“Reverse chocolate” — that’s how AesculaTech co-founder and chief science officer Niki Bayat describes the material created by its proprietary technology. Chocolate is solid until heated, when it melts deliciously into liquid. AesculaTech’s material, on the other hand, is a liquid at low temperatures, turns into a gel when heated and then reaches its final, […]
Google announced this morning a new plan to help retailers take on Amazon – and give Google a cut of their sales in the process. The search giant will allow retailers to list their products across Google Search, in its Google Express shopping service, and in the Google Assistant app for smartphones and on smart […]
Online gamers love to talk a big game, but how willing are they to put their money with their mouth is? Players Lounge is a home for gamers looking to make friendly wagers with strangers and friends in head-to-head matches. When we first covered the startup back in 2015, the team was getting people together […]
Volkswagen wants to make sure people are aware of just how versatile their forthcoming MEB platform, which will prove the base for all of its all-electric I.D. vehicles, really is. The MEB-based I.D. R Pikes Pace, a prototype all-electric race car, will take on the famous Pikes Peak hillclimb in June in Colorado to help […]
Building up your credit history or improving your credit score often presents somewhat of a catch-22 situation. You’ll need to take out some form of credit to do so, such as a loan or credit card, but if your score is too low or your history too chequered, you’ll typically be offered a very bad […]
The top widely-available VR headset that money can buy is… gonna take a lot of money to buy. HTC has released pricing info for its Vive Pro headset that the company showed off at CES and it ain’t cheap. The company had previously detailed that they would begin selling the system as a headset-only package […]
Nationwide, 62 percent of the jail population accounts for people who can’t afford bail, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. A lot of these incarcerated individuals are behind bars because they committed crimes at the misdemeanor level or lower. This is a significant statistic from a human rights perspective, as well as an economic […]
Here’s a curious bit of news for your Monday morning: Amazon wants to be the backend for gaming tournaments. They’ve built a new, AWS-powered platform called “GameOn” for third-party developers, allowing them to easily add things like leaderboards and leagues to their games. Fittingly for Amazon, there’s a product fulfillment aspect to the new API […]
Uber might begin selling its autonomous driving systems to outside companies, including major automakers, according to a new report from Japan’s Nikkei. The report claims that Uber has had talks with Toyota regarding supplying the automaker with self-driving tech, and that the two are currently in negotiations around how this would work, with talk of […]
Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went […]
VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million. ‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have […]
We all have tasks that we put off and put off, but actually accomplishing them is rarely as bad as we expect. Sometimes beating procrastination is about just getting over the initial hurdle. Instead of forcing yourself to tackle the entire task at once, focus on the first piece of it. Start by thinking about […]
Alibaba is increasing its control of Lazada, its e-commerce marketplace in Southeast Asia it acquired control of in 2016, after it injected another $2 billion into the business and replaced its CEO with a long-standing Alibaba executive. Alibaba’s first investment came in April 2016 when it bought 51 percent of Lazada for $1 billion, and […]
Tom Goodwin Contributor More posts by this contributor The battle for consumers gets physical (instead of virtual) In the new age of ubiquitous connectivity the message is the medium Adriana Stan Contributor Adriana Stan is the public relations director of W magazine and a writer on media, culture and technology. She is also the co-founder […]
“I should go on a weekend trip,” you think to yourself. “I’ll go to the mountains!” And then the weekend comes and all the hotels are booked and you’re tired and the mountains are far and hey look, Netflix! Wing It is a Facebook Messenger bot that tries to get you out of that rut. […]
Buying furniture sucks. Getting rid of it later is worse. Aalo, part of the Y Combinator Winter 2018 class, is trying to fix both sides of that equation. They want you to design and build your own furniture… and when you’re done with it, turn it into something else. They’ve built a system of interlocking, […]
There’s no shortage of ideas being backed when it comes to direct-to-consumer e-commerce companies that are cultivating their own brands. We’ve seen everything from slippers to toothbrushes to, perhaps most famously, razor blades. Among the newer frontiers being funded right now: ingredient-conscious perfumes. The New York-based, venture-backed cosmetics company Glossier began marketing a proprietary perfume called […]
When you get a new car, and you’re feeling like a star, the first thing you’re probably going to do is ghost ride it. This is where the Owl camera can come in. I’ve been testing Owl, an always-on, two-way camera that records everything that’s happening inside and outside of your car all day, every day for […]
The American South may not be the first region that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “hotbed of tech entrepreneurship,” but, slightly misguided perceptions aside, it’s home to a diverse and growing collection of startups. Here, we’re going to take a deep dive into the startup funding data for the region. What is […]
So-called ‘EdTech’ has seen many false dawns over the years. After being lauded as the teaching platforms of the future, most MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course platforms) have not quite lived up to the superlatives made for them, and the sector has had trouble coming up with more innovative ideas for a while. But that […]
Sunny Dhillon Contributor More posts by this contributor Mixed reality arcades are the next big market opportunity — but not for VCs Virtual reality in Japan “$43 million and the only thing you can buy in it is a coffee.” So said Samsung’s Senior Director of Store Development Michael Koch about the company’s flagship Manhattan […]
Sibjeet Mahapatra Contributor Compelling virtual reality shipped to developers and consumers nearly two years ago. The first flagship headsets arrived from Oculus and HTC back in the spring of 2016, offering enough resolution, frame rate, field of view, latency mitigation and position-tracking to produce believable visual immersion. But no one seems to know what to […]
Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor What does it take to be a startup that raises huge sums quickly? Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items It seems like startup news is full of overnight success stories and sudden failures, like the scooter rental company that went from […]
Enthusiasts will talk your ear off about the potential for drones to take over many of our dirtiest, dullest and most dangerous tasks. But most of the jobs we’ve actually seen drones perform are focused on the camera — from wildlife surveying to monitoring cracks on power plant smokestack. Aerones is working on something much […]
When we wrote about gaming startup Kahoot passing significant milestones of 70 million users on 51 million educational quizzes in January, we mentioned that the Oslo, Norway-based startup was closing another round of funding. Now, that has come to pass: Kahoot has announced that it has raised $17 million, at a valuation that sources close to […]
Also announced today, AWS Elemental MediaTailor now supports CloudWatch Metrics. In addition to CloudWatch debugging logs, you can use Amazon CloudWatch to build dashboards and alarms for key metrics related to the stability and monetization progress of video streams. These metrics include Fill Rate, Ad Server Error Rate, Origin Errors, Manifest Errors, and others. AWS […]
Zuora, which helps businesses handle subscription billing and forecasting, filed for an initial public offering this afternoon following on the heels of Dropbox’s filing earlier this month. Zuora’s IPO may signal that Dropbox going public, and seeing a price range that while under its previous valuation seems relatively reasonable, may open the door for coming […]
It was a big debut for enterprise cloud security company Zscaler, which saw its shares skyrocket 106% on its first day of trading. After pricing at $16, shares opened at $27.50, and closed at $34. This was also well above the original expected price range for its IPO of $10 to $12. The company ultimately raised […]
The FTC has announced that they’ve issued temporary restraining orders and frozen the assets of a team of three defendants who pitched investment advice as the Bitcoin Funding Team and My7Network. The FTC claims that the defendants “promised big rewards for a small payment of bitcoin or Litecoin.” From the report: According to the FTC, […]
[embedded content] Watch out all you well-paid, fat-and-sassy jazz marimba players: Shimon, the marimba playing robot is after your jobs. Shimon is the brainchild of the Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech and I’ve been following his career for a few years now. In this video, taken at the Ferst Center Presents as part of […]
GrokStyle’s simple concept of “point your camera at a chair (or lamp, or table…) and find others like it for sale” attracted $2 million in funding last year, and the company has been putting that cash to work. And remarkably for a company trying to break into the home furnishing market, it landed furniture goliath […]
Planning a mars mission, a global telecommunications network for inexpensive internet service, and creating an interplanetary hedge against world war three isn’t cheap, so it’s no wonder that SpaceX is closing on $500 million in new cash through a financing round led by Fidelity, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the round. Responding to clamoring […]
Anker is a devie maker that’s rapidly become a go-to brand for affordable, quality accessories include cables, chargers and backup batteries. More recently, it’s started to branch out into additional areas, including projectors through its Nebula brand. The Nebula Capsule is the latest product from that line, a super portable projector with an Android-based OS, […]
It takes a village to grow a startup, so Village Global is offering access to a deep network of top tech execs to lure founders to its seed fund. Today, Village Global announced it’s raised $100 million for that fund that was first unveiled in September. In exchange for equity, portfolio companies get investment plus […]
Developer bootcamps — several-month training programs that are designed to help people get up to speed with the technical skills they need to become a developer — exploded in popularity in the early part of the decade, but there’s been a bit of a shakedown on the space recently. And that could be a product […]
Gusto, formerly ZenPayroll, is the rare startup unicorn that has stayed relatively mum on its product and growth — it’s last press release, for instance, was more than a year ago. The company’s core offering remains payroll for small businesses, and it has been working to expand its customer base across the nation, including have […]
Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of trivia applications like HQ Trivia, dating app maker Zoosk has just released an experimental app that combines trivia with the potential for meeting someone new. The app is a relaunch and complete makeover of Zoosk’s Lively, which first debuted in July 2016 as a dating app that used […]
Tokyoflashis one of my favorite watchmakers. Unabashedly analog, the watches pay homage giant robots and old tech, looking like a cross between something that you could find in the hatch in Lost and a Shinjuku fever dream. Now the company has launched the Radar LED watch, a clever piece that shows the time with sweeping […]
The first big tech IPO of the year has opened with a bang. Zscaler, a security startup that confidentially filed for an IPO last year, started trading this morning as ZS on Nasdaq at a price of $27.50/share. This was a pop of 71.9 percent on its opening price of $16, and speaks to a […]
On the heels of last week’s rollout on Android, Google’s new AI-powered technology, Google Lens, is now arriving on iOS. The feature is available within the Google Photos iOS application, where it can do things like identify objects, buildings, and landmarks, and tell you more information about them, including helpful details like their phone number, […]
A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay is closing a deal with Warner Brothers to direct a movie based DC’s New Gods comics. The news was first reported in Deadline, and DuVernay seemed to confirm it by subsequently tweeting a tribute to New Gods creator Jack Kirby. While beloved by many comics fans, The New […]
[embedded content] The new trailer for Avengers: Infinity War is here, and it gives us a look at Thanos with a helmet on, and provides some signet into what he hopes to accomplish by invading Earth (kill half the people on it). Also, there are still a ton of characters in this movie, and it […]
Alexa is rolling out an optional “Brief Mode” that lets users configure their Echo devices to use chimes and sounds for confirmations, instead of having Alexa respond with her voice. For example, if you ask Alexa to turn on your lights today, she will respond “okay” as she does so. But with Brief Mode enabled, […]
Apple has a long legacy of providing services to schools and teachers, but the industry has changed in recent years as the Chromebook has completely changed the way classrooms work. The company is no doubt looking to take back some of that mindshare. This morning, it sent out invites for an event, asking attendees to […]
You might know your Instagram content is good, but imagine how much better it will seem if it looks like 10,000 people agree. Whether you’re trying to become a social media celebrity or simply looking to spread brand awareness on Instagram, it can seem tempting to pay for your first couple thousand followers. There are […]
A significant changing of the guard is underway in the world of telecoms and tech out of Asia. CK Hutchison, a Hong Kong conglomerate that owns the European mobile carrier 3 among other mobile and tech holdings, has announced that Li Ka-Shing is stepping down as the company’s chairman and executive director, after 46 years […]
Sweden-based Detectify, which offers a website vulnerability scanner that is in part powered by the crowd, has raised €5 million in new funding. The round was led by New York-based venture capital and private equity firm, Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors, Paua Ventures and Inventure, also participated. Founded in late 2013 by a self-described group […]
AirAsia, the low-cost airline in Southeast Asia, is considering an initial coin offering (ICO) as part of a push into financial services. Tony Fernandes, CEO of the $3 billion Malaysia-based company, told TechCrunch that he is analyzing the potential to hold an ICO that would raise money by introducing its own cryptocurrency. “We have two […]
It’s possible to be friends with someone who works for you, but you need to set boundaries. For example, there may be times when you’re privy to information that will affect your friend, but it would be improper for you to share it. To make the friendship work, be transparent about what you can and […]
Redshift Spectrum is a feature of Amazon Redshift that extends analytics to data stored in your Amazon S3 data lake, with no loading or transformations needed. Redshift Spectrum supports open data formats, such as Avro, CSV, Grok, Ion, JSON, ORC, Parquet, RCFile, RegexSerDe, SequenceFile, TextFile, and TSV. You can query data across Redshift and S3 […]
The maximum number of tables you can create per cluster is 20,000 for 8xlarge cluster node types, and 9,900 for large and xlarge cluster node types. The limit includes user-defined temporary tables and temporary tables created by Amazon Redshift during query processing or system maintenance. Views are not included in this limit.
Does Blogging Help With SEO? Blogging helps boost SEO quality by positioning your website as a relevant answer to your customers’ questions. Blog posts that specifically use a variety of on-page SEO tactics can give you more opportunities to rank in search engines and get customers to visit your site. Search engine optimization is incredibly […]
You can extend the customization of your notebook instances using the lifecycle configuration option. This feature will allow you to invoke a custom script at designated stages of a notebook instance’s lifecycle – such as every time the notebook instance is instantiated, or just when it is first created. You also now have the choice […]
I write a lot about creating an experience. About humanizing. About authenticity. About telling a story. About being helpful. In a marketing context, much of this boils down to the idea of your brand: about who you are, what you can do, and how that shapes the messages you send your audience, and how you send […]
Lyft is testing a monthly subscription plan for people who tend to take a lot of rides, The Verge first reported. This is no surprise, given Lyft CEO and co-founder Logan Green said earlier this week Lyft would like to achieve in transportation what Netflix achieved in streaming media with subscriptions. There seems to be […]
Google Maps has a pretty solid set of data for taking transit from here to there, but anyone with a physical disability knows it isn’t quite that simple. Some stations may be wheelchair-unfriendly, have out-of-service elevators, that kind of thing. A new update to the service adds an option for you to specify a wheelchair-accessible […]
When the Spectre and Meltdown bugs hit, it became clear that they wouldn’t be fixed with a few quick patches — the problem runs deeper than that. Fortunately, Intel has had plenty of time to work on it, and new chips coming out later this year will include improvements at the hardware/architecture level that protect […]
Fitness-oriented New Yorkers aren’t facing a shortage of classes that they can sign up for, but the prices can add up — Clément Benoit, founder of a new startup called FitHouse, said boutique classes cost an average of $35 per session. FitHouse, on the other hand, is charging $99 per month for unlimited classes. Contrast […]
Abra, a global currency wallet that was the belle of the early Bitcoin ball, has just added twenty cryptocurrencies and fifty fiat currencies, a feature that allows you to top up and send cash and cryptocurrencies from inside the wallet. “Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Zcash, Bitcoin Gold, Stellar Lumens, DigiByte, […]
Seven million women (and men) love TheSkimm. With its daily newsletters designed to keep you in the loop on the latest news and pop culture, TheSkimm has developed a loyal following, and even recruits fans called “Skimm’bassadors” to help spread the word. That word-of-mouth hype is helping and the startup has seen enough growth to […]
AWS CloudTrail makes it easier to search CloudTrail log files using the power of Amazon Athena. Previously, you had to manually create a CloudTrail table using the Athena console or AWS CLI and ensure you had the proper configuration and data definitions to match the CloudTrail log format. Now, from within the CloudTrail console event […]
Lightning Labs, a young, Bay Area-based startup, is trying to make it easier for users to send bitcoin and litecoin to each other without the costly and time consuming process of settling their transactions on the blockchain. It has investors excited about its work, too. The company is announcing today that it has raised $2.5 […]
The rapid consumer adoption of smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home has opened opportunities for developers creating voice apps, too. At least that’s true in the case of Volley, a young company building voice-controlled entertainment experiences for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. In less than a year, Volley has amassed an audience north […]
Teaching kids how to use a computer is hard enough already, since they’re kids, but just try doing it without any computers. That was the task undertaken by Richard Appiah Akoto in Ghana, and his innovative (and labor-intensive) solution was to draw the computer or application on the blackboard in great detail. His hard work […]
Amazon Connect integrations are automated deployments that extend the cloud-based contact center functionality provided by Amazon Connect with popular services and solutions from AWS partners. You can use Amazon Connect integrations to easily set up and manage your contact center in the AWS Cloud with key solutions for customer relationship management (CRM), workforce optimization (WFO), […]
Google says there are currently no ‘statistically significant’ pay gaps at the company across race and gender. This is based on the company’s most recent pay analysis, where it looked at unexplained pay discrepancies based on gender and race and then made adjustments where necessary, Google wrote in a blog post today. In total, Google […]
Rihanna is not happy with Snap for the tone-deaf ad the company let run on Snapchat. A couple of days ago, an advertisement on Snap appeared that alluded to Chris Brown’s violent assault on Rihanna back in 2009. The advertisement, which was for a game called “Would You Rather,” asked if people would “rather slap […]
Starting today, you can now use Amazon CloudFront to negotiate HTTPS connections to origins using Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). ECDSA uses smaller keys that are faster, yet, just as secure, as the older RSA algorithm. The smaller keys will also increase the number of TLS handshakes that your origins can process per second, […]
Facebook wants you to pay it for Internet. This week TechCrunch was tipped off that Facebook had quietly launched an Express Wi-Fi Android app in the Google Play store that lets users buy data packs and find nearby hotspots as part of Facebook’s distributed Wi-Fi network. The company’s Express Wi-Fi program is live in five developing […]
Ford is a 115 year old company and has changed much over the years. The car maker seems ready to change again. Today, Ford gathered several hundred journalists in a theater deep in its Dearborn, MI development center. The building is surrounded by engineering labs and test facilities. A Ford proving ground is across the […]
Ford is committed to electric vehicles and today revealed more details about its upcoming performance electric SUV. Jim Farley, President of Ford Global Markets, speaking a media event today, called the upcoming vehicle low-slung like a Mustang. The company is targeting 2020 release and Farley promised that it will be famous without having to shoot […]
Ford detailed a bunch of its roadmap for the next few years at a special media event today, and one of the key takeaways is that it’s going all-in on hybrids with its SUV lineup. Ford estimates that SUVs could make up as much as half the entire U.S. industry retail market by 2020, and […]
No matter whether you are a seasoned programmer or you simply want to take your first steps in writing code, Repl.it wants to help you get from idea to result as fast as possible — without complicated installs and setup procedures getting in your way. The Y Combinator-funded project, which released version 1.0 of its service […]
Airbnb has made some changes to its platform in order to make it easier for people with disabilities to find accommodations that suit their needs. The 21 new accessibility filters Airbnb has added enable people to find homes and apartments that have step-free entry to rooms, entryways wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair, elevators, roll-in […]
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, the ‘battle royale’ style game where everyone tries to be the last player standing while scrounging for supplies to keep them alive, has launched on Android in Canada MobileSyrup reports, which could presage a future release in the U.S. The arrival of the mobile version of the game more generally known as […]
Spotify explained why it’s ditching the traditional IPO for a direct listing on the NYSE on April 3rd today during its Investor Day presentation. Spotify described the rationale for using a direct listing to go public with five points: List Without Selling Shares – Spotify has plent of money with $1.3 billion in cash and securities, […]
Disrupt San Francisco 2018 promises to be our biggest Disrupt event ever — with three times the convention floor space and more than 10,000 attendees. That’s incredibly exciting, and it also presents a challenge for startup founders and tech investors eager to network and connect. Who wants to waste valuable time talking to the wrong […]
Blue Apron announced today it will bring its meal kits to stores. The news arrives at a time when the meal kit subscription company is struggling to grow and retain its users, who are often put off by the expense of the direct-shipped meal kits and the need to commit to an ongoing subscription. In […]
Android Wear has exactly been the rocket ship of success Google was no doubt banking on when it was launched four years ago this week. After a slow start, the company issued a 2.0 refresh of the wearable operating system in early 2017 — but the update was fairly minimal and didn’t appear to move […]
GM revealed today that it’s going to be starting proper production of its Cruise autonomous vehicle at its Orion township assembly plant in Michigan, with the roof modules for the vehicles assembled nearby at its Brownstown battery assembly plant. Alongside the Cruise AV, Orion will also continue to build the Bolt EV, as well as […]
Back in 2016, Microsoft bought the popular SwiftKey keyboard for Android and iOS for $250 million. It’s still one of the most popular third-party keyboard on both platforms and today, the company is launching one of its biggest updates since the acquisition. With SwiftKey 7.0, which is out now, the company is adding stickers — because […]
As you might have heard, last year’s TC Robotics event in Boston was such a hit we’ve decided to do it again — only on the West Coast, this time. On Friday, May 11, we’ll be holding TC Sessions: Robotics on the U.C. Berkeley campus. We’ve got a lot of big industry luminaries lined up […]
Additionally, we are releasing a JavaScript sample application that showcases usage of the AWS Amplify library and AWS AppSync together along with the Complex Objects feature. This sample showcases a comprehensive solution for a private photo storage application, where users can register and sign-in to an application. Photos can be synchronized across devices where users […]
Facebook’s Instant Games are now open to all developers, Facebook announced this week in advance of the Game Developers Conference. First launched in 2016, the platform lets developers build mobile-friendly games using HTML5 that work on both Facebook and Messenger, instead of requiring users to download native apps from Apple or Google’s app stores. The […]
Elon Musk has been one of the few Silicon Valley luminaries to place intense attention on the potential dangers of AI, raising a billion dollars with Y Combinator’s Sam Altman to found OpenAI. Musk has continued the drumbeat on AI’s dangers, telling a crowd at SXSW this week that “A.I. is far more dangerous than […]
Another massive financing round for an AI chip company is coming in today, this time for SambaNova Systems — a startup founded by a pair of Stanford professors and a longtime chip company executive — to build out the next generation of hardware to supercharge AI-centric operations. SambaNova joins an already quite large class of […]
[embedded content] Because if it gets to the free-throw line, it sinks the shot – every. single. time. This robot (via The Verge) is the project of a group of Toyota engineers using their spare time, to build a robot inspired by the manga Slam Dunk, which is about a Japanese high school basketball team. […]
In a keynote speech at SXSW, YouTube’s Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen spoke briefly of YouTube’s plans for a music subscription service, amid a longer discussion of the changes he’s witnessed throughout his career in the industry, as well as those still in the horizon. YouTube’s new music subscription service had been expected to launch […]
Amazon’s original content efforts are paying off, at least in terms of driving new sign-ups for Prime, which is ostensibly their main value to the commerce giant. Documents obtained by Reuters show that the top Prime video original programming, including 19 shows covered within, were accountable for as many as a quarter of the total […]
We had all but forgotten about Tamagotchis. But those attention-starved little creatures are coming back. Today, My Tamagotchi Forever launches on Google Play and the App Store. For those of you who didn’t ride the wave of handheld digital pets in the late 90s and early aughts, or those of you who are too young […]
Startup pitches invariably involve futures where the skies are thick with drones — delivery, transportation, emergency response. In that seemingly inevitable scenario, tracking and hunting down out of control and malicious unmanned vehicles will likely be a pretty lucrative field. It’s something Fortem’s been working on for a few years now. In May of 2016, […]
Maybe you’ve seen this kind of ad in a game you have played: your character dies and then the game asks you to watch a short video ad in return for an extra life. That’s actually a feature of Google’s AdMob advertising service, and today it’s extending this with playable ads, a new type of […]
Seattle-based Strix Leviathan, an enterprise trading and management platform for crypto assets founded by startup vet Jesse Proudman, today announced that it has raised a $1.625 million seed round led by Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures (yes, that Joe Montana). Other investors include Founders’ Co-op, FuturePerfect Ventures and 9Mile Labs, as well as angel investors like Chris […]
BlackBerry today announced it reached an agreement to keep CEO John Chen in his current position through 2023. Chen joined the company in 2013 and is responsible for leading the company’s recovery as it left smartphones and embraced services. When Chen took over the company, the company was struggling on all fronts. Its time as […]
While credit-scoring behemoth Equifax continues to work through the fallout from its massive security breach, one of its big competitors is snapping up a startup in the UK to diversify its business. Experian today announced that it is acquiring ClearScore, which has built a platform that — like Experian — offers you a credit score, […]
The U.S. Air Force wants to maintain its options: It awarded a total of $640 million in satellite launch contracts to both SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s joint space launch venture), with the goal of making sure it has access to at least two options for launching its payloads to […]
A massive company probably has plenty of engineers on staff and the resources to build a complex backbone of interconnected information that can contain tons of data and make acting on it easy — but for smaller companies, and for those that aren’t technical, those tools aren’t very accessible. That’s what convinced Howie Liu to […]
More VC money sloshing around Europe, this time with the launch of a new early-stage fund targeting food and agriculture technology. Backed by the likes of European Investment Fund, Nestlé, Fondo Italiano d’Investimento, and Bpifrance, Five Seasons Ventures is announcing the first closing of its fund with commitments “in excess of €60 million” to invest […]
In my last internship, my manager told me a funny story about her 18 year-old brother after he visited the office one day. And it made me realize I officially don’t understand the teenage mind anymore. After meeting me for a mere two minutes, he wanted to add me — the only other person around […]
Fintech startup Revolut is slowly making traditional bank accounts irrelevant. The company is adding direct debits in EUR to make it easier to pay for utilities and subscription services. While Revolut is currently applying for a banking license, the company has already been adding everything you need to replace your bank account with a Revolut […]
What do Drake, Ninja the professional esports player, Kim Dotcom, Travis Scott and NFL player JuJu Smith-Schuster have in common? They’re all playing Fortnight together right now and live-streaming it on Twitch. Yes, seriously. You can tune in to Ninja’s channel here to check out the action. Right now the amount of live viewers is […]
Having a tense conversation brings up a lot of negative emotions, leaving you feeling like an active volcano. To prevent an outburst and stay in control of your emotions, physically ground yourself in your environment. One of the best ways to do this is to stand up and walk around, which activates the thinking part […]
If you’re a real Star Wars Star Trek fan, chances are you’ve always dreamt of learning Klingon. It’s one of the most lovely and melodic tongues in the pantheon of fake languages, after all. Well, here is your chance: Duolingo today announced the launch of the official Klingon course on its service. “Many Star Trek fans become curious about […]
Back in September of last year, Nest announced its first smart doorbell. When it would actually ship, however, was left sort of up in the air; all the company said at the time was to expect it sometime in Q1 of 2018. Turns out, that means today. The Nest doorbell — or the Nest Hello, […]
You can’t go anywhere these days without hearing about the elusive, purportedly mystical powers of influencer marketing. But is this buzzword-laden tactic actually worth your time and energy? According to a recent study comprised of marketers from a variety of industries, 94% said influencer marketing was an effective campaign strategy. That’s great news for marketers — […]
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable, elastic file storage for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources via Amazon Direct Connect. Amazon EFS is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. It provides massively parallel access for thousands […]
If you want to see how a proposed drug affects human physiology, your options are limited — and usually you end up using mice, which are in many ways poor analogues. What’s a pharmacologist to do? MIT researchers have a solution: a “body on a chip” that simulates up to 10 interconnected human organs at […]
TypingDNA has a new approach to verifying your identity based on how you type. The startup, which is part of the current class at Techstars NYC, is pitching this as an alternative to two-factor authentication — namely, the security feature that sends unique codes to a separate device (usually your phone) to make sure someone […]
Now Spotify listens to you instead of the other way around. Spotify has a new voice search interface that lets you say “Play my Discover Weekly”, “Show Calvin Harris”, or “Play some upbeat pop” to pull up music. A Spotify spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that this is “Just a test for now”, as only a […]
Lyft is partnering with Magna, one of the largest tier one automotive industry suppliers in the world, on autonomous vehicle technology. Lyft CEO and co-founder Logan Green explained that this will help them get their self-driving tech into various automaker vehicles around the world. Lyft will be working directly with Magna on “co-developing” an autonomous driving […]
Beginning today, you can use a new Amazon Route 53 Auto Naming API to update the health status of service instances manually. After you register a service instance with a new custom health check configuration, you can call the new API to mark the service instance healthy and start routing traffic to it. Alternatively, you […]
AWS SAM extends AWS CloudFormation to provide a simplified way of defining the Amazon API Gateway APIs, AWS Lambda functions, and Amazon DynamoDB tables needed by your serverless application. The AWS Serverless Application Model is available under the Apache 2.0 license, enabling anyone to adopt and incorporate it into build, deployment, monitoring and management tools […]
Naeem Ishaq is leaving his role as chief financial officer of bulk e-commerce company Boxed. Ishaq joined Boxed in 2016, following a stint as head of finance, strategy and risk at Square. A Boxed spokesperson confirmed Ishaq’s departure, and sent the following statement from CEO Chieh Huang: Naeem is a world-class financial talent. Over the […]
YouTube has a plan to combat the abundant conspiracy theories that feature in credulous videos on its platform; not a very good plan, but a plan just the same. It’s using information drawn from Wikipedia relevant to some of the more popular conspiracy theories, and putting that info front and center on videos that dabble in… […]
Advancements in A.I. technology has paved the way for breakthroughs in speech recognition, natural language processing, and machine translation. A new startup called Voicery now wants to leverage those same advancements to improve speech synthesis, too. The result is a fast, flexible speech engine that sounds more human – and less like a robot. Its […]
For how massive Reddit is in terms of user base, it’s really gotten by for a long time having a product that advanced about as quickly as Drudge Report. That’s been changing lately, as the company has looked to mature their platform with user-centric features that make surfing content easier and keep everything a bit […]
Former Equifax exec Jun Ying has been charged with insider trading, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. He allegedly knew that Equifax had been hacked and sold his company shares before the public was notified. Ying, who was “next in line to the be company’s global CIO, allegedly used confidential information entrusted to him by […]
Lighting can make or break the right photo, when it comes to static environments inside virtual reality that users can move around in, this becomes exponentially more true. Today, Google released a new app for VR devices focused on helping users make sense of “light fields.” They’ve also got a blog post running down some […]
Procrastinateurs se réjouissent! If you haven’t applied yet to compete in TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Europe at VivaTech in Paris on May 24-25, then rejoice indeed, because we have great news for you. We’re extending the application deadline by one full week to March 22, at 9 a.m. PST. Startup Battlefield is the premier startup pitch […]
Circle is launching Circle Invest in the U.S. except in NY, MN, HI and WY. The app is now available in the App Store and Play Store and lets you instantly trade the most popular cryptocurrencies without any fee. Circle Invest isn’t exactly an exchange as the app hides most of the complexities that you […]
Systems that parse or store resource IDs may not work with longer IDs. We strongly recommend that you test your systems in preparation for the switch to longer IDs after June 2018. Additional information including details of how to test your systems and access these AMIs can be found in the FAQs and EC2 documentation.
Zero-fee stock trading app Robinhood is getting some product firepower as it dives into cryptocurrency and weighs platform aspirations. Investor Josh Elman will join Robinhood as its VP of product while remaining a partner at Greylock. With 4 million registered users, $176 million raised and a $1.3 billion valuation, the five-year-old fintech startup is shifting […]
Google just banned cryptocurrency and ICO ads, a move that follows Facebook decision to do the same. The language is stark: you are no longer allowed to advertise “Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice).” This is good news. In the Wild […]
