Samsung is stepping up its brand damage limitation efforts in the wake of the flaming battery disaster of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone by offering owners of the recalled device in South Korea the ability to upgrade to a Galaxy S8 or Note 8 device next year if they trade in their Note 7 for a Galaxy S7 now. Read More
The “Uber for weed” startup Eaze has grown quite a bit over the last year and it intends to expand even more. To get it there, Eaze has closed on $13 million in Series B funding from Fresh VC, Doll Capital Management (DCM) and Tusk Ventures. Eaze launched in July of 2014 to help medical marijuana patients order cannabis on demand. It soon expanded to allow people to get a medical… Read More
The very long wait is over, hackathon fans. Disrupt London 2016 is just around the corner, and we’re thrilled to announce the release of the first wave of tickets to the Disrupt London Hackathon. The Hackathon takes place December 3-4 at London’s beautiful Copper Box Arena, and we hope you’ll join us. Those of you looking to spend the weekend before Disrupt coding and… Read More
Honeycomb, a TV and video ad management platform founded by James Carpenter and Richard Carter, who both previously founded Adstream, has raised £3 million in Series A funding. It follows a £1 million “friends and family” round in May this year. Read More
While many people are arguing that the proposed $85 billion AT&T and Time Warner deal would be bad for consumer choice, billionaire Mark Cuban has a contrarian viewpoint. The merger would lead to “more competition” he tells TechCrunch. Cuban, who made his money through a different media acquisition, thinks the combination would help challenge the tech giants like Facebook,… Read More
It’s no coincidence that Alan Turing, one of the most influential computer scientists of all time, started his 1950 treatise on computing with the question “Can machines think?” From our science fiction to our research labs, we have long questioned whether the creation of artificial versions of ourselves will somehow help us uncover the origin of our own consciousness… Read More
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, hosted a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” this afternoon. He noted that the AMA should focus on SpaceX’s plans for Mars, which Musk revealed during the International Astronautical Congress last month. This will be under /r/spacex, not the general AMA. Meant to be supplemental to the IAC talk. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 23, 2016… Read More
The NFL has a distinguished history of successful partnerships with upstart media companies. When it became the home of Sunday Night Football in 1987, ESPN’s unprecedented growth accelerated. In 1993, the NFL sold its NFC Sunday afternoon package to Fox, firmly establishing it as the fourth major broadcast network in the U.S. This fall the NFL is working with another new media partner… Read More
The 2013 Snowden documents revealed UK intelligence agency GCHQ to be tapping into the undersea cables that carry Internet traffic, covertly gathering vast amounts of digital comms data under a surveillance program code-named Tempora — apparently with the help of commercial partners. Read More
It’s been 15 years since Apple first released the classic iPod. It was the first device to usher in what would become, in many respects, the age of Apple. Since its launch Apple’s mobile products have become (to many people) the gold standard. Other folks had launched digital music players before Apple. But none had Apple’s cache, or the weight of iTunes’ amazing… Read More
Artificial intelligence allows machines to reason and interact with the world, and it’s evolving at a breakneck pace. Now consider that most of our data, the best minds in the business and more computing power than you could ever imagine sit with just a handful of companies. Indeed, only a few companies in the world are able to understand the true potential — and the current… Read More
By the 2020 election driverless cars will have become ubiquitous, according to Rahul Sonnad, a co-founder of the zero-emission ride-sharing startup Tesloop. The impact, he predicts, will be “completely transformative.” Read More
There’s a reason Americans feel dispossessed by their government. We citizens have fewer and fewer opportunities for substantive interaction with our leaders. Corporate-funded organizations and narrow interest advocacy campaigns stand in as proxies for citizens as the distance grows between leaders and those they represent. This distance changes the dynamics of democracy. Read More
AT&T’s soon-to-launch live streaming service, DirecTV Now, just got a lot more interesting following AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. Announced earlier this year, DirectTV Now was already an anticipated new arrival on the cord-cutting scene, thanks to its plans to stream more than 100 live channels over the Internet without having to agree to traditional pay TV contract. Read More
Behind the less than enthusiastic embrace is a collective skepticism in the tech industry about Clinton’s pro-innovation credentials.
The shade is unwarranted. Read More
Weengs, a U.K. startup that has developed a shipping service for small retailers and online sellers that takes care of the hand and leg work (quite literally) required to send out orders, has picked up £2.2 million in backing. It plans to use the capital to expand beyond London, including other cities in Europe. Read More
LUMAScapes map the constellations and clusters of the digital advertising universe. For many years, that universe, like our own, was ever-expanding. But also like our universe, there’s debate about whether it will continue to expand or end in a big crunch. I would argue the latter is happening — and happening now. Read More
After days of speculation, the deal is now official: AT&T is acquiring Time Warner for $85 billion in a mix of cash and shares, paving the way for another behemoth in the converged media horizon. The final acquisition price will be $107.50 per share, paid in half cash and half AT&T stock. This means that for each outstanding share of Time Warner stock investors will receive $53.75… Read More
