Month: March 2017

Enlarge (credit: Google Fiber)

Some Kansas City residents who have been waiting years for Google Fiber to install service at their homes recently received e-mails canceling their installations, with no word on whether they'll ever get Internet service from the company.

KSHB 41 Action News in Kansas City, Missouri, "spoke to several people, living in different parts of the metro, all who have recently received cancellation e-mails," the station reported last week. "The e-mails do not provide a specific reason for the cancellations. Instead they say the company was 'unable to build our network to connect your home or business at this time.'"

While Google Fiber refuses to say how many installations have been canceled, KSHB said, "there is speculation the number of cancellations in the metro is as high as 2,700."

Google Maps quietly added a sweet new feature that will help you remember where you parked. Just park the car, open up Google Maps, and tap on the blue location dot. You'll be presented with a new menu offering to "save your parking" which lets you store everything you need to find your car again.

The new interface will save your current location and slap a big "P" icon on the map. This wouldn't be enough for a multistory parking garage though, so you can bring up a new interface that lets you save a ton of information. You can adjust the dot location, add photos to your parking spot, and type notes. If there's a parking meter, you can even set a "time left" field that will count down the time remaining.

ULA/Jeff Spotts

After Saturday night's successful delivery of an Air Force communications satellite to orbit, the medium variant of the Delta IV rocket has now launched 26 times. All of the Delta IV medium launches, which primarily have served the US armed forces, have ended in mission success.

Other US-based rockets have launched more, but no modern rocket with all-American components, from the engines and solid-rocket motors to the upper stage, can boast of such a record of success as the Delta IV Medium. And yet now the rocket's parent company, United Launch Alliance, desperately wants to retire the booster. Why?

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Uber's president Jeff Jones, a marketing expert who joined just six months ago to help soften Uber's abrasive image, has quit because his "beliefs and approach to leadership" were incompatible with what he "saw and experienced at Uber."

Jones had previously been the chief marketing officer at Target. "I joined Uber because of its mission," Jones said on Sunday evening in a statement to Reuters, "and the challenge to build global capabilities that would help the company mature and thrive long term.

"It is now clear, however, that the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber, and I can no longer continue as president of the ride sharing business."