Tech News Today for July 24, 2017
Tech News for Monday July 24, 2017
Alphabet may have been issued a $2.7 billion fine last month by European Union regulators for antitrust violations, but that didn’t stop the company from reporting over $26 billion in revenue for the first three months of the year, up 21% year over year. Even with that fine, Alphabet’s operating income still hit $4.1 billion for the quarter. Alphabet also announced that Google CEO Sundar Pichai will join the company’s board of directors, proof that Pichai has done well for the company in his two years at the lead of Google. Read more at abc.xyz.
1985. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the year Microsoft first licensed a version of ZSoft’s PC Paintbrush in Windows 1.0. The program we now know as Microsoft Paint. Paul Thurott says the company plans to put an end to the venerable bad art program with Windows 10 Creators Edition, which comes out this fall. Read more at thurrott.com
And you thought the Roomba would just be your robot vacuum. It turns out, the Roomba could someday soon be an integral part of making your smart home even smarter. As of 2015, iRobot released a version of the robovacuum that had a camera and sensors for mapping the home to keep it on track as it cleans. Now, Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot Corp, says it could someday sell those home maps to “the Big Three”, enabling devices by those companies to work better within the home thanks to those always-updating maps of the home within which they operate. Read more at reuters.com
Forget Elon Musk's Boring tube, Bloomberg reports that NASA wants to speed up your travel time with a new supersonic jet design. And they want to do it quietly too and without breaking any windows or maddening any farm animals on the ground. Supersonic jet travel has been banned over US soil since 1973 due to sonic booms. NASA says they have the technology to reduce a sonic boom to the sound a mercedes makes when its on the highway in a plane that could get you from LA to New York in 3 hrs. Read more at bloomberg.com
Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Rene Ritchie of iMore to talk about Pokémon Go Fest that took place in Chicago over the weekend. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. Subscribe to the show and get it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.