Gates-way drug? Microsoft joint-s up with marijuana sales tracking company June 17, 2016 Microsoft has paired up with Californian startup Kind Financial, which helps businesses and government agencies track the sale of legal marijuana. Kind has launched a government solutions business after being selected by Microsoft to participate in its newly created health and human services division. The firms are aiming to create technology to track and trace the cannabis industry [...]
Meet Rolls-Royce’s crazy driverless supercar and the glass-fronted Mini concept car of the future June 16, 2016 Rolls-Royce has created a super luxury car of the future ditching a chauffeur and any kind of driver entirely while serving the super rich with a robot concierge. The car delivers passengers to their destination in the style of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" with a canopy roof opening up to allow owners to stand up fully as [...]
UberEats has arrived in London June 16, 2016 Not only is Uber disrupting the way we travel, it's eyeing up the way we eat too. Now Londoners will be able to get food delivered from top restaurants straight to their door via an app in exactly the same way they now order a car. The separate UberEats app will let users order from a [...]
Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn: Tech businesses must not get carried away June 16, 2016 Dealmakers everywhere will be hoping that tech companies don’t get carried away by news this week that Microsoft has acquired LinkedIn for a considerable sum of money. On the face of it, Microsoft’s decision to pay $26.2bn (£18.5bn) for the social media company could seem excessive but the company will have completed detailed cost modelling exercises [...]
Bad news, sky watchers: It’s going to take another 1,500 years for humanity to encounter aliens June 16, 2016 If you're worried about an alien invasion, you can calm down: a new study by astronomers at Cornell University has suggested humans won't make contact with extraterrestrials for another 1,500 years. Even Solomonides and Yervant Terzian combined the Fermi Paradox, which says billions of Earth-like planets exist in our galaxy, with Copernicus' mediocrity principle, which postulates that the [...]
Uber’s Apple-backed rival Didi Chuxing just raised billions June 16, 2016 The taxi wars are hotting up. A day after reports of Uber raising a further $2bn (£1.4bn) to add to its already rather large cash pile, its rival in China has announced another $7bn in new funding that puts it squarely on the tail of the US startup when it comes to being the most well-funded private startup [...]
Fintech and blockchain top Mark Carney’s Mansion House agenda June 16, 2016 London's status as the world leading centre for fintech is set to be cemented on Thursday when it tops the agenda of the governor of the Bank of England at a prestigious City event. Mark Carney will centre a major speech on the subject of fintech and blockchain technology at the annual Mansion House dinner, his first to address the disruptive sector in [...]
Hire a hacker: Cyber security needs some fresh ideas June 16, 2016 Today, cyber security is one of the major issues keeping chief executives awake at night. Cyber crime is on the rise. According to Juniper Research, data breaches are projected to cost companies $2.1 trillion by 2019. High profile hacks have highlighted the significant risks in the digital world. But while news outlets focus on the [...]
E3 Round-up: All the top announcements from PlayStation VR and Xbox One S price and release date to Arkham VR, Death Standing and The Last Guardian news June 15, 2016 Every year, the world’s gaming press jets off to Los Angeles to be wowed by Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and all the top games developers, who lay out their plans for the future of the industry. This year there was a big push for virtual reality, with the big players throwing their weight behind the nascent [...]
Tech titans rule 2016 with $268bn of M&A activity June 15, 2016 Technology is leading the global mergers and acquisitions sector this year with $267.6bn worth of deals announced so far, according to new research by financial markets platform Dealogic. This is only the second time on record that technology deals accounted for the maximum number of M&A deals made in a year. The year 2000 saw [...]