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Facebook invents “virtual reality emoji” gestures
Josh Constine
2,016
10
6
and your VR avatar’s face will turn “angry.” Put your hands on your face Home Alone-style to express “shock.” Triumphantly thrust your hands in the air and your virtual self’s face will show “joy.” These are what Facebook calls “VR emoji,” and they’re the company’s vision for how we’ll convey emotion in virtual reali...
In buyers’ market, acquirers look to lock in management teams longer
Connie Loizos
2,016
10
6
Acquisitions are often celebrated in the press. But academic research suggests that 70 percent to 90 percent of mergers don’t succeed, owing to a wide variety of factors. Buyers overvalue the synergies they’ll derive, or they underestimate the impact of the associated costs, or they rely too heavily on assumptions abou...
ASUS’s Zenvolution event features four upcoming devices and one awkward portmanteau
Brian Heater
2,016
10
6
Zenvolution doesn’t really roll off the tongue. But hey, you come for the gadgets – the clever word play is really just a bonus, at best. And the company certainly has a lot to showcase on that front, covering all of the requisite bases with a new laptop, phone, tablet and watch. Let’s start with the notebook and go fr...
Toppling democracy one byte at a time
Ben Johnson
2,016
10
6
As the saying goes, “all politics is local.” And now, so is hacking. Cyber attacks popularized on the silver screen are now occurring in every aspect of our life. Our election system is not immune from this new reality. We don’t need to consult research to see the vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems. It’s ....
Yep, there’s now a subscription handbag service: Ivory Clasp
Sarah Perez
2,016
10
6
There are subscription services for , , , , and even , so why not one for handbags? That’s the premise, at least, behind a new startup called , which is promising to offer quality, stylish handbags that retail for over $100 for just $45 per month. The service sends name-brand bags, not knock-offs, and allows you ...
News in VR with RYOT
Sarah Buhr
2,016
10
6
, the Culver City, California-based virtual reality outfit by the Huffington Post last year, works on the cutting edge of the news business, bringing audiences straight to the scene. That’s an unusual use of the new medium – most VR startups focus on sports and gaming empires. But RYOT took its VR team to the Rio 20...
Coupa up 87% in software IPO
Katie Roof
2,016
10
6
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Sony packs more power into its compact cameras with the RX100 V and a6500
Devin Coldewey
2,016
10
6
Sony has a pair of new cameras for sale — though perhaps “new” isn’t the word, since they’re more like upgrades to existing devices. The price is upgraded, too. You’re not getting away for under a grand, though you’ll be getting a lot of camera for your money. is, as you might guess, the fifth iteration of this pocket...
Netflix’s Reed Hastings believes AT&T Time Warner merger could be good for consumers
Sarah Buhr
2,016
10
24
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings isn’t bothered by the idea of a marriage between mobile powerhouse AT&T and HBO’s parent company Time Warner, “As long as HBO’s bits and Netflix’s bits are treated the same [by regulators],” he said. Hastings, who was speaking at the Wall Street Journal Live conference this evening with Comc...
Alan wants to turn health insurance into software-as-a-service
Romain Dillet
2,016
10
24
Ok, my headline is a bit provocative, but it’s kind of true. French startup is launching today a brand new full-stack health insurance company in France. Compared to existing products, Alan wants to make the experience much sleeker. Here’s how it works. The company just raised $13 million (€12 million) from CNP Assur...
Flex raises another $3 million to replace tampons
Megan Rose Dickey
2,016
10
6
Flex, the tampon alternative you can wear during sex, has raised a $3 million seed round led by Vivek Ranadive’s new fund, Capital, with participation from Cyan Banister of Founders Fund, Ellen Pao and others. This comes just a couple of months after from Y Combinator, Amplify.LA and others. Flex plans to use the fu...
Palmer Luckey absent from Oculus conference keynote after troll scandal
Josh Constine
2,016
10
6
Oculus co-founder and Trump troll financier Palmer Luckey was conspicuously missing from the keynote stage at today’s Oculus Connect 3 conference in San Jose, CA. That likely related to the backlash against news that Luckey donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Trump non-profit dedicated to bashing Hillary Clinton w...
Senators ask FCC to investigate Stingray surveillance tech
Kate Conger
2,016
10
6
A group of Democratic senators asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate cell site simulators like Stingrays to determine if the surveillance devices used by local law enforcement agencies are disrupting cellphone service for ordinary consumers and 911 calls. The senators are also asking the FCC to loo...
Ant Financial partners with First Data and Verifone as part of its global expansion
Jonathan Shieber
2,016
10
24
As hundreds of newly minted Chinese millionaires and billionaires continue their global shopping spree, is expanding its reach to make sure they can buy whatever they want, wherever they want, and however they want. On the stage of today’s Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas, the company announced a slew of partnershi...
Twitter’s sales team is taking a hit in big upcoming layoffs
Matthew Lynley
2,016
10
24
Well, now we know why Twitter decided to move its earnings report to before the market opens ( ). Bloomberg is reporting that the company may cut up to 8% of its staff, or around 300 people, and that the cuts . As usual these situations are very dynamic, so all of the above could shake out to be different than expecte...
Google buys Eyefluence eye-tracking startup
Lucas Matney
2,016
10
24
Google wants to know everywhere that you’re looking. Today, Eyefluence announced that it has been acquired by Google. The eye-tracking interface startup founded in 2013 had raised $21.6M in funding from investors including Intel Capital, Jazz Venture Partners, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and NHN Investment. Te...
The Amazon Echo gains MLB Gameday Audio just in time for the World Series
Matt Burns
2,016
10
24
The MLB just made it a bit easier to listen to the Indians destroy the Cubs during the World Series. After enabling the skill, subscribers to MLB products just need to tell an Echo to ask MLB to play the Indians. And like that, the Echo turns into your personal Bob Uecker, streaming the play-by-play directly into your ...
Study estimates cost of last year’s internet shutdowns at $2.4 billion
Devin Coldewey
2,016
10
24
Whenever there’s a shutdown of internet access or restrictions placed on an app, we shake our heads disapprovingly because we know it’s a fundamentally bad idea to do that. But what exactly is the cost of those shutdowns? suggests well over $2 billion over the last year. The study, by Brookings analyst Darrell West, ...
Kodak teases a new phone for an October 20 reveal
Devin Coldewey
2,016
10
6
Kodak accidentally teased an upcoming phone today in a now-deleted tweet. Fortunately, the image accompanying the tweet is also easily found at . It shows what is presumably the power button on this new Kodak phone, embedded in a nice machined bezel and with a Kodak K stamped on it. But you knew that, since the pictur...
Trying on Nike’s limited edition, self-lacing ‘Back to the Future’ shoes
Anthony Ha
2,016
10
6
Nike announced earlier this week that it will be its self-lacing shoes inspired by — but only 89 pairs, which will be  (tickets cost $10), with proceeds benefiting the ‘s research on Parkinson’s disease. I got a chance to (briefly) try on a pair of Mags and discuss the technology with Nike Senior Innovator Tiffan...
Google pollutes new Chrome tabs with ‘article suggestions’ – here’s how to disable them
Devin Coldewey
2,016
10
24
The original new tab page. You know what people love? When you take something familiar and useful and replace it with content “for you” that you actually didn’t ask for. That’s one of the more visible changes in the , which swaps out the bookmarks and recently visited items (above) on the new tab page for “suggested a...
IPO pro Lise Buyer on what you need to IPO in the next six months
Connie Loizos
2,016
10
24
Last week, I sat down with IPO pro Lise Buyer to talk about the Bay Area ecosystem for a that’s broadcast from Wharton’s San Francisco campus. Buyer was the host and I was the guest, but because the IPO market is top of mind for so many in the startup industry right now, I asked if I could turn the table for a few mi...
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Matthew Lynley
2,016
10
6
null
NHTSA releases best practice guidelines for vehicle cybersecurity
Darrell Etherington
2,016
10
24
Following its , the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released a similar set of guidelines or “best practices” for cybersecurity in vehicles, designed to provide guidance for car makers. The best practices document is 22 pages and is non-binding, meaning there’s no regulatory imperative requiring that...
The tech industry’s regulatory crisis and how Silicon Valley lost touch with Washington
Tim Hwang
2,016
10
24
More than around the world tuned in to watch the first of three presidential debates — a number that almost rivals the Super Bowl, and surpassed the Oscars, Emmys and NBA Finals combined. With all the buzz being generated in and around the upcoming elections, no industry is exempt from their impact — Silicon Valley...
Twitter decides to release earnings while most of us are sleeping because reasons
Matthew Lynley
2,016
10
24
A lot of the industry watchers that follow Twitter are out here on the West Coast, where the company is based. And for good reason! The Twitter diaspora exists in a large force out here and are great to keep in touch with in order to keep context, and it’s important to be in general geographic proximity of the company’...
OpenDataSoft raises $5.4M to turn data into APIs
Romain Dillet
2,016
10
24
French startup just raised a $5.4 million Series A round (€5 million) to make it easier to manipulate huge sets of data. and invested in today’s round, with existing investor also participating and helping with the deal. Interestingly, this is one of the first investments in a French startup from Salesforce V...
Chronocam secures $15M to power its ‘biological eye’ computer vision system
Lucas Matney
2,016
10
24
Not everything in our field of view at any given time is all that interesting; often, it’s only when something consistent changes that our eyes take notice. Paris-based is looking to further develop this concept in the computer vision space with its new camera technology being optimized for autonomous vehicles. Today...
The Luminox XCOR 5261 Chronograph wants to send you (and your wrist) to space
John Biggs
2,016
10
24
frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Your Wrist, whose bold 80+ year mission is to help you carry grocery bags and wear watches like the Chronograph. This unique automatic chronograph from a watchmaker most known for brightly luminous and rugged timepieces, is an homage to spaceflight and looks pretty dar...
InContext Solutions raises $15.2M to bring retail experiences into VR
Lucas Matney
2,016
10
24
Virtual reality offers businesses the ability to see consumer habits in digital environments before committing the resources to actually building out those environments in the real world. For , a major market opportunity that they’ve been able to isolate is giving retailers the opportunity to test and explore new in-s...
VR audio startup Dysonics closes Series A led by Intel Capital
Lucas Matney
2,016
10
24
If you had the chance to watch the second episode of the new season of Black Mirror, you won’t take much convincing when people tell you how important realistic 3D audio is to immersing you in a virtual reality/mixed reality experience. is a startup in the VR audio space looking to build the hardware and software work...
Uber will deliver up to 5 free flu shots and a free care pack to users
Darrell Etherington
2,016
10
24
Last year, Uber launched UberHEALTH to deliver on-demand wellness pack and optional flu shots. For 2016, it’s doing it again, with Uber for Health, which similarly offers on on-demand “flu-fighting” care pack when you request one in-app, with optional free flu shots for up to 5 people at your location. And this time ar...
The future of books is coming, but it’s coming slowly
John Biggs
2,016
10
24
This week on Technotopia I had the opportunity to speak Laura Dawson, an and the future host of a podcast dedicated to ISBNs. To say that she has her finger on the pulse of the publishing world is an understatement. Dawson knows the ins and outs of the big houses and she understands how they think. Interestingly, alm...
Early stage VC holds up (even as late stage plunges)
Joanna Glasner
2,016
10
24
“We do see significant amounts of data added after the close of a quarter,” said Crunchbase CEO Jager McConnell. While there is some margin of error for projected numbers, it is estimated at below 5%, not enough to change the general thesis that early stage is not experiencing the large, across-the-board declines s...
Cuban: AT&T-Time Warner will create more competition
Katie Roof
2,016
10
23
The administration should kill the Time Warner/AT&T merger. This deal would mean higher prices and fewer choices for the American people. — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders)
WTF is machine learning?
John Mannes
2,016
10
23
of headlines about machine learning might lead one to think that we just discovered something profoundly new, the reality is that the technology is nearly as old as computing. It’s no coincidence that Alan Turing, one of the most influential computer scientists of all time, with the question “Can machines think?” Fr...
Honeycomb, a TV and video ad management startup from Adstream founders, scores £3M Series A
Steve O'Hear
2,016
10
23
, a TV and video ad management platform founded by James Carpenter and Richard Carter, who both previously founded Adstream, has raised £3 million in Series A funding. It follows a £1 million “friends and family” round in May this year. Leading the Series A is U.K. and U.S.-based VC Beringea, along with a number of ind...
What we learned about Elon Musk’s Mars plan in his Reddit AMA
Emily Calandrelli
2,016
10
23
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, hosted a this afternoon. He noted that the AMA should focus on SpaceX’s plans for Mars, which Musk during the International Astronautical Congress last month. This will be under /r/spacex, not the general AMA. Meant to be supplemental to the IAC talk. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Ov...
With a green light from the Feds, states race to regulate driverless cars
Eric Tanenblatt
2,016
10
23
California lawmakers and regulators just conditionally approved the road-testing of high autonomy cars that require no driver or even human controls, becoming the first state in the nation to flesh out an innovation-nurturing framework after federal regulators last month gave the green light to driverless technology....
The NFL: Twitter’s Kingmaker?
Ben Shields
2,016
10
23
The NFL has a distinguished history of successful partnerships with upstart media companies. When it became the home of Sunday Night Football in 1987, ESPN’s unprecedented growth accelerated. Then, in 1993, the NFL sold its NFC Sunday afternoon package to Fox, firmly establishing it as the fourth major broadcast netw...
UK spy agency GCHQ paid NZ firm Endace to power Internet fiber-optic taps
Natasha Lomas
2,016
10
23
The 2013 Snowden documents revealed UK intelligence agency , covertly gathering vast amounts of digital comms data under a surveillance program code-named  — apparently with the help of commercial partners. Now leaked documents obtained by  confirm GCHQ paid New Zealand-based to create data capture systems to enab...
Driverless cars will be widespread by 2020
Andrew Keen
2,016
10
23
 is CEO of  That said, however, he is very impressed with Obama’s transportation policy, particularly the recently announced  By the 2020 election, however, Sonnad believes that driverless cars will have become ubiquitous. The impact will be “completely transformative”, he said. And while it’s hard to imagine the kin...
Advancements in artificial intelligence should be kept in the public eye
Parag Mital
2,016
10
23
Artificial intelligence allows machines to reason and interact with the world, and it’s evolving at a breakneck pace. It’s already driving our cars, managing our health and even competing with — and sometimes beating at our on games — our best and most talented humans. Many advances in AI can be attributed to machine...
The banana republic of big data
Lorelei Kelly
2,016
10
23
“The money is in the noise,” said a former poorly paid congressional staffer, now successful social media guru, when I asked why she left. A noisemaker herself, she warned, “It’s going to get louder and deeper.” There’s a reason Americans feel dispossessed by their government. We citizens have fewer and fewer opportu...
AT&T’s new streaming service, DirecTV Now, just got a lot more interesting
Sarah Perez
2,016
10
23
AT&T’s soon-to-launch live streaming service, DirecTV Now, just got a lot more interesting following . Announced , DirectTV Now was already an anticipated new arrival on the cord-cutting scene, thanks to its plans to stream over the Internet without having to agree to traditional pay TV contract. More of a rival to...
Hillary Clinton will likely be as pro-innovation as President Obama
Gregory Ferenstein
2,016
10
23
Indeed, Hillary Clinton is the latest in a long line of “New Democrats” who have attempted to rebrand the party since the 90s as more tech friendly. (AP Photo/Kevin Lamarque, Pool, File)  
Weengs, a shipping service for online sellers, picks up backing from LocalGlobe, Cherry, and Seedcamp
Steve O'Hear
2,016
10
23
, a U.K. startup that has developed a shipping service for small retailers and online sellers that takes care of the hand and leg work (quite literally) required to send out orders, has picked up £2.2 million in backing. It plans to use the capital to expand beyond London, including other cities in Europe. Backing the ...
Employment in China’s tech industry
Norman Chang
2,016
10
15
Despite murmurs of tumult and slowdown in the Chinese economy, the fact remains that China’s economic engine has been on a tear — at roughly 6.5 percent or more for the last six years. Much of this growth has been fueled by China’s emergent tech industry, as even in Silicon Valley, China’s BAT companies (Baidu, Aliba...
Funders must give minority founders a fair deal
Kathleen Kelly Janus
2,016
10
15
I learned a shocking statistic recently: Less than  of venture capital funding goes to black founders. This must change. Minority founders are, in general, more in need of outside financial support. For many people of color, the “friends and family” plan for raising seed money, which so many founders rely on — askin...
Overdosing on VC: Lessons from 71 IPOs
Eric Paley
2,016
10
15
Venture capital is a . Used properly, it’s like adrenaline energizing many of the greatest companies of the past fifty years. Used incorrectly, it creates toxic dependencies. The conventional wisdom in the startup community is that when building the very best companies, more capital can be leveraged to accelerate ev...
Gillmor Gang: Bret Taylor Talks Quip
Steve Gillmor
2,016
10
15
The Gillmor Gang — A Conversation with Bret Taylor and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live at Dreamforce 16 Thursday, October 7, 2016. As CEO of Salesforce acquisition Quip, Bret Taylor returns to the Gang for a chat about his early work on Google Maps, co-founder of the legendary FriendFeed social network, CTO of Facebook,...
Multi-media journalists face jail time after reporting on North Dakota pipeline protest
Lora Kolodny
2,016
10
15
Investigative reporter and co-founder of Amy Goodman, is now  in the state of North Dakota after her report on a Native American-led pipeline protest there went viral on Facebook. about the new charges against Goodman late Saturday. The news organization, which spun out of WBAI-FM, creates programming which is sy...
Let’s have a little compassion for (some of) the trolls
Jon Evans
2,016
10
15
It’s looking pretty grim out there in social media land. A lot of what once was conversation has devolved into warfare. The issues of our time — Trump, Brexit, identity politics, housing and homelessness, how to pronounce “GIF” — seem to divide us ever more starkly, and so we huddle within our filter bubbles, and/or la...
How startups can use data to grow smarter
Dale Chang
2,016
10
15
Tech investing isn’t what it used to be — even compared to six months ago. Investors are applying greater scrutiny to deals. Many wonder if the days of the mega round that produced the likes of Snapchat, Uber and Magic Leap are . Founders are realizing they can’t favor growth over profitability, or vice-versa — both...
Firefox users chalk up HTTPS encryption milestone
Natasha Lomas
2,016
10
15
A majority of Mozilla users were served encrypted pageloads for the first time yesterday, meaning their web browsing data was secured from snoopers and hackers while in transit. The HTTPS milestone was tweeted by Josh Aas, head of the   initiative which has been working to help smaller websites switch to encrypting the...
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Stefan Etienne
2,016
10
24
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Watch all six episodes of the series Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain
Travis Bernard
2,016
10
15
Our latest video series explores the world of bitcoin and the blockchain, and you can now watch all six episodes on and . The series features Nathaniel Popper, a reporter and the author of the on which the series is based, along with several bitcoin developers, influencers and scholars tracing the history of bit...
Crunch Report | Baidu raises a $3 billion fund
Khaled "Tito" Hamze
2,016
10
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes Tito Hamze  Joe Zolnoski Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze 410 Townsend street Suite 100 San Francisco Ca. 94107
What it takes to secure the elections
Ben Dickson
2,016
10
12
While virtually every industry and domain is flourishing and being revolutionized by technological advances, more than three-quarters of U.S. citizens will vote for their next president on paper ballots this November. The main reason for this is concern over . In the wake of major breaches, such as the and , it i...
Billionaire tech investors support divisive plan to ban San Francisco’s homeless camps
Sarah Buhr
2,016
10
12
The debate over what to do about San Francisco’s homeless population has been building for awhile among the many startups and residents here. But now tech billionaires Ron Conway, Michael Moritz and well-to-do hedge fund manager William Oberndorf have each thrown about $50,000 behind a measure to rid San Francisco of i...
The combination of human and artificial intelligence will define humanity’s future
Bryan Johnson
2,016
10
12
Through the past few decades of summer blockbuster movies and Silicon Valley products, artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly familiar and sexy, and imbued with a perversely dystopian allure. What’s talked about less, and has also been dwarfed in attention and resources, is human intelligence (HI). In i...
Echo Spatial Perception starts rolling out to Amazon’s Alexa devices
Brian Heater
2,016
10
12
Of course Amazon wants you to own an Echo device. But not just one. The company really, really hopes to get one into every room of its customers’ homes. That’s where the second generation of the comes in — $50 a pop, and even cheaper if you buy them in packs of six or twelve. Granted, I live in New York City, but tha...
Add Google Assistant to your phone by tweaking two lines of code
Devin Coldewey
2,016
10
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Want , but don’t want to spend your allowance on a Pixel? I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is you can get it with two tiny tweaks to a single config file — the bad news is you’ll need root access, and there’s no guarantee it’ll work on your phone in particular. ⚠️ ⚠️Don’t try this unless you know what y...
Audi axed its electric supercar, per report
Matt Burns
2,016
10
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The Audi R8 e-tron is dead if from Car and Driver is to be believed. The production version of the car was unveiled at the 2015 Geneva Auto Show and apparently Audi produced fewer than 100 vehicles — which sported a $1.1 million window sticker each. When announced, the e-tron seemed like a key part of Audi’s future. ...
Alibaba backs PlaceIQ, a provider of location tools and data
Anthony Ha
2,016
10
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has a new, big-name investor — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The companies aren’t disclosing the size of the deal; they’ll only say that it’s a strategic, minority investment, and that it’s an addition to that PlaceIQ announced at the beginning of this year. Co-founder and CEO Duncan McCall told me this is part ...
Google’s latest Transparency Report sets more records in government request numbers
Devin Coldewey
2,016
10
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Google has added the data from the first half of 2016 to its ongoing page, and the changes are pretty much what you’d expect: more requests. Some frivolous, some legit, some top secret. Requests for user information jumped to a record total of 44,943 (up from the previous six months’ 40,677), with the U.S. leading th...
Turn a DJI Phantom 4 into a search & rescue drone with the EXO 1 exoskeleton
Matt Burns
2,016
10
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The DJI is a fantastic all-purpose drone, but with the , it becomes a dedicated search and rescue tool. The 3D-printed add-on quickly attaches to the drone and adds a host of features key to making the drone a valuable tool for first responders. There are GoPro mounting points at various locations around the exoskelet...
What regulation crowdfunding in the JOBS Act means to entrepreneurs and startups
John Rampton
2,016
10
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was signed into law by President Obama in 2012, allowing companies to acquire funding through online portals from non-accredited investors, which roughly accounts for 97 percent of the population in the United States. On May 16, 2016, Title III of the , also known as r  c , or , was the last section to be implemen...
Lyft partners with Brookdale to bring on-demand rides to senior communities
Lora Kolodny
2,016
10
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has struck a landmark partnership with one of the largest operators of senior living facilities in the U.S., Through this partnership, Brookdale residents will be able to book a Lyft ride, on-demand or pre-scheduled via a concierge in their community, no smartphones or apps required. The rides will be billed to their...
These soft robotic muscles could help with physical therapy
Devin Coldewey
2,016
10
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Robotic exoskeletons are one of those technologies that tend to be associated with warfare or at least the industrial sector, but soft robotics and artificial muscles like make them suitable for more delicate operations as well. The Reconfigurable Robotics Lab at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne is workin...
You have less than 24 hours to apply to the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt London
Samantha O'Keefe
2,016
10
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Yes, you read that right. for the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt London close tomorrow, Thursday at noon PT! Time to get going. You can do it. Startups should note that teams from across Europe and around the world are all eligible to participate in the event. We’re looking for the hottest seed-stage startups to laun...
NHL’s streaming season kicks off with new Apple TV and ‘Arena’ apps
Darrell Etherington
2,016
10
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It’s time for hockey season, news related to which I must cover because of the circumstances of my birth (Canada). So I will tell you that the NHL has a new slate of digital offerings for fans of the ice-based sport, including a new tvOS app for the latest generation Apple TV (which debuted during the pre-season). Al...
The Impossible Foods burger heads West
Sarah Buhr
2,016
10
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its West Coast debut today, starting with Jardiniere and Cockscomb in San Francisco and Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles. The startup, which has a whopping in venture capital so far for its plant-based burger that aims to look, taste and bleed like real beef announced it is now available in California. The announc...
How a unique approach to auto repair led to a new kind of shop software
Darrell Etherington
2,016
10
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At in San Francisco, the publicized focus on hybrid vehicles actually masks the real differentiator: a focus on people. Founder Carolyn Coquillette started the San Francisco-based auto shop in 2007, and as you can see from the video above, everything from the decor to the space it occupies is a departure from what ...
Valve teases next-gen VR hardware
Lucas Matney
2,016
10
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Today at the company’s Steam Dev Days conference, Valve teased a host of announcements related to the company’s efforts on its OpenVR platform, including a new prototype SteamVR controller. The company, which built most of the underlying VR tech for the HTC Vive, first shared some statistics regarding SteamVR, highligh...
Yahoo adds security event tracking to its Account Info page, but still no “delete” button
Sarah Perez
2,016
10
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Following news of its large-scale data breach affecting 500 million account holders, Yahoo today to its that will better alert users to unauthorized activity on their accounts. The feature is similar to Google’s in that it tracks the account activity and devices associated with your Yahoo account, but it doesn’t pr...
GM’s car sharing company Maven hits the streets of San Francisco
Sarah Buhr
2,016
10
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, a car sharing company out of General Motors, is driving its way into San Francisco today. The announcement made late Thursday evening is one part of a continued roll-out in several cities throughout the U.S., which started at the beginning of this year. It’s city based car sharing service called Maven City is now ava...
Verizon wants you to know its Google Pixel phones will get immediate Android updates
Brian Heater
2,016
10
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Verizon wants you to know that everything is fine. It’s learned its lesson. The carrier’s Google Pixels will get Android updates at the same time as the unlocked versions. False alarm. Of course, that original five-day-long concern , noting last week that its version of Google’s eagerly awaited Pixel handset would be ...
Watch Pitch@Palace’s Demo Day here
Samantha O'Keefe
2,016
10
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TechCrunch is pleased to bring you Pitch@Palace’s Demo Day today,  , live from the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. Pitch@Palace was set up by The Duke of York to amplify and accelerate U.K. tech entrepreneurs. At Pitch@Palace Boot Camp, 31 teams will give a three-minute pitch. Judges will then select the 12-15 b...
Crunch Report | Soylent Bars Are Getting Recalled
Khaled "Tito" Hamze
2,016
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes Tito Hamze  Joe Zolnoski Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze 410 Townsend street Suite 100 San Francisco Ca. 94107
The AI disruption wave
Rudina Seseri
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Information technology evolves through disruption waves. First the computer, then the web and eventually social networks and smartphones all had the power to revolutionize how people live and how businesses operate. They destroyed companies that weren’t able to adapt, while creating new winners in growing markets. Wh...
Returnly raises $3.2M to immediately refund your money after an online return
John Mannes
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Returning a product you bought online is inherently a statement of dislike, but smart retailers are quickly learning that they’re far better off if they shelve their defensive impulses and instead embrace your dissatisfaction with open arms. This is because it turns out that a smooth return process makes customers cons...
Uber hits another roadblock
Megan Rose Dickey
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Uber, the ridesharing behemoth that recently began operating driverless cars and exploring self-flying drone taxis, can’t seem to catch a break these days in the legal arena. The New York State Department of Labor has ruled that two Uber drivers, Jakir Hossain and Levon Alesanian, are indeed employees — not contractors...
Tiny, levitating balls make up this weird ‘JOLED’ display
Devin Coldewey
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LCDs are old hat, my friend. What you need is . That’s what researchers at the Universities of Sussex and Bristol have cooked up, and it’s exactly as weird as you think. Though not as weird as . The display uses “Janus objects” as “physical voxels” with “acoustic levitation.” That about sums it up, right? Well, maybe...
Mobile marketing and data startup mParticle raises $17.5M
Anthony Ha
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announced today that it has raised $17.5 million in Series B funding. The New York City startup helps marketers collect user data through a variety of services and then funnel that data to other marketing and analytics tools. Co-founder and CEO Michael Katz said this not only reduces integration challenges and technic...
From the distributed workforce to the partnered economy
Ajay Chopra
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Despite what some politicians say, no country is an island in today’s rapidly changing world. In the same way, no company can survive as an island, either. Most won’t have noticed   $6.5 million Series A for a company called , but it’s indicative of a major change occurring in businesses today. Companies’ growing re...
VR battle royale: PS VR vs. HTC Vive vs. Oculus Rift
Lucas Matney
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I’ve spent quite a bit of the last few months with headsets strapped to my face. Whether that has enriched my life significantly or left it in shambles I cannot say, but I will report that the games are at least starting to get really fun and the video content is only getting better. The PlayStation VR launched today, ...
PlayStation VR is easily the winner in virtual reality right now
Darrell Etherington
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Consumer virtual reality has a clear new leader today, and it’s the just-launched PlayStation VR. Unequivocally, this is the best VR experience currently available outside of the kinds of high-flying, super-secret test rigs that exist out there for army training or whatever that cost millions of dollars. That includes ...
Levchin’s Affirm secures $100M credit line from Morgan Stanley
John Mannes
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This morning, announced a new $100 million credit line from Morgan Stanley. The money will go directly to supporting the company’s current financial products that help customers purchase goods and spread their expenses over a period of time. Morgan Stanley is not the first institutional lender to issue a line of cred...
A test flight with Zipline, makers of humanitarian delivery drones
Lora Kolodny
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a hopeful note about drones, following that members of ISIS packed a hobbyist drone with explosives in Iraq, killing two Kurdish fighters who captured and disassembled it. Before the founding team of Zipline departed the United States to be present for the program’s launch in Rwanda, they gave TechCrunch a tour of...
HP plans 3,000 to 4,000 job cuts over the next three years
Brian Heater
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HP isn’t out of the woods just yet. In to this year’s 2016 Securities Analyst Meeting, Dion Weisler, the President and CEO of the newly formed HP Inc., attempted to put a positive spin on a tricky situation. “I’m proud of the progress we have made in our first year as the new HP. Our focus is clear, our execution is ...
Google starts highlighting fact-checks in News
John Mannes
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Today to its popular Google News service. The site aggregates popular timely news from multiple sources and has traditionally grouped them with tags like “opinion,” “local source” and “highly cited.” Now readers can see highlighted fact-checks right next to trending stories. The company cites the growing prominence of...
Brain-computer interface lets a man with a spinal injury feel robotic fingers
Devin Coldewey
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“Index… ring… pinky… index… middle…” Nathan Copeland is telling a researcher which of his fingers he feels a touch on. But the researcher is touching a robotic hand, not Copeland’s, whose hand hasn’t felt a thing in over a decade. In this “proof of principle” experiment, a man whose spinal injury removed all sensation ...
Hillary mentions internet
Josh Constine
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Hillary says Trump “makes you just want to look at cat GIFs”, and she even pronounced it correctly.* Hillary Clinton appealed to the tech crowd of San Francisco today at a campaign event, discussing technology in more depth than she or Trump has in weeks. Clinton said that because of Donald Trump’s bragging about sexua...
Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain episode 5 explores the most exciting blockchain innovation
Rebecca Friedman
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In this episode we catch up with the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, and dive into its implications in the world of cryptocurrency. Ethereum is considered the most exciting innovation using blockchain technology, as its use cases go beyond that of bitcoin and could eventually have more overarching effects on how ...
DeepMind’s differentiable neural computer helps you navigate the subway with its memory
John Mannes
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In his best-selling 2011 book , Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman hypothesized that thinking could be broken down into two distinct processes — aptly named fast and slow thought. The former is all about your gut, the initial automatic responses you have to things, while the later is calculated, reflective ...
Verizon says Yahoo privacy breach had “material” impact 
Katie Roof
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After being asked about the hack in a  a couple of weeks ago, AOL’s Tim Armstrong said, “the data thing was something new that got introduced and we’ll work through that together with” Yahoo. He added that he wants to be “protective” of the Verizon shareholders.
Crunch Report | Galaxy Note 7 banned from all flights
Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes Tito Hamze  Joe Zolnoski Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze 410 Townsend street Suite 100 San Francisco Ca. 94107
While the IPO market roars back, venture remains leery
Ben Narasin
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The IPO market is poised to make an almost complete 180° turnaround after a bleak Q1 and a very quiet summer. JPMorgan alone said they were  , and has successfully launched nine in the U.S. to strong demand. The broad market (S&P 500) has largely recovered, as well, from a low point of 1,810 earlier this year to a cu...
WristWhirl lets you control your smartwatch with hand gestures (and look mad while you do it)
Devin Coldewey
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It’s a funny thing: Smartwatches are supposed to be the more accessible alternative to your smartphone, but you can operate a phone with one hand, while the watch takes two. Luckily, Dartmouth researchers are on the case, and have engineered a way to use your wrist as a sort of joystick, allowing you to use your smartw...