Regular TechCrunch readers have probably noticed an uptick in Y Combinator-related profiles over the last few days, as founders rush to get press coverage before next week’s Demo Day. Today, the MIT Technology Review gave us the details of one of the most ambitious and science fictional-sounding ones yet. The startup in question is Nectome, […]

Disability Rights Advocates, on behalf of the Independent Living Resource Center and two people who use wheelchairs, filed a class-action lawsuit today against Lyft. The plaintiffs allege the ride-hailing company discriminates against people who use wheelchairs by not making available wheelchair-accessible cars in the San Francisco Bay Area. The case, filed in Alameda County Superior […]

A newly discovered set of vulnerabilities in AMD chips is making waves not because of the scale of the flaws, but rather the rushed, market-ready way in which they were disclosed by the researchers. When was the last time a bug had its own professionally shot video and PR rep, yet the company affected was […]

Todd Pierce Contributor Todd Pierce is the former chief digital officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and former executive vice president of operations and mobility for Salesforce.com. Software isn’t “eating the world.” It’s feeding the world, healing the world, educating the world and bringing the world’s top minds together to solve our most […]

As social media sites grow more massive and all-encompassing, one startup is looking to bring back the friendly customization of Myspace to a new generation of users looking to define their online presence in a unique way. Universe is a mobile-based website builder for the social media era, eschewing complicated templates for easily customizable website “filters” […]

Alexa is already everywhere in a lot of homes, thanks to the affordability and ease of installation/setup of the Echo Dot. But Alexa could become even more seamlessly integrated into your home, if you think about it. And Canadian smart home tech maker ecobee did think about it, which is how they came up with […]

Google Assistant is launching today on iPad, allowing customers to control their smart home, make calls, send texts, set reminders, and more, from their Apple tablet. The smart assistant was first launched on iOS at Google I/O 2017, following its earlier introduction on Android devices, led by Google’s Pixel phone. At the time, however, it […]

TechCrunch’s upcoming TC Sessions: Robotics is fast taking shape. The single-day event, held on May 11, will focus of the crossroads of the latest AI and robotics technology and the startup ecosystem.  We’re really pleased to announce two sessions for the show — as well as throw open the application for an early-stage robotics startup pitch […]

Virtually every random site you go to these days wants you to subscribe to its push notifications. It’s one of the many small annoyances on the open web but thankfully, those popups may not be for long — at least if you are a Firefox user. With the release of Firefox 59 for the desktop, […]

Just a few weeks back, Waymo got the thumbs up to start testing its self driving cars in Arizona without the need for a human “safety net” behind the wheel. Wonder what it’s like to ride in one? This morning at SXSW, the company released a video showing off the experience had by the first […]

Here’s another tidbit from Eddy Cue’s content-packed SXSW appearance yesterday. Along with a dive into Apple’s video content strategy, the company’s SVP offered up some insight into the health of its music streaming service. Cue noted that Apple Music has hit 38 million paid subscribers — an increase of two million since the company reported […]

You can now pay IKEA to help you put together its confusing furniture. The company announced this morning it’s rolling out the new TaskRabbit At-Home Assembly service in select U.S. markets where TaskRabbit is available, and in six stores in New York and San Francisco. The service is a result of IKEA’s acquisition of the contract […]

YouTube’s mobile app is getting a dark mode. The company announced this morning its dark theme first introduced on its desktop site last year, is launching today on the YouTube iOS app and arriving soon after on Android. With the setting enabled, YouTube’s background turns from white to black throughout the YouTube experience as you […]

I’m sure someone, somewhere out there was holding out on purchasing Amazon’s most premium Kindle reader because it wasn’t quite fancy enough for their taste. Perhaps this little garish addition will help push them over the edge. The e-reader now comes in a “Champagne Gold” version, which you can read through your monocle while sitting […]

APIs — lightweight interfaces that both let developers integrate third-party services into their own apps, and let their apps get used more easily by other developers — have become an essential, and fast-growing, building block of the tech world. Now, a startup that helps app builders find, use, pay for and track calls on those […]

APIs — lightweight interfaces that both let developers integrate third-party services into their own apps, and let their apps get used more easily by other developers — have become an essential, and fast-growing, building block of the tech world. Now, a startup that helps app builders find, use, pay for and track calls on those […]

Automaker General Motors is said to be planning a new peer-to-peer car rental service, similar to existing offerings by Daimler-backed Turo and startup Getaround, to debut as early as this summer according to Bloomberg. The service will debut in a test pilot set to begin this summer, under GM’s Maven mobility sub-brand, per the report, […]

Almost everybody wants better skin, but not everyone wants to put in all the heavy lifting required. But DearBrightly, a Y Combinator-backed company, wants to simplify the process of making Rx retinoids accessible to everyone. Retonoid is an umbrella term for both retinols and Rx retinoids, which are made from Vitamin A and promote rapid […]

Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket, the reusable launch vehicle created by Blue Origin to put people and large cargo into orbit, has a new confirmed payload for one of its first missions: mu Space. The Thai satellite startup announced it would be working with Blue Origin late last year, but now it has confirmed that […]

As more computing moves to the edge, programmers are looking for ways to access computing power as close to their users as possible to reduce latency and increase performance. Today, Cloudflare announced Cloudflare Workers, a service that enables developers to write code to execute directly at the edge of the Cloudflare network. Company co-founder and […]

Volkswagen confirmed at its annual media conference that it’s going to bring one of its most eccentric concepts to production – the all-electric Sedric shuttle, which is more tiny pod bus than car, will eventually actually get made, after its design is refined by one of the Volkswagen Group’s portfolio brands through a further development […]

James Park is quick to admit that the Ionic was a disappointment. Fitbit’s co-founder and CEO refuses to disclose any specific numbers during our chat, but he acknowledges that the company’s first smartwatch isn’t the mainstream device it could have — or should have — been. The sentiment is punctuated by the fact that the […]

Fitbit’s first smartwatch had its fair share of issues, including a large size, which made it unwieldy for many wrists. That fact no doubt automatically excluded the product from a big chunk of its potential user base, including a lot of women. Fitbit’s hardly alone among wearable makers in that oversight, of course, but the […]

The Ace was inevitable. Sure, Fitbit is leaning into smartwatches with today’s launch of the Versa, but the company’s current line of fitness trackers left a key demographic unserved. The new wearable, which is essential a scaled down version of the company’s entry level Alta tracker, is aimed squarely at kids aged eight to 17. […]

Harman and Samsung have entered into a strategic association that will have Harman taking up the SmartThings’ standard and carrying it forward against other Internet of Things products. Announced today, Samsung SmartThings R&D team and HARMAN Connected Services (HCS), a division of HARMAN International, will collaborate on the platform with HCS developing and supporting the […]

Tandem, the U.K. challenger bank co-founded by fintech veteran Ricky Knox, continues to be a shopping spree. Following the purchase of Harrods Bank, the banking arm of the famous luxury British department store, the company is acquiring Pariti, a money management app that has garnered 95,000 users. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although I’m […]

Automaker Volkswagen’s ramping up for its big EV push, with $25 billion in committed battery supplies and plans to outfit 16 factories to build electric cars by the end of 2022, up from three with that capacity in the VW stable right now. Thus far, Volkswagen’s focus is on battery suppliers in Europe and China, […]

[embedded content] Kitty Hawk, the company led by the ‘godfather of self-driving cars’ Sebastian Thrun and backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, has revealed its Cora aircraft, which is a hybrid vertical take-off and landing design that can take off like a helicopter but fly like a plane. The vehicle can travel at over 93 […]

Payments company Ripple says it plans to invest in startups and technology companies to develop more uses for XRP, its cryptocurrency that is currently the third largest digital token behind bitcoin and Ethereum based on total market cap. The value of XRP shot up in December and January following a crypto market rally that saw bitcoin reach […]

WeWork — the co-working startup valued at $20 billion with some 200,000 members across 200 locations globally — is continuing with its strategy of expanding into a wide array of adjacent operations to grow its business. Today the company announced that it will be expanding the coding-focused Flatiron School abroad, starting in London this June. Alongside […]

Danish startup Artland has closed $1M in seed funding for a social art marketplace app that aims to connect galleries and professional buyers. It’s also hoping to attract newcomers with an appetite to buy art but who don’t necessarily know how to go about learning about the market. We covered the startup last fall. At […]

Supernova, a startup operating out of Prague in the Czech Republic, is on a mission to accelerate the app development workflow of mobile designers and developers. More than three years in the making — and the brainchild of co-founder Jiří Třečák — the Supernova Studio macOS app promises to automatically convert mobile app designs created […]

Ride-hailing service Grab is being heavily linked with a deal to buy out Uber’s business in Southeast Asia, but those rumors aren’t stopping it from building its fintech platform after announced a financial services unit. The Singapore-based company has been pushing itself into fintech for some time, with the most visible moment being the launch of […]

Shares of Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding, an international investment company controlled by  Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, soared in January when he was freed after two months of being held captive at a Ritz Carlton in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Turns out investors may have celebrated too soon. As people following the story may recall, Prince Alwaleed was arrested in […]

Beijing-based bike-sharing startup Ofo has raised $866 million in new financing led by Alibaba Group to fuel its expensive competition with Mobike, which is backed by Tencent, one of Alibaba’s biggest rivals. Ofo and Mobike are the two largest bike-sharing companies in China. Other participants in the round, which consists of equity and debt financing, […]

Salesforce is set to buy CloudCraze, an enterprise e-commerce solution built on its cloud-based customer relationship management platform. Based in Chicago, CloudCraze announced on its site that it’s signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Salesforce. The deal’s financial details were not disclosed. According to Crunchbase, CloudCraze received $30.6 million in funding, including a […]

XPrize announced today that it’s teaming up with Japanese airline All Nippon Airways on a new $10 million competition. XPrize founder and chairman Peter Diamandis said the ANA team was interested in an XPrize around “reinventing travel,” which eventually turned into a prize for developing technology that would actually eliminate the need to physical travel […]

In a rare moment of contrition, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe admitted misleading both consumers and advertising execs with statements last week that the company tracks the location of users before and after they go to the movies. “We don’t do the things I described,” he told TechCrunch. As for location, “We don’t record it, we […]

Out in the desolate wastes of deepest Iceland, magic blooms. The Icelandic sagas tell of fairy houses to magical rings that control the world and now one of those, the Wave, has landed on the Internet. The Wave is a ring that controls sound. It is essentially a wearable MIDI controller which lets you play […]

Paul Vigna, along with his writing partner Michael Casey, are crypto gurus. A crypto critic and Wall Street Journal reporter, Vigna sees through the hype and looks for the value inherent in the crypto system. Vigna and I spoke during this, the 100th episode of Technotopia. Vigna has a lot to say about the market […]

Stitch Fix, the on-demand fashion styling business, saw its shares quickly fall 6% following the bell on Monday, after missing earnings projections for its second-quarter release.  The company posted an adjusted earnings per share of two cents, beneath the six cents that analysts surveyed by Yahoo! Finance were hoping for. Revenue for the quarter surpassed […]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration over its alleged practices of searching the electronic devices of passengers traveling on domestic flights. “The federal government’s policies on searching the phones, laptops, and tablets of domestic air passengers remain shrouded in secrecy,” […]

Lyft made a lot of progress in 2017, helped by strong market expansion within the U.S., and riding some very bad news from its primary rival Uber. That’s helped it grow revenue to over $1 billion as measured by GAAP standards for its fiscal 2017, with a particularly strong Q4 during which its revenue outpaced […]

After leading by example for quite a while, Snap is going to start putting AR lenses built by third-party creators front-and-center in the Snapchat app. The move, first reported by Mashable, will bring creator content to the main stage. While third-party filters have been a hallmark of the app for quite awhile, Snapchat has generally […]

Paul Shapiro Contributor Paul Shapiro s the author of “Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World“. Most paleo dieters try to stick to some type of regimen similar to what they think our distant, pre-agricultural ancestors might’ve eaten. Few, however, talk about eating literally what those ancestors ate. Yet for Geltor, a […]

Apple has more original content news: It picked up two seasons of a new musical animated comedy from Loren Bouchard, the creator of Bob’s Burgers. The series is called Central Park, and is co-written by Josh Gad and Nora Smith in addition to Bouchard, and it follows a group of caretakers who live and work […]

Earlier this year we reported that Twilio was going to launch a full contact center solution called Flex on March 12 — lo and behold, today is March 12 and Twilio today announced the launch of Flex at the Enterprise Connect conference in Orlando. Flex brings together virtually every part of the existing Twilio infrastructure […]

Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddie Cue appeared on stage at SXSW on Monday, and discussed a range of topics, including their just-announced acquisition of magazine app Texture. Cue also made some comments regarding Apple’s recent moves in original video content, where it’s been acquiring a number of TV series from high-profile creators. […]

TechCrunch Disrupt’s Main Stage always features interviews with the best and brightest tech founders, innovators and investors from around the world. As good as those interviews are, past attendees tell us that they’d love even more opportunities to address their burning questions around emerging trends and technologies. That’s why we’ve created Q&A Sessions for Disrupt […]

Mobility service providers are engaging with city transportation authorities in a variety of different ways, but the most extreme example so far might be a new partnership between the city of Arlington, Texas and ride-sharing provider Via. Via will be deploying a fleet of 10 commuter vans in Arlington’s downtown region (via The Verge). The […]

Apple has signed a partnership with Ito World to add bike-sharing data in Apple Maps in over 175 cities across 36 countries. The feature is now live and helps you find the nearest station by typing “bike sharing” in the search bar or the name of the service. Once again, Apple chose to integrate an […]

Clarifai has traditionally been known as a web-based visual search tool that developers can integrate into their services. But as more and more businesses start to get onto the service, with their own specific demands — like getting them in-house — the New York-based startup has to grow up a bit. Today, the company is […]

YouTube TV has grown quite a bit since its launch in April of last year. The service now has more than 300,000 users, according to a report, and is available in nearly 100 markets. That said, the service is raising prices tomorrow. Which means today is the last day you can subscribe to YouTube TV […]

As the debate continues over fake news and the role that aggregators like Facebook have played in spreading it, Apple is making an acquisition that could help it lay out a position as a purveyor of trusted information. The iPhone maker is buying Texture, a magazine that’s known as the “Netflix of magazine publishing” that […]

Alexa calling, the feature that lets users place voice and video calls from Alexa devices, like the Echo, is now coming to tablets. Amazon announced this morning added support for calling as well as messaging features on tablets including iPads, Android tablets, and of course its own Fire tablets. On the Fire HD 10, Alexa […]

[embedded content] If you couldn’t be at the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch that happened earlier this year, the next best thing might be watching this highlight reel of the launch, the voyage of Elon’s Tesla-driving Starman and the landing/landing attempt of the three Falcon Heavy booster cores. Set to David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars?’, the […]

Facebook is streaming Major League Baseball, and now Twitter will stream Major League Soccer. The company announced on Friday a new three-year streaming deal that will bring at least 25 of soccer matches that broadcast on Univision networks in Spanish to Twitter’s network, where they’ll be available in English. Notably, Major League Soccer (MLS) had […]

John Oliver’s main skill is that he’s usually pretty good at explaining complex and boring topics in short TV segments. And this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight is particularly relevant to the tech industry as Oliver tackled cryptocurrencies. In just 25 minutes, the Last Week Tonight team put together a descent introduction to bitcoin, […]

Uber Eats is pushing its international growth with a sizeable expansion across EMEA markets today. The Uber-owned on-demand food delivery app intends to serve 100 new cities spanning Europe, the Middle Eatst and Africa this year, including launches in Ireland, Egypt, Kenya, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and Romania. Already, Uber Eats reaches customers in […]

Microsoft Teams, the company’s team collaboration software and challenger to Slack, announced this morning- on its first anniversary – a suite of new features that will roll out to the software throughout 2018. This includes features that will allow users to record, transcribe and save meetings to the cloud, integrations with voice assistant Cortana, inline […]

Cars of the future will be heavily reliant on their suite of sensors for proper functioning; vehicles today already pack a ton of cameras, ultrasound and radar arrays, but they mostly use these for non-core driver assistance and other features, and if they weren’t working, it wouldn’t be the end of the road because the […]

BioCatch, the U.S./Israeli startup that has developed “behavioural biometric authentication and threat detection” tech to enable banks and other high transaction companies to stop online fraud before it happens, has closed $30 million in growth funding. In what can be viewed as a mixture of strategic and pure venture backers, the round is led by […]

Philips Hue products are going outside. Available for purchase this summer in the U.S., the lighting company has a range of new outdoor lighting products extending the world of Internet of Things to the great outdoors. These products mark an important change for the Internet of Things world. As WiFi range and consumer demand increases, […]

Last May, Docker CEO Ben Golub stepped down after four years at the helm of the containerization pioneer. We didn’t hear all that much from him since, but today, the distributed object storage service Storj Labs announced that Golub will join its team as interim CEO and Executive Chairman. There is obviously no dearth of […]

After announcing an IPO in February, today Dropbox updated its S-1 filing with pricing. The cloud services and storage company said that it expects to price its IPO at between $16 and $18 per share when it sells 36,000,000 shares to raise $648 million as “DBX” on the Nasdaq exchange. In addition to that, Dropbox […]

As our fractured planet stumbles toward the end of the second decade of its new millennium it’s become de rigueur among a certain class of the super rich to create contingency plans for possible doomsday scenarios that will bring about the end of the world. In a long, fascinating, meandering interview at South by Southwest […]

If you thought that televised gold was just about as technologically advanced as it was ever going to be, it’d be understandable, but you’d be oh so wrong. The PGA Tour is showcasing a new augmented reality app that will utilize Apple’s ARKit platform to let users visualize courses and holes in their living rooms […]

Tick tock, tech lovers. Time is running out to apply for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Europe. We’re taking Startup Battlefield to Paris in conjunction with VivaTech on May 24th – 25. The application deadline is March 15, 9 a.m. PST, so if you want your early-stage company to participate in the world’s top start-up competition, it’s […]

Spotahome, a Madrid-based startup that lets you view and book mid to long-term accommodation online, has made its first acquisition after raising €13.6 million in Series A funding late last year. The ‘proptech’ company has acquired international student community Erasmusu, a move that will see Spotahome add up to 70,000+ more properties to its rental […]

[embedded content] Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is capitalizing on the wildly successful Westworld experience at South by Southwest and offering pre-registration for its upcoming mobile game — based on HBO’s series of the same name. Produced by the company’s WB Games in San Francisco through a collaboration with Kilter Films, the game was developed by […]

Ola, Uber’s key rival in India, has taken its first step overseas after its service officially went live in Australia via a launch in Sydney. The company announced its plans to go Down Under at the end of January and in Sydney, which is its first full launch, Ola said it has signed up over 7,000 […]

Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor: Harley Davidson’s EV debut could electrify the motorcycle industry Africa Roundup: Partech Ventures launches $70M fund, TPG Growth acquires TRACE, Rensource raises $3.5M Despite exit rumors and quitting Morocco, Uber is staying […]

  Martin Casado Contributor Martin Casado, is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He was previously the cofounder and chief technology officer at Nicira, which was acquired by VMware in 2012. One of the truisms of software business strategy is that services is bad business; heck, we’ve also said it. The reason, […]

 A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books as a kid. I read it over and over, then tracked down the sequels and gobbled up many more of Madeleine L’Engle’s fantasy- and science fiction-tinged novels for young adults. But I hadn’t touched it in more than 20 years, maybe closer to 30, when […]

It used to be easy to get lost. Pick up your passport, board an airplane, and zoom, you were gone, disconnected, all on your own, until and unless you stopped by an Internet cafe or an international phone booth. Nowadays my T-Mobile plan gives me free data roaming in more than a hundred countries, and […]

Andrew Keen Contributor Andrew Keen is the author of three books: Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo and The Internet Is Not The Answer. He produces Futurecast, and is the host of Keen On. More posts by this contributor: 2018 might be Amazon’s year to take a leading role in online advertising More long term greed… […]

Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor: ICOs delivered at least 3.5x more capital to blockchain startups than VC since 2017 2018 VC investment into crypto startups set to surpass 2017 tally Unlike some jobs, there’s no clear educational path to becoming a venture […]

[embedded content] This week on CTRL+T, we talk MoviePass’s tracking drama and the way the local world works – media-style. We’re joined in the studio by Eric Eldon, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Hoodline (and former co-editor of TechCrunch and therefor my former boss). Hoodline is a local news site that covers hoods in San Francisco […]

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Denis Pombriant, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Saturday, March 10, 2018. G3: Fear Factory — Mary Hodder, Elisa Camehort Page, Halley Suitt Tucker, Maria Ogneva, and Tina Chase Gillmor. Recorded live Thursday, March 8, 2018. @stevegillmor, @kevinmarks, @kteare, @DenisPombriant, @fradice Produced and directed by Tina […]

Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, made a surprise appearance on the Westworld panel at SXSW. After getting cued up by Jonathan Nolan, the co-creator of HBO series Westworld, Musk walked out on stage to people cheering and one person screaming, “Elon, we love you!” During his stage time, he spoke about the excitement of […]

[embedded content] We were pretty skeptical about Everything Sucks!, a Netflix high school comedy set in the 1990s, which seemed to promise nostalgia, nostalgia and more nostalgia. The opening minutes of the premiere seemed to confirm those fears, as obvious ’90s references seemed to pile up one after another. But then the show kept going, […]

Rent the Runway has snagged a $20 million investment from Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and Joe Tsai via Blue Pool Capital, Recode first reported. Blue Pool Capital is a multibillion-dollar fund that invests in public and private equity on behalf people like Ma and Tsai. The round reportedly values Rent the Runway at about $800 […]

GV partner Lo Toney is looking to raise up to $50 million for his new fund, Plexo Capital, Axios first reported. Since 2017, Toney has been incubating Plexo Capital inside GV, formerly known as Google Ventures. The idea with Plexo Capital, which is backed by Alphabet, is to invest as a limited partner in seed funds […]

Those with digital home assistants know this phenomenon all too well. You ask Siri, Google or Alexa to hook it up with the facts, they provide an answer, but then you have a follow-up question. In order to ask that follow-up question, you have to say “Hey, Siri,” “Hey, Google” or “Alexa” all over again. […]

Those with digital home assistants know this phenomenon all too well. You ask Siri, Google or Alexa to hook it up with the facts, they provide an answer, but then you have a follow-up question. In order to ask that follow-up question, you have to say “Hey, Siri,” “Hey, Google” or “Alexa” all over again. […]

It’s a testament to quite how control freaky and hermetically sealed to criticism the tech industry is that Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey went unscripted in front of his own brand livestreaming service this week, inviting users to lob awkward questions at him for the first time ever. It’s also a testament to how much trouble social […]

In a way, Essential is something of a pioneer. Before the iPhone X helped the world reluctantly embrace the screen notch, the company proudly displayed one atop its first flagship. Since then, of course, it’s become a feature, not a bug, with a long list of companies rushing to embrace it on their latest flagship. […]

There are plenty of projects out there attempting to replicate the locomotion of insects, but one thing that computers and logic aren’t so good at is improvising and adapting the way even the smallest, simplest bugs do. This project from Tokyo Tech is a step in that direction, producing gaits on the fly that the […]

The FCC has denied a space startup permission to launch a collection of communications satellites after discovering that it had already launched some — after being told not to. Swarm Technologies, still in stealth mode, appears to have gone ahead with the deployment of four satellites deemed too small to be tracked and therefore unsafe […]

Elon Musk has shifted his pans for The Boring Company: While it will still focus on digging tunnels to provide a network of underground tubes suitable for use by high-speed Hyperloop pods, the plan now is to use that Hyperloop to transport pedestrians and cyclists first, and then only later to work on moving cars […]

Snapchat has temporarily removed its Giphy GIF sticker feature after a user saw an extremely racist GIF as an option. Snapchat confirms to TechCrunch “As soon as w were made aware, we removed the GIF and have disabled Giphy until we can be sure that this won’t happen again. The spokesperson says that all GIFs […]

Facebook’s augmented reality camera is evolving beyond selfies masks and randomly placed 3D objects to using location markers in the real world that trigger AR experiences in a precise location.  Spotted today, Facebook confirms to TechCrunch that its testing the feature in closed beta with promotions for the upcoming Ready Player One and Wrinkle In […]

Urban Airship recently announced new capabilities designed to allow app developers to deliver the right message to their users at exactly the right time. Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering Mike Herrick explained that the company (which started out as a platform for push notifications) has supported in-app messaging for years. However, those messages have […]

We’re hearing from a number of sources that Giphy, the big platform for hosting GIFs that also runs a GIF keyboard, set out to raise huge new financing round — though it’s not clear if it ever crossed the finish line. Sources pegged the round at something as high as around $100 million, but that […]

The high-end audio technology company Bose is getting into the augmented reality game with a new product and a $50 million fund devoted to startups that will develop services for its new platform. While most of the industry is focused on a visually augmented experience, Bose is most concerned with the intersection of sound and vision. […]

Capital One today officially introduced a new way to use its virtual card numbers from a web browser, in order to make shopping online safer. Virtual card numbers, of course, aren’t new – Bank of America and Citi both offer a similar feature that creates a temporary credit card number linked to your real account […]

For its latest addition to Street View, Google has employed a trio very good (and extremely fuzzy) boys — Ako, Asuka and Puuko. In order to capture the snowy streets of Ōdate City, Japan, the company strapped 360 cameras to the backs of the three Akita dogs, which hail from the country’s cold and mountainous […]

Not really the showiest of SXSW announcements, but Google’s got a nice little update for developers looking to differentiate Assistant integration on a product level. Custom Device Actions are way to add specific functions to products. In a blog post, the company gives the specific example of activating a specific color cycle on an Assistant-enabled […]

How can you participate in a Nerf gun fight if you’re missing a hand? The ingenious Hackerloop collective of tinkerers solved that problem by putting together a prosthetic Nerf gun that you can control with your arm muscles. In other words, Nicolas Huchet became Barret Wallace from Final Fantasy VII for a day. And here’s […]

LinkedIn used to have its own business card scanning app, CardMunch, which served a useful purpose in a world where paper cards simply refuse to die. But that app was shut down back in 2014, with LinkedIn suggesting users move to Evernote instead. Today, Microsoft is bringing back business card scanning – but this time, […]

Apple’s Touch ID was a step change in convenience for securing its mobile devices, and now that same level of convenience is available in a padlock. The Tapplock One is now shipping, and features a fingerprint sensor for unlocking, as well as a companion app with a Bluetooth unlock backup. The Tapplock One began its […]

“It feels like investing in Uber when it first launched.” That’s what one investor said of the hot new Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup, Bird — an electric scooter company that’s now in the process of raising as much as $100 million on a $300 million valuation, according to several people with knowledge of the company’s […]

Next Story This eQuoo app games you to into learning useful psychological skills There’s nothing we spend more money on for a worse experience than housing. Keyo wants to fix all of it. The audacious startup envisions a world where a building’s other tenants get $20 to show you an available apartment on your schedule. Where […]

Mental health is one of the behest issues of recent times, with Kendall Jenner, Emma Stone, Lady Gaga and even The Rock opening up about their mental health issues. Even the royal family has got in on the act, setting up the Heads Together charity. And it’s not just a fleeting issue. The World Health […]

Onavo, the data-security app maker Facebook acquired in 2013 in order gain insights into mobile user activity across apps, has quietly launched a new app aimed at Android users called Bolt App Lock. Instead of offering a VPN, Bolt App Lock is a tool that lets you lock down any app you don’t want others […]

Kickstarter’s name has become synonymous with crowdfunding since the site launched back in 2009. As it happily notes, it’s helped 14 million backers pledge $3.1 billion in funding over the years. Of late, though, the service has been exploring alternative funding sources, including the relaunch of Drip, which arrived just as Patreon was getting pushback […]

Filed under moves that are potentially groundbreaking with big implications but with quite small numbers, Facebook has signed an exclusive deal with the MLB to stream 25 afternoon games, according to Bloomberg. The deal is a bit reminiscent of the one Twitter signed for Thursday Night Football back in 2016 to stream games that are outside […]

It’s Mario Time! Beloved gaming character Mario is coming to Google Maps, thanks to a partnership between Google and Nintendo ahead of Mario Day, March 10. (MAR10…get it, Mario?) In addition to the various deals and sales on Nintendo games, the mustachioed plumber will also make an appearance in Google Maps’ navigation, if you opt […]

[embedded content] Straight out of Black Mirror, this video is a mock documentary showing a future where Boston Dynamics SpotMinis roam the Earth in packs (herds?) of thousands. It’s fictional but I suspect plausible if Boston Dynamics only defense against its robots is an engineer with a hockey stick. Boston Dynamics has been steadily advancing […]

Things have not been so rosy for Qualcomm over the past few months, whether you are looking at an ongoing legal dispute between the chipmaker and Apple or Broadcom’s aggressive attempts to acquire the company. Now, Qualcomm is saying its executive chairman, Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, will no longer serve as executive chairman for the […]

If you want to live outside an expensive city like San Francisco or New York, it pays to have specialized knowledge. So suggests a new survey out of Upwork, the freelancing platform created from the 2013 merger of Elance and oDesk that connects businesses and independent contractors. According to feedback from more than 1,005 workforce hiring […]

Just weeks after signing a large licensing deal with leading indy label representative ICE, Facebook has continued its march into the world of music with the news that it has now added Warner Music Group into the mix, the last major label that was not yet working with the social network. Facebook has signed a […]

The storied 911 will not be immune from Porsche’s electrification plans and that could be a good thing. The car company’s CEO recently told Autocar that the hybrid 911 “will be the most powerful 911 we’ve ever had; 700 bhp might be possible.” Count me in (as long as someone buys it for me). Porsche […]

Tiago Maximo’s grandparents were shepherds. They word solid, handmade boots into the fields, trudging through dry grass and mud, over rutted country roads and through barnyards. He brought that tradition – handmade boots for people who appreciate quality – to his business, Urban Shepherd – where sources boots from Portugal to sell to customers in […]

Social planning apps have yet to take the world by storm. A handful of these apps tried and failed years ago, and even Swarm decided to ditch that methodology and focus on location logging. But a new Y Combinator-backed company seems to be picking up traction. And shockingly enough, the winning ingredient seems to be […]

What’s the biggest motivating factor behind automakers embracing autonomous vehicles and self-driving? You might think ‘safety’ or maybe even consumer demand, but in truth the biggest driver might be China and its incentivization programs for automakers. Much like China’s rules for qualifying for subsidies and restrictions on selling vehicles in market have led to automakers […]

[embedded content] Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had a corking set of news to get through, so we rounded up the usual gang (Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself), and brought in Eric Feng from Kleiner Perkins to help us get under […]

Waymo’s autonomous trucking program is coming along – though we haven’t heard much about it since discovering it was a real thing last year, Waymo today announced that it’s launching a pilot program in Atlanta to focus specifically on self-driving trucks and automated logistics. The pilot is being done in partnership with Google, another Alphabet […]

Dropbox is not messing around. Two weeks ago it announced its IPO. Just last week it announced a big partnership with Google and today comes news that it is integrating more deeply with Salesforce. Dropbox and Salesforce have danced a bit in the past as cloud companies tend to do, but today’s announcement is a […]

Nick Halstead’s new startup, InfoSum, is launching its first product today — moving one step closer to his founding vision of a data platform that can help businesses and organizations unlock insights from big data silos without compromising user privacy, data security or data protection law. So a pretty high bar then. If the underlying […]