Microsoft’s Bing is down in China, according to users who took to social media beginning Wednesday afternoon to complain and express concerns. The Seattle-based behemoth has confirmed that its search engine is currently inaccessible in China and is “engaged to determine next steps,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch Thursday morning. Citing […]
View More Microsoft confirms Bing is down in ChinaCategory: Baidu
Apple HomePod comes to China at $400 amid iPhone sales woes
Apple is finally launching HomePod in China, but the timing is tricky as the premium device will have to wrestle with local competitors and a slowing economy. The firm said over the weekend that its smart speaker will be available in Mainland China and Hong Kong starting January 18, adding to a list of countries where […]
View More Apple HomePod comes to China at $400 amid iPhone sales woesWorld’s most valuable AI startup SenseTime unveils self-driving center in Japan
The world’s highest-valued artificial intelligence startup SenseTime has set foot in Japan. The Beijing-based firm announced on Friday that it just opened a self-driving facility in Joso, a historic city 50 kilometers away from Tokyo where it plans to conduct R&D and road test driverless vehicles. The initiative follows its agreement with Japanese auto giant Honda in […]
View More World’s most valuable AI startup SenseTime unveils self-driving center in JapanA self-driving delivery car brought me a burger at CES
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Burgers and fries delivered by robo-car.
Stranger things have happened in Las Vegas. At the CES tech show this year, a car from AutoX showed off its autonomous driving skills by delivering burgers to the convention center.
The San Jose, California-based company started out delivering groceries with cars equipped with backseats modified to keep produce fresh and unharmed. Later, it partnered with select restaurants in Silicon Valley.
For CES this year, the delivery service found a nearby Applebee’s and sent out its test cars with a livefeed to show on the convention floor how the delivery process was going. After the car picked up the food about 2 miles away, some other reporters, VIPs, and I were able to chow down on slightly sweaty burgers and fries. (It was still delivery, after all — it can’t compete with food at a restaurant. It must have looked delicious though, because someone at the convention center stopped to ask me where I got it from.) Read more…
More about Ces, Delivery, Baidu, Autonomous Vehicles, and Self Driving Cars
View More A self-driving delivery car brought me a burger at CESBaidu Cloud launches its open source edge computing platform
At CES, the Chinese tech giant Baidu today announced OpenEdge, its open source edge computing platform. At its core, OpenEdge is the local package component of Baidu’s existing Intelligent Edge (BIE) commercial offering and obviously plays well with that service’s components for managing edge nodes and apps. Since this is obviously a developer announcement, I’m […]
View More Baidu Cloud launches its open source edge computing platformBaidu announces Apollo Enterprise, its new platform for mass-produced autonomous vehicles
Baidu made several big announcements about Apollo, its open-source autonomous vehicle technology platform, today at CES. The first is the launch of Apollo Enterprise for vehicles that will be put into mass production. The company claims that Apollo is already used by 130 partners around the world. One of its newest partners, Chinese electric vehicle […]
View More Baidu announces Apollo Enterprise, its new platform for mass-produced autonomous vehiclesWalmart taps startup Udelv to test autonomous grocery deliveries in Arizona
More autonomous vehicles are poised to descend on Arizona. This time, Walmart has signed a deal with startup Udelv to test the use of autonomous vans to deliver online grocery orders to customers. Under the agreement, Udelv will provide its second-generation autonomous delivery van, called the Newton, to Walmart to deliver groceries in Surprise, Arizona. […]
View More Walmart taps startup Udelv to test autonomous grocery deliveries in ArizonaChina’s Nreal raises $15M to shrink augmented headsets to size of sunglasses
A former Magic Leap engineer believes the problem with most consumer-facing augmented headsets on the market is their bulky size. “You wouldn’t want to wear them for more than one hour,” Xu Chi, founder and chief executive officer of Nreal told me as he put on a bright orange headgear that looked just like plastic Ray-Ban […]
View More China’s Nreal raises $15M to shrink augmented headsets to size of sunglassesChina’s Baidu says its answer to Alexa is now on 200M devices
A Chinese voice assistant has been rapidly gaining ground in recent months. DuerOS, Baidu’s answer to Amazon’s Alexa, reached over 200 million devices, China’s top search engine announced on its Weibo official account last Friday. To put that number into context, more than 100 million devices pre-installed with Alexa have been sold, Amazon recently said. Google just […]
View More China’s Baidu says its answer to Alexa is now on 200M devicesApple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs
Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy. The problem for this subset […]
View More Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offsTencent AI Lab loses key executive
Chinese internet giant Tencent just lost a leading artificial intelligence figure. Zhang Tong, who previously worked at Yahoo, IBM and Baidu, has stepped down after directing Tencent’s AI Lab for nearly two years. The scientist will return to academia and continue research in the AI field, Tencent confirmed with TechCrunch on Thursday, adding that it […]
View More Tencent AI Lab loses key executiveTencent-backed homework app jumps to $3B valuation after raising $300M
Academic exams are a big deal in China as they determine the kind of universities, high schools and elementary schools that students get into and to a degree, the future that awaits them. Parents are thus willing to invest generously to help their children get ahead in school. One startup capitalizing on this need is […]
View More Tencent-backed homework app jumps to $3B valuation after raising $300M