Robots Company Anki Shuts Down

Robotics company Anki announced that it’s shutting down, and close to 200 employees would be paid a week of severance. The company said it was left without “significant funding” to support its goals.

“Despite our past successes, we pursued every financial avenue to fund our future product development and expand on our platforms,” a company spokesperson said. “A significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement. We’re doing our best to take care of every single employee and their families, and our management team continues to explore all options available.”

Sad to see. I remember first seeing Anki announced at Apple’s keynote back in 2013.

Apple Gets Low Marks on Trust From Survey Respondents

A new survey makes grim reading for tech giants. It found that users gave a number of firms, including Apple, low marks when asked whether they trust them.  Interestingly, Amazon came out on top, Cult of Mac reported. It looks like Tim Cook’s privacy message is not quite getting through yet.

All seven of the tech giants mentioned in a YouGov survey received jarringly negative results from an undisclosed number of respondents from the U.S. and United Kingdom. The survey, sponsored by Tresorit, which offers encrypted file sharing, shows Amazon as most trusted, but with just 28 percent. Microsoft was second with 24 percent, Apple was third with 22 percent, Facebook and Google each had 13 percent, while Dropbox and Instagram were at the bottom with single digits.

Mozilla Says Cities Can Help Save The Open Internet

International bodies like the EU have made some effort to protect the open internet recently. However, it is also happening at a more local level too. The Mozilla Foundation told Fast Company about the important action being taken by cities.

“Cities are a place to shape what we want from the internet, which might be faster and more powerful than what national governments can do,” says Mark Surman, the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. He points to an example from 2015, when the New York City Department of Education was able to require Amazon to make its e-books accessible to blind people, even though the company had been ignoring the same request from the National Federation for the Blind for years. How? By making it a stipulation of the city’s $30 million contract to create an e-book store for teachers in 1,800 schools.

Silicon Valley Lobbyists Want to Limit California Consumer Privacy Act

Silicon Valley lobbying groups are trying to gut the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

The California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, gives residents of California the ability to request the data that businesses collect on them, demand that it be deleted, and opt out of having that data sold to third parties, among other things. But last week, the California Assembly’s Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection advanced a series of bills that would either amend CCPA or carve out exemptions for certain categories of businesses.

I have a couple of opinions here. I think groups affected by a certain bill or law should have the right to voice their opinion. On the other hand I feel uneasy by corporate lobbying focused on donating or influencing political campaigns where there is a conflict of interest.

Toyota Retrofits Older Vehicles for Apple CarPlay

Owners of Toyota’s Camry and Sienna vehicles will be able to add Apple CarPlay and Amazon Alexa as part of a retrofit.

Toyota says it will be notifying Camry and Sienna owners and «encouraging them to contact their dealer» about the retrofit; the installation will be done at dealerships. We reached out to Toyota to ask if the retrofit costs anything, and a spokesperson for the brand said there «may be a small service charge» and that dealers will be able to provide more information. Toyota doesn’t say how long it will actually take to complete the installation.

This Algorithm Could Erase Your Criminal Records

This month, a California judge erased thousands of criminals records with the help of an algorithm. The creators of it say they’re just getting started.

It discards any record involving a violent crime, as such records do not qualify. For those that remain, the tool automatically fills out the necessary paperwork. In other words, the algorithm replaced the process being done manually at the expungement clinics.

Working with San Francisco’s raw data, Code For America was able to identify 8,132 eligible criminal records in a matter of minutes – in addition to the 1,230 found manually already. They dated as far back as 1975, the year in which the city started digitising its files.

Tony Fadell - iPhone Co-Creator Discusses His Adventures in Asia

Tony Fadell, the co-creator of the iPhone, left Apple in 2010. Since then he has founded smart-home company Nest, and been on adventures around the world. He spoke to Bloomberg News about his current time in Asia, studying startups.

Fadell discovered his wanderlust as a young employee of Apple spinoff General Magic in the early 1990s, when business trips to Sony’s Tokyo headquarters took him outside North America for the first time. “I was like, ‘Whoa!” he recalls. A few years later, he spent 16 weeks backpacking across Latin America, then traveled the Middle East in similar fashion. “If you are a designer or entrepreneur, you have to see different ways of living,” he says. “It’s the sights, sounds and smells that inspire you.”

The Complete RapidWeaver 8 Bundle: $49.99

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Amazon is Launching Hi-Fidelity Music Service

Amazon is set to launch a hi-fidelity music service to challenge TIDAL. It will cost $15 per month for this “better than CD quality” audio, Techcrunch reported.

The company’s investment in music not only allows for new revenue streams through advertising and subscriptions, it also provides a direct connection to Amazon’s smart speakers: its Echo line of devices. For consumers pinching pennies, the ad-supported service streaming over an Echo Dot may be good enough. But those who bought, say, a stereo pair of Echo Plus devices and an Echo Sub, may want a better-quality music subscription, too.