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 While Coinbase has had its fair share of technical issues the last few months, it seems the latest one may not be their fault. Earlier today reports started coming in across social media and reddit that Coinbase users were seeing strange charges on their credit and debit cards. Many of these were users being double-charged for a past transaction, although there were also some (unconfirmed)… Read More

 If you need to make a 3D model of an object, there are plenty of ways to do so, but most are only automated to the extent that they know how to spin in circles around that object and put together a mesh. This new system from Fraunhofer does it more intelligently, getting a basic idea of the object to be scanned and planning out what motions will let it do so efficiently and comprehensively. Read More

 Google announced today that it intends to buy Xively from LogMeIn, giving Google Cloud an established IoT platform to add to their product portfolio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Google indicated it wants to use this purchase as a springboard into the growing IoT market, which it believes will reach 20 billion connected things by 2020. Read More

 Instagram has taken down content posted by Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny under pressure from a government agency, while YouTube has yet to do so. Navalny and others have criticized Instagram for complying to what they call a politically-motivated move to silence him. Read More

 Black Panther doesn’t look like any movie I’ve seen. I mean, I don’t want to downplay America’s long history of black cinema (a history that already includes a handful of black superheroes). Nor am I ignoring the fact that Black Panther is the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — so yes, it conforms in a number of ways to the dictates of… Read More

 Black Panther doesn’t look like any movie I’ve seen. I mean, I don’t want to downplay America’s long history of black cinema (a history that already includes a handful of black superheroes). Nor am I ignoring the fact that Black Panther is the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — so yes, it conforms in a number of ways to the dictates of… Read More

 Founders Co-op, a Seattle-based seed-stage venture firm, is looking to close its fourth and newest fund with $25 million, according to an SEC filing that shows the outfit has raised at least $10.7 million toward that end. The firm — now a fixture on Seattle’s venture scene — was created 10 years ago and closed its last fund in 2015 with $20 million. Its founders include… Read More

 When I first heard of Blinkist, a service that breaks down recent nonfiction books to easily digestible snippets, I was afraid it would turn out to be some machine-learning-driven auto-summary thing. But in talking to co-founder Niklas Jansen, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the company is still very much people-powered — and in fact, that may be the root of its continuing success. Read More

 When I first heard of Blinkist, a service that breaks down recent nonfiction books to easily digestible snippets, I was afraid it would turn out to be some machine-learning-driven auto-summary thing. But in talking to co-founder Niklas Jansen, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the company is still very much people-powered — and in fact, that may be the root of its continuing success. Read More

 Game streaming site Twitch today is debuting an always-on chat room feature it’s simply calling “Rooms.” The addition was first announced at its developer event TwitchCon back in October, and was expected to launch before year-end. That timing shifted a bit, but the feature is going live today across both web and mobile for Twitch users worldwide. Rooms are custom chat… Read More