Later this year, Anthem, Cigna, Aetna and Humana will all argue their respective mergers don’t run afoul of antitrust laws. Aetna also announced it was pulling out of 538 of the 778 county health insurance exchanges in 2017 due to lack of profit potential. After a honeymoon period, corporate healthcare providers are measuring the Affordable Care Act’s impact. Read More
Why does Doctor Strange need a science consultant? The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t exactly known for its scientific accuracy, and with his psychedelic, magic powers, the character of Doctor Strange (created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, and played in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch) goes even further into fantasy. Nonetheless, astrophysicist Adam Frank served as science consultant on… Read More
Many of us have tried new services, like online food ordering, subscription meals and signing with your finger on a tablet-based point-of-sale system; but the reality is that we are still in the early phases of restaurant industry disruption. I believe that’s about to change. Read More
Do you work in software? Do you have more than a decade of experience? You do? I’m sorry to hear that. That means there’s a strong possibility that much of what you know is already obsolete. Worse yet, there’s a good chance that you’re set in anachronistic ways, hidebound with habits which are now considered harmful. If you think your experience is automatically valuable,… Read More
On Friday morning, I awoke to find that our company-wide single sign-on and cloud storage was disrupted due to the massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against domain host Dyn. This attack was big, disrupting consumer services like Spotify and Netflix, all the way to enterprise-grade providers like Heroku and Zendesk. Once the dust has settled, it’s likely that this… Read More
TechCrunch is coming to Seoul next week for the TC Meetup + Pitch-off, and today we’re proud to announce the startups participating in the pitch-off. These companies will have exactly sixty seconds to pitch their wares to a panel of expert judges, including TC editors and local VCs. First place wins a table in the Startup Alley at TC Disrupt London. Second place gets two tickets to… Read More
Huge DDoS this morning has been affecting many websites, Hampton Creek buyback allegations are being investigated, a team of engineers in Russia was able to design a computer vision system to recognize faces in television broadcasts, AT&T may buy Time Warner and Weebly notified everybody it had been hacked. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Yesterday saw the introduction — after many leaks and rumors — of the Nintendo Switch, the company’s next game console. It isn’t due to arrive until March of next year, which is infinitely frustrating because it looks amazing for several reasons, not all of them obvious. Here’s why I’m more excited about the Switch than for any Nintendo product in a long time. Read More
How do you make things funny in virtual reality? That’s the question CollegeHumor is exploring with 1600 in 360°, a new video series depicting some of the, um, highlights of U.S. presidential history.
Apparently, Google approached IAC-owned CollegeHumor about creating 360-degree content for YouTube and for its DayDream VR platform. Sam Reich, president at CollegeHumor’s… Read More
Another city, another Airbnb lawsuit. Airbnb sued the city of New York, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Mayor Bill de Blasio today over legislation that would make it illegal to advertise accommodations that can’t legally be rented out for less than 30 days. The bill was passed in June and signed into law by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier today. New York housing law… Read More
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took the stage at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing today to talk about diversity and equality. This comes just weeks after Salesforce brought on board Tony Prophet, its first-ever Chief Equality Officer. Equality, Benioff said, has to be something that Salesforce stands for, just like it stands for growth, innovation, new ideas and creating new… Read More
Virtual, augmented and mixed reality have a competition problem. But while most AR/VR companies will tell you how much better they are than their nearest direct competitor, they’re picking the wrong fight. The main event isn’t between the major companies; there are far bigger and scarier competitors out there: Status quo is AR/VR’s biggest competitor. Read More
At its core, Zwift is indoor cycling software. But layered on top of its functionality is a community that in the two years the company has been operating has grown in both scale and shear strength. At an event at Rapha’s cycling in SF, I found myself surrounded by core users proudly flaunting their team names and meeting, often not for the first time. Even Barry Bonds showed up to… Read More
The future of prosthetics is fast arriving, with 3D-printed construction, advanced materials and embedded sensors replacing the unadorned wood and plastic of yore. But like the rest of the future, it’s not equally distributed. In order to bridge the gap for users who can’t afford or get at these fancy new prostheses, researchers propose smartening up dumb prosthetics with… Read More
Do you make the hardest of things, hardware? We want you to compete in our Hardware Alley, our premier startup competition at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. You will have the chance to show your amazing products to representatives from major retailers, VCs, and other notables and you’ll climb far above the usual CES noise.
Hardware Battlefield is part of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield… Read More
No mainstream electronics manufacture is making more interesting, innovative and downright bizarre products than Lenovo. Between its contorting efforts under the Yoga banner and the modular handsets being produced by Motorola, the Chinese company is taking the sort of form factor risks we rarely see outside of hardware startups.
Nowhere is this better embodied than in the $499 Yoga Book. If… Read More
This week, Tesla made a major announcement about the availability of its self-driving tech, Apple revealed when its next MacBooks are going to be announced, and we reviewed Google’s new Pixel XL. These are the top stories to catch you up on this crazy week in tech. Read More
Having a heated argument while discussing the presidential elections with friends? Good news: Alexa can now fact check the 2016 campaign, answering questions about the candidate’s claims right on the spot. This includes statements made by Clinton and Trump, as well as other candidates and politicians whose comments have been checked. This fact-checking is being made possible by way of… Read More
Teddy bear dogs, singing children, and your deepest personal opinions are what you should be sharing on Facebook Live, according to Facebook’s new ad campaign for its mobile broadcasting feature. Instead of poising itself for web celebrities like YouTube Live or citizen journalists like Periscope, these commercials show Facebook Live wants to be the camera for the common man. Click or… Read More
Facebook will soon display more graphic content including violence and nudity that would normally violate its policies as long as the imagery is newsworthy or important enough.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s VP of global policy writes “Our intent is to allow more images and stories without posing safety risks or showing graphic images to minors and others who do not want to see… Read More
