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Amazon has a shiny new startup accelerator to advance conversational AI
John Mannes
2,016
11
30
Big tech companies have been creating accelerators and to evangelize their brands and get developers engaged with APIs and other open-source efforts. Today, Amazon joined the crowd by announcing a new program for startups developing conversational AI. This is Amazon’s first foray into the world of accelerator progr...
For Nike, the HyperAdapt self-tying shoes are the first step toward something larger
Brian Heater
2,016
11
30
At $720,  of Nike’s HyperAdapt self-tying shoes are for sneakerheads. They’re flashy and pricey, and while Nike isn’t revealing exact numbers, it’s clear that they’re an extremely limited edition. But one thing they’re not, according to Tiffany Beers, is a gimmick. The Nike senior innovator has been working on the pro...
Dusk’s new app lets you live stream anonymously
Sarah Perez
2,016
11
30
Online anonymity can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can give people a voice when they’d otherwise be afraid to speak up — whether that’s because of fear of government surveillance, discussing a topic that’s known to provoke cyberbullying or because the topic itself is sensitive — like a personal confessio...
Box shows strong sales growth in third quarter earnings
Katie Roof
2,016
11
30
The company also posted significant growth in deferred revenue, with $192.6 million, an increase of 36 percent from the same period last year. This is money that was received in advance of services. Billings were also up 26 percent, coming in at $112.4 million. Box’s operating loss also narrowed to $37.8 million, down ...
AWS Snowball Edge offers 100TB of storage and compute functionality
John Mannes
2,016
11
30
got a major update today at the company’s re:invent conference. Though largely overshadowed , the aforementioned Snowball will be getting a storage increase to 100 terabytes in addition to computing functionality. will be able to perform basic analysis on their data right from each device. This is ideal for field work...
Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls
Josh Constine
2,016
11
30
Reddit will start issuing warnings, timeouts and permanent bans to its most abusive trolls, but will also limit the content manipulation capabilities of its own CEO for ethical violations that shook the trust of the online community. Last week, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, who goes by the handle Spez, in the pro-Trump...
AWS Greengrass brings Lambda to IoT devices
Frederic Lardinois
2,016
11
30
Amazon today announced the launch of AWS  , a new service that will be built into IoT devices to bring them better and smarter compute capabilities. As AWS CEO Andy Jassy noted in today’s keynote at Amazon’s re:Invent developer conference, Amazon expects that the majority of on-premises hardware will soon be IoT device...
Crunch Report | First Hyperloop Will Be Built in UAE
Khaled "Tito" Hamze
2,016
11
8
Tito Hamze, John Mannes Tito Hamze  Joe Zolnoski  Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze 410 Townsend street Suite 100 San Francisco Ca. 94107
13 of the best tweets about the election
Anna Escher
2,016
11
8
The polls for the 2016 election are beginning to close and Twitter is aflame. As the trashfire of this election burns itself to cinders, we got out of fetal position and took a break from counting down to the potential end of days with Twitter. Here are some tweets keeping us sane on #ElectionNight. 1) Wandering eyes T...
GoPro is recalling the Karma drone after just 16 days on the market
Matt Burns
2,016
11
8
GoPro just issued a press release announcing the recall of the Karma drone. It just happened to be while the United States is watching the election results roll in. The press release is below. Customers can view return instuctions . The Karma drone was on the market for 16 days and GoPro says it sold 2,500 drones thus...
For a brief, glorious moment, you could do weird things to Donald Trump’s website
Anthony Ha
2,016
11
8
The internet found a new way to amuse itself in the final hours of the presidential election cycle. Basically, there was a glitch on of Donald Trump’s website. So whatever text you entered at the end of the URL, it would show up at the top of the page, like so: Fun with URL hacking. — Andy Baio (@waxpancake) Why ...
Wurk raises $1 million to help cannabis companies manage their people
Lora Kolodny
2,016
11
8
A “pottech” company called has raised $1 million in seed funding to help cannabis businesses such as dispensaries or growers comply with all the different regulations coming into play around the burgeoning legal cannabis industry. The seed deal closed before various ballots issues were voted on today in the U.S., whi...
How our next president can usher in the next wave of job growth
Richie Hecker
2,016
11
8
Both candidates talked about creating jobs. One wants to cut taxes and the other wants to increase them. While they debated whose plans will make America great and whose will make America broke, here is an innovation plan that will guarantee to not cost America any money, and will usher in the greatest wave of innova...
How bitcoin protects against geopolitical risk
Peter Smith
2,016
11
8
Today’s election is anything but ordinary.  People from every corner of the globe have been watching, not only for its theatrical elements but because the impact will be felt around the world in very real ways.  And nowhere will the impact be more immediate and certain than on the economy. In August, the Wall Street ...
Walgreens is suing Theranos for $140 million in Delaware
Sarah Buhr
2,016
11
8
Walgreens has filed a lawsuit against blood analysis company . Walgreens was once Theranos’ biggest partner and the startup used several of the drugstore chain’s Arizona store locations as testing sites. However, Walgreens formally with the startup in June, citing the myriad bad test results and a federal investigati...
Hyperloop One will build the first Hyperloop system to go from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in twelve minutes
Sarah Buhr
2,016
11
8
and the United Arab Emirates are on the fast track to building out the first hyperloop system. Just today H1 announced it would build the first commercial hyperloop transportation system from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. The journey is 99 miles (159.4 km) long and normally takes about two hours by car but H1 promises it would ...
You can now buy a refurbed iPhone directly through Apple’s site
Brian Heater
2,016
11
8
Some good news for folks looking to shave a hundred bucks or so off an iPhone, while still getting all the benefits that going through Apple’s official channels entail. The company is now stocking through its online store — which was previously limited to iPads, Macs, Apple TVs and the like. As one expects from Apple...
Google to shut down Map Maker, its crowdsourced map editing tool
Sarah Perez
2,016
11
8
Since 2008, Google has run an online tool called  that allows anyone worldwide to contribute data to Google Maps. Now, that tool is shutting down. The company today in its online forum for the project that the Google Map Maker service, as a standalone product, is retiring in March 2017. However, crowdsourced contrib...
Alexa, who is winning the presidential election?
Brian Heater
2,016
11
8
My own personal method for following election results mostly revolves around curling up in the fetal position under my bed with a bottle of whiskey and a security blanket. But for those who want to be a little more engaged without having to immerse themselves fully the 24-hour cable news cycle, Alexa’s got a few tricks...
Tickets to the 10th Annual Crunchies are on sale now!
Jordan Crook
2,016
11
8
It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the holiday season or even tech’s own winter wonderland, CES. I’m talking about Awards Show season, and the one awards show that no TechCrunch writer, reader, or subject can afford to miss: The Crunchies. This year, we’re celebrating our in style, at the San Fra...
Need some good news today? A mutant snail just found love via Twitter
Devin Coldewey
2,016
11
8
This day will be a stressful one for many Americans, so naturally we turn to the internet: to paraphrase , the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. Luckily, today brings — from across the pond. A mutant snail who once thought hermself alone in the world has found love, thanks to online dating. Jeremy, a ...
PlayStation Vue’s streaming TV service is losing all Viacom channels
Sarah Perez
2,016
11
8
Sony’s PlayStation Vue streaming TV service has just hit a bit of a roadblock in terms of its content lineup. The company says today that it is losing all Viacom-owned channels, including Comedy Central, Spike and MTV, which will be removed from the service beginning on November 11. Reading between the lines of the , ...
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Haje Jan Kamps
2,016
11
30
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Prisma now supports real-time style transfer on Facebook Live
Natasha Lomas
2,016
11
8
Prisma’s app now supports real-time style transfer for livestreaming videos broadcast to the Facebook Live platform. ‘Style transfer’ is the phrase being used to describe popular art filter technology which creates a pastiche effect at the touch of a button — turning a representational photo or video into something mor...
The insurance impact of self-driving cars and shared mobility
Seth Birnbaum
2,016
11
8
“We’re going to see more change in the next five to 10 years than we’ve seen in the last 50,” said Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, . While that statement is now a year old, it continues to ring true. Vehicle ownership is changing and self-driving cars will be implemented in the next decade. What will affect the i...
Facebook speeds up its data center network with the launch of its Backpack switch platform
Frederic Lardinois
2,016
11
8
Facebook is on a mission to make the fiber optic networking inside of its data centers go from 40G to 100G. Its top-of-rack network switch (basically, the device that connects all the servers in a rack to the wider data center network) was already accepted into the Open Compute Project and today, the company lifted t...
Deliveroo riders in North London push to unionize
Natasha Lomas
2,016
11
8
A group of Deliveroo riders in North London is pushing for improved pay and conditions by taking legal steps to obtain union recognition. To achieve that they will need a tribunal to judge at least some of them to be workers, rather than self-employed contractors as Deliveroo describes them. It’s the latest development...
Microsoft’s new to do list app, Project Cheshire, spotted in the wild
Sarah Perez
2,016
11
8
Although Microsoft back in 2015, the company has been working on another to list app experience, code-named Project Wunderlist, which is now in private beta testing. Not much is known about Microsoft’s intentions with its new app, but according to a report out today, this simple to do list app will soon be available ...
Alibaba’s Lazada confirms acquisition of Singapore web grocery startup RedMart
Jon Russell
2,016
11
1
Last week, we reported that Lazada, the e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia backed by Alibaba, , and today the companies confirmed the deal. Our sources said Lazada, which earlier this year, is spending $30-40 million to buy Singapore-based RedMart. Given that , which include Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, ...
Didi may not have invested in Asian ally Grab’s recent funding round after all
Jon Russell
2,016
11
1
Days after , — China’s top ride-sharing service — had agreed to take part in a new funding round for Southeast Asia-based ally Grab. The Chinese firm’s involvement in the round — which  led by SoftBank — was never formally announced, along with a lot of other investors, but it was widely assumed by many following t...
Amazon plans to enter Southeast Asia with Singapore launch in Q1 2017
Jon Russell
2,016
11
1
Amazon is ready to enlarge its presence in Asia. Months after and a week after it , plans for its entry into Southeast Asia next year have surfaced. The U.S. retail giant doesn’t currently offer local services in Southeast Asia, but it is working to enter the region via a launch in Singapore. Amazon is covertly acqu...
Tools that help startups scale effectively
Gerard Grech
2,016
11
1
If you wanted to start your own tech business 10 years ago, you needed deep pockets and extensive knowledge of building the various parts of a company yourself. From the ground up. Skype, Amazon and eBay were all well-backed companies given significant capital to grow while making significant early losses. Building a...
Microsoft strives to give computers common sense with Concept Graph
John Mannes
2,016
11
1
Today, to tackle just one of the problems plaguing natural language understanding — knowledge. The company believes that background knowledge is one of the key separators between the way humans and machines understand language. Probase, a knowledge database Microsoft has been working on for quite some time, is servin...
Crunch Report | Instagram Shoppable Photos
Khaled "Tito" Hamze
2,016
11
1
Tito Hamze, John Mannes Tito Hamze  Joe Zolnoski  Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze 410 Townsend street Suite 100 San Francisco Ca. 94107
Cross River Bank gets unconventional validation with a $28M VC round
John Mannes
2,016
11
1
In a rare move, and , investors in a number of Silicon Valley’s fintech startups, have backed the bank enabling many of their investments to lurch forward.  , the obscure financial institution that seemingly everyone in fintech has heard of but doesn’t really know, originated more than $2.4 billion in loans for co...
Facebook officially announces Gameroom, its PC Steam competitor
Josh Constine
2,016
11
1
After losing mobile gaming to iOS and Android, Facebook is making a big push into playing on PC with today’s developer launch of its Windows desktop gaming platform. After months of name changes, beta tests and dev solicitation, Facebook and officially named it Gameroom. The app is openly  on Windows 7 and up. Gam...
Some Facebook employees struggle with inclusion
Megan Rose Dickey
2,016
11
1
There’s a clear disconnect between and inclusion and how it plays out in the office. The most recent example is the presence of a series of posters that describe the average characteristics of software engineers, product designers and other tech positions. Then there’s the language used in the poster for content stra...
It’s curtains for Talkshow, launched by former Twitter VP Michael Sippey
Connie Loizos
2,016
11
1
Twitter’s former VP of product seemed to be building a service that might challenge his former employer: his app allowed anyone to exchange text messages in front of an audience; the idea was to get other people talking. Now it’s gone quiet. In a letter to users sent earlier today, the company writes: The nascent c...
Otonomo raises $12 million to make data from connected cars useful
Lora Kolodny
2,016
11
1
Even if self-driving cars aren’t part of our daily lives yet, vehicles are becoming internet-connected at a rapid pace. that one-fifth of all autos on the road, and a great majority of new vehicles being produced worldwide, will have wireless network connectivity by 2020. Yet, few organizations have access to use the ...
Roku’s latest OS update brings live TV pausing and private listening
Brian Heater
2,016
11
1
Roku’s rolling out an update to its TV streaming operating system that brings a pair of important updates to its entire line of streaming players and TVs. Most notable for is the long-awaited addition of live TV pausing. So long as a Roku TV is connected to an antenna and a USB storage device with 16GB or more, users...
Check out the trailer for our new series “The Down Round”
Rebecca Friedman
2,016
11
1
The new series “The Down Round” is a six-episode look at what many are considering the burst of the Silicon Valley bubble. While Silicon Valley has boomed for most of the past decade, funding has become harder to come by and unicorns are having trouble proving their worth. Companies that have raised huge funds are fo...
Uber and GM partner to offer drivers car sharing through Maven
Darrell Etherington
2,016
11
1
Uber has announced that it will be teaming up with GM’s car-sharing company, , allowing drivers to rent GM vehicles on a weekly basis in a 90-day pilot program to see how the arrangement works. This is separate from, but similar to,  , wherein the carmaker makes vehicles available to Lyft drivers on an all-in short-te...
Sudo lets you change your online identities as easily as flipping a switch
Fitz Tepper
2,016
11
1
If you’re like me your inbox is a mess of hundreds of promotional emails from different sites across the web – many of which I’ve only actually shopped at once or twice. But once they have your email address it’s over – you can expect to receive a weekly (or daily!) email ad infinitum. Companies that get your cell phon...
Apple, give me back my emoji
Devin Coldewey
2,016
11
1
What have you done, Apple? You took an entire visual lexicon used by millions of people every day, and changed it. You destroyed iconic images and needlessly tweaked perfectly good ones. Why? Why would you do this? I want my peach butt. I want my cartoon moon. I want my candy heart. I want my emoji back. But you’ll nev...
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Josh Constine
2,016
11
8
null
How combined human and computer intelligence will redefine jobs
Brad Bush
2,016
11
1
The man versus machine dichotomy has been a staple of pop culture for decades. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Blade Runner to Terminator to The Matrix and beyond, film makers have envisioned what the world would look like if artificial  took over. However, a new mindset is taking shape — the . This combination of a ...
Jack Dorsey gets another break with a strong third quarter from Square
Matthew Lynley
2,016
11
1
While Jack Dorsey’s other company Twitter might be struggling, Square continues on a roll that’s keeping Wall Street happy. There’s going to, as always, be a big question mark for Square because of Dorsey’s tenure at Twitter — which is hardly going well. While the company’s latest quarter showed a flash of optimism, th...
Genetics startup Genos wants to pay you for your DNA data
Sarah Buhr
2,016
11
1
The first  cost a whopping $2.7 billion. That didn’t bode well for making any breakthroughs on genetic disorders. Luckily, the cost has dropped dramatically since then, leading to a new breed of consumer genetics startups taking a deeper dive into all the double helix’s that make up you. is one of those startups usin...
Photo app Ever removed its spammy SMS feature after Apple banned it
Ingrid Lunden
2,016
11
1
Score one for the consumer against the indefatigable force of growth hacking. , the photo storage app that we called out in September for  (it from Everalbum shortly after), has found its way back into Apple’s App Store after getting temporarily banned for its practices. Ever has had a lot of negative feedback — an...
China’s new cybersecurity law is bad news for business
Kate Conger
2,016
11
6
The Chinese government has passed new cybersecurity regulations Nov. 7 that will put stringent new requirements on technology companies operating in the country. The proposed Cybersecurity Law comes with data localization, surveillance, and real-name requirements. The regulation would require instant messaging services...
Not every service needs to be an on-demand service
Ajay Prakash
2,016
11
6
When my co-founder James and I started our mobile-based laundry service in 2013, the “on-demand” economy was starting to emerge. VCs were excited to find the next Uber and companies were launching on-demand services in all verticals imaginable (more broadly known as “Uber for X” companies). Fast forward to today wher...
WTF is CRISPR?
Sarah Buhr
2,016
11
6
a rare genetic mutation that guarantees you’ll get a certain form of cancer by the time you reach 50 years of age. And that this is most likely how you are going to die. But what if I told you this cancer gene, passed down from generation to generation, can be snipped out of your genome entirely and you never pass it...
Sinovation Ventures’ Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is betting big on artificial intelligence
Romain Dillet
2,016
11
6
Given that Sinovation Ventures founder Dr. Kai-Fu Lee has around 50 million followers on Chinese social networks, he has become an oracle when it comes to predicting the future of tech in China. Kai-Fu Lee talked about the most important trends in Chinese startups at . Sinovation Ventures recently raised the equival...
Why iRobot’s Colin Angle thinks the smart home starts with a robot vacuum
Matthew Lynley
2,016
11
6
Robots — and the smart home in general — are a hot topic, and it’s one where an enormous amount of investment is happening right now. There are many companies like Nest and Ring that are trying to target segments of the home in the hopes of making everything smarter. But it’s easy to forget that the home is still a phy...
Why the Department of Transportation’s self-driving car guidelines aren’t enough
Carl Herberger
2,016
11
6
Ford, GM, Toyota and VW are just a handful of the car manufacturers planning to put self-driving cars on the road in the next five years. If you ask Uber or Tesla, they might say driverless cars have already arrived… which means we’re running out of time to secure one of the juiciest new targets for hackers. Hacking ...
The new 64-bit Orange Pi is a quad-core computer for $20
John Biggs
2,016
11
6
Need a teeny tiny computer that can run Android or Linux? Only have $20? Well you’re in luck. When we first met the (get it?) the company was selling a nice Raspberry Pi clone for $15. Now they’re selling a souped up version with all the trimmings. The . It has 1GB of memory, H5 High Performance Quad-core 64-bit Cor...
Would you let an algorithm choose the next U.S. president?
Vyacheslav Polonski
2,016
11
6
Imagine a typical day in 2020: Your personal AI assistant wakes you up with a friendly greeting before preparing your favorite breakfast. During your morning workout, it plays new songs that perfectly match your musical tastes. For your driverless commute to work, it has pre-selected a few articles based on the durat...
Listen to cartoonist Ruben Bolling talk about Trump, art, and cartooning
John Biggs
2,016
11
6
I’m a really lucky guy. In the course of this work I get to talk to a lot of my personal heroes and my favorite so far has been . Bolling is a fixture in the alt-comics scene and he has a lot to say about the rise and fall of the alt-weekly and the new laws of popularity. If you want to know how to build and keep an a...
What Tesla’s new Gigafactory means for electric vehicles
Jussi Pikkarainen
2,016
11
6
‘s new    at the end of July in Nevada, with much excitement from both the media and the general public. Only 14 percent of the massive structure has been built, with the rest of the $5 billion project to be concluded by 2020. According to Tesla, battery cell production will start in 2017; by 2018, the Gigafactory sh...
Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize the supply chain
Ben Dickson
2,016
11
24
At the time of its inception some two centuries ago, the was a revolutionary idea that would improve visibility and control on goods and products as they moved from point A to point B. But the old concept and technology no longer support today’s production and cycles, which have become extremely fragmented, c...
Tesla’s Autopilot and the double standard for automotive safety systems
Jack Dashwood
2,016
11
24
This summer saw the inevitable controversy arise when a Tesla automobile was involved in a fatal traffic accident while operating in its headline-grabbing Autopilot mode. While early reports seem to point toward human error by both parties involved (the truck driver turning across traffic without sufficient time and ...
Faraday Future’s factory construction paused; shipping timelines at risk
Darrell Etherington
2,016
11
24
Electric vehicle maker Faraday Future may not be able to make its first cars in time to hit its 2017 shipping deadlines, according to a new report by the . It’s hard to ship a car when your factory itself isn’t finished — FF’s Nevada-based manufacturing facility broke ground in April, but construction has since been p...
GoCardless spies a glimmer of hope for UK fintech amid the Brexit gloom
Natasha Lomas
2,016
11
24
While the U.K. government continues to decline to provide any substantial intelligence on its plan for Brexit, and , U.K. businesses are left to wonder what Brexit will mean. The Prime Minister’s insistence that “Brexit means Brexit” might be a crafty soundbite, but it’s a fat lot of good to anyone trying to build a...
2016 Thanksgiving on track to break $2B in online sales
Ingrid Lunden
2,016
11
24
With Thanksgiving Day in full swing, many are turning to the internet to get their holiday shopping started. Adobe is e-commerce transactions in real time, and it said that by 5pm Eastern time online retailers had clocked $1.15 billion in sales, up 13.6 percent on a year ago. Of that, $449 million was spent on mobile...
Big data company Palantir quietly raised another $20M in November
Ingrid Lunden
2,016
11
24
— that $20 billion secretive outfit that provides government, finance, healthcare and other organizations with analytics, security and other data management solutions — has raised another $20 million in funding, according to a . It’s a relatively modest amount for the company. In its last fundraising, in December 201...
Watch this $9K VR walking rig really put players into the game
Darrell Etherington
2,016
11
24
When TechCrunch went to Beijing recently, I got the chance to try out virtual reality walking simulation rig. The setup encircles the player’s waist, keeping them upright no matter what’s going on in virtual space, while the special shoes and a slick plastic pad, both laden with sensors, help translate your perambu...
Seven principles to ignite a culture of innovators
Alex Goryachev
2,016
11
24
Every big company was a lean and mean startup at one time. Now, confronted with digital disruption all around us, we’re all rushing to rekindle the entrepreneurial flame that first put our businesses on the map. Every company wants to be “innovative,” but “innovation” has become an overused buzzword that has lost its...
Virata is an automatic watch with a racing pedigree
John Biggs
2,016
11
24
is the brain-child of Patrick Wacks from Canton, Ohio. Wacks was inspired by his favorite Formula 1 cars to create a watch as streamlined and sexy as a race car. He’s finally shipping his watches and he’s running to get them out the door. The feature I find interesting is the clever, highly engineered case. The watc...
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Brian Heater
2,016
11
1
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The tangle of the year
John Biggs
2,016
11
24
One of the primary reasons for Thanksgiving was always the celebration of the end of the harvest and the promise of new growth. Home gardens wilted in the first November rains and the apples and herbs died out around the ides. The land goes from oregano and blanched green bean to tan and dust and brown and the leaves c...
Zvooq, Russia’s Spotify, sues Yandex for $29M after key staff were allegedly poached
Mike Butcher
2,016
11
24
, a music streaming service in Russia and CIS countries backed by major Western labels, is suing Yandex for $29 million. It accuses the Russian search giant of poaching key Zvooq staff for its own music streaming service, in contravention of an NDA the two parties allegedly signed in February of this year. Zvooq, which...
Maserati plans an all-electric Alfieri for 2020
Darrell Etherington
2,016
11
24
Maserati was said to be looking at 2020 as the target time frame for its first production electric vehicle, and now the company has confirmed to that a battery-powered electric drivetrain option will be made available in 2020 for its Alfieri two-seater sports car. The EV version will follow the conventional fuel-base...
LeEco’s Le Pro3 is cheap, fast and frustrating
Brian Heater
2,016
11
24
LeEco would like nothing more than to be . The impulse is no better demonstrated than with the company’s grand U.S. debut a few months back, which included everything from phones and flat-screen TVs to a bicycle, an electric car, a VR headset and, yes, a cameo by Michael Bay directly from the set of the latest Transfo...
Dyson’s V8 cordless is your best bet for ditching your heavy plug-in vacuum
Darrell Etherington
2,016
11
24
Dyson’s is the latest in a long line of the company’s portable category, and it has a more powerful motor that drives more suction than ever before, as the name implies. It’s also a premium-priced device, but that suction combined with its battery life and lightweight design make for a pretty unbeatable combo in the ...
Strolling through the line at Snapchat’s NYC Spectacle store
Jordan Crook
2,016
11
24
Snap, the social media company formerly known as Snapchat, has launched a . Inside the store, there is a Snap Bot (a vending machine full of Spectacles). Outside the store, there is a line — a long, winding line of people who stand out in the freezing cold to buy a pair of Snapchat-capable sunglasses. Personally, I ...
Anyone for quantifiable VR mindfulness?
Natasha Lomas
2,016
11
24
? At this nascent stage the question remains hanging in the pixelated air like the promise of a better life off-world. As does the associated unknown of whether the tech’s promise of “exceptional immersion” will stand the test of time and make the leap to mainstream appeal. For now, on the content side, VR mainly means...
Here’s why you should attend the Disrupt London Hackathon, more tickets now available
Matt Burns
2,016
11
24
The Hackathon at  is so close we can almost taste it. Soon, thousands of founders, investors and tech enthusiasts will storm London’s Copper Box Arena for the best startup show in Europe. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that the next wave of tickets to the hackathon is available now, and you can . The hackathon kic...
Watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Daydream VR is actually fun
Darrell Etherington
2,016
11
24
Live streaming 360-degree video is rarely the right way to go if you’re thinking about doing a live broadcast for an event — but Verizon’s (disclaimer: Verizon owns TechCrunch via AOL) use of it to show the  actually makes sense. Especially if you happen to have a Daydream View headset, Google’s new first-party mobile...
Autonomous robots and game-playing A.I. — incredible demos at Disrupt London, Dec 5-6
Mike Butcher
2,016
11
24
is on December 5-6. Grab tickets . As well as speakers and panels, we’ll be featuring some demos by some amazing tech companies. The first will be by Boston Dynamics. Yes, folks, delegates to Disrupt London will get to see one of those amazing BD robots up close and personal, almost literally in the flesh (if they ha...
China’s Ctrip is buying flight search company Skyscanner for $1.74 billion
Jon Russell
2,016
11
23
Skyscanner, the Scotland-based flight-search company, has been for £1.4 billion, or approximately $1.74 billion. The deal is predominantly cash and is expected to close before the end of this year. Once completed, Skyscanner will operate independently of Ctrip, both parties confirmed. Ctrip was founded in 1999, and i...
Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters
Jon Russell
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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has admitted that he modified comments about him left on the site from supporters of Donald Trump. Huffman said he changed mentions of him in some of the messages inside the site’s largest forum for the President-elect, but not the messages themselves. But, in doing so, he dredges up . “Yep. I...
Crunch Report | Facebook Builds a Censorship Tool
Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes Tito Hamze  Chris Gates  Chris Gates TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze 410 Townsend street Suite 100 San Francisco Ca. 94107
Wynd grabs $31.7 million for its point-of-sale solution
Romain Dillet
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French startup has raised a $31.7 million Series B round (€30 million) from and , with also participating. Orange Digital Ventures had already invested in the Series A round with . Wynd is working on a software-as-a-service solution to replace your existing point-of-sale service that you use in your restaurant ...
Facebook is unlikely to succeed in China, even if it compromises on free speech
Jon Russell
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Facebook may have laid some of the early groundwork to launch its social network in China, but the U.S. company’s chances of making a dent in the world’s most populous country remain remote. that Facebook is developing a system that could censor information to appease the Chinese government is the talk of the tech ind...
Care/of takes on the vitamin industry with customized nutrition packs
Sarah Buhr
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There’s no end to the bottles, packs and pills of various nutritional supplements out there, but vitamin startup plans to stand out by tailoring the vitamins you pop to your specific needs. The startup joins a growing number of others in tech hoping to cash in on the vitamin industry.  offers pills they say will bo...
Sony gives Bose a run for its money with the MDR-1000X
Brian Heater
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Sony makes no bones about going after Bose. In fact, when the company first showed off its product in the lead up to IFA this summer, it said as much, acknowledging that the QuietComfort line is largely considered the gold standard for noise-cancelling travel headphones. It’s a bit like getting the old board together a...
Sherpa Foundry casts a wider net, hoping to catch customers abroad
Connie Loizos
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— a three-year-old, San Francisco-based group that’s among a growing number of outfits to help older and non-tech companies better understand how tech startups might help them — is looking to fold in some new customers. It anticipates a growing number of them will come from overseas, too. While Sherpa Foundry launched ...
Amazon makes good on its promise to delete “incentivized” reviews
Sarah Perez
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Amazon is making good on from its website, according to a new analysis of over 32,000 products and around 65 million reviews. The ban was meant to address the growing problem of less trustworthy reviews that had been plaguing the retailer’s site, leading to products with higher ratings than they would otherwise deser...
Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures back Apptopia’s next-gen app intelligence platform
Sarah Perez
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, a startup that began its life as  before morphing into the app intelligence provider that’s now used by Google, Facebook, Pinterest, NBCU, and others, has closed on a second seed round of $2.7 million. The round, which was led by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, brings Apptopia’s total raise to date t...
A longtime VC on the virtues of not swinging for the fences
Connie Loizos
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11
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There’s a winner-take-all mentality in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it has distorted the thinking of countless entrepreneurs who’d likely be better off running smaller companies — and giving up less ownership to investors in the process. While funding announcements are widely celebrated as milestones, the reality is ...
Amazon acquired patents, employees from Biba, reportedly plans new video chat service
Ingrid Lunden
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Amazon’s purchases of  and appear to be only two parts of a bigger strategy at the company to move deeper into video services through acquisition. Last year, the marketplace and cloud computing giant also quietly acquired a startup out of San Francisco called , which develops and operates video messaging apps aimed...
UK wants to censor ‘non-conventional’ sex videos
John Biggs
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In an ongoing effort to prevent pornography from soiling the shores of Britannia, UK lawmakers are working to prevent the spread of ‘non-conventional’ sex videos online. The proposed law blocks sites that host content that “certified for commercial DVD sale by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC),” an orga...
Gong says it’s cracked news personalization
Anthony Ha
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If you’re a little skeptical about trying out another news aggregator, CEO Itzik Ben-Bassat knows what you’re probably thinking — after all, he heard the same thing when he was pitching investors. “They all kind of looked at me and said, ‘ ,'” he recalled. But it seems like  (who was previously an executive at Blizza...
Security researchers can turn headphones into microphones
John Biggs
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Security researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have created a proof-of-concept exploit that lets them turn headphones into microphones to secretly record conversations. The PoC, called first turned headphones connected to a PC into microphones and then tested the quality of sound recorded by a microphone vs. ...
Handy’s Black Friday promo rewards contractors over customers
Jordan Crook
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11
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Handy, the on-demand service for cleaners, handymen, and more, has today announced the Give > Get promotion for Black Friday. This Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, customers pay the same amount as they’d usually pay, but the company will add a 50 percent bonus to the Handy Professional’s paycheck. The booking itself...
Lovely is finally shipping the Fitbit for sexy times
John Biggs
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Do you and your partner often do sex? Do you want to know how much sex you’re doing? And do you want to know how good it is and how good it could be? What is sex? Does anyone know? Can help us find out? Hopefully, because I’m confused. Created by Jakub Konik and Tomasz Badyla Lovely is a thinger that goes on your oth...
NHTSA spells out what your phone shouldn’t be able to do while driving
Darrell Etherington
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released new for software makers and device manufacturers, including smartphone makers like Apple and Google, which aim to cut down on driver distraction from mobile apps and hardware. These guidelines, which are again voluntary, are based on research about what facto...
Alexa can now clean a floor with Neato’s robot vacuum
Brian Heater
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Neato got on the smartphone connected robot vacuum train early on, so it’s really only fitting that the company become the first to embrace Amazon’s multi-talented home assistant. Starting this week, the company’s Botvac Connected vacuum , so users can control a clean by speaking. The functionality is pretty basic to ...
Albert raises $2.5 million for its finance app that helps you save money
Sarah Perez
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11
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Everyone knows the basics of how to improve their financial health: put money into savings, track your spending, reduce your debt, look for ways to save on your monthly bills, and make smart investments. Where people struggle is translating that knowledge into specific actions you can take today. That’s where an applic...
Samsung’s latest acquisition could pave the way for its own iMessage-type service
Jon Russell
2,016
11
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This is a week for Samsung acquisitions, it seems. Fresh from announcing , the Korean giant revealed on Wednesday that it is also , a messaging company, in an undisclosed deal. The company might not be as sexy or as recognizable as Harman, which claims to have audio and connected systems in 30 million cars worldwide,...