Author: pekandesigns

 The slings and arrows of outrage keep flying at Facebook. Today a coalition of child health advocates has published an open letter addressing CEO Mark Zuckerberg and calling for the company to shutter Messenger Kids: Aka the Snapchat-ish comms app it launched in the US last December — targeted at the under 13s. Read More Source: […]

 Hyperledger, the open source blockchain project from the Linux Foundation, released Hyperledger Sawtooth 1.0, its latest open source digital ledger project. Sawtooth joins its sister project, Hyperledger Fabric which reached 1.0 in July last year. Among the features in this latest open source distributed ledger product is on-chain governance, which lets members adjust the rules […]

 Montreal-based travel booking platform Busbud has closed an $11M Series B round led by iNovia Capital. New investors backing the company include Teralys, Claridge and Plaza Ventures. Existing investor Real Ventures also participated in the round. Read More Source: New feed

 Ken Chenault, the outgoing CEO of American Express, is quickly building a platform in the startup world. Chenault announced plans to leave his position as the head of Amex last October, ending a 17-year run, and this month he’s bagged a trio of top positions within the tech/startup world. Facebook appointed him to its board […]

 Uber has partnered with Polaris, which aims to fight human trafficking at the global level, to empower its drivers to combat this form of modern-day slavery. Worldwide, there are an estimated 20.9 million victims of human trafficking, according to the International Labour Organization. The partnership will help educate Uber drivers about some signs of human trafficking […]

 Zelle, U.S. banks’ answer to mobile payment services like PayPal and Venmo, claims that nearly 100,000 consumers, on average, are signing up for its service per day. The company also painted a picture of growing traction, noting it processed over 247 million payments in 2017, an increase of over 45 percent year-over-year, totalling $75 billion […]

 Brooklyn-based startup LittleBits has worked hard to shake the “tech toy” label. While the company’s done a good job getting its kid-friendly engineering kits into the hands of schools, a new partnership with Pearson will certainly add an extra bit of legitimacy to the company’s methods. The education publishing giant announced this week that it’s… Read […]

 Nvidia and GE subsidiary Baker Hughes want to bring the power of artificial intelligence to bear on the oil and gas industry – and do so throughout the space, covering everything from locating new oil sources, bringing it up to the surface, refining it for use and even delivering it to the end customer. Baker […]

 According to a Bloomberg article, Apple could be working on three new Mac models for this year. All three of them could feature an ARM coprocessor to improve security. Apple isn’t switching to ARM chipsets altogether. There will still be an Intel CPU in every Mac, but with a second ARM processor. Currently, the MacBook […]

 Hats… and now flamethrowers. Elon Musk’s Boring Company has so far been more of a ‘lifestyle’ brand (and a weird one at that) than a company that, you know, digs massive tunnels through the earth as a going concern. But it’s making bank. The hats, which retailed for $20, were capped at 50,000, thus netting […]