Shops patronized by pot smokers have a long tradition of labeling their pipes and vaporizers “for tobacco use only.” But startups developing smoking and vaping gear are basically asking customers to put their weed in it. Self-described cannabis product companies are raising capital in droves, while funding for startups in the e-cigarette space has all but, well, vaporized. Not a… Read More
Acer has made a lot of ultrabooks, but the only one worth mentioning is the current S 13. Priced aggressively even for the “high-end” model, as configured, it sports a slim profile, backlit keys and a Core i7 processor. Acer is taking the perks of owning a pricier machine and making them more accessible, creating an ultrabook that’s a good value without a ton of compromises. Read More
While Samsung’s most high profile contactless payment push is the eponymous Samsung Pay — aka its mobile payments product, which competes with the likes of Apple Pay and Android Pay — the company is today bigging up another approach it’s backing, with the not so catchy name of Contactless Companion Platform (CCP). Read More
Fintech startup Revolut has been a free service and that’s not going to change. But the company is adding a premium tier with more features for £6.99/€8.50/$8.50 per month in 42 European countries. If you sign up to the new “Premium Account,” you’ll receive a MasterCard with a new design. There are three different options and I love pink so I think they look… Read More
Zenreach is announcing that it has raised $30 million in Series C funding. Founder and CEO Jack Abraham said that Zenreach is “bringing the online and offline world together.” Specifically, businesses that use Zenreach can offer their customers free Wi-Fi. All the customer needs to do is register using their email address, phone number or Facebook account. Read More
Alaska Airlines has announced they are killing off the Virgin America brand sometime in 2019.
Sad? Angry? You’re not alone.
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin America, just penned a love letter saying “tears were shed today” and memorializing all the great things Virgin America had accomplished before the merger.
In a blog post announcing the decision, Alaska took four… Read More
YouTube has long had an automatic captioning system that, thanks to Google’s machine learning advances in recent years, has gotten pretty good at automatically transcribing spoken words in a video. As the company announced today, its technology is now able to take this a step further by also captioning some of the ambient sounds like [LAUGHTER], [APPLAUSE] and [MUSIC].
For now, the… Read More
The broadband privacy rules created by the FCC last year and vigorously debated last night are in danger after the Senate voted to repeal them this morning. Among other things, the rules required ISPs to obtain consumers’ permission in order to use certain sensitive data like browsing history that they obtain through their service. Read More
While CoreOS is probably still best known for its Linux distribution, that was only the company’s gateway drug to a wider range of services. Tectonic, the company’s service for running Kubernetes-based container deployments in the enterprise, now sits at the core of its business. Until now, Tectonic could only be used for installing and managing Kubernetes on bare-metal and… Read More
Hulu’s original series The Handmaid’s Tale, which debuts on April 26, is based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, which is a work of fiction. Try to keep that in mind as you listen to the opening lines of narration in this first full-length trailer, which sound worryingly documentarian. The trailer gives a quick-cut synopsis of the world’s quick progress from… Read More
Soundcloud — the popular, but unprofitable platform that lets creators post and share music and other audio files — may have been unsuccessful (so far) in closing a new $100 million round of funding, but it’s not running out of money soon. The company has secured a $70 million round of debt funding from three new investors — Ares Capital, Kreos Capital, and… Read More
A new startup called CALA aims to make it easier for new designers to break into the fashion business by offering everything needed to run their e-commerce operations – from production to delivery. In addition, CALA’s new mobile app where this apparel is sold is upending the traditional way garment sizes are created and fitted by way of 3D body scanning technology. The result… Read More
Tutanota, an end-to-end encrypted email service located in Germany, says it’s seeing an “exponential” uptick in sign-ups — crediting this to growing awareness of and concern for privacy online for a variety of (often political) reasons. Read More
On the outskirts of the Bay Area, my Lyft driver jokingly asked me if I wanted to leave him my number in case I didn’t return from where I was headed. I would soon be descending a set of stairs into the basement of a newly built, largely empty office complex where I was going to try an “experimental virtual reality experience.” I’ve seen enough Black Mirror to be… Read More
Shout is a sharing app. Think of it as a stripped-down Pinterest for those with no interest in messing with pretty photos of cookies and you get the general idea. And I think, with a little work, it could be a go-to collaboration tool for partners shopping for supplies, couples interested in not buying two boxes of beans at the grocery store, and a micro-blogging platform for the plugged in.… Read More
WikiLeaks just shared a few new documents as part of the CIA Vault 7 data dump. These documents describe hacking methods allegedly used by the agency to access Apple devices and upload data. Most of today’s exploits are related to the Mac platform. It’s interesting to see the CIA’s old hacking techniques. It’s unclear if some of them still work today. Sonic… Read More
For Mashape CEO Augusto Marietti, the Silicon Valley dream is playing out as well as could be imagined.
In 2009, Marietti and his cofounder Marco Palladino — who’d formed a software company in Milan a year earlier — learned of and were accepted into TechCrunch50, a pitch competition that has evolved into today’s giant TechCrunch Disrupt events.
As the event… Read More
Facebook is introducing a new ad format that should help retailers showcase their products. The last big addition to Facebook’s ad lineup came last year, with the launch of Canvas, a fast-loading, rich media ad. Like Canvas, a collection is created specifically for mobile, and seem designed to win users over in the Facebook app — before directing them to the advertiser’s… Read More
Amazon continues its march across the globe, and one of its newest targets is the Middle East. According to multiple reports that we have confirmed with our own sources, the e-commerce giant has acquired Souq, often described as the Amazon of the Arab world and the region’s biggest e-commerce player, for a price of $650 million, to spearhead its Middle East business. “The ink… Read More
Following Chevrolet’s lead, Jaguar Land Rover is the latest carmaker to offer an unlimited in-car data plan in the U.S. The AT&T prepaid data plan will coast $20 per month, and will be an option for any Jaguar and Land Rover cars with InControl Wi-Fi as an available feature. Up to eight devices can connect simultaneously to the in-car Wi-Fi network enabled by the cellular hotspot.… Read More
