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Shiny and chrome! Rendering sparkly surfaces in CG just got massively better | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | As the graphics in games and movies edge closer and closer to photorealism, even the subtlest tricks of the light must be simulated. For years an especially tough one has been recreating the sparkling, uneven surfaces of water, metals and other materials — but these glints can now be rendered 100 times faster than befo... |
Reddit is still in turmoil | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | year since Reddit revolted. When the company cracked down on revenge porn and subreddits containing offensive content last summer, the backlash was swift and ultimately led to the ouster of interim CEO Ellen Pao. Although Pao was seen as the driving force behind efforts to make Reddit respectable enough to appeal to a... |
Monotype will acquire marketing startup Olapic for $130M | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | , a publicly traded company focused on font design and technology, announced today that it’s acquiring , a startup that helps brands promote themselves with user-generated photos. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year — at that point, Olapic will operate as a division of Monotype. The purchas... |
Pandora struggles to find new footing as music streaming becomes commoditized | Matthew Lynley | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | Pandora, in a story we’ve seen before with many other maturing companies, is facing an existential crisis. The company now finds itself fighting for its life against competition from the core platforms its service exists on: Android and iOS. Both of them — and Amazon as well — have launched their own music-streaming pr... |
Daimler hits the gas on electric and autonomous driving tech | Darrell Etherington | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler intends to up its spending on research and development, the company revealed during its on Thursday. The high-end car maker is going to route a lot more money toward areas key to the future of driving, including autonomous driving tech, a brand new generation of batteries for elec... |
Roger Ailes resigns from Fox News | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | Roger Ailes has officially resigned as chairman and CEO of Fox News, according to from parent company 21st Century Fox. The resignation follows a lawsuit , a former Fox anchor. (Ailes claimed that the suit was retaliation for Fox’s decision not to renew Carlson’s contract.) There are reports that an internal investi... |
null | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 7 | 26 | null |
Facebook scraps another Snapchat clone: 24-hour “Quick Updates” | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | Poke failed. Slingshot failed. But Facebook is still trying to mimic Snapchat with a new Stories-style feature it’s been testing called “Quick Updates”. These 24-hour ephemeral updates are buried in a special part of the app, and won’t show up in News Feed or on your profile. We received these screenshots from our read... |
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is reason No. 1 to tune in to the RNC with us tonight | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | Donald J. Trump is, to put it gently, not well liked within the Silicon Valley tech industry — and not because it is the liberal bastion it’s often portrayed to be. Mary Meeker, Meg Whitman and other tech leaders are die-hard members of the Republican Party and plenty of those among the valley’s tech elite, including M... |
Bot influencers are the programmatic future of conversational advertising | Vladimir Klimontovich | 2,016 | 7 | 21 |
In the near future, ads will just be part of the conversation. Bots, and the AI technologies that drive them, are taking huge leaps forward in sophistication and reach. and recently added bot APIs to their platforms, and Apple Messages will soon allow third-parties to plug in, too. While bots had previously been ... |
PayPal ticks up 2% on earnings, Visa partnership | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | PayPal after the bell on Thursday, showing $2.65 billion in revenue for the quarter, when analysts were expecting $2.6 billion. Adjusted earnings per share was also in line with Wall Street estimates at 36 cents. “Our agreement with Visa enhances our capabilities, offers the potential to establish new contexts for ou... |
Pandora shares drop after it rejects $3.5B buyout from SiriusXM | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | Wall Street quieted Pandora today following mediocre earnings and news that at about $15 per share from SiriusXM radio owner Liberty Media, according to The Wall Street Journal. That would have been a few dollars higher than its existing price, signaling high hopes for the company from leadership despite this quarter... |
This amazing search engine automatically face-swaps you into your image results | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | Ever wonder what you would look like with long, wavy hair? I think you’d look great. But how can you try on a few looks without spending a fortune at the salon, or hours in photoshop? I’m glad you asked. All you need is a selfie and , the face-swapping search engine. The system analyzes the picture of your face and de... |
Impinj soars 28% in internet-of-things IPO | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | A leader in developing radio frequency technology, or RFID chips, Impinj has found unique partnerships with Coca-Cola, Macy’s, McDonald’s and other corporations who embed these tiny sand-size chips in anything from receipts to product packaging. “Our vision is to connect and give digital life to every item in your ever... |
Crunch Report | Microsoft COO Leaving Company | Khaled "Tito" Hamze | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski |
Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes banned from operating blood testing labs | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of blood analysis startup Theranos has been banned from operating a blood testing lab for the next two years. Where this leaves the founder of the testing company and how it can continue to operate with her banned from operating a blood testing facility remains to be seen. Holmes’ censure,... |
New reports confirm $1.15B leveraged loan raised by Uber at 5% | John Mannes | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | that Uber was in talks to raise $1-2 billion in leveraged loans. The Wall Street Journal is circulating new information that the company has closed . This number comes in on the low side of . Last month, sources confirmed to TechCrunch that Uber had plans to raise $1-2 billion in leveraged loans. Uber initially targe... |
News discovery app SmartNews nabs another $38M, now valued at $500M-$600M | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Interestingly, when SmartNews raised that previous Series C, co-founder Kaisei Hamamoto told me that it was in part to expand into the U.S., where it would likely be raising money next. As it turned out, Japan has remained SmartNews’ single biggest market with 10 million users, and so that’s where investors seemed most... |
VCs are betting on the great Chinese fitness boom | Jenny Lee | 2,016 | 7 | 7 |
As the Chinese economy has boomed in the last decade, millions of people have entered the middle class. And the Chinese aren’t just getting wealthier, they’re getting fitter. China, it seems, is in the midst of a workout craze — and that represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for venture investors to back emergi... |
Facebook needs a way to report content as “Graphic But Newsworthy” | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Mark Zuckerberg believes Facebook Live could illuminate wrongdoing in the world. Facebook still hasn’t explained the details of its policy on censorship of Live video. But today in response to the police shooting of Philando Castile whose last moments of life were broadcast on Facebook, that “The images we’ve seen th... |
Tackling systemic racism | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Discussions around diversity and inclusion in the tech industry are not going away. Not on my watch. Earlier today, I sat down with Erica Baker, an engineer at Slack, and Ellen Pao, formerly of Reddit, to talk about their nonprofit organization for diversity, , as well as the systemic racism that exists in the United ... |
Running through walls: 6Sense’s Amanda Kahlow on values that stick | Brian Ascher | 2,016 | 7 | 7 |
For and , one of the most important aspects of the company is its culture. The values of the company have been baked into the operations of the team, how it interacts with itself and its customers. Kahlow says it boils down to family — an acronym for fun, accountability, mindfulness, integrity, love and yes. And a... |
ZUtA demos its mobile robotic printer | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | The printer rolls back and forth over a piece of paper, until the on-screen image is recreated in about a minute. The ZUtA Robotic Printer integrates with an app, which enables it to print what you see on your phone. TechCrunch spoke to CEO and founder Tuvia Elbaum in Jerusalem, at ZUtA’s research lab. We also got a de... |
Make way for more bots: Ex-Evernote CEO Phil Libin leads seed rounds for Butter.ai and Growbot | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | , Phil Libin, the former CEO of Evernote who is now a venture capitalist at , laid out to fund and support (and maybe even build?) his own startups in the burgeoning world of bots — services that use conversational interfaces and varying degrees of artificial intelligence to provide users with information, products ... |
Up close with Fujifilm’s new X-T2 mirrorless camera | Brian Heater | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | If you’re going to show off the follow-up to your well-loved mirrorless camera two years after release, you might as well do it in style — classic cars, rail-thin models, terrible music, the whole nine yards. Fujifilm’s X-T2 interchangeable lens camera made its flashy Manhattan debut at the borough’s Classic Car Club, ... |
This artificial stingray has a gold skeleton and light-activated rat muscles | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Mimicking nature’s most elegant designs has become a popular method for creating equally elegant robots ( ) — but using nature’s raw materials, too? That’s what researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have done, creating a tiny light-controlled stingray with a solid gold skeleton that moves using reconstituted rat musc... |
Rthm wants to be your comprehensive health AI | Darrell Etherington | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | startup MagniWare, you’ve learned some hard truths about the realities of what people will bear in terms of keeping tabs on their general wellness. Instead, Rthm offers informed advice on how to “extend your life” via exercise and meditation. It provides an added level of personalization thanks to a special method of ... |
Carmaker + ridesharing roundup | Kristen Hall-Geisler | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Auto manufacturers are realizing that the future of transportation is not going to be one person, one car. It’s going to be ridesharing, ridehailing and public transit — and these vehicles may not even require drivers. So most major manufacturers have made a turn toward becoming “mobility companies.” It’s been a quick ... |
null | Mark Lelinwalla | 2,016 | 7 | 21 | null |
If you’re waiting for a self-driving car revolution, keep waiting | George Arison | 2,016 | 7 | 7 |
Not a week goes by, it seems, without some sort of development in the world regarding cars. Whether it’s Google going on a as it attempts to accelerate its efforts or General Motors Cruise, a driverless- startup, the subject consistently finds a place in any given news cycle. And now Uber got in the mix, put... |
The NBA debuts its new and improved shot clock | Mark Lelinwalla | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | That 3…2…1 on a 24-second shot clock never looked better than this. On Thursday, the that it has tabbed Tissot for a sleeker and more efficient shot clock, which will debut during Summer League action Friday, before being integrated into all 29 arenas for the tip-off of the 2016-17 season. The new shot clock uses inn... |
Lyft could be working on a music jukebox feature | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | You may have noticed whenever you hop into a Lyft, more times than not, the driver asks what you want to listen to. You, like us, might tend to say you don’t have a preference, even though you most definitely do because you don’t feel like racking your brain or going through your SoundCloud to communicate to the driver... |
Penn students’ startup XEED puts wearables to work against Parkinson’s disease | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | The internet of things, and wearables in particular, may not be quite living up to the hype, but it turns out they may be just the thing for people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. A pair of engineering students from the University of Pennsylvania have . Sade Oba and Alfredo Muniz, founders of , grew up near one a... |
Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra on moving from enterprise businesses to social shopping | Navin Chaddha | 2,016 | 7 | 7 |
Manish Chandra began his professional career as an enterprise software executive, but found his greatest successes as a consumer-focused entrepreneur. After going through two IPOs in enterprise software and some small acquisitions, he was intimidated by the prospect of launching a consumer startup. He used a kitchen ... |
Google acquires Anvato, a media streaming and monetization platform for broadcasters | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | Google is getting deeper into the tech side of the video and broadcasting business. The company today announced that it has acquired , a platform for encoding, editing, publishing and distribution video across platforms. The company says Anvato will join its Cloud Platform team and that Anvato’s technology will comple... |
The reality of AR/VR survival | Tim Merel | 2,016 | 7 | 9 |
VR will be big, AR will be bigger ( ). But as in most early-stage tech markets, , not straight. There will be a few billion dollars of revenue this year, a progressive ramp in 2017 and a hoped-for inflection point in 2018 (when AR could deliver that magic combination of hero device, long battery life, cellular capab... |
Eyefluence shows us how we’ll be able to navigate screens with our eyes | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | The team has been working on prototypes, testing it out with augmented reality glasses equipped with cameras that can assess where you’re looking at any given time. Users can click on icons with a glance. The super secretive team gave us an early look at their technology, demonstrating in the above video how it could... |
The reward for mining Bitcoin was just cut in half | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | It’s Halvening!!! Bitcoin a major milestone in its short little lifespan. The reward for mining a block (a block = a ledger of transaction data) was just cut in half from 25 bitcoins to 12.5 bitcoins. This means that assuming a price of $650 per coin, going forward miners will make ~$8,125 per block they mine, compar... |
Strike the right balance on drone policy | Tim Day | 2,016 | 7 | 9 |
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — more commonly referred to as drones — are on the cusp of a major commercial trial that has the power to save thousands of lives. This pilot program isn’t taking place in the Bay Area or Boise or Boston. Instead, it will take place 7,200 miles away — in Rwanda. UPS and Zipline are wor... |
Hype check: Pokémon Go says more about Pokémon than it does about AR | Darrell Etherington | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | Go-ing according to Twitter, and I’m sure basic resources like power and water will soon start to shut down because key staff are out chasing Pikachu. But before we go the Poképoaclypse foretells, maybe it’s best to take a step back and examine the components of Pokémon Go’s success, and its potential pitfalls. The ... |
The end of your undivided attention | Darrell Etherington | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | sought to capture your undivided attention, but that might be the ghost of a goal in today’s reality. And that genie isn’t going back in the bottle, so responsible product design now has to assume a high and growing average level of user distraction. Already, the products that perform well and generate high engagement... |
We need to talk about AI and access to publicly funded data-sets | Natasha Lomas | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | a decade the company formerly known as Google, latterly rebranded Alphabet to illustrate the full breadth of its A to Z business ambitions, has engineered which last year pulled in ~$75 billion. And it’s done this mostly by mining user data for ad targeting intel. Slice it and dice it how you like but Google’s busin... |
Deleted Tweet archive PostGhost shut down after Twitter cease and desist | John Biggs | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | was a nascent website that archived the tweets of the famous, rich, and important. The site got popular for finding and storing the deleted Tweets of politicians and even Lindsay Lohan who plead with the English PM to #remain. “We created the website postghost.com to provide the public with a more accurate history of ... |
Inside the ape cage with Antonio Garcia Martinez, author of Chaos Monkeys | John Biggs | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | If you’re in a startup or even plan to sue one, is the book to read. Antonio Garcia Martinez is a former physics major turned Wall Street quant turned startupper and he’s an amazing writer, able to encapsulate in a few words an era of greed, avarice, and ridiculous button-down-shirt/sweater vest combos. The world in ... |
The two best pieces of early-stage pitching advice | David Hickson | 2,016 | 7 | 9 |
Over the past 10 years I’ve been on the first cap tables of three startups for which I’ve been responsible for closing their capital-raising efforts. I’ve been in over 200 investor meetings as part of the operating team, and have raised money from the smallest angel investor to the biggest European VC funds and some ... |
Westphalexit | Jon Evans | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | As technology advances, a world partitioned into nation-states makes less and less sense. That may sound crazy, if you take it as granted that our world must be divided into nations. But the whole concept of a “country” is a 400-year-old weird hack, riddled with crippling bugs, plagued by contradictions that sharpen ea... |
The Brexit hangover has left UK startups drained — Are the brains next? | Mike Butcher | 2,016 | 7 | 9 | As the UK referendum result dropped in that fateful Friday morning, the tech startup world didn’t immediately grind to a halt. Websites kept loading. Apps kept opening. But what left UK technology entrepreneurs aghast was not just that Britain had chosen to leave the European Union after 40 years, but that all those ye... |
Lumo Run’s new jogging sensor launches today – here’s how it stacks up | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | its smart running sensor, , today, and we took it for a spin around the park to tell you how it compares to other jogging tech out there. TechCrunch first caught wind of with the running sensor last October. It was a breakout product from its posture trainer Lumo Lift and a first step into both connected garments an... |
In Kenya, Safaricom’s Little Cab app goes head to head with Uber | Jake Bright | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | Even as a deal is imminent between Uber and its closest competitor Didi Chuxing in the immense Chinese market, competition in ride-sharing continues to intensify around the globe. Africa is one region where entrants continue to pile in. In Kenya’s tech transit market, which already includes Uber and several other start... |
Uber China will reportedly merge with archrival Didi Chuxing | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | Huge news for China’s ride-sharing industry: It appears that Didi Chuxing will gobble up rival Uber China in a merger deal that will value the combined entity in China at $35 billion. The rumor has being doing the rounds for about a month now, with both sides denying but it looks like a deal is happening. Both and th... |
Grab CEO: Didi victory shows we can beat Uber in Southeast Asia | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | hasn’t even been confirmed, but the significance of the deal has already prompted responses from others in the global ride-hailing industry. Anthony Tan who is the CEO of Grab, the company that rivals Uber in Southeast Asia and , told his staff today that reports of a merger to create a $35 billion ride-sharing giant... |
Talking the future of education with Convergent Media founder Rob Anderson | John Biggs | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | This week on Technotopia I talk to Rob Anderson, founder of and a former founding team member at MTV Russia. Anderson has some interesting ideas on education and the necessity for a true way to assess and hire based on personality types and skills. Anderson is constantly hiring for his media company and he’s looking ... |
null | Brian Heater | 2,016 | 7 | 7 | null |
Philips intros a smart health product ecosystem | Brian Heater | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | Philips is no stranger to health. In fact, Philips Healthcare (nee Philips Medical Systems) comprises a big chunk of the multinational corporation, providing some serious industrial equipment for hospitals, from CT scanners to defibrillators. It’s no surprise, then, that the company’s been angling to make progress in t... |
A Q&A with DFJ Partner, Bill Bryant, on “unicorn” valuations and startup investing | Jasper Kuria | 2,016 | 7 | 31 |
I think the next several months and possibly years will be challenging for raising capital. There has definitely been a reset. The market was over extended in an unhealthy way and we are seeing the impact across the board. The catalyst for this reset has been the collapse of public markets stocks where comparisons ... |
It’s a new era for female Israeli entrepreneurs | Sivan Baram | 2,016 | 7 | 31 |
The Israeli startup scene has dramatically changed within a couple of years because of the significant increase in investment prospects (i.e. incubators, accelerators, angels), events, meet-ups, competitions, lectures, academic programs and more. Especially interesting are the slowly, yet surely recent alterations in... |
Understanding Hillary Clinton’s innovation plan | Andrew Keen | 2,016 | 7 | 31 |
It’s been an all-Hillary week. But in her Philadelphia acceptance speech, she said next-to-nothing about innovation and absolutely nothing at all about digital policy. So what will a Clinton presidency mean to Silicon Valley? And does she actually have a plan on innovation and technology? Yes, she . Last month, she ... |
Gillmor Gang: Not Insane | Steve Gillmor | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Frank Radice, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, July 29, 2016. In 1972, the Firesign Theatre released a film nominating George Papoon as the National Surrealist Light Peoples Party candidate for president. The campaign rallying cry, Not Insane, has never been more... |
Virtual reality will not replay the 3D debacle | Soumen Ganguly | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | In the mid-2000s, everyone was talking about 3D, the “next big thing” in video that would transform the way we consumed TV and movies, even how we communicated. It required people to buy expensive new gadgets and wear goofy eyewear, but we were told that consumers would flock to this new three-dimensional world. VR vi... |
BlackBerry’s security-focused Android identity crisis | Brian Heater | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | about the company, its products, its most iconic features. What comes to mind? Business apps? A QWERTY keyboard? BBM? The once-mighty Canadian smartphone maker is banking on one word standing above all the rest: security. You see, BBM is no longer solely the realm of BlackBerry devices, and the keyboard hasn’t been ub... |
Here’s what your boring app would look like as a conversation | Nir Eyal | 2,016 | 7 | 31 |
In years to come, conversations will breathe new life into software — particularly the boring enterprise tools millions of knowledge workers begrudgingly use every day. Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) work because of our familiarity with messaging. Even the most technically complex interactions can look as simp... |
BBC: And then we strapped a helicopter rig to an elephant | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | of the BBC’s natural history unit, traveling the world to create some of . Sounds like a dream job, right? I sat down with , the producer on a ton of the Beeb’s best-loved shows, to find out more about the technology and gadgets the team deploys to capture the beasties in action. “I’m sorry, sir, your hand luggage m... |
The other pipeline | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 7 | 31 | never thought he would end up in prison. What he did envision, he tells me, was dying before the age of 25 or 30. “I saw so many people around me dying at such a young age that my long-term vision just wasn’t in focus,” Leal tells me. “I was just focused on what was right in front of me.” Chrisfino Kenyatta Leal Chris... |
It’s okay for Pikachu to watch you — as long as you want it to | Denelle Dixon-Thayer | 2,016 | 7 | 30 |
Millions who downloaded the new Pokémon Go app are living in a brave, new, augmented reality world. For the early adopters (meaning apparently ) on iOS devices, it meant unknowingly granting Pokémon Go the permission to fully access their Google accounts. You’ve got to risk it all to catch ‘em all, right? Wrong. Tha... |
In what contexts should messaging be the UI? | Kyle Samani | 2,016 | 7 | 30 |
The current messaging hype is overstated. There are certainly some interesting and unique opportunities for messaging as an interface, but I contend the number of practical use cases is a fraction of what the current hype cycle suggests. Facebook and Microsoft in particular have been pushing messaging because their p... |
Serious privacy flaws discovered in Glow fertility tracker app | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 7 | 30 | There are scores of startups making fertility tracker and family planning apps today, but a has singled out for serious security and privacy flaws. First, Consumer Reports’ team was able to access very personal information including data and comments about users’ sex lives, history of miscarriages, abortions and mo... |
Tech trends that will impact your home | Agnieszka Wilk | 2,016 | 7 | 30 |
Imagine walking through the bathroom door at and the shower starts itself at optimal water heat and pressure. The thermostat adjusts when you enter the room. Want a new bathroom tub? What if you could 3D print it? High-tech homes are about to revolutionize the way we live. While interior design once relied on color... |
VR needs a hit | Jon Evans | 2,016 | 7 | 30 | I believe virtual reality is going to be huge. …Eventually. But when? Are we talking years, or decades? I visited this week, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’re still in the very early days of the medium. It’s amazing! It’s thrilling! And it’s still kind of the Stone Age. When do we get to discover bronze? ... |
Austria: The up-and-coming early-stage investment capital of Europe | Conrad Egusa | 2,016 | 7 | 8 |
can seem like a country of the past, one whose very charm lies in the fact that its best days are behind it. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed almost 100 years ago, and, with it, the aspirations this landlocked, Central European nation of 8.5 million had to control the global stage. Perhaps that’s why the Austri... |
Make your commute suck less | Contributor | 2,016 | 7 | 30 | post was done in partnership with Everything you do to make your commute better is like an early-stage investment in your success at work. Start earning dividends early by borrowing some of our hundreds of hours of research and picking up the best devices and accessories for commuters. They make your twice-daily trek... |
The human role in a bot-dominated future | Justin DiPietro | 2,016 | 7 | 30 |
Imagine a world where bots are ubiquitous… a world where nearly every online interaction takes place with a Siri, Alexa, Cortana or some soon-to-be-named artificial being. Here, banking is a breeze, as a customer service bot can quickly extrapolate your banking preferences from your online search history. In this wor... |
Crunch Report | Theranos CEO Gets Banned | Khaled "Tito" Hamze | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski |
CARTO makes geographical data visualization and analysis accessible to non-specialists | Lucia Maffei | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | Historically, CartoDB has helped data specialists with knowledge of SQL perform location data analysis. In addition, the company allowed data visualization enthusiasts (including data journalists with no coding experience) to build interactive maps from scratch. Now, the company aims at providing large organizations wi... |
Facebook explains censorship policy for Live video | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | Facebook only removes content if it celebrates or glorifies violence, not if it’s only graphic or disturbing, according to a spokesperson. Facebook also insists that the video of Philando Castile’s death was temporarily unavailable due to a technical glitch that was Facebook’s fault. That contradicts theories that the ... |
15 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week | Anna Escher | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | This week, Apple’s iOS 10 beta was released, Tesla Autopilot went under scrutiny and the tech world responded to the devastating shootings and protests that occurred across the country. These are the top tech stories to bring you up to speed. It was a tragic week in the U.S. as headlines and live social video brought t... |
Bain Capital Ventures raises $600 million (and another big fund is born) | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | It’s starting to happen like clockwork. Firms are closing new funds almost exactly 24 months to the date from their last fund closing. The newest example? (BCV), which this morning announced a new, $600 million fund. It last closed two funds — a $650 million early-stage vehicle, and a $200 million co-investment fund ... |
Google’s Self-Driving Car Project has a new legal lead | Mark Lelinwalla | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | Google’s Self-Driving Car Project is one step closer to becoming its own independent business. has confirmed that the autonomous-driving company under the Alphabet umbrella has hired The Climate Corporation’s chief legal officer, Kevin Vosen, as its first general attorney. He’s slated to begin later this month. Curre... |
Study of Candy Crush players finds virtual currency buyers don’t go for upsells | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | The upsell we all fall for at fast food joints and places like Costco doesn’t seem to work on purchasers of in-game currencies, according to a study conducted on millions of Candy Crush players. Turns out the decision to buy fictional bars of gold isn’t rational, economically speaking. Who would have thought? For two... |
Step aside, Tatooine, astronomers have discovered a planet with three suns | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | Move over, , astronomers have a planet with not one, not two, but three suns. Known as HD 131399Ab, the newly discovered planet is located 320 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus. The planet is estimated to be merely 16 million years old, making it one of the youngest exoplanets discovered so fa... |
Engineering management may be the most unnatural act of all | Michael Driscoll | 2,016 | 7 | 8 |
The best management decision I ever made took five seconds. “I can build a better database,” were the words accompanied by a blank but confident stare from the most talented developer I’d ever hired. “Okay,” I nodded, “see what you can do.” It wasn’t our top priority at the time, but five years later, the Druid datab... |
The Golden State Warriors used virtual reality to woo Kevin Durant | Mark Lelinwalla | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | The Golden State Warriors laid it on pretty thick for Kevin Durant during the team’s successful free-agent pitch to the NBA superstar last week. In addition to having two-time MVP Stephen Curry and fellow Warriors’ all-stars, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, attend the meeting, the team also tapped into its Silicon Va... |
DIY Co. launches JAM to help kids learn what they don’t in school, with a little help from Cartoon Network | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | , the education tech startup led by Vimeo designer and co-founder , has launched a new online learning platform for kids called The company also quietly closed a $4 million round of venture funding led by , joined by , at the end of 2015 to support the development of JAM, Klein told TechCrunch. Courses on DIY’s new... |
The Athletic is bringing subscription-based local sports coverage to a city near you | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | High-quality local sports coverage isn’t dead. At least that’s the premise upon which is building its business. The young startup, part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2016 class, is trying to reinvent local sports media – an industry that has been on the decline ever since newspapers realized that advertising revenue would... |
MIT researchers develop wearable toxic gas sensor | Lucia Maffei | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | Using these sensors, the researchers hope to design badges that weigh less than a credit card and can be easily worn by military personnel on the battlefield. In layman’s terms, the system works as follows. The sensor is a circuit loaded with carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical molecules that look like l... |
Twitter reportedly in talks with the NBA, MLS and Turner for more sports streaming | Mark Lelinwalla | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | Twitter isn’t satisfied with streaming 10 games this upcoming NFL season. According to , the social media network is also reportedly in talks with the NBA, Major League Soccer and cable television giant Turner about acquiring digital rights to stream more live sports. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to our reques... |
Her, the dating app for queer women, finally goes live on Android | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | And so, the dating pool for queer women across the world got that much bigger. , the dating app focused exclusively on ladies who are into other ladies, has finally opened up the app to Android users. The app launched all the way back in 2013 in the UK, and back then it was known as “Dattch.” Since, the app has rebrand... |
Where today’s tech can, and can’t, replace humans | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | This morning, McKinsey & Co. is releasing a new look at the impact automation is likely to have across various sectors of the economy and, ultimately, the workplace. Its findings are based on analysis of 2,000-plus work activities across more than 800 occupations and includes data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisti... |
Police use of robot to kill Dallas shooting suspect is new, but not without precursors | Darrell Etherington | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | The Dallas police force used a bomb-defusing robot equipped with an explosive device to kill a shooting suspect, police chief David Brown revealed today at a press conference. An explosive was affixed to the extension arm on the robot, Brown said at the , in order to neutralize the suspect, later , 25. The incident i... |
Integral Ad Science acquires bot detection company Swarm | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 7 | 8 | is unveiling some new steps to combat ad fraudsters, including the acquisition of a bot detection company called . CEO Scott Knoll told me that he was particularly interested in Swarm’s technology for side channel analysis, a technique for examining a web browser to identify whether or not it’s a bot. That’s an area ... |
Creating life through generative design | Florencio Mazzoldi | 2,016 | 7 | 8 |
We have been shaping the organisms that live around us for a long time. Take as an example the changes we forced on wolves to become our best friends. Traditionally, we accomplished it by selecting organisms with special traits (“Let’s keep that wolf, it doesn’t bite as much”). In the last 20 years we have gone furth... |
Five companies considered buying LinkedIn | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | The filing also shows that LinkedIn is subject to a $725 million breakup fee if the transaction with Microsoft does not get finalized. Here’s why: |
Marrakesh Treaty will limit copyright, easing book access for blind and print-disabled worldwide | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | It’s difficult enough already for the visually impaired to read the books and publications sighted people take for granted, but it’s downright impossible when the content isn’t even available in accessible formats. Fortunately, a global agreement aimed at alleviating the problem passed a major milestone today and may t... |
Google talks up its self-driving cars’ cyclist-detection algorithms | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | Today might be conspicuous in the annals of autonomous vehicles for a , but another month is over and Google has issued its self-driving car report for June. In it are some interesting details about the system’s ability to detect and avoid cyclists. “Cyclists are fast and agile — sometimes moving as quickly as cars — ... |
Games company Paradox Interactive raises $11.8M from the crowd | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | , best known for developing and publishing a series of popular games, including Hearts of Iron, Stellaris and Europa Universalis today announced it on the new Swedish equity crowdfunding platform Pepins. The campaign was off to a strong start, raising the first $3 million in a mere eight minutes, before going on to f... |
Invoxia’s Voice Bridge puts your landline in your pocket | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | If you’ve ever wished you could roll out a five-mile extension cable for your home phone so you can get your calls when you’re out and about, may be the solution to your globetrotting woes. It’s a virtual phone that connects your landline to your Wi-Fi, making it available via an app. It’s a box. With a light. The ut... |
Exploiting machine learning in cybersecurity | Ben Dickson | 2,016 | 7 | 1 |
Thanks to technologies that , companies are able to perform tasks that previously were impossible. But the added benefit does come with its own setbacks, specifically from a security standpoint. With reams of data being generated and transferred over networks, cybersecurity experts will have a hard time monitoring e... |
The silver lining of Google’s diversity efforts | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | Google has had a big week around diversity. The company gifted a $2.8 million office space inside its New York City building to Black Girls Code, appointed , and released its . Most of this was good news. Having a space inside Google’s office could potentially give Black Girls Code more access to mentorship and inter... |
13 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week | Anna Escher | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | This week, Airbnb sued the city of San Francisco, details about a fatal Tesla autopilot crash came to light and Facebook changed the News Feed again. Here are the top tech stories of the week. Airbnb is taking its beef with the city of San Francisco to court. over a new law that requires Airbnb to verify that its host... |
Amazon Prime Video gets exclusive deal for most PBS Kids shows | Lucia Maffei | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | will be the exclusive subscription streaming service for the majority of PBS series for children, Amazon today. All episodes are now available to download and stream. Prime members in the U.S. can watch PBS episodes via the Amazon Video app for TVs, connected devices including Fire TV, mobile devices and online. The ... |
NASA captures enormous aurora on the largest planet in the solar system | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 7 | 1 | Days before the Juno spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, astronomers have an enormous aurora at the north pole of Jupiter. The imagery, released this week, was taken back on May 19 using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope as part of a program to study how solar wind affects auroras on Jupiter. Hubble Tracks Bright Auroras ... |
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