When was the last time you booked a vacation or picked a restaurant without first asking the world what they thought? From places to stay and restaurants to try, to brand selection and business loyalty, we are all heavily reliant on the input of others when making determinations about how to spend both our time …

A California federal judge, Lucy H. Koh, granted Apple almost $6.5 million in ongoing royalties from Samsung in the companies’ dispute over patented designs on Feb. 15, 2018 after scolding Samsun in a hearing last month for continuing to sell the infringing phones. The Federal Circuit has not squarely addressed the standard for evaluating claims for ongoing …

Final Rule to Eliminate Barriers to Electric Storage Resources On February 15th, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final rule to support electric storage resources (like lithium-ion batteries or pumped-storage hydroelectricity) and their continued growth in regional electricity markets. This new rule directs all regional grid operators (RTOs/ISOs) to create a new “participation …

International Business Machines Corporation, more commonly known by its moniker “IBM,” alleges that the work it put into capturing and retaining a diverse set of employees is a protectable trade secret in a recent lawsuit. Lindsay-Rae McIntyre used to be the chief diversity officer at IBM, where she managed groups that developed tools and methods, …

In just three years, 16% of the U.S. population has adopted smart speaker technology. As of December 2017, a study indicates that one in six adults in the U.S. own smart speakers. This is around 39 million people, an increase of about 128% from January 2017. The recent release of Apple’s HomePod (February 9, 2018) …

On January 31st, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Twitter can’t be held liable for allegedly allowing the Islamic State (ISIS) to use its social network to spread propaganda. The case, Fields v. Twitter, Inc., is brought by a pair of plaintiffs whose family members were killed in 2015 in …

While one day requesting air travel with the convenience of a ride sharing app may seem like a luxury reserved for the ultra-wealthy, Uber already has plans to deliver this service to consumers at an affordable rate. The idea is that destinations could be entered via an app that would inform of where the closest …

5Pointz complex in Long Island City, Queens, was a frequent site of photo shoots and music videos as its walls were adorned with visual works of art since the 1990s—back when the owner of the building agreed to allow graffiti artists work on the walls of the building. 5Pointz became not only a hotspot and …

In the Mission Impossible series Tom Cruise receives self-destructing assignments before embarking on a theatrical, mostly death defying, stunt filled mission. Interestingly enough, minus the explosive part, those messages are now no longer just for the movies. There is an app, Confide, that provides the same security without all the cleanup. Confide provides users “[w]ith …

“Deepfakes technology” uses machine learning to doctor film and replace the face of one person with the face of another. It does so by condensing the film editing task into three, easy steps: (1) “gather a photoset of a person;” (2) “choose a video to manipulate;” (3) wait for your computer to do the rest. …