A bitcoin transaction wastes as much electricity as it takes to power an American home for a week, and legendary coder Bram Cohen wants to fix that. Cohen has started a new company called Chia Network that will launch a cryptocurrency based on proofs of time and storage rather than bitcoin’s electricity-burning proofs of work. Read More
DST Global, the investment firm led by Yuri Milner, has sent a letter to its limited partners blasting media outlets for “insinuations” that it used its holdings in Twitter and Facebook as anything other than financial investments, after it was revealed that the Russian government was indirectly an investor in DST Global. The letter, provided to TechCrunch by a source, comes in… Read More
TechCrunch’s Disrupt SF is the pride of TechCrunch’s event line-up, and last September the event reached new heights, including 5,000 attendees, 1,220 investor-founder meetings, 500 exhibiting startups, and millions tuning in online. Most importantly, early-stage founders and investors gave Disrupt great reviews on our reason for being: helping startups excel. There’s just… Read More
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals that was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion, is today rolling out the latest product in its deepening relationship with its owner. The two are unveiling Resume Assistant, a resume builder in Microsoft Word that will be powered by data from LinkedIn — letting you import information about yourself and the companies that you have worked… Read More
Twitter unveiled in its Q3 earnings report that it had been testing a new, self-serve advertising subscription aimed at small businesses. That service, known as Twitter Promote Mode, is officially launching today with the goal of letting small businesses and personal brands more easily run ad campaigns on Twitter’s platform by automating them, for the price of $99 per month. As… Read More
There’s little that’s more annoying than clicking on what you think is a video and finding out it was actually an image with a link to a dubious site. Or what about those links that take you to your destination in a new window but then navigate your original site to some ad for male enhancement pills? With Chrome 65, in pre-release channels today, Google plans to fix these issues. Read More
In a security hearing that called both Equifax and Yahoo’s past and present executives to Washington, D.C., we’re learning a bit more about what Yahoo didn’t know about the biggest hack in history. When pressed about how Yahoo failed to recognize that 3 billion accounts were compromised, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer admitted that the specifics of the attack still remain… Read More
Apple has updated its App Store support page with new metrics. As of November 6, 2017, iOS 11 is now installed on 52 percent of iPhones and iPads currently in use. 38 percent of devices still run iOS 10, and only 10 percent of people are using an earlier version of iOS. Apple usually updates this page quite quickly after the release of a major iOS update. This year, the company waited a bit as… Read More
Lyft is giving around 1 percent of its riders access to a different, beta user experience in its mobile app, starting today. The new look for passengers offers the same essential functionality, but is definitely a departure in terms of how the interface works for riders. Lyft says via a spokesperson that the new look and feel is “an exercise to learn more about our users” but… Read More
Are you a student on a limited budget but still want to check out the best startup show in Berlin? We’ve got you covered. For a limited time, current undergraduate and graduate students can get deeply discounted student tickets to Disrupt Berlin 2017. Read More
Computers have changed cars at least as much as they’ve changed our daily lives, but a new partnership between Google and Volkswagen could transform transportation further still: The two are collaborating on how to apply quantum computing to solving some fundamental car-related problems, including optimizing traffic flow, making machine learning more intelligent, and helping to crack… Read More
Back in April the Netherlands-based Rockstart bootcamp announced it was adding an AI track. It’s now named the first batch of startups in the inaugural six-month program, with teams hailing from as far afield as India, Singapore, South Africa and the US. Read More
Niantic Labs had tremendous success with Pokémon Go, which paired their expertise in building location-based augmented reality mobile experiences with a top-flight IP with a ravenous fan base. So, it stands to reason that we should expect a similar fan response to Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, an AR title set to launch in 2018, co-developed by Warner Bros. Interactive and its new sub brand… Read More
The latest company to emerge from startup accelerator Expa Labs is focused on helping online marketplaces make money from advertising. Promote founder and CEO Siddharth Vora used to lead the engineering team for advertising products at StumbleUpon. (StumbleUpon’s founder Garrett Camp went on to start Expa, which runs Expa Labs.) Vora said he became convinced that with their user data… Read More
Adoption of voice-powered smart speakers is taking off. According to a new report from Juniper Research out this morning, smart devices like the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Sonos One will be installed in a majority – that is, 55 percent – of U.S. households by the year 2022. By that time, over 70 million households will have at least one of these smart speakers in their home, and… Read More
What if a mystery TV series let you decide to follow one character’s story to the end, or jump between characters as the action unfolds? That’s the idea behind Mosaic, a 3-year, $20 million project by the acclaimed director of Traffic and Ocean’s 11, Steven Soderbergh. Today, HBO launches the Mosaic app for iOS and Apple TV that allows viewers to decide the viewing order of… Read More
For folks who have played Call of Duty since the beginning, this is a welcome return to the game they fell in love with. Soldiers appear more human, instead of looking like some futuristic, cyber-mutant Marine. And because the soldiers’ physical ability is limited — they can’t sprint too long before tiring or jump more than a few feet — strategy is now a priority. For… Read More
Instagram is turning on a feature that many users have asked for, letting users add photos and videos from their camera roll – even if they’re older than 24 hours. The limitation in place previously seemed designed to encourage Stories to be more of a repository for spur of the moment sharing (as well as a more accurate copy of the original Snapchat product), but Instagram seems to… Read More
Coffee Meets Bagel, the dating app that serves up a small number of targeted matches each day, has today introduced a new video feature to help users connect right on the app. “We learned that people don’t really feel a connection to each other until they meet, which makes any dating app feel like a lot of work,” said cofounder and COO Dawoon Kang. “We wanted to figure… Read More
Yotpo, a platform that lets companies gather content from their customers in the form of reviews, Q&As, photos and videos, mainly for use in marketing, has closed $51 million in Series D funding. Read More
