Month: May 2020

Brex,  last valued at $2.6 billion, is restructuring its credit card for startups business and cut 62 staff members, the co-founders Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras said in a blog post. “Today we’re restructuring the company to better align our priorities with this new reality, while simultaneously accelerating our product vision. With that, I have some very … Continue reading Brex, the credit card for startups, cuts staff amid restructuring Continue Reading →

The U.S. has suffered from devastating wildfires over the last few years as global temperatures rise and weather patterns change, making the otherwise natural phenomenon especially unpredictable and severe. To help out, Stanford researchers have found a way to track and predict dry, at-risk areas using machine learning and satellite imagery. Currently the way forests … Continue reading As wildfire season approaches, AI could pinpoint risky regions using satellite imagery Continue Reading →

When Toyota unveiled the 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime in November, the vehicle garnered a lot of attention because it achieved two seemingly conflicting goals. It was Toyota’s most fuel efficient and one of its most powerful vehicles. Now, it’s getting praise for managing a base price under $40,000. Toyota said Friday that the standard trim of … Continue reading Toyota’s first plug-in hybrid RAV4 Prime priced a skosh under $40,000 Continue Reading →

Acorns, which helps millions of people invest their spare change in the stock market, has laid off between 50 to 70 people, TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources. The Irvine, Calif.-based company would not confirm the total number of people laid off, but did confirm that there were cuts at the company as a result … Continue reading Amid unprecedented growth on its platform, Acorns cuts roles and shuts down an office Continue Reading →

A Predator B drone from near-by Airforce bases makes six passes over protestors. Thousands of people took to the streets of Minneapolis on Friday to protest the death of George Floyd, a local black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest. All the while, a Customs and … Continue reading Border Patrol flies anti-terrorism drone over Minneapolis protestors Continue Reading →

Including wood and biofuels across all sectors, coal fell short last year. Two weeks ago, we covered a US Energy Information Administration (EIA) projection that renewable wind, solar, and hydroelectric power would top coal for total electricity generation in 2020. That was particularly believable given that renewables had beat coal in daily generation every day going back … Continue reading 135-year-long streak is over: US renewable sources topped coal in 2019 Continue Reading →

“China has total control over the World Health Organization,” Trump claims. President Trump today said the US government is “terminating our relationship” with the World Health Organization, alleging that the global health group has not implemented needed reforms and that it is controlled entirely by China. “China has total control over the World Health Organization … Continue reading US “terminating relationship” with World Health Organization, Trump says Continue Reading →

WD clearly underestimated the consumer outrage they’d face over SMR disks. All three of the surviving conventional hard drive vendors—Toshiba, Western Digital, and Seagate—have gotten caught sneaking disks featuring Shingled Magnetic Recording technology into unexpected places recently. But Western Digital has been the most brazen of the three, and it’s been singled out for a class action lawsuit in … Continue reading Western Digital gets sued for sneaking SMR disks into its NAS channel Continue Reading →

Experts say better public health infrastructure, more testing would have helped. The botched rollout of COVID-19 testing did not cripple the country’s early response to the pandemic, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claimed Friday. CDC Director Robert Redfield cited a new analysis published by the agency Friday. The analysis suggests … Continue reading CDC says its testing fail didn’t hurt US response. Experts disagree Continue Reading →

Mutual-aid groups are distributing groceries and spare air conditioners via tools designed to turn labor into money as efficiently as possible. The workplace chat app Slack is where you go to do any number of things throughout the day: announce “I am busy”; pop into a conversation to clarify “I am paying attention”; submit a … Continue reading Pandemic Organizers Are Co-opting Productivity Software Continue Reading →