Volvo to co-develop and sell autonomous driving tech

It’s a more common occurrence for car manufacturers to keep their autonomous driving technology to themselves. But Volvo is breaking away from that and is looking to sell the technology it develops with Swedish automotive safety supplier Autoliv. The two companies will move all their autonomous vehicle software development and intellectual property into this new joint venture. The venture will start off with 200 employees, which is split between existing staff of both companies, and will eventually grow to over 600 people. The company is expected to begin operations at the start of 2017. And they hope to sell the first of its products by 2019 with technologies becoming available by 2021. The joint venture’s headquarters will be in Gothenburg, Sweden a.k.a. Volvo’s hometown.

Source: The Verge

Chromebooks might integrate fingerprint scanning

Google might be looking for a way to improve security of its laptops. Mention of a fingerprint sensor for Chrome OS was spotted in the company’s Chromium code repository. But it isn’t clear yet how the feature might work with the operating system. It could make it faster to log into the device itself, access certain Google apps, or even to pay for items in the Google Play Store or third-party vendors. Google won’t be the first one to try this out. A lot of the flagship smartphones have built-in fingerprint sensors and for the desktop/PC side you have Microsoft’s Windows Hello feature that uses biometric authentication as well. For now, Chrome Unboxed suggests Google might just be working on getting basic fingerprint scanning and then we can see from there.

Source: PCWorld

LG unveils V20, company’s first Android Nougat-powered smartphone

Don’t have a Nexus and want to get your hands on an Android 7.0 Nougat device already? LG just unveiled the V20, the V10’s successor. It’s the first device outside of Google’s Nexus devices to get the latest Android operating system.

Instead of maintaining its distinct look with a rugged, grippy back and stainless steel sides, the V20 looks rather similar to the G5 with its smooth aluminum surface. But this phone doesn’t carry LG’s interpretation of modular smartphones. The good thing though is you can still swap out the 3,200mAh battery and the phone is supposedly sturdy having been rated MIL-STD 810G for drop and shock resistance. Don’t take it swimming with you, though, as the phone isn’t water resistant.

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Facebook experiments with showing highlights of your friends’ status updates

Facebook likes to play around with its News Feed and we don’t all get to see these experiments. One example has been spotted by Mashable. There is a new box roughly the size of an image post with the title “What friends are talking about” showing a few status updates and image previews from some of your friends. They saw the feature show up on an Android device. The section also shows how many comments have been made on that specific update.

While you may or may not be able to see this feature in the future, it seems like Facebook is trying to get you content you might care about more. As big as the social network has gotten, it’s been a bit trickier to get you connected to the people that matter to you.

Source: Mashable