Killer Apps Headlines

The company's smart litter box, now on Kickstarter, looks like it addresses a lot of problems with other automated boxes and more.

The Discord store offers indie games and exclusives.

Mr. Allen and Bill Gates started the company in 1975, helping to usher in the personal computing revolution. He died after a recurrence of cancer.

Github ranked its top open source projects as well as fast growing developer languages.

Plus, a look into the San Fran scooter wars.

Matthew Boyle / Bloomberg : CIRP: Amazon US Prime membership growth slows, up 8% over the past 12 months to 97M, as members spent $1,400/year on average, versus $600 for non-Prime users   —  - Walmart has tried to blunt the appeal of Prime membership  — Prime members still spend heavily, $1,400 per year on average

Samsung, Huawei, and Apple are the top three smartphone makers and to continue the trend of these companies having smartphone companions, Huawei announced a new smartwatch and fitness band to meet the needs of active users.

Based on the dual-NPU Kirin 980 chipset, the Mate 20 series looks set to consolidate Huawei's strengths in on-device AI, photography and battery life.

Brad Chacos / PCWorld : Gaming chat company Discord says its digital game store, which first launched in Canada back in August, is now launching globally in public beta with 22 titles   —  Discord's war on Steam (which only started after Steam declared war on Discord) is escalating.

Alex Heath / Cheddar : Source: Facebook is building a hybrid video chat/TV set-top box, internally called Ripley, which it plans to announce in Spring 2019   —  Facebook is developing hardware for the TV, Cheddar has learned.  —  The world's largest social network is building a camera-equipped device that sits atop …

Ron Miller / TechCrunch : Paperspace raises $13M Series A led by Battery Ventures for AI-fueled application development platform   —  Paperspace wants to help developers build artificial intelligence and machine learning applications with a software/hardware development platform powered by GPus and other powerful chips.

Vlad Savov / The Verge : Huawei unveils Mate 20 Pro with 6.4-inch OLED display, in-display fingerprint sensor, two-way wireless charging, three rear cameras, and 4,200mAh battery   —  Everything you could want from a phone, and then some  —  Arriving fashionably late to the 2018 contest for super flagship phones …

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch : Syncron, which offers a SaaS to help manufacturers move to a service model, raises $67M led by Summit Partners, source says at a $175M post-money valuation   —  Syncron, a Stockholm-headquartered company that offers a SaaS to help equipment and other product manufacturers move to a service model …

Jason Del Rey / Recode : Instacart raises $600M at a $7.6B valuation led by hedge fund D1 Capital Partners   —  The startup has a fresh $600 million in funding to boot.  —  As Amazon has ramped up its Whole Foods grocery delivery service to 48 cities across the U.S., a common narrative has followed …

Roberto Baldwin / Engadget : Amazon unveils waterproof Kindle Paperwhite with higher 300ppi resolution, starting at $129, available for preorder now, shipping November 7   —  Sometimes you just want to read a book.  Or maybe all the books.  That's the promise of the Kindle line.  Access to thousands of books …