to prepare a 100-vehicle fleet of test vehicles capable of nearly full-autonomy. Vehicles of all different brands and types will be utilized to show off how the tech can be supplied to all sorts of partners. Not only that, it will allow Intel to validate the safety of the systems. Read more at theverge.com.
Facebook says that it's cracking down on cloaking, a practice that effectively enables an ad or post to represent itself as one thing to Facebook’s reviews process, while servicing up another thing to those who click through. So a post that appears to be about flower deliveries in the news feed then becomes an ad for diet pills when clicked through. And now, you guessed it, Facebook is assigning some swift artificial intelligence along with additional human attention to the problem to hopefully improve the experience for its users. Read more at techcrunch.com.
If the Echo Dot is still a bit too spendy for your blood, Anker is showing off the new Eufy Genie smart speaker, armed with Amazon’s voice assistant engine and priced at only $35. The small-ish black flat-orb device has a few far-field mics on board listening for the wake word to get to work. Also on board is a 2W speaker that Anker says is “better sound”, but fails to provide the comparison point so we can only assume it's better sound than absolutely no sound. Maybe better than the Echo Dot. We’ll never know. But even if its not, it has an external speaker port on the backside. Read more at cnet.com.
Acer announced a new Chromebook for those of you who worry about durability. The Acer Chromebook 11 C771 can withstand up to 132 pounds of downward force. In other words, it could possibly survive the tree trunk chuck test, though don’t quote us on that. It meets military standards for drop, dust, and water resistance, so it's perfect for the student returning to school. And under the hood, it has an 11.6” IPS display, Intel’s 1.6GHz Celeron chip, and you'll soon be able to pick one up with Core i3 or i5, beginning in September. Read more at engadget.com..
Fallout is getting the table top game treatment. Wasteland Warfare will encompass scenarios from Fallout 3 and 4. Maps will be assembled at random with hex-shaped cards, with an open, RPG style progression. Cards and tokens define your character, inventory management, skill improvements and the ability to group up or go it alone in the desolate wasteland. Fallout: Wasteland Warfare should hit by the end of the year. Read more at mashable.com.
Tech News Today with Megan Morrone and Jason Howell streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and get it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.