It’s November 11 — 11/11, or Singles’ Day — which is China’s biggest shopping day. A day for records. A big promotion day for Alibaba, which surpassed its sales total from last year’s event despite concerns around how sustainable its sales growth is. Read More
HTC’s PC-powered VR rig is set to get one of the plusses of cheaper mobile virtual reality systems early next year, after the company announced a wireless add-on that will let users untether the headset from the gaming PC required to power it. Read More
Emotions remain high as the country closes out its second day with a President-elect Donald Trump. Startup founders are struggling to instill confidence among employees that the culture of openness at their companies will not be affected by a President Trump. Unfortunately, some media outlets aren’t helping. Earlier this evening, Fox news published that Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney had… Read More
Instagram adds some new features to Stories, Snapchat starts selling Spectacles out of vending machines, Facebook has a misinformation problem, Tusk Holdings tries to find silver lining in Trump and Nasty Gal files for bankruptcy. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Today the Drone Racing League, a league that has a deal with ESPN to broadcast races this season, launched a drone racing simulator game.
And perhaps even more interesting, the league will be teaming up with Bud Light to host Drone Racing League tryouts on the simulator, with the winner receiving a $75,000 contract to compete in the 2017 season.
The simulator itself is pretty basic –… Read More
In the aftermath of the U.S. Presidential election, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at Techonomy16 to address concerns that the company didn’t do enough to stop the proliferation of fake news on News Feed.
Zuckerberg insisted that more can always be done to improve the quality of the News Feed experience, but that Facebook could not have influenced the outcome of… Read More
Yahoo admitted today that some of its employees were aware of the theft of 500 million users’ data as early as 2014 — years before Yahoo publicly acknowledged the hack. The hack, which Yahoo has attributed to an unnamed “state-sponsored actor,” occurred in late 2014, and according to today’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it seems Yahoo… Read More
By crowdsourcing for solutions using machine learning to utilize the abundant data available across these five industries, we can find relevant signals and patterns among the noise and make these industries not only more efficient, but also more integral to improving our lives. Read More
Edward Snowden gave an extended interview today touching on numerous topics, from the Trump Presidency to his own future. Overall his message was clear: it’s not about thwarting one leader or even one government, but using technology that guarantees rights across borders and administrations. In other words: don’t hate, innovate. Read More
Does the world need another food ordering app? No? Well, what about an app that’s all about pizza? The startup formerly known as MyPizza has already been working with independent pizzerias by helping them to accept online orders. (It’s also provided pizza at TechCrunch meetups.) Recently, it rebranded as Slice and launched a Slice app for iPhone. The goal is to make it as easy… Read More
AOL’s president of media brands Luke Beatty is stepping down from his position today to spend more time with family.
Beatty ran AOL’s tech blogs — including TechCrunch and Engadget — as well as several other online media properties for the company. He came to AOL from TechStars after serving as Yahoo’s vice president and general manager. Beatty also founded… Read More
My workflow is predominantly iOS-centric, but, lately, I’ve been turning more to the Mac — my girlfriend’s 15” MacBook Pro — to get work done. I’ve enjoyed getting reacquainted with Apple’s desktop operating system. I like the Mac. While it’s true the 12.9” iPad Pro is generally more accessible than a laptop due to iOS’s… Read More
Scientists at Imperial College of London have teamed with UK biotech company DNA Electronics to develop a USB stick-based HIV test capable of sophisticated detection in a fraction of the time of a standard test. The computer plug-in just needs a single drop of blood to go to work, measuring the levels of HIV-1, changing the acidity and transmitting the results as an electrical signal that can… Read More
Announced earlier this year, the PillDrill is a simple system designed to take some of the pain out of remembering to take medication – taking things between those big plastic pill boxes with the help of a little 21st century connectivity. The system is built around the Pill Drill Hub, which offers up an audio/visual reminder when the time comes to take a dose. Once the pills are taken and… Read More
Snap’s Spectacles are having a spectacular debut today, with (at least) hundreds of people lining up at their first Snapbot pop-up vending machine location in Venice Beach. We got the chance to speak to a few of those lucky enough to have grabbed some today, and they told us what it’s like to use the clip capturing face wear.
Jameson Detweiler, co-founder and CEO of AR startup… Read More
No matter which side of the aisle you’re on it’s clear that in next four years technology will be taking center stage. Politics are now less about relationships between people and more about relationships between computers and no matter who you voted for we believe tech is truly leading the way. Many of us are looking for a sense of clarity and understanding that will help us… Read More
It’s Spectacle day. Snapchat surprised everyone this morning by deploying a vending machine that sells Spectacles right along the beach in Venice. The machine will only be there for 24 hours, and there are already crazy lines. We got some hands on video from Jameson Detweiler, who actually got to use the machine to buy a pair of spectacles. Some hands-on footage of actually… Read More
California’s reliably-blue votes gave Hillary Clinton a boost on election night, but they weren’t enough to carry her to the presidency. Now, Californians angered by Donald Trump’s win have proposed a ballot measure to begin the process of secession — and the referendum is receiving funding from investor and Hyperloop One co-founder Shervin Pishevar.
The movement for… Read More
Snapchat’s Spectacles are already causing huge lineups and mild millennial frenzy in LA now that they’re on sale via super-exclusive Snapbot vending machines. It’s almost inevitable that Facebook copies this, too, so gird your nose bridge for Facebook Frames. Here’s our exclusive (and very fake) early preview of their promo site copy, which unsurprisingly looks a lot… Read More
Google is hosting its Chrome Dev Summit today. There hasn’t been a lot of news out of the event, but one number that stood out in today’s keynote by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher was that there are now 2 billion Chrome installs in active use across desktop and mobile. This is the first time Google has shared this number. Sadly, Google didn’t announce any new user… Read More
