Silicon Valley
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Hitting the Books: Summer reading list
Got a recommendation for a book that you just couldn’t put down? Drop us a line at Tips@engadget.com about it and we might just include it in a future roundup!
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is found guilty of defrauding investors
Elizabeth Homes, the former CEO and founder of Theranos, has been found guilty on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
How it feels to survive Silicon Valley and a pandemic
It shouldn’t feel like it took a pandemic to get Twitter to boot 7,000 QAnon accounts (and crack down on 150,000 more related to the violent conspiracy group), but it does. At least Twitter is doing harm mitigation around its role in this interconnected disaster. Five months in, you’d think 145,000 American deaths would move platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to ban virus “truther” content, but nah.
Apple will spend $400 million on affordable housing this year
Apple will spend more than $400 million on affordable housing projects and first-time homebuyer assistance programs in California this year.
Zoom is now 'the Facebook of video apps'
A lot of us are wondering just how full of crap Zoom is. Acting like Facebook is already bad, even more so now that we’re all fighting for our lives.
We need more tech satire like HBO's 'Silicon Valley'
When Silicon Valley premiered in 2014, it came out swinging as the Office Space of our time: a hilarious and sometimes all-too-real reflection of a tech industry high on its own supply. Over the past five years, the show, created by Mike Judge (Office Space, King of the Hill) and Alex Berg (Barry), lampooned everything from VC Peter Thiel's curious interest in young-blood transfusions to the smugness of Tesla owners. And it did so while weaving a dense (if often crude) tapestry of humor. Who could forget the legendary -- and mathematically sound -- dick-joke algorithm from the first season's finale?
What's on TV: 'Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' and 'Silicon Valley'
This weekend, Silicon Valley ends its run on HBO after six seasons lampooning tech culture. This is also the week that you can get Game of Thrones on Blu-ray either as a Complete Series or just season eight, which is also available on Ultra HD Blu-ray. Either way, you should finally be able to see what's going on in the Battle of Winterfell. Other big releases include a new Tiffany Haddish comedy special on Netflix, and a new season of Amazon's award-winning series Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. For gamers, the Halo: Master Chief Collection is making its debut on PC, while players on Xbox One and PC can both revisit Halo: Reach. In sports we have a slew of college football conference championships. Look after the break to check out each day's highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
Apple pledges $2.5 billion to address California's housing crisis
Apple is joining Facebook, Google and Microsoft in acknowledging that tech companies are contributing to housing problems. It's pledging a total of $2.5 billion toward more available (and importantly, more accessible) housing in California. Most of this will go directly toward lowering costs. It's launching a $1 billion affordable housing investment fund, and another $1 billion fund for first-time homebuyer mortgage assistance. The company is also committing $300 million to make some of its San Jose land available for affordable housing, creating a $150 million fund for San Francisco Bay Area housing and donating $50 million to Destination: Home in order to foster "systemic change" that reduces homelessness across Silicon Valley.
The ‘Silicon Valley’ season six trailer skewers the past year in tech
HBO released the trailer for the 6th and final season of Silicon Valley, and it feels like a real-life recap of the past year or so. Richard Hendricks, CEO of Pied Piper, testifies in front of lawmakers, mirroring Mark Zuckerberg's trainwreck appearances in Washington DC. And what would a parody of recent start-up culture be without a subplot focused on an ill-conceived festival?
The creators of 'Silicon Valley' are making a Match.com origin series
The co-creators of Silicon Valley are developing a series on the origins of Match.com, according to Variety. John Altschuler and David Krinsky are reportedly adapting a book entitled The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet's Rise for the small screen.
These engineers and tech execs want to create a peaceful lunar settlement
A group of Silicon Valley tech executives and engineers want to create a peaceful, multinational lunar settlement. According to Bloomberg, the San Francisco-based Open Lunar Foundation plans to invest in hardware "to accelerate the exploration and settlement of the moon." And it's committed to creating a kind of cooperative that wouldn't be tied to one particular country or billionaire.
The sixth season of 'Silicon Valley' will be its last
Silicon Valley will return to HBO later this year for its sixth season. Unfortunately for its fans, it will also be the end of the show's run. Variety reported today that the upcoming season of Mike Judge's tech-centric comedy will be the last. Season six will consist of seven episodes -- an abbreviated run compared to previous seasons -- which will be used to wrap up the story of upstart compression company Pied Piper.
Hey Alexa: How can we escape surveillance capitalism?
Where do you go when you want to escape surveillance? When you want to stop feeling like you might be being listened to by microphones, or watched through surveillance cameras, or tracked by invisible tech gremlins burrowed within devices. Certainly nowhere in public. Perhaps it's your car. Maybe it's your home. Or even your bedroom? For some readers, that perimeter of personal freedom likely shrunk in February when news broke that Google "forgot" to tell consumers its Nest Secure came with a built-in microphone.
Robot chefs and en route baking could be the future of pizza delivery
Looking at its storefront, you wouldn't expect Zume pizza to be the kind of business gunning to revolutionize the food-delivery business. Tucked into a quiet commercial park in Mountain View, California, next to a defunct flower shop -- which now serves as the company's engineering bay -- Zume looks more like the countless IT startups that dot Silicon Valley than a pizzeria. But only from the outside.
Transgender protection rollback sparks opposition from tech
On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that it would roll back federal protections for transgender citizens and require states and local school boards to decide how (or, more accurately, whether) they would enforce these people's civil rights. Given that Silicon Valley tech companies routinely portray themselves as paragons of diversity and tolerance, these companies would surely be equally incensed at the government's current attempts to regulate where children can pee. However, the responses so far have failed to directly address the president's recent actions, instead generally relying on passive statements that extol their valuation of diversity and inclusion.
Trump team wants to meet with Silicon Valley execs next week
The Trump transition team has invited a number of tech industry leaders to New York next week for a roundtable discussion. USA Today reports that Reince Priebus, Trump's chief of staff, Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and advisor Peter Thiel are engineering the December 14th summit.
Is tech billionaire Peter Thiel prepping for a life in politics?
"I occasionally get involved but don't want to make it a full time thing." That was how Peter Thiel answered a question about his future in politics today. But, after he spent roughly 15 minutes delivering what amounted to a polite version of Donald Trump's stump speech to the National Press Club, it's a little hard to take him at his word.
This short film was written by a sci-fi hungry neural network
Remember when we played with Google's Deep Dream neural network to create trippy visuals that featured a whole lot dogs? The creators behind the short film Sunspring do. Instead of Google's product, however, they turned to a neural network named "Jetson" to do all the heavy lifting. The result? A bizarre nine minutes that you'll remember for quite some time.
Jeb Bush wants to expand the NSA's reach to fight 'evildoers'
Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush says that the government should be granted broad surveillance powers over both the American people and and private technology firms so that intelligence agencies can better fight "evildoers", according to the Associated Press. No, seriously, he specifically used the term "evildoers." Dick Dastardly, Skeletor, Gargamel had all better watch their backs if Jeb lands the Oval Office.
Luxy dating app doesn't care about poor people
Out of the many different app categories which exist today, dating is certainly among the most popular. Whether it's Tinder, Grindr, OkCupid or Siren, there's definitely something for everyone. And now that "everyone" includes arrogant, rich narcissists. Say hello to Luxy, a dating app that promises to "work just like Tinder," except that it allows you to "weed out the poor and unattractive." It's so absurd you'd assume it's a hoax. The app, which is available for iOS and Android, comes from the same humanoid creatures behind the website MillionaireMatch, where wealthy men and women can find other "successful and attractive" singles. Luxy takes that already questionable concept and races to the bottom with it. The press release even brags that Luxy is "basically Tinder without the poor people... In fact, the average income of male users on LUXY is over $200k and those who are unable to keep up financially are immediately removed from the service."
