Technology

Bloomberg The most talked-about, futuristic product from Google’s developer show isn’t even finished — but it’s already stoking heated debate. At its I/O conference, Alphabet Inc.’s Google previewed Duplex, an experimental service that lets its voice-based digital assistant book appointments on its own. It was part of a slate of features, such as automated writing in emails, where Google touted …

Bloomberg Space Exploration Technologies Corp. launched its more reusable rocket for the first time, a major step forward in reducing the cost of the closely held company’s missions. The Falcon 9 Block 5 carried Bangladesh’s first geostationary communications satellite towards orbit. It’s the latest major upgrade by SpaceX to its workhorse rocket and is built to handle at least 10 …

Bloomberg A series of high-profile accidents involving self-driving cars are slowing the mad rush into the autonomous vehicles business, according to a report issued. The accidents, some of them fatal, have ignited a debate about how to regulate the safety of self-driving vehicles and tempered the public’s expectations, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said. They’ve also exposed the downside of rushing …

Bloomberg Google is secretly building a social-gaming startup, part of its effort to create fledgling companies within the internet-search giant. The founder and co-owner of the new firm, called Arcade, is Michael Sayman, according to people familiar with the matter. Sayman is the 21-year-old wunderkind who started as a Facebook Inc. intern at age 17 and left that company for …

Bloomberg Axon Enterprise Inc., the police technology company best known for its Taser stun guns, agreed to purchase its main competitor in the body camera industry, Vievu LLC. The combination of the two largest providers of the recording devices will create a dominant force in police surveillance. The companies declined to disclose financial details; Axon said it would discuss them …

Bloomberg Twitter Inc. advised users to change their passwords after the company found a bug in its systems that exposed passwords in plain text internally. The company said it removed the non-encrypted passwords from its system, and is working to avoid such an issue happening again. An internal investigation “shows no indication of breach or misuse by anyone” and there’s …

Bloomberg After President Emmanuel Macron scrapped plans for a high-speed rail connection to Limoges, a city in central France, local entrepreneur Fabien Thibaut picked up his phone to call Elon Musk and talk about the Hyperloop — Musk’s idea for superfast trains zooming in tubes. “This kind of project is essential for a city like ours,” said Thibaut, one of …

Bloomberg Bird, a startup that deploys electric scooters with location trackers on city sidewalks and rents them through an app, trumpeted two weeks ago that it was bringing its service to San Francisco. The company, run by a former honcho at both Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc., said it was determined to make sure everything went smoothly with city …

Bloomberg Cisco Systems Inc., the biggest maker of the gear companies use to connect employees, said it’s expanding the use of artificial intelligence in its online collaboration and video-conference products to make meetings more useful and efficient. Menial tasks such as scheduling, taking notes and following up on requests will be taken care of by machines in the future, according …

DUBAI / Emirates Business Smart Solutions and IT Technology (SSIT), the region’s leading one-stop shop for office automation solutions and part of the Al Ahlia Group, is delighted to introduce an extensive range of TA Triumph-Adler products to the UAE market. TA Triumph-Alder’s tailor-made document and output management software solutions are designed to deliver the highest levels of quality, reliability, …