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How a Pair of Jeans Could Save Our Plastic-Choked Oceans
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- Monday, August 11
- Discuss
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The earth’s oceans are clogged with millions of tons of plastic trash. Can the fashion industry put a stop to this massive global problem?
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The earth’s oceans are clogged with millions of tons of plastic trash. Can the fashion industry put a stop to this massive global problem?
Riding your bike to work is a good way to reduce your carbon footprint. But how green is the place you ride your bike to?
Robots have loomed over the future of labor for decades—at least since robotic arms started replacing auto workers on the assembly line in the early 1960s. Optimists say that more robots will lead to greater productivity and economic growth, while pessimists complain that huge swaths of the labor force will see their employment options automated […]
Reed Hastings has added another talent to his lengthy résumé: the humblebrag.
Google and Barnes & Noble may seem like strange bedfellows, but they have a common enemy: Amazon.
Ariel Zambelich/WIRED Stewart is hungry. He’s munching on potatoes smothered in chicken fat drippings, sitting by a long metal table that once served as a gurney in the morgue at the Treasure Island Naval Base. It’s a prominent piece of furniture in what will be the kitchen area for Stewart’s new startup. All told, the […]
Google just bought another online communications channel it can fill with ads.
Lyft is getting back to its roots. Before offering a smartphone app that let you summon other people’s private cars—each decked out with a pink mustache—Lyft was a startup called Zimride that matched up college students who wanted to take the same road trip. Now it’s offering much the same service to everyone going the […]
Sprint announced Wednesday that it had appointed Marcelo Claure to be the wireless carrier’s new CEO, replacing former CEO Dan Hesse, who has struggled recently to grapple with Sprint’s dwindling subscriber base.
A new version of Foursquare’s eponymous app, released today, is a radical departure for the company.
Many startup have tried to reform the dirty payday lending industry, but Ram Palaniappan says he’s going to solve the problem where it starts: payday.
These days, no one has a good excuse for not accepting credit card payments. That includes the smallest of businesses. And it includes, well, you. Way back in 2009, Square torpedoed the idea that taking credit cards had to be cumbersome, esoteric, or exclusive. The company’s free card reader plugged into the iPhone’s headphone jack, […]
Amazon likes to cultivate its image as the “everything store,” but there’s a glaring absence from its offerings. Nations measure their economic strength by gross domestic product, or GDP, a metric that takes into account both goods and services. But as Amazon aspires to serve as the primary storefront for countries across the globe, it […]
The smartphone promises a new golden age of journalism.
The deal sounds great: Stream unlimited music without any data charges. The offer from T-Mobile includes popular services such as Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora. These apps will no longer count against your data plan, the company announced recently, no matter how much you stream across its 4G LTE network. Or consider Sprint’s new offer, via […]
E-commerce may be eating the world, but Sephora’s leadership believes technology can actually complement—rather than kill—the retail store.
The telecom industry, like the cable industry before it, is about to come unbundled.
Square first came to fame with a credit card reader you could plug into your iPhone jack. But next year, the company’s signature device will be on its way to obsolescence as the U.S transitions to a new kind of credit card that verifies purchases with an embedded computer chip. In anticipation of this sweeping […]
“On the internet,” says Ron Gutman, “every headache becomes a brain tumor in four clicks or less.” For Gutman and his colleagues in the world of health tech, this has become a running joke, a cheeky nod to just how far the human imagination can wander after a quick search of benign symptoms. But there’s […]
Overstock.com and its swashbuckling CEO, Patrick Byrne, are hoping to create a new kind of corporate stock based on the computer software that drives bitcoin, aiming to overhaul the stock market in much the same way that bitcoin overhauled how we store and exchange money. On Tuesday afternoon, Overstock—one of the world’s largest online retailers, […]
In the eyes of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, nothing is worth more right now than rooms and rides. Airbnb (the rooms) and Uber (the rides) are the two most highly valued private companies in startup land, with Airbnb’s price tag at $10 billion and Uber’s reaching $18.2 billion. Now, all they have to do is […]
If that $3 billion acquisition of Beats didn’t have you convinced, Apple is getting serious about the radio business.
The train hurtles down the track, the engineer oblivious to the vanished bridge the villain just dynamited to smithereens. For some investors, that train is Amazon and the engineer is CEO Jeff Bezos, who is throwing every kind of fuel he can imagine into the firebox to keep his locomotive moving: A phone. Drones. Self-produced […]
Four women tell their sordid tales of what it’s really like to fundraise while female.
Shopping cart attrition is a huge problem for online retailers. This startup says it has the solution.
Two years ago, you didn’t want to be Mark Zuckerberg. Sure, there’s the whole billionaire thing, but no personal fortune was going to buy the young CEO out of his first earnings call. The Wall Street skeptics were circling, and within little more than a month, the value of the Facebook shares on which that […]
The file-syncing service is rolling out several Office-related features for businesses, including full-text search of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, among other file types, and the ability for multiple users to simultaneously edit Office documents via Dropbox.
Investors are pouring millions into Urban Compass, a New York City-based startup that offers an antidote to Craigslist chaos.
General Electric wants to bring clean, reliable, efficient, and affordable energy to the masses, and in a rare move for the 122-year-old company, it’s launching a startup to do it.
The ReWalk is the first bionic exoskeleton approved by the FDA for personal use. Here’s the story of how it came to be.
This morning, a number of Mozilla employees took to Twitter with a united, nearly simultaneous message to new Mozilla Foundation CEO Brendan Eich: "Step down."
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While one of the big holdups for Office for iPad was getting the software just right, another was Apple’s policy that apps that sell things — including subscriptions — use Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism and hand over 30 percent of that revenue to Apple
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Spotify could take itself public some time in the fall of 2014. + The popular music-streaming company has participated in informal chats with some of the investment banks likely to fight for a role in a potential IPO, sources familiar with the process said
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Silicon Valley has become one of the most ageist places in America. Tech luminaries who otherwise pride themselves on their dedication to meritocracy don’t think twice about deriding the not-actually-old
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As part of its continued effort to evolve and broaden its advertising capabilities, Twitter is now touting itself as a platform for effective direct response advertising.
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Disney has been talking to Maker Studios about an acquisition that would value the YouTube network at $500 million or more, according to people familiar with the negotiations
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There’s little that tends to unite a leading liberal like Dick Durbin and a conservative firebrand like Ted Cruz. But when the two senators join their colleagues for a hearing this month on Comcast’s $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable, many of them will have something in common — they’ve each collected Comcast cash
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For something as ubiquitous as the internet today, it certainly isn't easy to find where it all started. I don't mean historically, I mean logistically: 3420 Boelter Hall is a tiny room in a basement hallway of a large nondescript building on the sprawling UCLA campus
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Box has grown rapidly since it was established, from offering a simple cloud storage service to hosting an all-inclusive enterprise platform for workplace collaboration to content management and editing. The Los Altos, California-based business has inked deals to integrate its portfolio with some of the biggest brands in tech including Google, Salesforce.com, and NetSuite
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Its name has become a verb meaning "to search," but as users shift to mobile devices, Google Inc. GOOG -0.36% is suddenly faced with the threat that its search engine—and its advertising business—are becoming less relevant
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Today Microsoft confirmed the raft of executive changes that leaked yesterday. Senior executives Tony Bates and Tami Reller will exit the company, Mark Penn will move to a more ‘strategic’ role away from advertising, and the company’s ad efforts will be headed by Chris Capossela, who will be the executive vice president of marketing. Eric Rudder will take Bates’ job on an interim basis
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The European Commission announced plans on Thursday to tackle one of the scourges of the modern age - games on tablets and mobile phones that allow adults and children to rack up vast credit card bills by making "in-app" purchases
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Nikola Hu is running wrong. He’s loping along, leaning back as he goes. Suddenly a voice emerges from his phone: "Your cadence is low. Try swinging your arms legs and arms faster." Hu’s phone knows hes has running injuries before, so it’s hypersensitive to how his feet land on the ground. "Lean forward and land mid-foot to soften your impact," it tells him. He obliges, and the voice comes back immediately. "Good job!"
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Google did not bid for WhatsApp, the company revealed yesterday. Suggestions that Facebook’s $19bn purchase of the instant messaging service outbid a $10 billion offer from Google are “simply untrue,�? the company’s Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai said.
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Apple filed papers on Tuesday telling a federal appeals court in New York that a judge's finding it violated antitrust laws by manipulating electronic book prices "is a radical departure" from modern antitrust law that will "chill competition and harm consumers" if allowed to stand
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Ray Markovich started driving a taxi in Chicago three years ago after shuttering his struggling wireless phone store. Driving a cab wasn’t particularly gratifying or lucrative—he had to pay $400 a week just to lease his 2011 white Ford Escape. It was predictable if monotonous work
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Amazon is rolling together its Prime and Lovefilm Instant video services in the U.K. and Germany. That means the cost of an annual Prime membership in the U.K. will rise to £79 per year from £49
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As wearable technology begins to take off, Samsung hopes to avoid giving Google's Android operating system the same boost it got in the smartphone and tablet market
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Several Microsoft Connector shuttles were reportedly blocked for a total of 45 minutes in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood this morning by protesters handing out flyers and carrying signs that read, “Gentrification Stops Here.�?
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From Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to a "secret millionaire," the country's 50 biggest donors were far more generous last year. This crew donated a total of $7.7 billion in 2013, 4% more than in 2012, according to a new report from The Chronicle of Philanthropy. That brought the median donation to $86.1 million, up from $49.6 million in 2012.
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Billioniare investor Carl Icahn says that there's no reason to persist with his Apple buyback proposal, according to new letter.
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Google Glass may soon become a favored tool for law enforcement agencies in the United States
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The search for a new Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.88% leader was taking its toll. It had been five months since Steve Ballmer announced he was stepping down as chief executive, and more than a year since the company's board had directed faster change at the once dominant technology giant.
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For those who’ve been reading, we’ve had failure on the brain recently. This is partly because its a good counterbalance to the typical survivorship bias laden stories we read and also because understanding failure is critical to the algorithms underlying our product.
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It is 3 p.m., and outside another brilliant Los Angeles afternoon beckons. But Olga Kay has drawn her blinds, leaving her living room in a semidarkened haze
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According to numerous sources close to Microsoft, the selection of a new CEO could happen within the next week.
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Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t usually observe sentimental anniversaries. This year he’s confronted by three of them. On Feb. 4, Facebook (FB), the company he co-founded in a Harvard University dorm, turns 10 years old. The prodigy himself turns 30 in May. It’s also been a decade since his first date with Priscilla Chan, now his wife, whom he first met in line for the bathroom at a Harvard fraternity party
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"Amazon.com is reportedly planning to offer small and mid-size retail businesses a checkout system that would use the company's Kindle tablets to process payments."
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"A handful of California coding bootcamps are fighting for survival after receiving a stern warning from regulators."
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Google continues to invest in wind power for its data centers — this time in Finland
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Months of tension around the use of San Francisco’s public bus stops by Silicon Valley companies to transport workers finally led to action on Tuesday night, as the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority SFMTA moved forward with its previously outlined plans to charge each bus $1 per stop, according to The Verge.
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After publicly announcing and failing to follow through with a big plan to launch a set-top box, Intel is selling the project to Verizon. The telecoms company will purchase assets of Intel Media, a division set up to develop "over the top" TV services. Details of the transaction have not been disclosed, but Intel was previously rumored to be seeking $500 million.
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Roughly 60,000 Silicon Valley workers won clearance to pursue a lawsuit accusing Apple Inc, Google Inc and other companies of conspiring to drive down pay by not poaching each other's staff, after a federal appeals court refused to let the defendants appeal a class certification order
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A deal to sell iPhones on China Mobile's vast network is a "watershed" moment, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC on Wednesda
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ources tell Valleywag that after housing and transportation, the latest slice of public infrastructure to get the VIP, front-of-the-line treatment is healthcare. We hear Oscar Salazar, an Uber cofounder who helped design and implement the e-hailing prototype, is working on a startup that will offer personalized house calls from doctors. It plans to launch imminently
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Link-sharing service Branch and sister service Potluck have agreed to be acquired by Facebook for around $15 million, sources familiar with the deal told The Verge
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Fixing the HealthCare.gov site will fall to Accenture ACN -0.95% LLP, a widely known consulting giant tapped to replace an embattled contractor that was largely responsible for creating the health portal, launched in October. Accenture faces a tough task as the new lead contractor: repairing the online insurance marketplace quickly enough to enroll millions more consumers under the Affordable Care Act
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The right to protest has always been powerfully upheld in France – whether it’s protesting an immigrant’s right to healthcare, the closing of a factory, or even Taxis, who have perfected the art of making their voice heard; however, how much is too much?
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As technology shifts from personal computers to smartphones and tablets, Apple Inc. is expanding its reach into a lucrative customer base: companies
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Google Inc. (GOOG)’s top privacy official said the European Union’s “flawed�? attempt to overhaul data-protection rules is “dead�? and urged politicians to go back to the drawing board
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Barnes & Noble, the nation’s last remaining major bookstore chain, experienced steep sales declines in its digital division during the nine-week holiday period, the company announced on Thursday
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In fulfilling online orders, Amazon.com Inc. Amazon is all about expediency. The fewer people involved the better. But when it comes to filling higher-level jobs, the e-commerce giant is in no rush—and it has a gantlet of people, dubbed "bar raisers," who must sign off on would-be hires
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When I first visited Mark Zuckerberg in September for our profile on the FacebookFB +0.56% CEO, what initially struck me were all the parts of “Zuck�? that seemed resistant to change
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In its latest attempt to boost China sales, Apple Inc. opened an official store on Tmall, a major online marketplace run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
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It’s safe to assume that Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg are not best buds. Spiegel, the Snapchat CEO, Monday tweeted a screenshot of an e-mail exchange from November 2012 with the Facebook chief. The exchange, confirmed as authentic by a Snapchat spokeswoman, offers a window into Facebook’s initial flirting with the ephemeral messaging service
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Mark Zuckerberg needed help. Facebook Inc. FB +0.72% s initial public offering in May 2012 had been a mess. And after turning a website born in his college dorm room into a company valued at $100 billion, the young chief executive was under pressure to prove he could sell lots of ads on smartphones
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Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly violating its members' right to privacy. The social network is being sued by members who claim that the company intercepts private messages, without consent, to mine the data for its own profit
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For those who no longer trust Snapchat, but want that same vaporizing-message functionality, some alternatives exist, including Silent Circle which offers a messaging app, for a subscription fee, that forces messages to self-destruct after a set period of time and Wickr features military-grade encryption — AES256, ECDH521, RSA4096, TLS — and the app-builders claim they dont have the keys to decrypt; messages vaporize after a set time.
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Dogecoin users are in a minor panic after a popular coin storage service, Dogewallet, was apparently hacked. So far about 30 million coins seem to have been lost, together worth between $10,000 and $20,000
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Sources tell AllThingsD that Calxeda, the Austin-based chip design startup that had raised somewhere north of $90 million in venture capital funding, has effectively ceased operations today
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