This week: Palantir's long path and the omnipresence of Peter Thiel
Today is the day that Palantir begins trading as a public company. The Big Data company's Wall Street debut will be closely watched as a barometer for direct listings and for the broader tech rally.
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You might already know that Palantir has been around for a long time — since 2003. The internet looked a lot different then, and while the stock market will provide one important way to measure Palantir's worth since, its own history over the past 17 years provides a fascinating look into the tangled, interconnected layers of the internet.
Every now and again something happens in tech that really makes you do a double-take. And in the past week or so, there have two big ones that struck me.
Musk goes mining. No, not bitcoin mining. Actual excavation of the earth for minerals, in this case, the lithium which is the key ingredient in its car batteries. Tesla has long prided itself on being a vertically integrated company that produces most its cars' components in-house, but Musk's new plan for the company to own and operate its own mines takes the concept to another (deeper) level.
Today's silicon processors are split into two main camps: x86, the chip architecture used by Intel and AMD, and ARM, the technical basis of the microprocessors made by nearly everyone else and found in most smartphones.
RISC-V is open source, so anyone is free to use and modify it to their liking. Just like how Linux changed the software world two decades ago, RISC-V could upend the market for chips — and that might not be good news for Nvidia or Intel.
Weeks after Bloomberg reported that Apple's engineers and industrial designers had created a new face mask for its retail employees, we finally got a look at the iMask, courtesy of gadget video blogging site Unbox Therapy. The key differentiators from your standard, garden-variety surgical mask seem to be the special nose and chin flaps, and the wraparound headstrap — with a special clasp — to relieve the pressure on the back of your ears.
According to the video, tightening the nose seal can prevent your sunglasses from fogging up — a breakthrough that Apple is to be commended for. As far as we know, Apple has no plans to sell these masks to the general public, so talk to your local Apple "Genius" about the best way to procure a five-pack of these puppies on the black market.
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Facebook is merging its Messenger and Instagram direct message features, allowing users on Instagram to send chats to people on Facebook and vice versa
China is preparing an antitrust investigation into Google at Huawei's request, according to a report
Apple is giving CEO Tim Cook over $38 million in stock to stay with the company through 2025