TechCrunch

 The future of food is going to get weird. Read More

 Uber’s past six months have been tumultuous, with lawsuits and allegations of harassment. The company doesn’t even have a CEO right now, but newly released financials suggest that most users don’t care. First reported by Axios, Uber has confirmed to us that Uber’s $8.7 billion in gross bookings were up 17 percent in the second quarter. Global trips increased 150… Read More

Commuting in a busy city like San Francisco can be annoying — between all the cars, bikes, Boosted Boards and other electric gizmos zipping and weaving through lanes. The Ojo Electric scooter, while it might help with your personal traffic woes, won’t do much to help reduce the overall annoyance commuters experience. Read More

 “How much money does it take to get a startup off the ground?” Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are faced with this question all the time, and the only right answer — it depends — is also the least satisfying. For any particular startup to succeed, it might take a lot of outside funding or very little. It’s contingent on the business a team is trying to build. Read More

 The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is allowing Amazon to move forward in the process of purchasing Whole Foods. The $13.7 billion acquisition, which was announced in June, combines the e-commerce behemoth with a major grocery chain. The FTC has since been investigating whether the tie-up would decrease competition, ultimately deciding it needn’t pursue the matter further. Read More

 Remember Valerie Plame Wilson? The former CIA agent, who got involved in what became known as the “Plame Affair,” has a solution for ridding Twitter of America’s favorite troll. Wilson launched a fundraiser last week to buy the social media service. Read More

 Amazon Business, the retailer’s free program for business customers offering fast shipping, discounts and purchase approvals, is now expanding to include grocery delivery from AmazonFresh. That means businesses can stock their employee break rooms with fresh goods, like produce, plus groceries and other items from local stores. Read More

 In our perambulations through the halls of museums, who hasn’t wanted to give paintings we pass by a little touch-up in a spontaneous act of yellowism? Disney has created an augmented reality app to allow just this, but given the company’s core competencies I can’t help but wonder if the museum use case is just a smokescreen for another: the smartification of millions of… Read More

 Day 2 of YC S’17 brought us autonomous store checkout, cannabis genomics and at-home fertility testing. We whittled down the strong day of pitches to just seven hot companies. These are the startups our writers and the investors we spoke with were most excited about. Read More

 How the bugs in our gut and elsewhere on our body affect our overall health still remains largely a mystery. But IBM is hoping to shed some light on the human microbiome and its role in autoimmune diseases using crowdsourced supercomputers through its World Community Grid. IBM has partnered up with the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of… Read More

 Roku isn’t only maintaining its lead as the top streaming media player device in the U.S., it’s increasing it. That’s the conclusion from the latest industry report out today from market intelligence firm Parks Associates, which states that 37 percent of streaming devices in U.S. households are Roku devices, as of the first quarter of this year. That’s up from 30 percent… Read More

 VIPKID, an online English teaching tool, announced today that it has raised $200 million in financing. That financing round values the company at $1.5 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg. That wouldn’t just give VIPKID unicorn status — it also exposes a huge amount of demand there is in China and other countries as a tool to learn English from English speakers. VIPKID… Read More

 At about 9pm on Tuesday, August 22 a hacker swapped his or her own SIM card with mine, presumably by calling T-Mobile. This, in turn, shut off network services to my phone and, moments later, allowed the hacker to change most of my Gmail passwords, my Facebook password, and text on my behalf. All of the two-factor notifications went, by default, to my phone number so I received none of them and… Read More

 Today, Samsung showed off its flagship Note 8, the device has a big, beautiful screen, the S Pen and a battery that’s a little bit smaller. The company also announced that there’s a new $130 Gear VR on the way that you’ll have to buy if you want to try Samsung’s brand of VR on the Note 8. What’s new over past models? Not much. Samsung has made several upgrades to… Read More

 SpaceX’s new spacesuit design got photographed for the first time today, and it’s a high-fashion option for extra-atmospheric wear. But SpaceX’s suit isn’t the only option for galactic explorers – a lot of new options have been debuted recently, fueled in part by the glut of interest in commercial crewed spaceflight. Not all spacesuits are created equal, or with… Read More

 Most people are overpaying for car or home insurance, but many don’t know by how much or even how to compare different plans or carriers. That’s where Gabi comes in. The startup, which has raised $2.6 million in funding, wants to help users find the best, least expensive home and car insurance plans. Read More

 It’s promotion season at Uber, as detailed in my post about Uber’s new approach to performance reviews. As part of this round of reviews, several people have received promotions to vice president levels, including U.S. and Canada Regional General Manager Rachel Holt, EMEA head Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, and Asia Pacific and Latin America Regional Manager Andrew… Read More

 Alright, would-be Disrupt attendees. We gave you an extra week to save $1,000 on Disrupt SF 2017 tickets, but this week we aren’t feeling so generous. You now have just three days left to get an early-bird ticket for $1,995 before prices jump to $2,995 after Friday. Seriously, no more extensions. This is it. This is your only chance. Get your tickets now. Read More

 Mark down September 12 in your calendar as Apple could be unveiling the next iPhone at 9 AM on that day. Mac4Ever wrote a report saying that it confirmed with telecom companies that Apple should hold a press event on September 12. This wouldn’t be a big surprise as Apple has been announcing new iPhones every September since 2012. Apple also always holds press conferences on Tuesday for… Read More

 Ollie, a two-year-old, New York-based subscription service that sells what it calls human-grade pet food, has raised $12.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Canaan Partners, with participation from WME Ventures, Rosecliff Ventures, RiverPark Funds, Correlation Ventures and earlier backers Primary Venture Partners and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. It brings the company’s… Read More