Voyager Space announced a new collaboration with Hilton, the American hotel and hospitality company. Together, the companies are planning to bring crew lodging to Starlab, Voyager Space’s upcoming commercial space station which will be consistently crewed by four astronauts.
If you’ve gone online this week or turned on the TV, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the gross and potentially fatal practice of cooking chicken in NyQuil. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration warned about the “recent NyQuil chicken” challenge, and by the amount of coverage it’s gotten, you would think…
Meta is facing a hefty bill after losing a patent infringement lawsuit. A federal judge in Texas has ordered the company to pay Voxer, the developer of app called Walkie Talkie, nearly $175 million as an ongoing royalty. Voxer accused Meta of infringing its patents and incorporating that tech in Instagram Live and Facebook Live.
In 2006, Tom Katis, the founder of Voxer, started working on a way to resolve communications problems he faced while serving in the US Army in Afghanistan, as TechCrunch notes. Katis and his team developed tech that allows for live voice and video transmissions, which led to Voxer debuting the Walkie Talkie app in 2011.
According to the lawsuit, soon after Voxer released the app, Meta (then known as Facebook) approached the company about a collaboration. Voxer is said to have revealed its proprietary technology as well as its patent portfolio to Meta, but the two sides didn’t reach an agreement. Voxer claims that even though Meta didn’t have live video or voice services back then, it identified the Walkie Talkie developer as a competitor and shut down access to Facebook features such as the “Find Friends” tool.
Meta debuted Facebook Live in 2015. Katis claims to have had a chance meeting with a Facebook Live product manager in early 2016 to discuss the alleged infringements of Voxer’s patents in that product, but Meta declined to reach a deal with the company. The latter released Instagram Live later that year. “Both products incorporate Voxer’s technologies and infringe its patents,” Voxer claimed in the lawsuit.
Meta denied Voxer’s claims in a statement to TechCrunch. It plans to fight the ruling. “We believe the evidence at trial demonstrated that Meta did not infringe Voxer’s patents,” a spokesperson said. “We intend to seek further relief, including filing an appeal.”
It’s been over two years since I reviewed Darkwalker on Moonshae, the fabulously titled first book ever set in Dungeons & Dragons’ venerable Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It’s been less than a week since I read the sequel, Black Wizards, but when I tell you I’ve forgotten nearly everything about the book since…
The new Chromecast with Google TV (HD) is one of those rare devices that’s better than its predecessor and less expensive a the same time.
Donald Trump could be back to his old social media antics in just a few months. The two-year ban, barring the former poster-in-chief from Facebook, expires at the beginning of 2023. And Meta, Facebook’s parent company, hasn’t revealed whether it’ll be extending Trump’s virtual exile.
One out of every two BMW M2s is purchased with a manual transmission, so it doesn’t make sense to shift gears to automatic only.
SpaceX is expecting to see its gigantic Starship rocket take off on its first flight very soon. CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company is gearing up to attempt the first-ever orbital test flight of the two-stage reusable system as early as late October, but with a launch in November being more “likely.”
Alex Jones found himself in the hot seat for the second time to answer for the lies he spread about grieving Sandy Hook families.
According to Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin is named because “… this is the blue planet and this is the planet that we have to save.”
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
