Steve Jurvetson, the venture capitalist who invested in companies like Tesla and SpaceX, is leaving his role as partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Recode reports. TechCrunch has since confirmed the news. His resignation comes after DFJ began investigating allegations of sexual harassment against the founding partner in August. Read More
A group of 15 top Democratic senators are pushing the Federal Election Commission to expand disclosure requirements on political ads to include commercials distributed online. Read More
Uber said Sunday that it agreed to move forward on a proposed investment from SoftBank Group. But SoftBank Investment Advisors sent a statement to reporters on Monday on behalf of CEO Rajeev Misra, emphasizing that it could still walk away. Read More
Just as many people enjoy a nice cold Goose Island pale ale but hate the beer megacorp AB InBev which owns it, so too is the rage palpable against Electronic Arts, which owns many a beloved franchise but is far less than the sum of its parts. Today, that dislike is slightly more quantifiable thanks to a comment on Reddit. Read More
Amazon is making a Lord of the Rings TV show, but it isn’t a straight adaptation of the greatest fantasy series of all time — it’s a prequel. The show, which already carries a multi-season commitment, will “explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.” Read More
Facebook is combining its Snapchat Stories clone with features Snapchat can’t match. Starting today, users of Facebook Groups and Events will be able to contribute to a Facebook Story visible to the rest of the members and moderated by the admins. In essence, these collaborative Stories will work like a private hashtag so multiple people can add content but only those involved can see it. Read More
Facebook is cleaning up the redundancy in its Snapchat Stories clones. Today Facebook is killing off the Messenger Day brand and merging the chat app’s stories feature with Facebook Stories. Now, just called “Stories,” 24-hour ephemeral posts in either Facebook or Messenger will appear in both apps, and viewing will be synced, too. Read More
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote a new report about Apple’s plans for next year. According to him, the company is going to release three new iPhone devices next year. They’ll all have edge-to-edge displays with a notch. The successor of the iPhone X could be roughly the same size and shape. According to Kuo, this new iPhone would feature a 5.8-inch display with a density… Read More
A proposed tax that charges people as their startup equity vests instead of when they cash it out and actually have money to pay the taxes could wreck how tech companies recruit talent. And the industry doesn’t have much time to mobilize to get this tax changed. Read More
It takes courage to say you were wrong about almost everything. But that’s what Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel did this week, and that’s what it will take to save Snapchat. From algorithmic feeds to partnerships to target markets to recruiting adults, Snap is planning a 180-degree turn across the board. Read More
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) announced today that 36 members have agreed to a set of certification standards for Kubernetes, the immensely popular open source container orchestration tool. This should make it easy for users to move from one version to another without worry, while ensuring that containers under Kubernetes management will behave in a predictable way. The group of… Read More
Sometimes the simplest ideas make the biggest difference. Take SnapType, for example. Created by a husband and wife team – Ben and Amberlynn Slavin – this app lets kids take pictures of their homework and simply type in answers instead of having to hand-write them. Amberlynn, a pediatric occupational therapist, works with kids with ADHD, Autism, Down Syndrome, and dyslexia. Many… Read More
With Stitch Fix’s IPO on the horizon, Wall Street — and the rest of the tech industry — is going to be keeping a close eye on this next big consumer IPO as both a signal for the future of e-commerce startups like Stitch Fix and the consumer IPO market as a whole heading into the back half of the year. So one of the big metrics Wall Street and others will be focusing on is… Read More
HBO is launching an over-the-top subscription streaming service in parts of Central Europe, parent company Time Warner announced today. The move will allow viewers in Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to stream HBO programming – including its original series, documentaries, movies and more – alongside HBO Europe’s local content. The service will not require… Read More
Noted futurists like Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan got a lot of things right when they predicted things like genetic splicing, transatlantic communications, the Internet. But what these eggheads didn’t predict was the burgeoning market for metallic posters. That’s where the wizards at Displate got it right. Displate is a Polish company with almost $10 million in worldwide sales.… Read More
ESPN today announced it’s launching a short-form version of its SportsCenter show on Snapchat, which will kick off today at 5 PM ET. The show will then begin to release new episodes on a twice-daily basis, at 5 AM and 5 PM on weekdays and once, at 5 AM, on weekends. The launch will make SportsCenter the first-ever daily sports show on Snapchat’s platform. The move comes at a time… Read More
Heyday has raised $3 million in seed funding led by New York’s Lerer Hippeau Ventures. The company’s stated goal is to take facials “out of the spa” and make them more accessible to a wider range of customers. Founder and CEO Adam Ross’ background in finance might not make him the most obvious candidate to lead a skincare startup, but he said he first got to… Read More
Amazon is developing a free and ad-supported streaming video service, according to a new report out now from AdAge, citing people familiar with the plans. The company is said to be in discussion with various studio and TV networks to provide content for the service, which aims to give content creators their own channels where ad revenue would be shared with Amazon. This is not the first… Read More
