Christmas
If you’re a parent with young children, then you’ll probably hear this a lot on Christmas Eve: “Where’s Santa right now?” With tracking tools like the NORAD Santa Tracker and…
Meta’s Oculus VR companion app gained ~2M downloads since Christmas
Consumers worldwide have downloaded Meta’s Oculus app, the mobile companion for Oculus VR devices including the Quest 2, roughly 2 million times globally since Christmas Day, according to new data…
Tencent offloads stakes in allies as it continues investment spree
Chinese internet titan Tencent is divesting its vast portfolio. On Tuesday, the company announced plans to offload more than $3 billion worth of shares in Sea, a Singaporean internet conglomerate,…
Amazon workers at two Chicago warehouses walk out to demand better treatment
This morning, dozens of warehouse workers at two Amazon facilities near Chicago staged a pre-Christmas walkout during the busiest time of the year to demand better treatment and higher wages.…
‘Pfeffel’ artist satirizes Boris Johnson with parody NFTs, sending 52% of proceeds to charity
As crazy as the NFT market has become, there’s been an increasing range of other things to do with NFTs other than pimp images of apes and punks — even…
Roku’s first original film continues NBC’s canceled series ‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist’
Roku’s expansion into original content continues with news that the streaming platform and device maker will debut its first original feature-length film during the 2021 holiday season. In partnership with…
Here in the final few working days of 2020, a surprising number of new unicorns have come to light. The mad scramble that investors are seeing in seed-stage startups appears…
Cosmos Video — a ‘Club Penguin for adults’ to socialise and work — raises $2.6M from LocalGlobe
All over the world startups are piling into the space marked “virtual interaction and collaboration”. What if a startup created a sort of “Club Penguin for adults”? Step forward Cosmos…
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Despite limitations, 3D and AR are creating new realities in retail
“Within the next five years, I think we’re going to see that having AR and 3D on your dot-com and beyond will be mandatory.”
Anna Palmer just became the first female general partner at Flybridge
Better late than never. So it might be said of the Boston and New York-based seed-stage firm Flybridge, which is today announcing that Anna Palmer has joined as general partner.…
Streamers, including Netflix and CBS All Access, roll out new family-friendly features
As competition in the streaming service market heats up, services are looking for ways to differentiate their offerings. One area of increased interest — especially in light of fierce competition…
Sunshine Contacts may have given out your home address, even if you’re not using the app
A third-party contacts app you’re not using may be handing out your home address to its users. In November, former Yahoo CEO and Google veteran Marissa Mayer and co-founder Enrique…
US charges Russian hackers blamed for Ukraine power outages and the NotPetya ransomware attack
Six Russian intelligence officers accused of launching some of the “world’s most destructive malware” — including an attack that took down the Ukraine power grid in December 2015 and the…
Envisics nabs $50M for its in-car holographic display tech at a $250M+ valuation
The jury is still out on what might become the most viable business models for augmented reality technology, but in the meantime a startup out of the U.K. is betting…
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Ford’s Bronco relaunch demonstrates the power of nostalgia
Ford is finally taking the wraps off the reborn Bronco next week. Literally. The company has teased the vehicle for months, showing a camouflaged SUV bouncing through rocky streams and charging over dusty hills. This week, the wraps come off and the sheet metal will finally be exposed. The launch of the Bronco looks to…
Amazon Prime Video is streaming kids’ movies and TV for free, no Prime membership required
Amazon is making a selection of family-friendly and programming for kids available for free streaming on Prime Video as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis, which has people trapped…
Elon Musk says Tesla will add Disney+ to its vehicles ‘soon’
Elon Musk spent some time over this past holiday week answering questions posed by fans on Twitter, and one addressed the growing catalog of entertainment options available in-car via the…
The holiday season can be a lot. You might need something to make you feel better. This post doesn’t have it. But it does have some pretty terrible bitcoin Christmas…
Black Friday sees record $7.4B in online sales, $2.9B spent using smartphones
Following swiftly on the heels of a Thanksgiving that broke records with $4.2 billion in online sales, Black Friday also hit a new high, although it just fell short of…
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With $15M round and 100K tablets sold, reMarkable CEO wants to make tech ‘more human’
The reMarkable tablet is a strange device in this era of ultra-smart gadgets: A black and white screen meant for reading, writing, and sketching — and nothing more. Yet the company has sold 100,000 of the devices and now has attracted $15 million in series A funding from Spark Capital. It’s an unusual trajectory for…
Week in Review: Snapchat beats a dead horse
Hey. This is Week-in-Review, where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged on…
Fortnite Season 8 is now available, and it includes pirates, cannons and volcano lava
Fortnite, the world’s most popular game right now with some 200 million players, has just announced that its much-anticipated Season 8 is available. For those of you who don’t play…
Nintendo posts $958M profit but cuts Switch target despite strong Christmas sales
Nintendo has cut its ambitious annual Switch sales forecast despite enjoying a strong Christmas Q3 quarter. The Japanese games giant recorded a 104.21 billion JPY ($958 million) net profit on revenue…
Youth-run agency AIESEC exposed over 4 million intern applications
AIESEC, a non-profit that bills itself as the “world’s largest youth-run organization,” exposed more than four million intern applications with personal and sensitive information on a server without a password.…
Another server security lapse at NASA exposed staff and project data
Two months ago, NASA quietly fixed a buggy internal server that was leaking sensitive information about the agency’s staff and their work. The leaking server was — ironically — a…
Drone sighting briefly halts departing flights at UK’s Heathrow Airport
All flights departing Heathrow, the U.K.’s largest airport, were suspended for an hour on Tuesday following a reported drone sighting. An airport spokesperson told TechCrunch that staff are “working closely”…
Twas the last trading day before Christmas, and on the trading floor, Most stocks were falling, and then falling some more, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin all the banks had called,…
My aunt and uncle lived up the hill from Martins Ferry, Ohio, high above the river. My uncle ran a used car lot — Snezek’s — and so it was…
UK police release airport drone suspects and admit there may not have been any drones after all
Less than a week after mystery drones grounded flights at the U.K.’s second largest airport, wreaking havoc on as many as 140,000 people’s travel plans for the Christmas period, police have…
The removal of conspiracy enthusiast content by InfoWars brings us to an interesting and important point in the history of online discourse. The current form of Internet content distribution has made…
