Blue Apron co-founder steps down as CEO

Less than a month after an earnings report indicated customers dropped six percent from last year, Blue Apron has a new CEO, as co-founder Matt Salzberg steps down from his role as president and CEO. Former CFO Brad Dickerson will now fill both of those roles and join the company’s board of directors where Salzberg will remain as chairman.

Blue Apron just completed its initial public offering in June, but its stock price has already dropped from $10 to around $3 and last month it laid off six percent of its employees. The five-year-old company is facing more competition from others in the space like HelloFresh and Plated, while also being squeezed by meal kits from companies like Amazon (which just bought Whole Foods) and Kroger.

Source: Blue Apron

Ditch your bulky commuter bike helmet and ride smarter with the foldable Lid

Cycling without a helmet isn’t advisable for obvious reasons. Then again, having to carry around a bulky bike helmet with you all day can make it a tempting option for commuters. That’s where a smart new helmet, currently raising funds on Indiegogo, comes into play. Called Lid, the helmet is able to fold up when you’re not using it — courtesy of a neat design boasting separate movable parts, a bit like sliding tectonic plates, and some well-placed magnets. The result is a helmet that will comfortably fit into a bag when it is not being used to safeguard our noggins.

“Our research told us that ‘helmet hassle’ is the No. 1 reason why cyclists opt not to wear a helmet, and also that safety concerns prevent many commuters from cycling altogether,” creator Sam Terry told Digital Trends. “We went about changing this and developed an eco-friendly helmet which would bring ‘safety with convenience’, by folding to a size and shape which would slip easily into a backpack, satchel, or handbag. We’ve designed Lid with clean lines and an urban profile, so we think it also looks great too.”

In terms of protection, Terry said the helmet has been extensively impact-tested and has passed the necessary standards. Each of the helmet’s five segments boasts its own impact absorption capability, so there’s no compromise in terms of safety versus a traditional, single-piece helmet.

“In 2011, I began commuting to work in London by bike,” Terry continued, explaining the project’s origins. “At first, cycling in London was pretty intimidating to me. London’s bike-share scheme had recently been launched, and I could see the potential for cycling, but it shocked me at how few of the users were wearing helmets. I saw a guy take a hard fall from one of the bikes and crack his head, which got me thinking. I knew that the short journey times on the bikes of 20 minutes meant that users weren’t willing to carry around a helmet with them all day. That’s where the idea for a helmet that could compact to fit into a bag, but also look great too, came from.”

Clearly, there is a demand for the project, since it raised 50 percent of its funding target in just two hours on Indiegogo. If you want to get your hands (and, eventually, your head) on a unit, you can pre-order one now. Prices start at $70, with shipping set for May.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best smart helmets are full of cool tech, and totally worth the messy hair
• Beacon Helmet uses laser markings to light the way for cyclists
• How Vicis developed Zero1, the high-tech helmet that could save the NFL
• Motorcycle buying guide: What to know before buying your first bike
• RadMini Folding Ebike Review

Google’s new kit uses Raspberry Pi to bring image recognition to your project

Google said on Thursday, November 30 that it released a new AIY Vision do-it-yourself kit based on the Raspberry Pi Zero W board. The kit follows Google’s recent AIY Voice Kit for DIY voice recognition, and provides means for your project to include image recognition without the need for a connection to the cloud. That ability stems from the kit’s vision processing unit, which is capable of running local neural network models.

According to Google, the kit includes software supporting three separate neural network models. One model can detect people, cats, and dogs while another specializes in faces and their expressions. The third model is capable of recognizing “a thousand common objects.” You can even train and retrain your own neural network models using a TensorFlow-based tool built into the software.

“We also provide a Python API that gives you the ability to change the RGB button colors, adjust the piezo element sounds and access the four GPIO pins,” Google said.

At the heart of the kit’s design is the $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W board. It’s a self-contained computer consisting of a single-core processor, 512MB of memory, Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity, and several connectors. The kit’s included “VisionBonnet” accessory board packing Intel’s Movidius MA2450 vision processing chip connects to the Raspberry Pi’s CSI camera connector via a flex cable.

The assembly instructions show that these two boards are sandwiched together via the Raspberry Pi’s 40-pin header, and secured in place using plastic standoffs. Meanwhile, the $30 Raspberry Pi Camera 2 plugs into a special slot on the kit’s inner cardboard frame, and then plugs into the CSI camera connector on the VisionBonnet board via a flex cable. Eventually, the base device is enclosed in an additional cardboard shell containing an LED, camera lens, and tripod mount.

Right now, you can pre-order the kit only through Micro Center for $45, but it won’t become available until December 31. The drawback is that Google’s kit does not include the Raspberry Pi Zero W board, the Raspberry Pi Camera 2, or the required blank Micro SD card. Note that this card needs at least 4GB to store the downloadable software required for the device to work, and you’ll also need a utility to install the software onto the card.

Ultimately, the complete image-recognition device for your project will set you back around $85. Add Google’s AIY voice kit, and your project will have the ability to recognize people, animals, objects, and voices. But that’s another $25 just for the kit, which doesn’t include the required $35 Raspberry Pi 3 board, or the SD card needed to store the operating system and voice-recognition software.

So what can you do with image recognition? Google lists a few examples, such as detecting when your dog approaches the back door, sounding an alarm when a sibling creeps into your room, and witnessing the reactions of your neighbors when they view your Griswold-style holiday decorations. The kit sounds like fun if you’re willing to shell out an additional $85 for your project.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi: Mortal enemies, or best friends?
• These Raspberry Pi 3 bundles will cover everyone, from coders to gamers
• Doctors may be able to spend less time transcribing notes thanks to Google
• Here’s everything you need to know about Google’s Project Fi
• Choosy? You can light up your home in 16 million colors with these solutions

Redditors don’t read what they vote on, according to a new study

Reddit, the so-called “front page of the internet,” allows users to upvote and downvote links and other content in order to aggregate the best shareable content on any given day. However, a new study shows that the system might not work as well as it’s intended to.

A paper by students at the University of Notre Dame that was published via IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems suggests that 73 percent of the users that vote on a particular Reddit post haven’t actually clicked through to view the content.

Reddit apparently receives some 234 million visitors per month, but the study honed in on just 309 individuals, according to Motherboard. This allowed the researchers to eschew the site’s own data and collect its own through bespoke browser plugins developed for Google Chrome and Firefox. These tools were able to record a full picture of the users’ behavior.

Most of the participants in the study were designated as “headline browsers” — meaning that they would scroll through page after page without actually clicking on anything. The paper states that 84 percent of the users monitored interacted with content in less than half of their page loads, while 94 percent did so in less than 60 percent of their page loads.

There is a lot that we can glean from this study about the way that people ingest content on the internet. For one, there is the importance of the headline — it seemingly takes something truly special to draw an individual to access the content itself.

Further, there is the fact that so many people are willing to vote on whether a particular piece of content should be placed more or less prominently without having clicked through for themselves. This suggests that such decisions are being made based on assumptions rather than actual experience.

Clicking a link to read an article, watch a video, or listen to some audio doesn’t take a great deal of effort — especially compared to what you would have to do to access the same materials 30 years ago. The sheer breadth of content being shared on Reddit means that our time and attention are at a premium and as a result, we’re becoming more difficult to please.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Which browser gives the best battery life? The winner is a shocker
• Want to download a YouTube video? It’s easier than you think
• Here’s how to delete your YouTube account in just a few easy steps
• Adobe Portfolio can now upload entire Lightroom collections at once
• Here is our list of the 10 best free MMORPGs to play right now

How to get the best fit for your Gear VR

Getting a good fit is the first step on a journey in VR.

Gear VR is one of the more accessible VR headsets available right, as well as being a pretty comfortable fit. Before you go diving directly into VR though, you’re going to want to adjust the headset so that it sits correctly on your head. After all, who wants to start enjoying VR only to move their head and have their headset slip off their face?

This is how you ensure that never happens.

Read more at VRHeads!

Google Assistant will soon help you find local home services

Like rival assistants Alexa and Siri, Google Assistant keeps adding new features, including identifying songs and controlling Chromecast. But now it can help users find local businesses, too. Instead of just providing a top list, however, Google Assistant will ask several questions to get the right nearby shop that fits the user’s needs.

To be clear, this isn’t just to advise users of the best nearby restaurants, which Amazon’s Alexa has been doing for years. The new Google Assistant questionnaire helps find specialists, like plumbers and electricians. In some cities, it will suggest businesses that have been prescreened by Google and companies such as HomeAdvisor and Porch. Otherwise, it will still offer suitable options in the area. The feature will start rolling out to US users in the coming weeks.

Source: Google Blog

GM plans to put self-driving cars to work in cities in 2019

GM plans to get its autonomous cars driving commercially around cities by 2019. That’s according to a presentation posted on the automaker’s website, which stated that at its current rate, GM expects “commercial launch at scale” to happen after next year.

That includes commercial use for both item delivery and passenger carrying. The latter could refer to the autonomous taxi fleet of Bolt EVs GM plans to launch in 2018, which its preparing for with additional testing. The could offer its own service as well, given how much things have cooled between GM’s autonomous Cruise division and Lyft.) Whatever rollout the automaker has planned for 2019, it probably isn’t referring to a small program. This week, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said they will likely only launch when they’re ready for a full-scale deployment.

Via: CNBC

Source: GM (slide presentation)

Merlin and Dubset strike a deal to help indie artists monetize DJ mixes

Last August, Sony Music made a deal with Dubset, a company that helps rights holders identify samples in songs to ensure they get paid. Apple and Spotify also connected with the licensing company for the streaming services’ unofficial mixes, too. Now, indie label Merlin has struck a new deal with Dubset that will hopefully help independent musicians monetize their own samples.

Dubset’s MixBANK platform helps identify sampled music within DJ remixes, which can have hundreds of samples per set. It also helps DJs clear the rights to samples without having to contact every artist. The company claims that it already connects 14,000 labels and publishers to help manage rights. According to Billboard, the deal with Merlin grows the number of tracks managed by MixBANK to more than 38 million across almost 40,000 indie and major record labels. Merlin represents more than 20,000 indie labels, including Sub Pop, Mad Decent and Warp, making this new deal a positive step in helping artists working for these groups.

Source: Billboard

Twitch and Coca-Cola will raise money to fight AIDS with a MOBA tournament

With World AIDS Day coming up on December 1st, Twitch is partnering up with (Coca Cola)RED for one week to help fight the disease in sub-Saharan Africa. On December 2nd, you can stream Twitch’s Arena of Valor channel and watch eight popular streamers face off playing the mobile MOBA designed by Tencent Games. There will be a way to make donations during the stream, of course, and if you’re a streamer, you can gather donations for the entire week, too. Coca Cola will match up to $50,000 of all donations gathered during the week.

Twitch notes that every two minutes a teenager gets HIV. It only costs $.30 per day for medicine to help those with the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, and your donations will help many people with HIV testing, counseling, education and care services to people in the region. If you don’t want to wait until the 2nd, you can donate right now to help the cause.

Source: Twitch

Qualcomm Seeks Import Ban on AT&T and T-Mobile iPhone 8 and iPhone X Models

Qualcomm today announced that it has filed three new patent infringement claims against Apple, accusing the Cupertino company of violating a total of 16 Qualcomm patents with its most recent iPhones, including the iPhone X.

Most of the patents in question cover technologies like carrier aggregation, memory designs, and power management features that are designed help to reduce battery usage, but in one claim, Qualcomm says Apple is using a depth-based image enhancement technique for Portrait mode that violates a Qualcomm patent.

Qualcomm is also filing a new complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) concerning five of the patents, and it is asking the ITC to ban imports of iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X models that use chips from Intel, aka AT&T and T-Mobile devices in the United States.

The complaint with the ITC follows a previous filing in July that saw Qualcomm ask for an import ban on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models equipped with Intel modem chips, along with some iPad models. Qualcomm has not asked for a ban on iPhones that use Qualcomm LTE chips, with the reasoning that a more limited exclusion order is more likely to be granted.

In the lawsuit, Qualcomm once again says its inventions form the “very core” of “modern mobile communication,” and that without Qualcomm technology, Apple products “would lose much of their consumer appeal.”

Qualcomm is seeking damages in an amount to be proven at trial, a permanent injunction against Apple, and attorneys fees.

Qualcomm’s latest filing follows a countersuit from Apple that was filed earlier this week. Apple claims that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips infringe on “at least” eight battery life patents owned by Apple.

The legal battle between Apple and Qualcomm kicked off in January of this year, and it has escalated rapidly over the course of the last several months. It is not clear if the ITC will agree to investigate the claims Qualcomm has made against Apple, but this will be a legal battle that spans several years, so Apple devices are in no danger of being banned anytime soon.

Tags: lawsuit, Qualcomm, Patent lawsuits
Discuss this article in our forums