Mission Everywhere

After a limited rollout, Go-Jek said today that it will extend its ride-hailing service to all of Singapore tomorrow while continuing its beta phase. The Indonesian-based company began offering rides in Singapore at the end of November , but only for passengers riding to and from certain areas. It http://bit.ly/2Roif56 dynamic pricing there, which increases prices during peak times, a few days ago. “We continue to welcome feedback from driver-partners and riders during this enhanced beta phase, as we work to fine-tune the app and create the best experience for our users,” the company said in a statement. After Uber exited from Southeast Asia earlier this year by selling its local business to Grab, Go-Jek became Grab’s main rival. Uber still maintains a presence in the region, however, thanks to its 27.5 percent stake in Grab. There is currently a waiting list for Go-Jek in Singapore, with customers of DBS/POSB being given priority. When asked about how long new users need to wai...

The Federal Communications Commission said on Monday that it will need to suspend most of its operations by the middle of Thursday if the partial government shutdown continues. The FCC will continue “work required for the protection of life and property,” as well as work related to spectrum auctions, since those are funded by the money raised by auctioning off spectrum licenses. The Office of the Inspector General, responsible for conducting internal reviews, audits, and investigations of FCC programs and operations, will also remain open until further notice. In a document outlining what needs to happen for an “orderly shutdown,” the FCC said suspended activities will include: “Consumer complaint and inquiry phone lines cannot be answered; consumer protection and local competition enforcement must cease; licensing services, including broadcast, wireless, and wireline, must cease; management of radio spectrum and the creation of new opportunities for competitive technologies and se...

Kenneth Li / Reuters : Source: Netflix to hire Activision Blizzard's Spencer Neumann as its new CFO starting in early 2019; Activision said it intended to fire Neumann in a filing   —  (Reuters) - Netflix Inc is expected to announce in the next few days that it has poached media finance veteran Spencer Neumann … from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2RnJKf0

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch : All photos uploaded to Twinning, Popsugar's tool to match a user's photo with a celebrity's, were accessible from a public AWS storage bucket that is now locked   —  I thought the worst thing about Popsugar's Twinning tool was that it matched me with James Corden. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2F1r0w9

Wall Street Journal : Tech trends for 2019: foldable phones, 5G, cashierless retail, privacy legislation, autonomous delivery wagons, IoT edge computing, and more   —  From delivery wagons and foldable phones to privacy crackdowns and corporate health tracking, the coming year will make good on some of the tech industry's biggest promises from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2s0cE6J

Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and self-driving technology are helping the transportation and logistics industry finally transform by cutting costs, optimizing delivery routes, and automating mundane tasks. Startups will be the lynchpin of this transformation because they specifically target areas of need  with cutting-edge solutions. Business Insider Intelligence examined the top 5 startups within five key areas: digital freight services, warehouse robotics, AI for supply chain management, last-mile delivery robotics, and self-driving car software. Transportation and logistics industries have operated largely the same way for decades. But the surge in e-commerce in the last several years, combined with consumers’ appetite for same-day delivery, has brought us to a tipping point. Delivery companies are doing all they can to get orders to customers’ doors as quickly as possible, which has facilitated wholesale changes in how they operate. Cutting-edge digital solut...

Jesse Lawrence Contributor Jesse Lawrence has been in media and tech for 20 years. Prior to TicketIQ , he worked at MediaMath and IAC. He started his career as a writer. More posts by this contributor The Golden Knights, live gambling and the future of live sports attendance After years of chasing brokers and bots, ‘slow ticketing’ will help both artists and fans Among the many myths that were laid low in 2018, perhaps none was as welcome to throngs of live event fans as the fantasy of the sold-out show. Indeed, as the ticket market has moved to adopt new technology the new-found transparency has had one prime victim: The Sellout. The highest-profile debunking of the sellout in sports for 2018 came from Washington, DC. Originally reported by the Washington Post , the Washington Redskins officially ended their decade-long season-ticket waitlist this June. Once claimed to be 200,000 fans deep, the reality of Redskins demand hadn’t been as rosy since the glory days of Riggi...

Business Insider's team of tech journalists were first to report some of the most important developments in tech in 2018. From the surprise departure of Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene to the internal turmoil at AR pioneer Magic Leap to the problems leading up to Uber's fatal autonomous car crash , the industry has had an eventful year. Check out the list below for some of great reads you may have missed, or to refresh your perspective and challenge your assumptions as you prepare for the new year in tech. From massive, multibillion dollar acquisitions to boardroom shake-ups and disturbing scandals, the tech industry had an eventful 2018. Business Insider's team of tech journalists were first to report some of the most important developments, from the surprise departure of Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene to the internal turmoil at AR pioneer Magic Leap to the problems leading up to Uber's fatal autonomous car crash. As the tech world move ahead into 2019, we dec...

Scott Scrivens / Android Police : Screenshots suggest Google is testing group calling and a low light mode in its Duo video chat app for Android   —  Group calling and a low light mode in Google Duo have been rumored for some time, but we now have our first glimpse of the features in action. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2SuBNC6

Depending on how paranoid you are, this research from Stanford and Google will be either terrifying or fascinating. A machine learning agent intended to transform aerial images into street maps and back was found to be cheating by hiding information it would need later in “a nearly imperceptible, high-frequency signal.” Clever girl! This occurrence reveals a problem with computers that has existed since they were invented: they do exactly what you tell them to do. The intention of the researchers was, as you might guess, to accelerate and improve the process of turning satellite imagery into Google’s famously accurate maps. To that end the team was working with what’s called a CycleGAN — a neural network that learns to transform images of type X and Y into one another, as efficiently yet accurately as possible, though a great deal of experimentation. In some early results, the agent was doing well — suspiciously well. What tipped the team off was that, when the agent reconstructed...

Happy New Year! The folks over at Epic Games have a special treat in store for players hopping on Fortnite today. In celebration of New Years Eve all around the world, Fortnite is having an in-game live event where a massive, dropping disco ball descends on the map each hour, on the hour. The virtual ball drop has the same affect on players as a boogie bomb, meaning that everyone playing Fortnite is collectively dancing each time the minutes on your clock read :00. Obviously, the clock has already struck midnight and 2019 has officially begun in many parts of the world, but the in-game ball drop threw some players off guard. 2019 NEW YEAR LEAKED!?!?! pic.twitter.com/T8t81LPEOQ — dakotaz (@dakotaz) December 31, 2018 A NEW YEARS EVENT ALREADY? HAPPY EARLY NEW YEARS I GUESS LMAOOO pic.twitter.com/Jwmu1W1klP — FaZe Thiefs (@Thiefs) December 31, 2018 Nick Chester, Epic’s PR spokesperson, tweeted this in response: Woke up to learn that many Fortnite players are unawar...

This was the year Amazon went all-in on the Alexa. September saw the announcement of a new Echo Dot, Show and Plus, a subwoofer, an audio input device, an auto dongle and an amplifier. That would have been plenty, but the company also started dipping its toes into the other side of things. 2018 also found Amazon experimenting in the connected device category — namely a microwave and wall clock (oh, and a singing fish , too). It’s a strange move on the face of it. After all, there are countless companies currently vying for a small slice of that mindshare. But Amazon’s got a few key things going for it. For one, the company stands to gain from building products that exist solely to complement its Echo devices. For another, it’s able to sell products at — or close to — cost. The Echo Wall Clock benefits quite a bit for both of these factors. It’s $30 device that’s essentially useless without an Alexa device. In fact, Alexa is required to set the time. That’s a downside in the off-ch...

Bill Gates published a blog post in which he reflected on the last 12 months and shared his thoughts about the year to come.  In the post, Gates said he believes the US must spend more on nuclear energy research in order to regain its global leadership leadership in that area.  Burning fossil fuels causes global temperatures to rise. Renewable energy sources don't emit the same heat-trapping gases, but Gates said breakthroughs in solar and wind energy won't be enough. Gates and other billionaires lead a fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures that invests in startups focusing on clean energy. Bill Gates is urging the United States to invest in nuclear power research. In his annual year-in-review Gates Notes blog post , Gates noted that, despite the consequences of climate change that people face around the globe, "global emissions of greenhouse gases went up in 2018." Because burning fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide and ot...