Hi, and welcome to my obligatory hot take on the nearly confirmed no-headphone-jack iPhones we’re about to see rolling out of Apple. I’m not an absolute fan of this idea, but we’ve seen this sort of behavior from Apple before — most notably the move from the 30-pin dock jack that probably caused a bit of an e-waste problem, forcing users and most notably hotels to… Read More
Technology has made it simple to record and archive our digital memories through posts, snapshots, videos and more, but it can sometimes be a struggle to surface our past – our memories, activities and other experiences – in an easily accessible way. A new mobile application called Fabric, built by two former Facebook engineers, aims to solve that problem.
Co-founders Arun… Read More
The space exploration game No Man’s Sky features biodiversity that would make Earth weep with envy, and players are incredibly avid taxonomers. Hello Games founder Sean Murray tweeted today that players have racked up over 10 million species discoveries thus far in-game, which is around five to 6.5 times the number of known species on earth, depending on whose numbers you trust. While… Read More
NASA is serious about going to Mars, and not just for a quick visit, either. It just committed $65 million, spread over two years and six companies, for the purpose of developing and testing deep-space habitats that could be used on the way to — and on the surface of — the Red Planet. Read More
Rugged is just kind of Kyocera’s thing, when it comes to handsets, and the new DuraForce Pro does its best to uphold that tradition with a Military Standard 810G grade rugged body and IP68 certification, which its dustproof and can withstand a two meter dunking for up to 30 minutes. None of that’s really all that different for the line, but the Pro does bring a newfound focus on… Read More
Abhinav Shashank was working on an academic project at Harvard with his colleagues Kanav Hasija and Sandeep Gupta — figuring out how to pool together large data sets from hundreds of different sources and APIs and manage them — when his business colleagues started asking him to help apply those tools.
The result was Innovaccer, a set of software that mashes together data from… Read More
Quizlet, the popular app that lets students create interactive study sets and prepare for tests in any subject, is unveiling a redesign today, including a new website, logo and redesigned mobile apps soon to come. The new Quizlet was created with an eye on international expansion. The San Francisco edtech startup now offers translated and localized versions of its study tools in German,… Read More
Close your eyes. What do you see when you think about artificial intelligence? Hal 9000 defying human orders? Ava savagely murdering her maker? What about ARIIA taking over the country from deep inside the Pentagon? With a new competition, XPRIZE and IBM Watson challenge us to think slightly more pragmatically (or at least less apocalyptically dystopian) about the implications of… Read More
Pro-privacy organization Tor, which distributes anonymizing web browser tools, has published a social contract — promoting what it dubs its commitment to ‘advancing human rights’. Read More
Facebook has to train people how to make great video if it wants it “at the heart” of its services like Mark Zuckerberg promised, so today it launched a slew of new video analytics. Creators can now see the audience demographics of their video viewers, what moments were most engaging in their live broadcasts, and how shares and cross-posts boosted their view counts. But… Read More
Silk‘s co-founder and CEO, Salar al Khafaji, announced today that private data analytics unicorn Palantir would be acquiring the company. The transaction appears to be an acqui-hire, with members of the Silk team directly joining Palantir in new roles. Founded in 2010, Silk helps data journalists, activists, NGOs and businesses produce data visualizations in the cloud without the need… Read More
Service-level agreements (SLAs) are key when it comes to choosing a service that is going to play an important part for your own service. Cloud hosting services have an SLA, software-as-a-service products have an SLA, even airlines have SLAs. Software-as-a-service startup Algolia just revamped its SLA, and it’s interesting to see how the company is wording its policy. SLAs are simple: if… Read More
The Flex Company, the makers of a disc-shaped tampon alternative, has raised $1 million from Y Combinator, Amplify.LA and several others and acquired menstrual disc competitor Softcup for an undisclosed amount. Flex now owns all of the market’s menstrual disc products, which the company says are ultimately easier to use than tampons and menstrual cups. The discs, which have not… Read More
Listen up, would-be TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016 attendees. Time is quickly running out to get your hands on tickets to the best startup show in the Bay Area at the deeply discounted, early-bird price point of just $1,995 apiece, so get on over to our ticketing page today before prices jump on Saturday, August 13. Read More
Since news broke of the fatal accident involving a Tesla Model S that was on “Autopilot,” the media and various experts have been locked in high-speed Socratic dialogs on the pros and cons of self-driving cars. To date, most questions have focused on three key areas: liability, the technology and ethics. Read More
IFTTT made a name for itself as a platform for people to easily build (or pick up pre-built) scripts to automate tasks in and between various apps — say, to turn on the air conditioner using your home’s smart thermostat when your car tells it that you are 20 minutes’ drive away. Now, as part of the company’s bid to grow in ubiquity, it is taking the next natural… Read More
It is, sadly, just for businesses, so slow your roll before you start daydreaming about what you’ll load onto yours. The company showed off a few new products at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, but nothing quite as jaw dropping as what the company is calling “the largest SSD ever demonstrated.” The 60TB SSD is firmly in demonstration mode, meaning it’s sort of… Read More
I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday, August 10, to hold a night of pitches and open mic shenanigans so bring your guitar and pitching shoes. The event will be at O’Toole’s 4796 W Broad St, right off I-270. We’ll start at 7 p.m. sharp with pitches, so get there after work. And at 8pm or so we’ll have an open stage with live music – I’m going to… Read More
BMW is working on an Alexa skill for its new BMW Connected app, which will arrive later this year and let car owners do things like check their remaining fuel levels and lock their car doors via voice commands to their Echo speaker.
The new BMW Connected app arrived in the North American App Store in April, and will roll out in the UK. It’s able to connect to any car with… Read More
Sending a letter to the White House is getting a digital upgrade today. In addition to accepting hand-written missives by postal mail and emails, the public can now send a note to President Obama via Facebook. On the the White House’s Facebook page, you can use Messenger to “speak” to the administration by way of the newly launched White House Messenger bot. To use the… Read More
