Author: pekandesigns

Today marks the start of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s much-anticipated trip to Washington as he attends a hearing with the Senate, before moving on to a Congressional hearing tomorrow. Away from the U.S. political capital, Zuckerberg is engaged in serious discussions about Myanmar with a group of six civil society organizations in the country who […]

Cambridge, U.K.-based startup Spectral Edge has closed a $5.3M Series A funding round from existing investors Parkwalk Advisors and IQ Capital. The team, which in 2014 spun the business out of academic research at the University of East Anglia, has developed a mathematical technique for improving photographic imagery in real-time, also using machine learning technology.  As we’ve reported […]

In turns out, SpaceX was indeed not responsible for the loss of a top-secret government satellite that fell back to earth and was destroyed following a Falcon 9 rocket launch earlier this year, a report in The Wall Street Journal today states. The Zuma satellite’s purpose was highly classified, but the fate of the project, […]

The most interesting part of Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared testimony for congress that was released today shows that Facebook has been fighting Russian election interferences since before the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Facebook shut down accounts related to Russian GRU military intelligence-linked group APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, which had created an organization called DCLeaks […]

Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress on Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has released the Facebook CEO’s prepared statement. In it, Zuckerberg explains that Facebook has always been an optimistic organization, focusing on connecting people and giving them a voice. But Zuckerberg also admits that the idealist train of thought might have […]

Last week, Facebook revealed that 87 million or so users potentially had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica — and you’ve no doubt been wondering if yours is among them. Today the site will share that information with users. The disclosure arrives by way of a new “protecting your information” link set to appear […]

UK startup Juro, which is applying a “design centric approach” and machine learning tech to help businesses speed up the authoring and management of sales contracts, has closed $2m in seed funding led by Point Nine Capital. Prior investor Seedcamp also contributed to the round. Juro is announcing Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise’s co-founder) as an investor […]

Global app downloads and consumer spending in apps had yet another record quarter, according to a new report from App Annie, out on Monday. In the first quarter of 2018, iOS and Google Play downloads grew more than 10 percent year-over-year to reach 27.5 billion – the highest figure to date. In addition, consumer spending […]

Only a few weeks after launching a major overhaul of its Cloud Text-to-Speech API, Google today also announced an update to that service’s Speech-to-Text voice recognition service. The new and improved Cloud Speech-to-Text API promises significantly improved voice recognition performance. The new API promises a reduction in word errors around 54 percent across all of […]

Scribd is setting its sights on bigger, newer titles. E-book and audiobook versions of The Fates Divide, the second volume in Veronica Roth’s Carve the Mark series, will go live on Scribd tomorrow. It’s not an exclusive deal — you’ll be able to buy The Fates Divide in bookstores and from online retailers — but […]