Digital Trends Live: Facebook, Flying Taxis, and Police in Teslas

Digital Trends Live: Facebook, flying taxis, and Tesla police car

By Will Nicol January 26, 2019

On episode 54 of Digital Trends Live, DT’s live morning show, hosts Greg Nibler and Caleb Denison closed out the week with some of the biggest news stories from the world of tech, as well as interviews with fascinating people.

First story of the day: Facebook brooks controversy once again, though this latest incident probably won’t result in a Congressional hearing. According to a report by the New York Times, Mark Zuckerberg aims to fully integrate Facebook Messenger, as well as Instagram and WhatsApp, into Facebook proper. Apparently the services will continue to exist as standalone apps, “but their underlying technical infrastructure will be unified.” The NYT report goes on to suggest that the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp left the company over disagreements regarding Zuckerberg’s plan.

In other news, a police department in California is going green. The Fremont Police department is adding a Tesla Model S to its fleet of cars. The department spent a year outfitting the car with necessary features like a prisoner partition and ballistic barriers, however it estimates that over the long term, the Model S will require far less in upkeep costs than a Ford Explorer.

Decades ago, sci-fi writers promised the future would hold flying cars, and so far reality has been a disappointment. Boeing may soon change that, as the company has been testing a VTOL (vertical take off and landing) taxi. The unnamed vehicle will be autonomous and carry two passengers.

Later on in the show, Greg sat down to talk with Chris Duffin, the “Mad Scientist of Strength,” co-owner of Kabuki Strength, an organization that both provides strength-training equipment and educates people on how to better train their bodies.

“We’re an organization that’s both a manufacturer and an educator,” Duffing explains. “We’re a principle-based organization, principles around managing load, movement, and out of that we find gaps that are in the industry. So we don’t just make things to make things. We have a lot of very unique, innovative tools that improve biomechanics, positioning, and it’s all about reducing injury and maximizing the performance of the athlete.”

Finally, Greg also talked with Elana Fishman, co-founder and COO of Wyze Labs, a company trying to make tech for everyone.

“We’re a startup based in Seattle. We were founded in July 2017, and our mission is to make great technology accessible to everyone. We believe that technology makes life better and that everyone should have access to it. So we started focusing on smart homes; our first product was a smart home camera called Wyze Cam. It’s a 1080p smart home camera, that you can put anywhere in your home and access a live feed 24/7. It includes 14 days of cloud storage for free, there’s no subscription charge for our camera.”

Since then, Wyze has added a camera with panning functionality, and is working on much more.

Digital Trends Live airs Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. PT, with highlights available on demand after the stream ends. For more information, check out the DT Live homepage, and be sure to watch live for the chance to win occasional prizes.

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