TechCrunch

 Budget airline AirAsia is the latest corporate to get into hackathons. The company just revealed plans to host its first-ever hack event on March 18 at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Read More

 Fraugster, a German and Israeli startup that has developed Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to help eliminate payment fraud, has raised $5 million in funding. Read More

 Just weeks after revealing its first court case against counterfeiters, Alibaba has again pledged to increase its focus on fake goods after it announced a partnership with 20 global consumer brands. Read More

 Samsung is still getting over the Galaxy Note 7, but already an investigation into alleged bribery in its native South Korea is threatening to plunge it into yet another crisis. Read More

 Well, 2016 is officially in the past. Between the election drama, the stock markets tossing and turning, celebrities moving on and Harambe, it was a doozy. Read More

 Shifts in a rapidly changing retail world and dramatic changes in consumer behavior continue to be a challenge for some traditional retailers. Legacy retailers that have remained stagnant with their old-guard ways are struggling to maintain sales and stay relevant with today’s consumer. The successful brands all have one thing in common: They don’t fear change. Read More

 Why don’t we set our goals around giving sincerely and unconditionally in our personal lives and careers. Forget about what you want to receive back — the universe returns back a more meaningful and lasting ROI than any other market ever could. Read More

 Puerto Rico is steeped in more than $70 billion of debt that has been accruing for the better part of a decade. As part of its new economic development plan, Puerto Rican officials are looking to technology and entrepreneurship to revitalize the economy, attract its bright minds back to the island and solve the sustainability problems bedeviling the commonwealth. Read More

 New consumer-facing financial applications are being built on top of old banking infrastructure, while other startups are going around financial infrastructure altogether. Together, they are unbundling the roles of banks and other financial incumbents. Read More

 Drones feel a bit like old news already, don’t they? At least in the Valley, with its hyper-fragmented mayfly attention span. The military has used them for decades. DJI, the undisputed (consumer) polycopter industry leader, was founded in 2006. We tech journalists can’t stop talking about drones, but they’re still mostly playthings, curiosities. One might well ask: what… Read More

 Everywhere you turn these days, there’s talk of automation replacing people. Technology is surely advancing at a rapid rate, and in today’s click-driven media environment, sensationalism sells, but just because tech can replace a human worker doesn’t mean we’re always going to want that. In some instances, even when tech can do an adequate job, we still want to deal with… Read More

 My 1st Years, a U.K.-based e-commerce startup that offers personalised gifts for babies and children, has picked up £5 million in growth funding. Read More

 Sometimes even just defining the problem you’re trying to solve is the hardest part. We need human intelligence to decide how and when to use machine intelligence, and the more sophisticated the uses we make of machine intelligence, the more critically we need human intelligence to ensure it’s deployed sensibly and safely. Read More

 Ever since the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch took the spotlight, most of Apple ads have been focused on those devices. So it’s always nice to see the company try new things for less important devices, such as the AirPods. With today’s new ad, Apple is going back in time to the good old days of the iPod. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but I instantly thought about the… Read More

 In a world economy with slow growth and increased uncertainty, policymakers have had two sources for hope — the tech industry and low interest rates. Could it be these goals are at odds? Read More

 SpaceX successfully recovered its first stage Falcon 9 rocket during a launch on Saturday, marking the 7th rocket recovered overall, and the first one for this drone landing barge, ‘Just Read The Instructions.’ The recovery was captured on video from the rocket’s perspective, too, so you can see the entire process as it touches down. The first time SpaceX successfully… Read More

 SpaceX has succeeded in launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, its first launch since a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on a launch pad in pre-flight procedures in September 2016. The launch took place at 9:54 AM PT Saturday, during an instant launch window. It’s a huge victory for SpaceX, which has had to delay its launch schedule since the explosion. The… Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, Frank Radice, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 6, 2017. First show of the New Year, proving once again there is a next time. Plus the latest G3 (below) with Mary Hodder, Elisa Camahort Page, Francine Hardaway, and Tina Chase Gillmor. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @kevinmarks, @fradice Produced/directed by Tina Chase Gillmor… Read More

 Well howdy, partner! How’s your Django app deployment going? Jackson Wayne makes leather goods with a decidedly old-timey, pre-WWII/post-Pony Express bent. Founded by a former lawyer, Andrew Lynch, the style is based on “old pictures of lawyers and their briefcases” that Lynch found while running is law practice. Lynch’s inspiration came from a leathery past. “I… Read More

 Some changes at the top of Timehop, the quirky app that shows you reminders of photos and other content that you’ve taken and posted on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and Flickr or from your camera roll. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Jon Wegener, who co-founded the company with Benny Wong, has stepped down as CEO. He has been replaced… Read More