From left: Tribute CEO Sarah Haggard, Humanly CEO Prem Kumar, and Radious CEO Amina Moreau. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) GeekWire’s Elevator Pitch is back. Presented by WestRiver Group, this fun startup competition pits a dozen entrepreneurs against one another as they present their early-stage startups in the 32 seconds it takes to get to the top of Seattle’s historic Smith Tower. In the first episode of our third season, we hear from three founders who are building cutting-edg ...read more

from the putting-the-'d'-in-DLC dept You may recall that a few weeks back we discussed Ubisoft’s decision to shutdown game servers for several titles, including major AAA titles like Assassin’s Creed 3 and Far Cry 3. While server shutdowns are the norm after some period of time, as is the loss of certain online gaming features, notable in Ubisoft’s announcement was that anyone who bought the PC DLC for those games was simply going to lose all that bought DLC. Making matters worse, updat ...read more

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.CLAWAR 2022: 12–14 September 2022, AZORES, PORTUGALIROS 2022: 23–27 October 2022, KYOTO, JAPANANA Avatar XPRIZE Finals: 4–5 November 2022, LOS ANGELESCoRL 2022: 14–18 December 2022, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALANDEnjoy today's videos! There's really nothing ...read more

A red-headed woman stands on the moon, her face obscured. Her naked body looks like it belongs on a poster you’d find on a hormonal teenager’s bedroom wall — that is, until you reach her torso, where three arms spit out of her shoulders. AI-powered systems like Stable Diffusion, which translate text prompts into pictures, have been used by brands and artists to create concept images, award-winning (albeit controversial) prints and full-blown marketing campaigns. But some users, intent on ...read more

My phone buzzes as I get a text from a friend who’s a partner at a VC firm. It’s a screenshot of a Venmo notification that just came in. “My 2 cents on why you should invest in my company,” reads the message she received, along with a $0.02 transfer. I tracked down and emailed the founder who sent the transfer to figure out what they were up to. “In the past two and a half weeks I’ve reached out to over a hundred VCs, angels, celebrities, athletes and influencers through Venmo ...read more

Editor's take: Achieving 80 Gbps of bandwidth over copper cabling is an impressive feat, but passive cables capable of those speeds will be limited to under 1 meter. Meanwhile, the naming convention is as terrible as you'd expect for a USB specification, as less technically-inclined consumers might confuse it with USB 2.0, a standard released over two decades ago that tops out at 480 Mbps. The USB Promoter Group announced the USB4 Version 2.0 specification, a significant update that will enab ...read more

As a brutal heat wave cooks the West in the run-up to Labor Day, California’s power grid manager is calling on electric vehicle owners to avoid charging at peak times. The request is part of a broader effort to keep the state’s grid up and running, while locals crank their air conditioners to outlast a streak of blazing-hot days. Through at least September 2, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) is asking residents to conserve energy by “setting thermostats to 78 degre ...read more

from the must-we-always-relive-the-past? dept In July of 1995, Time Magazine published one of its most regrettable stories ever. The cover just read “CYBERPORN” with the subhead reading: “EXCLUSIVE A new study shows how pervasive and wild it really is. Can we protect our kids—and free speech?” The author of that piece, Philip Elmer-Dewitt later admitted that it was his “worst” story “by far.” The “new study” was from a grad student named Marty Rimm, and… was n ...read more

from the passing-the-buck-means-having-no-more-bucks-to-pass dept Over the past few years, international law enforcement has been cracking down on encrypted device purveyors. We’re not just talking about regular device encryption, which has been mainstream for several years now. These would be specialized manufacturers that appear to cater to those seeking more protection than the major providers offer — services that ensure almost no communications/data originating from these phones can ...read more

India is planning to speed up testing and safety approvals of electronic devices, including smartphones and earbuds, to reduce their time to market. Currently, it can take as long as 20 weeks to for consumer electronics to pass safety tests — but the new approvals could bring that down to as little as three days. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the country’s nodal agency responsible for setting quality and safety standards, has considered a pilot project to do away with the exis ...read more