Jeff Bezos
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Recommended Reading: The 'fingerprints' of bourbon
Whiskey webs: Microscale "fingerprints" of bourbon whiskey Stuart J. Williams, Martin J. Brown, VI and Adam D. Carrithers, Physical Review Fluids (PDF) Finish up your weekend with glass of your favorite bourbon. And while you imbibe, these findings from researchers at the University of Louisville (because of course) will keep you company. A team from the school's department of mechanical engineering observed web-like patterns or "fingerprints" when a drop of American whiskey evaporated. The same characteristic isn't present in Scotch whisky or other liquors. What's more, each pattern was a unique indicator of both whiskey type and age.
Blue Origin teams with spaceflight veterans to complete its lunar lander
Blue Origin won't be alone in working on a crewed lunar lander that will (hopefully) participate in NASA's Artemis program. Jeff Bezos' outfit has unveiled a trio of partners that will help it complete the Human Landing System, all of which are space industry veterans. Lockheed Martin will work on the reusable Ascent Element vehicle as well as lead crewed flight ops. Northrop Grumman, meanwhile, will produce the Transfer Element that brings the landing system toward the Moon. Draper, in turn, will handle descent guidance and avionics.
Blue Origin might not send humans to space until 2020
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin still plans to offer space tourism trips on its New Shepard rocket, but before any passengers take flight, the company is expected to launch at least two more uncrewed test flights. Tuesday, Blue Origin filed an application for its next test flight with the Federal Communications Commission, CNBC reports. The filing is for "Flight #12 on the New Shepard space launch booster and capsule." The earliest it might happen is November.
Amazon orders 100,000 EVs to help meet climate goal ten years early
Jeff Bezos has announced Amazon will sign up to a climate pledge with the aim of meeting the United Nations Paris Agreement climate goals 10 years early. He said Amazon will hit emission reduction targets by 2040, report its emissions regularly and implement decarbonization strategies. The company will balance out any remaining emissions with carbon offsets. Bezos wants 80 percent of Amazon's energy use to come from renewable sources by 2024, and for it to rely fully on renewable energy by 2030.
This week in tech history: Amazon's 25th birthday
At Engadget, we spend every day looking at how technology will shape the future. But it's also important to look back at how far we've come. That's what This Week in Tech History does. Join us every weekend for a recap of historical tech news, anniversaries and advances from the recent and not-so-recent past. This week, Amazon turns 25. Few companies have done more to shape the modern internet (and, some might argue, modern capitalism) than Amazon. CEO Jeff Bezos incorporated the company 25 years ago today, and it was another year before Amazon launched as an online bookstore. It was still longer before it became the internet Goliath it is now -- but the list of things that Amazon has significantly changed 25 years in is dizzying.
Jeff Bezos reveals his 'Blue Moon' lunar lander
Blue Origin is building a lunar lander aptly called the Blue Moon. Jeff Bezos has announced his space company's shared goal with NASA to go back to our planet's fateful companion in the next few years at an event for media and space industry executives. There, the tech exec has also revealed that Blue Origin is developing a new engine called BE-7 with a 10,000 lbf thrust, strong enough to power the rocket that's ferrying the lander and its large payloads to space. Its first test fire could happen as soon as this summer.
Investigators say Saudi Arabia accessed Jeff Bezos' phone
Jeff Bezos' accusations of blackmail and extortion extend beyond just the National Enquirer and its parent AMI. Bezos' investigation team has determined "with high confidence" that Saudi Arabia had access to the Amazon chief's phone. Team leader Gavin de Becker pointed to a number of factors leading to the conclusion. Most notably, he rejected the Enquirer's claims that Michael Sanchez (the brother of Bezos' lover Lauren) was the sole source for the info. Sanchez told Page Six that the Enquirer had already seen text messages when it contacted him to investigate Bezos' possible affair -- there was another source, and de Becker's group believes Saudi Arabia is the most likely culprit given its methods, motivations and connections to AMI.
Amazon's joint healthcare organization is called 'Haven'
Last year, Amazon announced a healthcare venture with Warren Buffet and JPMorgan Chase. It was still in the planning stages at the time, but now the tech giant and its partners are finally ready to present their project to the public. They've named their venture "Haven," and according to the website they've launched along with the revelation, the name "reflects [their] goal to be a partner to individuals and families and help them get the care they need, while also working with clinicians and others to make the overall system better for all."
After Math: Everything is Awesome
It's been a wonderful week for the tech industry. Twitter is finally getting its act together regarding hateful content and Russian election interferences, major industry players released their Q3 earnings (Hint: They all made boatloads of money), and the FBI continues to prove that your phone's encryption can withstand their hacking attempts. Numbers because how else will you know how many highs to five?
Amazon touts Prime Day results despite slumping profits
This year's Prime Day was Amazon's third and largest to date, according the company's earnings report released on Thursday. The company claims that it was the "the biggest global shopping event ever for Amazon" and that it set an internal record for single-day Prime signups. All told, the sale moved more than 40 million units.
After Math: The final frontier
We saw some significant developments in the field of space exploration this week. Jeff Bezos unveiled his latest heavy lift rocket. The Gaia satellite has mapped its billionth Milky Way star. China launched another piece of its Heavenly Palace into orbit. And Galaxies just can't seem to stop exploding. Numbers, because how else are you going to accurately measure your insignificance against the infinite voids of space?
Jeff Bezos gifts Fire Tablet owners six months of access to his newspaper
Jeff Bezos may have bought the Washington Post with his own money, but that doesn't mean that the paper won't be extra friendly to the boss' other company. The outfit has launched a new tablet-friendly app that's designed for a "national and international" audience but, as rumored, it's exclusive to Amazon's Fire Tablets for the next six months. After that point, users will be asked to spend $1 for a six month subscription, and when that's done, will be expected to pay a monthly fee of between $3 and $5 a month. The app will update twice daily, once at 5am and again at 5pm ET, and will also arrive on other Android and iOS tablets at some point in 2015 - presumably six months and one day from today. The app will find itself onto your Kindle Fire Tablet thanks to an over-the-air update, but customers who prefer to get their news from other sources will be able to delete the app in the usual way.
Amazon's Kindle Fire will come with free news from the Washington Post
Jeff Bezos runs Amazon and owns the Washington Post -- is it any surprise that those two entities might start getting a little cozy? According to a new report from BusinessWeek, the a group of folks at the Post are working on a sort of curated Washington Post app that'll be preloaded on the forthcoming Kindle Fire HD tablet. The kicker? It's expected to be totally free to those Fire owners, and the app will eventually roll out to other Kindles, as well as iPads and Android tablets... though owners of the latter will have to shell out a subscription fee. This isn't the first time that we've seen Kindles and traditional reporting collide -- let's not forget that Amazon once made a ginormous version of the Kindle meant in part to make newspapers more palatable on an e-ink screen -- but it's a big, smart step for a media company that has its metaphorical eyes set on a national audience.
Amazon's eyeing wearables and automated homes next
One of the nice things about operating the world's biggest online retail store, besides the money, is that you can get a real-time picture of what consumers around the globe want. Amazon's used that insight to launch its own e-readers, tablets and a smartphone in the past, and it's certainly not stopping there. According to Reuters, Jeff Bezos is investing heavily to boost the headcount of its secretive Lab126 division, the designers of Amazon's mobile devices, so that it can begin exploring new trends in smart homes and also wearables.
Authors take out full-page NYT ad to criticize Amazon
There's no sign that Amazon and Hachette are close to burying their e-book hatchet, which has prompted the authors caught in the middle to speak up. One of those affected, Douglas Preston, penned an open letter to Jeff Bezos, requesting that he stopped singling out individual Hachette authors for "selective retaliation." After it was published, however, nearly a thousand other writers, including Stephen King, Malcolm Gladwell and Jeffrey Deaver co-signed the letter -- which has prompted the group Authors United to pay for the letter to be printed as a full-page advert in Sunday's New York Times. Apparently the Kindle Team's most recent letter fell upon deaf ears.
Amazon CEO scribbles on customer's iPhone after Fire phone event
Amazon is going all-in with its iPhone competitor, the Fire Phone, and company CEO Jeff Bezos took the time to have some fun with one of Apple's devices after revealing his new gadget at its debut event last week. A few of Amazon's biggest fans were on-hand for the event, and afterwards they got a personal visit from the CEO himself. Upon being asked to autograph an iPhone, Bezos took a quick jab at the device with a playful scribble. This means war! No, in all seriousness, it's nice to see a CEO engage in some playful gamesmanship, as many are often far too by-the-book for such antics. Of course, the customer in question knew exactly what he was getting into when he asked for an autograph on his Apple device, and Bezos was all too happy to oblige. Of course, whether or not the Fire Phone can be considered an "upgrade" from the iPhone is something I'll let you decide. This isn't the first time an Apple competitor has taken a Sharpie to one of the company's products -- Microsoft's Steve Ballmer famously autographed a MacBook Pro with "Need a new one?" back in 2010.
Hollywood, Amazon and your local realtor are fighting to legalize drones
In the United States it's legal for you to take your A.R Drone out for a spin around the neighborhood, but if you want to use one to shoot a car chase on a closed movie set you'd be breaking the law. The use of commercial drones is a complicated issue, in part because of how many different ways you can use them. Defense companies have traditionally been the biggest advocates for drones; but now everyone from Hollywood to your realtor are pulling for the unmanned aircraft.
Yes, Amazon's delivery drones are real (maybe)
If you've been dreaming of drone-delivered packages since Amazon announced Prime Air last year -- apparently your dreams are getting a little closer to reality. In its 2013 letter to shareholders published today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos not only confirms the delivery drone's existence but also addresses its production. In what still may be the greatest retail troll of all time, Bezos says "The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles, and we are in the design phase on generations 7 and 8." All we want to know is what version Amazon will have to get to before we can start placing orders.
Amazon refreshes Kindle Fire HD with new body, $139 price tag
It's no surprise, of course, that the Kindle Fire HDX was the thing Amazon wanted to shout about from the Seattle mountaintops today. But Jeff Bezos had another little surprise up his impeccably tailored sleeves -- a surprise that makes the $229 HDX look downright extravagant. A warm (if decidedly overcast) Pacific Northwest welcome to the new Fire HD. Well, "new" is perhaps not entirely accurate. This Kindle shares a lot with its predecessor, though there are some notable changes. Namely, the body. See, if we're strictly talking form factor here, this guy is a dead ringer for the 7-inch HDX. Inside, however, you'll find last-gen processing power: a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and on the front, the same old 1,280 x 800 display. Still, not too shabby for $139 -- that's $60 less than the last version cost moments before this post went up. That price also gets you access to Fire OS 3.0, aka "Mojito," Amazon's latest sugary rum of an operating system. Naturally, some of the new features just won't work on this hardware -- things like Mayday, which requires a microphone for use. Like the HDX, this slate plays nicely with those neat new Origami covers. You can pre-order one right this second, but you'll have to hang on until October 2nd before it actually starts shipping. Philip Palermo contributed to this report.
Amazon debuts Kindle Fire HDX 7- and 8.9-inch tablets, we go hands-on (update: video)
"Today, we're going to show you the third leg of our device business strategy," Jeff Bezos begins. His audience is modest: four people sitting around a table in an Amazon conference room. It's a far cry from the Santa Monica airplane hangar his company rented out for last year's event. Bezos picks up a dry erase marker and begins breaking down the first two parts, elements the company has focused on since it first began building Kindles. "One," he says, narrating the words as he goes along, like an enthusiastic high school teacher, "premium products at non-premium prices. Two: make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices." "We sell our hardware and roughly break even and then when they use the devices and buy content," he adds. "Our point of view is that this is more aligned with the customer. We don't have to get discouraged when we see people using fourth-generation Kindles. Bezos draws a Venn diagram to illustrate the third part of the puzzle. He writes "customer delight" on one side and "deep integration throughout the entire stack" on the other. The intersection houses the "hardest" and "coolest things," which utilize OS, key apps, the hardware stack and the cloud. "It's a little abstract," he adds, "but I think it will be extremely clear when I show it to you." The template for the third piece of the puzzle is the new Kindle Fire HDX series -- the company's latest premium tablets.
