Rocket Internet is increasing its focus on Asia after it opened its first engineering hub in the region. Bangkok, Thailand, is the location of the center, which will house a tech team that carries out work for Rocket Internet’s portfolio of startups. The firm currently has 20 people at the base in Thailand, and it said it plans to more than double that headcount before the end of… Read More
China is a big country with big cities and big roads. Imagine what it must feel like to know that the closest subway station or bus stop is 20-30 minutes away. Imagine getting in your car at 2 pm on a Thursday thinking that the traffic should be okay only to find that traffic definitely isn’t okay. Imagine taking a cab to the nearest supermarket because it would take 30 minutes to… Read More
Connectivity features are increasingly included as standard on new vehicles, with cellular modems in particular becoming a popular feature included even in base level trim. Now, connectivity is so important to Ford, that the automaker is actually offering an easy retrofit option to add connected features to Ford and Lincoln vehicles from model years between 2010 and 2016, with SmartLink, a… Read More
AppDynamics CEO David Wadhwani and Cisco VP of IoT Rowan Trollope talk to us about the $3.7 billion acquisition, Alpahbet biotech moonshot lands $800 million in funding and a Snapchat Spectacles case melts while charging. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark has donated half a million dollars towards Wikipedia’s “Community health initiative,” aimed at reducing harassment and vandalism on the site and improve the tools moderators use every day to keep the peace. Read More
The commercial spaceflight industry is doing a great job creating new rockets, launch vehicles and all that good stuff, but spacesuits have seen few alterations. Until now. Boeing has publicly debuted what astronauts on its Starliner craft will be wearing, and it looks like a big improvement. Read More
Figuring out where to eat is often a headache. While there are a plethora of restaurant-discovery apps and sites already out there, one app, available today, aims to make the process a lot easier. Tell, available now for iOS, is yet another food-finding app — but two things set it apart from the rest. First, it trades in reviews for simple recommendations, because, at the end of the… Read More
Snapchat recently released its redesigned app on iOS; it now has universal search capabilities, so I decided to give it a try — you can watch me fumble around in the video above. The search bar functions like, well, a search bar — if you’re looking for another user, group chat or Discover publisher, you just type them in. It also introduces Quick Chat recommendations, so… Read More
Between the Pixel and Google Home, 2016 was a big year for Google voice search, but the company’s plays in the space still seemed to pale in comparison to Amazon’s infiltration, courtesy of its wildly successful Echo devices. In today’s Q4 Alphabet earnings call, Google Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai addressed what looks to be a late start from the company, calling the voice… Read More
The League, the dating app known for its exclusivity, has now officially launched on Android. The company has been accused of elitism, though founder and CEO Amanda Bradford has said her vision is more about creating a service that welcomes ambitious women. The app still makes users apply to join, and it screens them based on their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, but it also redesigned… Read More
During today’s earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new milestone for the adoption of Google’s G Suite productivity tools. “G Suite achieved a significant new customer milestone last quarter,” he said. “More than 3 million paying businesses are now using G Suite to collaborate smartly and securely in the cloud.” The last time Google announced… Read More
In these uncertain times, everyone who’s anyone has a secondary nation to flit off to. Like a nonprofit foundation or a glittering Tesla, a second citizenship is a status symbol of the true tech elite. If you’re rich and connected enough, why not choose which country’s laws and tax codes suit you? And, in the event of a meltdown in your home country, you have a quick… Read More
To complement existing offerings like Sparkling Water and Steam, H2O.ai is releasing Deep Water, a new tool to help businesses make deep learning a part of everyday operations.
Deep Water will open up new possibilities for the TensorFlow, MXNet and Caffe communities to engage with H2O.ai. This also means that the GPU is set to become a greater part of business operations for the entire… Read More
The Nintendo Switch is getting closer to its launch date, and now it’s also getting real about how we might use these things. Previous promotional materials depicted the Switch being shared around at amazingly photogenic evening rooftop parties, but this new clip shared on Nintendo’s German Facebook page starts right where the Switch will probably get a significant amount of play… Read More
Microsoft reported financials for its fiscal second quarter today, posting earnings of $0.83 per share on $26.1 billion in revenue. That compares with Wall Street’s forecast of $0.79 per share on revenue of $25.3 billion for the quarter, and earnings of $0.78 per share on revenue of $25.7 billion a year ago. Read More
If you want to walk among the crocodiles, first you must become a crocodile, as the saying goes. But short of an Ace Ventura-style setup, a robot is probably your best bet if all you want is some sweet footage for a nature documentary. That’s just what these Swiss roboticists did for a BBC show airing today. Read More
Venrock, the 47-year-old venture firm that started as the venture arm of the Rockefeller family, has closed its eighth fund with $450 million, which longtime partner Bryan Roberts calls “not too big and not too small, but just about right” in a new blog post. Certainly, it’s an amount that the partnership, spread across offices in Palo Alto, New York City, and Cambridge,… Read More
PayPal reported fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, and they were just what investors were expecting. The stock was flat in initial after-hours trading. Revenue came in at $2.98 billion, which is on par with analyst estimates and a 17% increase from last year. Adjusted earnings per share was 42 cents, which is also what Wall Street was forecasting. Total payment volume was… Read More
Google reported mixed earnings for its fourth quarter today — but we’re starting to see some flashes of improvement in its “other bets” category, which is where it stuffs pretty much everything that lives outside of Google proper. In the fourth quarter, Alphabet’s other bets recorded $262 million in revenue, a healthy jump from $150 million in the fourth quarter… Read More
Nvidia announced a new Shield TV that provides 4K HDR streaming, and boosts its existing gaming capabilities considerably. Now, though, many of the benefits of the updated hardware are available on the original Shield TV, thanks to a free over-the-air software available now. The update delivers 4K HDR streaming via sources like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, as well as 4K movie support for… Read More
