• Regulators approve sale of state's largest electric utility 
    The Public Utility Commission of Texas on March 24 gave its blessing for Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt’s family to buy and restructure Oncor, the state’s largest electric utility — but not without dozens of strings attached. The regulators approved the proposal despite warnings from the AARP, the Texas Coalition for Affordable Power and others who argued that the deal will harm ratepayers. The PUC staff, former Gov. Rick Perry and a coalition of cities also opposed passing the deal, saying…
       


  • Oracle wants to put the cloud under your company's roof 
    Oracle Corp., the tech giant building a massive cloud services campus is Austin, has launched a service in which Oracle installs its servers in customer data centers. The so-called Oracle Cloud at Customer was announced Thursday at an Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) users conference in Washington, D.C., the Wall Street Journal reported. Oracle said the arrangement will enable it to bring its cloud services directly to customers while meeting security and privacy requirements with apps and databases staying…
       


  • Favor, Uber rush to the plush West Austin hills 
    Call it Manifest Mastication. On-demand food delivery services, such as those operated by Uber Technologies Inc. and NeighborFavor Inc., are rushing to scoop up more customers and partner with more eateries. It's a crowded market and competitors are trying to distinguish themselves. Other companies operating such services in Austin include Amazon Inc. and Get Me LLC. Austin-based NeighborFavor, which operates the Favor app and shuttles mostly food around in bright blue T-shirts, recently added…
       


  • Treating computers like toddlers: How Austin engineers are on the cusp of the artificial intelligence revolution 
    An Austin man is trying to teach computers how to think on their own by feeding them 15 million toddler-approved rules of logic, such as “You can’t be in two places at the same time,” and “You can’t pick something up unless you’re near it." That is the story of Doug Lenat, a former Stanford computer science professor out to remake artificial intelligence. Wired magazine highlighted his story in a piece called "One Genius’ Lonely Crusade to Teach a Computer Common Sense" that was published…
       


  • Apposphere launches; targets freelancers, small businesses 
    A couple of Austin entrepreneurs have teamed to develop a suite of software applications for freelancers and small businesses. CEO Sridhar Kamma and Hector Sanchez, co-founders of Apposphere Inc., came out of beta testing on March 10 and said they quickly attracted several major customers. The company, which was founded in September 2015, developed a set of modules for tasks such as lead generation and billing that enables users to customize what they want in one app. The goal is to enable small…