TechCrunch

 Ola, the ride-sharing service that rivals Uber in India, has hired a new COO. Read More

 Just weeks after landing a $215 million Series D funding round, Chinese bike-sharing service Mobike has scooped up a strategic investor from prolific manufacturing firm Foxconn. Read More

 Pitchero, a U.K. startup that makes it easy for amateur and grassroots sports clubs to build a web presence and move communities online, has scored £3.1 million in Series A funding. ICM, a global fund manager with numerous other sporting interests including Harlequins Rugby Club, led the round. Read More

 The growth of smartphone sales may be declining, but the reach of mobile internet in China has now reached the notable threshold of 50 percent for the first time. Read More

 Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is losing its head of international and primary English-language spokesperson Hugo Barra after he announced his exit from the company. Read More

 Hot on the heels of providing closure around the Galaxy Note 7 saga, Samsung won’t be launching or previewing its come-back smartphone at Mobile World Congress, the industry’s largest trade show, in February. Read More

 As if two massive data breaches affecting more than one billion users isn’t enough, Yahoo is now under investigation from the SEC for not disclosing the hacks sooner, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Read More

 After explosions, recalls, and months of bad press, Samsung is attempting to put the drawn out Galaxy Note 7 saga behind it once and for all, with the long-promised official release of the findings of its internal investigation. Samsung mobile chief DJ Koh kick off a packed press conference in Seoul by “deeply” apologizing to customers and business partners, before adding on a… Read More

 If you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in energy, you should. We’ve seen this movie before. Spoiler alert: There’s massive economic opportunity ahead. How massive? Imagine standing in 1992, knowing that Google, Akamai, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, BuzzFeed and Uber lay ahead. This time it’s the “Enernet,” not the internet, that will… Read More

 Seed terms have gotten much better, but I still find Series A (and beyond) term sheets frustrating. I think we can change the “norm” by offering entrepreneurs a better alternative. So if you have terms you don’t like, it’s time to try object-oriented capital (OOC). Read More

 With one foot in its science fiction past and the other in the new frontier of science and tech innovations, AI occupies a unique place in our cultural imagination. Will we live into a future where machines are as intelligent — or frighteningly, more so — than humans? AI’s next frontier requires ethics built through policy. Will Donald Trump deliver? Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, Frank Radice, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 13, 2017. Finally, the reality is upon us, and the Gang had it pretty right from the start. What a difference a week doesn’t make. Plus the latest G3 surviving Inauguration Day with Halley Suitt Tucker, Elisa Camahort Page, Kristie Wells, Rebecca Woodcock, and Tina Chase… Read More

 Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk has advice for prospective buyers hoping their vehicles will be future-proof: Shop elsewhere. Musk made the comment when responding to a Twitter question about the possibility of a paid upgrade path for existing vehicle owners who want the new sensors, computer and other components now shipping in so-called ‘HW2’-equipped Teslas. He also gave us… Read More

 Henry Ford famously said that if you asked people what they wanted, they wouldn’t have said “ a car.”  They would have said – “a faster horse.” I believe driverless cars are today’s equivalent of faster horses. A continuation of what exists – not a true category break. Predictable but not revolutionary enough. That takes me to Elon Musk, who… Read More

 There is something about encryption that brings out the worst in journalists. Because to most of them it is magic, they are always searching desperately for the proverbial man behind the curtain, without knowing what to look for. Which may explain The Guardian’s recent bizarre attack on WhatsApp, which they accused, wrongly, of having a “backdoor.” And the security… Read More

 A Whitehouse.gov petition calling for President Donald Trump to immediately release his tax returns has surpassed the 100,000-signature threshold in under a day, garnering a Whitehouse response. It’s not clear that the current administration intends to follow the practice established under Former President Barack Obama, of accepting petitions online, reviewing and responding to… Read More

 Never a dull moment in the smartphone wars. This week, Qualcomm started getting serious regulatory heat when the Federal Trade Commission filed charges against the chipmaker, accusing it of anticompetitive tactics designed to shut competitors out from supplying components to handset companies. Apple was one of the few manufacturers mentioned by name in the complaint, and accordingly, the… Read More

 The use of music — not as a background mood enhancer, but actually as a director of sorts — will be critical as VR and AR content creators struggle with how to direct the viewer’s gaze in 360 environments. Figuring out music’s role will be key to the mainstream adoption of VR dramatic content. But so far, music is still being relegated to a background mood feature.… Read More

 Twitter chief Jack Dorsey today apologized for what he says were technical problems causing some Twitter users to involuntarily follow the @POTUS account as it was handed over to Donald Trump. As Sarah Perez reported here yesterday, Twitter users were bewildered as to why they were forced to follow the Trump @POTUS account, and many accused Twitter of doing the new administration’s… Read More

 We’ve entered a new phase in the history of whole-genome sequencing; it has opened the door to understanding our entire world at the molecular level. With this intelligence, we’ll be able to understand, influence and optimize the way we interact with ourselves and our natural world. The promise of genomics is just beginning — we are at the leading edge of an intelligence… Read More