Amazon.com would like to be your personal shopper.

A service rolled out on Thursday, called Amazon’s Choice, effectively turns over a shopper’s decision-making to Amazon. The new designation comes in an update to Amazon’s Echo voice-activated speaker, which now allows customers to order goods just by saying them aloud. Read More »

Google’s self-driving cars are leaving the campus behind and turning on to public roads. Read More »

At the heart of AOL’s video distribution and advertising technology lie three startups that AOL snapped up over the past five years, all with strong connections to Israel. Read More »

The state-owned electricity company, which says it fends off between 150,000 and 300,000 hacking attempts a day, is betting its future on cyber-security exports – software, hardware, training, and consulting to foreign governments, utilities companies and airports. Read More »

This is ‘Silicon Milkroundabout’, a twice-annual job fair for the London tech scene in which talent-starved startups will do almost anything to attract the attention of skilled job seekers. Read More »

Amazon.com Inc. is working to expand its Prime-eligible inventory, including goods it doesn’t handle itself.

The Seattle retailer has reached out to third-party merchants to potentially allow them to ship goods directly to consumers under Amazon’s Prime membership program, according to people familiar with the effort. That could expand Prime inventory beyond the 20 million items currently eligible for free shipping in the U.S. Read More »

Internet pioneer Vinton G. Cerf warned Thursday that political and technological forces threaten universal access and integrity, which he described as the foundation of the Internet’s value.

“In my view, fragmentation is destructive of the basic functioning of the Internet. … Fragmentation would be a terrible outcome [and] destroy value …. But we have to work to make sure there is no reason to fragment,” Dr. Cerf said Thursday during a conference on Internet governance and cybersecurity, sponsored by the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and the Global Commission on Internet Governance. Read More »

Reddit, the popular link-posting and discussion website periodically plagued by personal attacks and leaked explicit photos, announced a new way to report harassment Thursday, providing an email address and direction for users who are seeking relief from abusive posts.

Ellen Pao, the company’s chief executive who has sought to make Reddit both safer for users and more welcoming to advertisers, helped to announce the changes in a co-authored blog post. “We’ve seen many conversations devolve into attacks against individuals,” the post said. “If you are being harassed, report the private message, post or comment and user by emailing contact@reddit.com.”  A spokeswoman said Reddit employees will field, evaluate and respond to complaints, which could lead to warnings or the banning of abusive users. The company cited a March user survey as encouraging the new system. Read More »

Apple said the first HomeKit-enabled smart-home devices are coming out next month, refuting a report that said delays with the home automation software platform would push back the launch until August or September. Read More »

Microsoft encountered a shock earlier this year: Networking issues suddenly cropped up across the company’s sprawling Redmond, Wash., campus, causing headaches for engineers and pushing the company toward substantial expenditures.

“We’ve been having a hard time,” Justine Vick, a Network Architect at Microsoft, told attendees of a networking conference in March.  Read More »