February 2017

Long ago, people believed that the eye emitted invisible rays that struck the world outside, causing it to become visible to the beholder. That’s not the case, of course, but…

Some very big brands outside the tech space have been stepping in to acquire technology companies as the pressure to keep up with consumer-powered digital trends touches more industries. Add…

In 2016, blockchain startups raised some $200 million in Initial Coin Offerings, a new form of crowdfunding based on cryptocurrency tokens. Some of the startups have raked in millions of…

Bradley Tusk has long been known in political circles. He was once deputy governor of Illinois, working for the now-incarcerated former governor Rod Blagojevich. He also worked for Michael Bloomberg during…

Let’s talk about something non-awful that Donald Trump has done. (Shouldn’t take long, right? Ba-dum-bump-wince.) Specifically, let’s talk about the draft executive order floating around which calls for H-1B visas…

Mobile surveillance by ad-sponsored smartphone apps is intrusive and creepy — and it can easily compromise your enterprise’s data.

The turn of the calendar is cathartic for entrepreneurs — there’s something about starting a new year that inspires folks to launch a new startup, build a new product or…

The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Keith Teare, Frank Radice, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, February 10, 2017. Plus the latest G3 (below) with Halley Suitt Tucker, Elisa Camahort…

Statsbot is giving companies a new way to look at their data — in their chatrooms on Slack. Co-founder and CEO Artyom Keydunov said that the product was inspired by…

It’s clear Republicans hitched their wagon to a demographic they have successfully exploited at historic levels the last couple of decades. Yet in doing that they’ve still lost six of…

Hellocar, a new car buying website out of the UK, has secured a £1m investment round. The round was led by JamJar Investments, the Innocent Drinks founders’ venture capital fund,…

Today’s Stories  Prince returns to Spotify and Napster this weekend WhatsApp now supports two-step authentication Amazon’s Tap speaker gets a hands-free update in defiance of its name Beats X bring…

Tech companies continued to rally against Trump’s immigration ban, Android Wear 2.0 finally launched, Airbnb bought up another company and Zenefits laid off 45 percent of its workforce. These are…

Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting Muslims, immigrants and refugees are moves that pander to the dangerous forces of racism and xenophobia.

On the surface, many internet businesses might not have much in common; internally, we’ve converged around one single metric that’s applicable to almost all consumer and/or marketplace businesses that use…

In the face of criticism around its new FOIA process, the FBI moved to clarify some questions surrounding the online portal that will replace its existing process starting March 1.…

Encrypted messaging app Wire has now published an external audit of its crypto protocol, Proteus, and the implementation of the protocol across its various apps.

It’s always good to hear that scientists are bringing the latest technology to the fight against cancer, but virtual reality doesn’t seem like an obvious addition to the arsenal. Yet…

Carl Bass is sitting at his desk at Autodesk today, but he’s no longer CEO of the publicly traded design software company. He stepped down earlier this week in a…

You know how old you are. You know how old your friends think you are. Heck, you even know how old Microsoft thinks you are. But at the end of the day, does…

What wine makers are going after with applied technology and science is a more profitable piece of an already sizable market. Consumers spent $38 billion on U.S.-made wines alone in 2015 according…

Last year Xiaomi’s market share slid notably in its native China, as the smartphone maker moved from first to fifth place (and tellingly avoided publishing its own sales figures for the first…

Lucid’s Air is a 1,000 HP electric dream car, which is still in the early stages of real-world testing, but which already has more than a few EV fans excited.…

In a world defined by trends, we’ve been beset by a highly worrying one: There is an undeniable lack of IPOs. In 2015, 164 companies entered the public markets, which…

You know that Twitter is getting serious about live streaming when the company starts signing deals for rugby matches just for French users. The company announced that it would stream…

It’s hard to say precisely what took Beats X so long to arrive. Unlike Apple’s own house-branded AirPods, the company didn’t really start from scratch. Sure, it’s a somewhat new…

The California DMV has added Subaru as the latest member of its list of companies clear to test autonomous driving technology on state roads, bringing the exclusive club to 22 members in…

Quora, a crowdsourced Q&A site that’s generally smarter than Yahoo Answers, is making a big change to how anonymity works on its service. Most notably, it will begin cracking down…

Wednesday night, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, venture capitalist Aileen Lee took the stage to interview Amy Chang, a former eBay product manager turned head of Google Analytics turned…

Following multiple admissions last year that it had been misreporting some of its ad numbers, Facebook just announced that it has committed to an audit by the Media Rating Council “to verify…