After President-elect Trump’s surprising win, a narrative has emerged that the stunning result was a loss for big data. “Tonight, data died,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy said on MSNBC. In truth, reports of data’s death are greatly exaggerated. The election’s outcome has no bearing on the fact that big data continues to grow as a disruptive,… Read More
Keith McCarty, founder of the well-funded pot delivery startup Eaze, is stepping down from his position as CEO. Instead, the startup’s chief product and technology officer Jim Patterson will take on the role and McCarty will remain on the board of directors “as a strategic advisor on company growth,” says a blog post on the site announcing the change of roles. McCarty… Read More
There’s never been a better time to start a company, thanks largely to technological innovations that have made it easier to raise capital, find and manage new customers and streamline operations. Some might say that entrepreneurship has entered a golden age in recent years. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2015/16 Global Report estimates more than 100 million new businesses… Read More
Welcome to the 2016 TechCrunch Holiday Gift Guide! We’ll be rolling out a bunch of guides leading up to Christmas, hopefully making your holiday shopping a little easier. Looking for gifts for others on your list? Check out our full 2016 Gift Guide Hub. Have a furry friend and want to spoil them with tech treats? This is the list for you! From cat cams to apps to occupy them while you… Read More
The phenomenal mobile hit Pokémon Go has peaked, just as the anticipated Nintendo title Super Mario Run hits the App Store, vying for mobile users’ attention and the chance to best Pokémon’s record-breaking numbers. According to new data from App Annie, Pokémon Go has seen declines in both downloads and revenue over the past several months, though it’s still highly… Read More
Plug and Play, the international corporate innovation and venture capital firm, is holding its Winter Summit Demo Day this week in Silicon Valley. At the two-day event, dozens of startups that have come through one of Plug and Play’s many accelerator programs will pitch their products and services to executives at corporations and early-stage investors who may be interested in working… Read More
Facing pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, Twitter announced that it will limit the data access it formerly provided to domestic surveillance hubs. Twitter’s longstanding policy has been to prohibit the use of its data for surveillance, but a social media monitoring firm it partially owns, Dataminr, has repeatedly taken government contracts that give local and federal… Read More
Following his chat with whistleblower Edward Snowden, @Jack dropped a hint about what privacy features might be in the cards for Twitter. In the tweeted exchange, Dorsey and Snowden continued the conversation that streamed on Periscope Tuesday, veering back to the topic of Twitter itself. When Snowden asked if Twitter might consider making the platform’s private messages more secure… Read More
As soon as Apple’s AirPods were announced, it seems people were already imagining how they were going to lose them. Well, in an update on the company’s iPhone Service Pricing page, Apple has detailed that it is going to be charging $69 for a single lost (or broken) AirPod or charging case. Those with battery issues outside of the AirPods’ one-year warranty can be serviced… Read More
After slowly testing the waters with non-game related content, Twitch is officially opening its doors to vloggers. The company today is debuting a new content category on its site called “IRL,” which is where Twitch creators can broadcast anything about their life, communicate with fans, and share their opinions. In addition, because IRL broadcasting is the sort of thing Twitch… Read More
There’s unrest in the Mushroom Kingdom once again. It’s a familiar story… Princess Peach just trying to live her life. Baking cakes, throwing parties. She sends an invite over to her old friend Mario, a friend and confident and sometime savior, only to be once again menaced by an unrepentant recidivist, a flame-haired reptilian antagonist who hovers in on his Koopa Clown Car.… Read More
On-demand startup Postmates just launched virtual gift cards, which you can purchase in amounts of $25, $50, $100 or $200. There’s no expiration date, and they can be used at any store on Postmates, which is pretty cool for the recipient because it means they can buy just about anything — and get it delivered on demand — on someone else’s dime. Postmates is by no means… Read More
Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, ABC News, and AP will help Facebook make good on four of the six promises Mark Zuckerberg made about fighting fake news without it becoming “the arbiter of truth.” It will make fake news posts less visible, append warnings from fact checkers to fake news in the feed, make reporting hoaxes easier and disrupt the financial incentives of fake… Read More
Unity is making a huge bet on VR and is aiming to ensure that developers have plenty of reasons to build their virtual reality titles on the company’s game engine. Today, the company has released a preview build of its EditorVR tool which allows game designers to dive into their creations in VR to build and destroy to their hearts’ content. At the end of the day the keyboard… Read More
Comparably, a company and workplace culture review platform, is expanding its tools and offerings to employers that want to have a better understanding of how they can improve their workplaces for employees. Comparably’s culture analytics dashboard for employers lets companies easily see how they stack up against their competitors. The most impactful part of the dashboard is the ability… Read More
As its name clearly implies, Super Mario Run is all about forward momentum. It’s a simple matter of physics — you can’t stop a Mario brother, you can only hope to temporary contain him with a well-placed pause block. As such, it should come as no surprise that the portly plumber jumped the gun a bit in the App Store. Nintendo’s long-awaited title was slated for a 10AM… Read More
Part of the reason so-called ‘fake news’ videos can spread so virally is that there is very rarely any supporting information attached to the video. Further links and verified sources just don’t get attached, either because there is no way of adding that to the video or the maker and/or the sharer just don’t bother. So a ton of video comes out that has no clear sources,… Read More
The Federal Reserve yesterday raised its benchmark interest rate to a range of 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent, up from 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. People in the business of venture-backed startups were paying attention, too, and not because of the new range, which is still super low by historical standards. It’s what the move augurs – even higher interest rates in 2017 –… Read More
WordPress is embracing WebVR as it begins to roll out support for 360-degree videos and photos to its network of sites. In a blog post, the company says its aim is “to make publishing VR content as simple as publishing text or photos to the web.” Currently, the 360-photo feature has been made available to all blog account types while the 360-video uploader is still in beta and… Read More
If there’s one thing I consistently love and can be trusted to both enjoy free or even pay money for, it’s fireplace videos. Sometimes called yule log videos, too, these are those things you see on Netflix, in the Apple TV App Store and on YouTube that just show a fireplace for a long period of time, often looping a clip and sometimes including music or sound effects.… Read More
