2018
Featured Article
MacBook Air review
For three years, the MacBook Air was conspicuously absent. The ultraportable never left Apple’s site, of course, but we finished keynote after keynote wondering why Apple continued to neglect one of its most popular products, all while overhauling the rest of the MacBook line. At an event last month in Brooklyn, however, Apple finally acquiesced,…
Featured Article
Mac Mini review
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…
Study of political junk on Facebook raises fresh questions about its metrics
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…
VMware acquires Heptio, the startup founded by 2 co-founders of Kubernetes
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…
Aiden.ai raises a $1.6M seed round for its AI marketing analyst
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…
Venture capital and the blockchain will be the talk at Startup Battlefield Africa
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…
Nikola Motor unveils a new hydrogen semi truck designed for Europe
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…
Hours before US Election Day, Facebook pulls dozens of accounts for ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’
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…
Tink Labs, which gives free-to-use smartphones to hotel guests, is raising $300M
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…
Some online resources to help voters with disabilities on Election Day
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,…
India’s Meesho, which enables social commerce via WhatsApp, raises $50M
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…
One-year-old Bracket Capital is already an investor in Lyft, Bird, Airbnb and Coinbase
Two former private equity executives have entered the venture capital business via Bracket Capital.
Bots distorted the 2016 Election. Will the midterms be a sequel?
The fact that Russian-linked bots penetrated social media to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election has been well documented, and the details of the deception are still trickling out.
Automakers invest in Transit, the app that helps people get around without a car
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…
Pandora beats in Q3 with $417.6M in revenue, fast-growing subscription business
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…
You can ride Bird’s e-scooters in London starting today — but only in Olympic Park
Due to ancient British legislation, Bird’s scooters will only be available in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
AMC is raising Stubs A-List prices in 15 states
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…
A Swedish ISP has blocked Elsevier’s website in protest for forcing it to block Sci-Hub
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…
Subterranean drone mapping startup Emesent raises $2.5M to autonomously delve the deep
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…
SF fines two landlords $2.25 million for illegal Airbnb rentals
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,…
Supreme Court denies broadband industry petition to scrub favorable net neutrality court decision from history
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…
How to get to the polls for free at the 2018 midterm elections
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…
Instacart nabs Google execs as VPs of engineering and corp dev, acqui-hires MightySignal
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…
2018 Midterms: 4 resources every voter should know about
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,…
ABC News is covering the midterms in augmented reality
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…
Apple rolls out watchOS 5.1.1 after earlier Apple Watch bricking issues
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…
Instagram prototypes bully-proof moderated School Stories
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…
Is it legal to post a ‘votie’ in your state? Check this map
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,…
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…
Facebook opens its first small biz pop-up stores inside Macy’s
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.…
