Crunch Hype

At last month’s Apple event, the Mac Mini was greeted like a returning hero. Maybe it was the over the top space advert or the fact that the company had packed the seats of the Brooklyn opera house full of local employees. Most likely, however, it had at least a little to do with the […]

A midterms election study of political disinformation being fenced by Facebook’s platform supports the company’s assertion that a clutch of mostly right-leaning and politically fringe Pages it removed in October for sharing “inauthentic activity” were pulled for gaming its engagement metrics. Though it remains unclear why it took Facebook so long to act against such prolific […]

During its big customer event in Europe, VMware announced another acquisition to step up its game in helping enterprises build and run containerised, Kubernetes-based architectures: it has acquired Heptio, a startup out of Seattle that was co-founded by Joe Beda and Craig McLuckie, who were two of the three people who co-created Kubernetes back at Google […]

Aiden.ai, a London based AI analytics startup, has raised a $1.6M seed round to develop its “AI-powered marketing analyst” which, they claim, is like having an extra person on the marketing team for mobile apps. The round has been led by Partech. Other investors include Sophia Bendz, who previously led marketing at Spotify and Nicolas […]

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield returns to Africa next month, and we have an agenda chock-full of interesting panels and our premier startup competition. Joining us in Lagos, Nigeria on December 11 for a couple of those aforementioned panels will be Chris Folayan, the founder and CEO of Mall for Africa; Nichole Yembra, chief financial, risk and […]

Nikola Motor has started taking reservations for Tre, the startup’s first hydrogen-electric truck built for the European market. Nikola Motor, which less than a year ago announced plans to build a $1 billion hydrogen-electric semi truck factory in a suburb of Phoenix, said it’s in the preliminary planning stages to identify the proper location for its European […]

Facebook has pulled the plug on 30 accounts and 85 Instagram accounts that the company says were engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher revealed the latest batch of findings in a late-night blog post Monday. “On Sunday evening, U.S. law enforcement contacted us about online activity that they recently […]

Tink Labs, a Hong Kong startup that develops smartphones that hotels provide to their guests for free, is raising a new round of up to $300 million to further its international footprint, TechCrunch has come to understand. The startup is in the final stages of completing the deal that could give its six-year-old business a […]

After Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, more states and counties in the United States are returning to paper ballots from electronic voting machines. While this may help cybersecurity, it also makes it harder for many people with disabilities to cast their vote. To counteract that, RespectAbility, a non-partisan non-profit that works on inclusivity […]

Meesho, a Bangalore-based social commerce startup, has closed a $50 million investment to grow its business in its Indian homeland ahead of future international expansion. This Series C round means that Meesho, which graduated Y Combinator in 2016, has now raised three funding rounds in the past year. Its $3.4 million Series A came in […]

Two former private equity executives have entered the venture capital business via Bracket Capital.

Tiffany Olson Kleemann Contributor Tiffany Olson Kleemann is the chief executive officer of Distil Networks. She formerly served in executive roles at Symantec and FireEye and was deputy chief of staff for cybersecurity operations under President George W. Bush. The fact that Russian-linked bots penetrated social media to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election has […]

Transit, a company that built a mobile app designed to help people in cities live without cars, has raised $17.5 million from two automakers in a Series B round. The round was led by RenaultNissan-Mitsubishi’s joint investment arm Alliance Ventures. InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund, also joined the round, as well as two past […]

Streaming music service Pandora released its third quarter earnings today – the first since the news of its impending acquisition by SiriusXM, announced in September. The company reported a quickly growing subscription business for its paid products, Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium, which brought in $125.8 million in Q3 – a figure that’s up 49 […]

Due to ancient British legislation, Bird's scooters will only be available in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

AMC Theatres is raising the price of its subscription movie plan Stubs A-List — at least in a handful of states. Rather than simply charging $19.95 per month across-the-board, AMC will soon offer differing prices to residents of different states. California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York will see the biggest increase, to $23.95 […]

A little known fact about Swedes: when they get angry, they will often scribble down a note on paper — sometimes anonymously — and leave it where it will be seen, rather than confront a person face-to-face. One extremely angry Swedish pro-freedom internet provider took that passive aggression to a whole new level. On Thursday, […]

Seemingly every industry is finding ways to use drones in some way or another, but deep underground it's a different story. In the confines of a mine or pipeline, with no GPS and little or no light, off-the-shelf drones are helpless — but an Australian startup called Emesent is giving them the spatial awareness and intelligence to navigate and map those spaces autonomously.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is laying down the law — literally. Today, Herrera’s office announced a $2.25 million settlement with two property owners in the city. The landlords, Darren and Valerie Lee, ran “an illicit hotel chain during San Francisco’s housing crisis rather than lawfully renting the units to residential tenants,” Herrera’s office […]

The Supreme Court today offered moral support for net neutrality activists and a soft setback for the current FCC’s agenda by declining to revisit a major case supportive of the 2015 rules. It essentially sets in stone the fundamental legality of those rules — not good PR for the agency that just rolled them back […]

In case you haven’t heard, polls will open Tuesday morning across the U.S. for the 2018 midterm elections. It’s a big deal, so go vote. And this year, there are more free ways to get to the polls than ever before thanks to a variety of non-partisan “get the vote out” campaigns from ride-hailing, bike […]

After raising $600 million at a $7.6 billion valuation a few weeks ago, Instacart is doubling down on expanding its talent pool to square up against Amazon and others with ambitions in online grocery ordering and delivery. The company has appointed Varouj Chitilian as it first VP of engineering and Dave Sobota as its first VP […]

Voting in the U.S. can be confusing. By design, every state is different. On top of that, disinformation meant to discourage voting is rampant this election. Cut through the noise, arm yourself with the facts and vote. We’ve got resources to help you. 1. Fill out a sample ballot for your state If you’re not […]

Augmented reality is certainly the gimmick du jour these days. Case in point: ABC News is covering tomorrow’s U.S. midterms using a custom-made 360-degree stage and AR technology. The media organization posted a behind-the-scenes look at its glitzy and over-the-top “Election Headquarters” AR-powered stage on its Sunday political affairs program “This Week,” and today published […]

Apple has rolled out watchOS 5.1.1, less than a week after the company pulled its immediate predecessor, watchOS 5.1, following reports that the software was bricking some Apple Watches. The update also includes bug fixes for the Walkie-Talkie app and an additional issue where some Activity rewards were not displayed. watchOS 5.1 initially went out […]

Instagram is considering offering collaborative School Stories that only a certain school’s students can see or contribute to. And to make sure these Stories wouldn’t become bullying cesspools, Instagram’s code shows a warning that “School stories are manually reviewed to make sure the community is safe.” School Stories could create a fun space for kids […]

The midterms are tomorrow and in addition to exciting changes to the political landscape, the day promises to bring millions of voties, pictures of completed ballots posted to social media, and simultaneously, confusion at a national level over whether they're legal or not. It depends on what state you're in — fear not and consult this map!

It’s true! It’s 2018, and Barnes & Noble just announced another Nook! You can preorder it today! All of these things are somehow simultaneously true. The Nook line has basically been a non-starter since 2016, back when the once ubiquitous bookseller offered up a dirt-cheap $50 model. Even back then it felt like a strange anachronism. […]

Facebook is bursting out of the ones and zeros into the physical realm with nine brick-and-mortar pop-up stores that will show off goods from 100 small business and online brands. Facebook organized the merchants to be part of The Market @ Macy’s, which first launched earlier this year to create temporary spaces for businesses. The […]

Friends, readers, internet browsers, lend me your ears; I come to bury Oath, not to praise it. The subsidiary brands that companies own live after them; Their terrible rebranding is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Oath . The new Verizon chief executive, Hans Vestberg, told you Oath was ambitious: If it […]

Before there was Pokémon GO, there was Ingress. It was Niantic’s first game — and while it never became the overwhelmingly popular phenomenon that GO did, it’s undeniably what allowed GO to exist in the first place. Now Niantic is taking another swing at it. The company has rebuilt Ingress from the ground up, with […]

Yuval Noah Harari, the noted author and historian famed for his work Sapiens, wrote a lengthy piece in The Atlantic entitled “Why Technology Favors Tyranny” that is quite interesting. I don’t want to address the whole piece (today), but I do want to discuss his views that humans are increasingly eliminating their agency in favor of algorithms who make decisions for them.

All of the major players have held events over the past few months, but hardware season still has a few last gasps left. The Samsung Developer Conference happening this week in San Francisco isn’t likely to be a major launching pad for consumer electronics, but the company is expected to offer a glimpse into what’s […]

Researchers at Radboud University have found critical security flaws in several popular Crucial and Samsung solid state drives (SSDs), which they say can be easily exploited to recover encrypted data without knowing the password. The researchers, who detailed their findings in a new paper out Monday, reverse engineered the firmware of several drives to find […]

An analysis of political advertisers running extensive campaigns on Facebook targeting users in the United States over the past six months has flagged a raft of fresh concerns about its efforts to tackle election interference — suggesting the social network’s self regulation is offering little more than a sham veneer of accountability. Dig down and […]

Last year, Walmart acquired menswear site Bonobos for $310 million in cash. Now the retailer is adding the brand to a Walmart-owned website. A few days ago, Walmart opened an online shop for Bonobos on its Jet.com website, newly focused on serving urban shoppers, along with a dedicated shop for Nike apparel, footwear and accessories. […]

Halloween’s over, which means retail is in full holiday mode. For Amazon, that also means a couple of new shipping offers and, apparently, the launch of a bunch of new brick-and-mortar locations. In September, the online giant opened a 4-Star Store in New York City, following it up with a Denver location last week. The […]

Vitaly Bahachuk wants you to share your crypto. His company lets you lend cryptocurrency peer-to-peer via smart contract, ensuring you can send your buds some red hot Ether and, in theory, they have to pay you back. Further, it allows for some other clever tricks to be played with ERC20 tokens including performing some of […]

In a move aimed at boosting its falling stock price, Spotify this morning announced it would buy back up to $1.0 billion worth of stock – up to 10 million in ordinary shares. The repurchase program was authorized by the company’s general meeting of shareholders and approved by the Board of Directors. The program will […]

7-Eleven is piloting a new mobile check-out process called Scan & Pay.

Students at Oregon State University dressed up their bipedal robot, Cassie, in a delightful AT-ST costume. This robot, which everyone said looked like one of the Empire’s two-legged walkers, anyway, can now zap both Rebels and Ewoks in a deadly battle to take control of the forest city of Corvallis. The robot, as you can […]

Andréa Mallard, the former chief marketing officer of Athetla, has joined Pinterest as its first-ever CMO.

Language learning company Reverso is launching a new product on the web and mobile. Reverso Synonyms is a thesaurus service that lets you learn new words and improve your vocabulary. You may have found this feature in the main Reverso translation app already. If you translate a word or a group of words, there’s a […]

When China’s Invictus Gaming defeated European squad Fnatic in the League of Legends 2018 finals this past Saturday, China’s social media platforms became awash in ecstasy and pride. “It’s like winning an Olympic gold, a teenage dream come true,” writes one thirty-something audience of the competition on his WeChat feed. Many others share that sentiment. […]

In the world of autonomous vehicles, the news comes in repetitive short bursts with formulaic precision: Company X is launching a robotaxi fleet/test program in city Y by [insert date]. These announcements are promptly forgotten until the first self-driving vehicles are spotted, an accident occurs, or a new partner joins the test program. Rinse. repeat. The […]

Laptop users have been focused for a very long time on whether the iPad Pro is going to be forced upon them as a replacement device. Depending on who you believe, Apple included, it has at one point been considered that, or a pure tablet with functions to be decided completely by the app development […]

The UK government has announced an investigation into personalized pricing practices in online retail following growing concerns that vulnerable consumers are at risk of price discrimination through the use of ecommerce technologies that vary prices for products such as cars, holidays and household goods via the use of personal data points. The Competition Markets Authority (CMA) will […]

“Did you know Christmas is nearly here?” Now that it’s November, people will start telling you how many shopping days or weekends there are until Christmas. You can avoid them all you like, but a pretty major sign that the festive season is nearly upon us has dropped today after Amazon ditched its shipping charges […]

If you haven’t purchased your pass to Disrupt Berlin 2018 yet, this is your lucky day. How so? We’re holding a 24-hour flash sale, which means starting at midnight tonight, 5 November, and running through 11:59 P.M. (CET), you can score two Innovator passes for the price of one — that’s €1184 (VAT included) or […]

“I was hired when I was 8 months pregnant, so kudos to Niklas for betting on someone who was pregnant,” Sophia Bendz tells me. “That meant I was working a couple of hours per week in my first year and then I ramped up my engagement and now I’m at a point where I’m fully […]