This week in tech saw people passing the buck. Former President Donald Trump sued the co-founders of his social media platform for bungling the job when it went public, the owners of the cargo ship that caused a bridge to collapse say it’s not their fault, and a company that makes an interesting fire extinguishing tool says the U.S. government agency that recalled its product did so because it didn’t know how to use it. Here are the rest of the big tech stories of the week.
Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with. - Maxwell Zeff Read More
Last week, a cargo ship temporarily lost power and spun out of control, causing it to slam into the Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore. The bridge collapsed, sending two construction workers to their deaths. Two other construction workers were injured, and four others are currently unaccounted for and are presumed dead. - Lucas Ropek Read More
A little over a week ago, Trump Media Technology Group, which owns Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, became a publicly traded company. Around the same time, Trump Media launched a lawsuit against the co-founders of the platform, claiming that they had hurt the company’s value by bungling key parts of its business operations and the process of going public. As such, the suit seeks to eliminate their stake in the company, which is currently valued at around $606 million. - Lucas Ropek Read More
Amazon’s grocery stores ditched their “Just Walk Out” technology on Tuesday, though it turned out the automated checkout system included 1,000 reviewers in India. However, this is hardly the only example of times when automation breakthroughs were truly powered by human workers in hiding – a phenomenon known as “The Mechanical Turk.” - Maxwell Zeff Read More
California Forever, the tech billionaire-backed effort to create a new city on hundreds of acres in the Bay Area, has faced a number of challenges, including a legal dispute between the project’s backers and a number of families who are longtime residents of the area where developers want to build. - Lucas Ropek Read More
The air fryer is the hottest kitchen appliance in America right now. Many of us discovered them during the pandemic, as recipes went viral on social media claiming you could fry without the oily mess. This brilliant new device seemingly popped up out of nowhere, or did it? The idea that air frying is a new cooking technique is a myth. Your air fryer is just a little convection oven with a fan system that really blows. - Maxwell Zeff Read More
Jon Stewart interviewed Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on Monday night’s episode of The Daily Show, alongside a segment on how artificial intelligence is taking jobs. Stewart says Apple wouldn’t let him do either on his Apple TV show The Problem with Jon Stewart, which was canceled roughly six months ago. - Maxwell Zeff Read More
Fresh off dumping its electric vehicles project, Apple appears to be pivoting to something fairly different: household robots. Engineers at the iPhone company have been working on some sort of “personal robotics” device that can cohabitate with you and follow you around, Bloomberg reported Thursday. So, basically a robo-roommate. - Lucas Ropek Read More
AT&T revealed over the weekend that the data of 73 million customers, including social security numbers, had been compromised in a data breach—a hack some media outlets state was reported back in 2021. - Jody Serrano Read More