In a talk at the ISS R&D conference on Wednesday, Elon Musk shared some more insight into SpaceX’s path to fast and full rocket reusability. The company hopes to achieve its 24-hour turnaround window for used Falcon 9 rockets sometime next year, he said, and there is already “a technical path in place to achieving that.” Some of its reuse efforts aren’t… Read More
One-third of all link clicks on Facebook already go to its self-hosted Instant Articles. Facebook claims they drive more referral traffic click-for-click because people don’t abandon them mid-click as they do with slow-loading mobile websites. Now Facebook is teaming up with Nielsen to prove that individual publishers benefit when they post with the Instant Articles format. Read More
Elon Musk made headlines over the weekend with comments calling for government controls around artificial intelligence, which he has said repeatedly he believes is an existential threat to humanity if left unchecked. Musk was at the International Space Station R&D conference today, and during a fireside chat explained more about his views on the matter in response to an audience member… Read More
NerdWallet, a personal finance company, laid off six people from its marketing team this week, TechCrunch learned and has since confirmed with NerdWallet. This latest round of layoffs means NerdWallet has cut nine percent of its workforce this year. Read More
We’re pleased to report that a so-called Roomba for weeds, Franklin Robotics’ Tertill, won the TC Sessions: Robotics pitch-off. Because if there’s a task that should be relegated to a robot, it’s weeding a garden. For winning the pitch-off, Franklin Robotics was awarded an exhibit table in Disrupt SF’s Startup Alley. “We actually tried to get away from… Read More
Hulu today announced a sizable content deal with 20th Century Fox Television Distribution that will allow Hulu to add nearly 3,000 more episodes of popular TV shows, including dramas and comedies, to Hulu’s streaming service. The deal will give Hulu the streaming rights to several well-known titles, such as “How I Met Your Mother,” “Burn Notice,”… Read More
It’s like Facebook without all those annoying “friends.” Instead of having to look at what weird things other people are interested in, like their babies, Google shows me the weird things I’m interested in, like Legend of Zelda and Elon Musk. It’s a fundamental shift in content consumption, and it could unlock our niche fascinations without us ever having to… Read More
You’re a bored former finance guy who decides one day to strap on some micro-jet engines and see if you can become Iron Man. Hey it happens all the time. Or maybe not. But that’s what British entrepreneur Richard Browning decided to do and just this year found himself demoing his ‘flight suit’ to venture capitalist Tim Draper in the parking lot of Boost VC. Moments… Read More
Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling, which allows private citizens in the region to make requests that search engines delist incorrect, irrelevant or out of date information returned by an online search for their full name, is set to return to the region’s top court to settle an ongoing dispute between Google and the French data protection agency, CNIL. Read More
Earlier this week, at the campus of MIT, TechCrunch had the chance to sit down with famed roboticist Rodney Brooks, the founding director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and the cofounder of both iRobot and Rethink Robotics. Brooks had a lot to say about AI, including his overarching concern that many people — including renowned AI alarmist Elon Musk… Read More
Big data analytics continues to be a key driver in how organisations utilise their vast quantities of information to run their businesses, and now a startup that has built a big data platform specifically focusing on data from the public sector has raised a round of funding.
LiveStories, a Seattle-based company that works with governments, education institutions and other public entities to… Read More
Amazon’s Treasure Truck, the retailer’s deal programs that offers discounts on select items paid for online then picked up in person from an actual truck, is expanding across the U.S. First announced back in 2015 in Seattle, then rolled out the following year, Treasure Truck initially appeared to be some sort of one-off marketing experiment, but its recently granted patent and… Read More
The gig economy, as we know, is big and just getting bigger. But companies like Uber and Deliveroo have a huge problem and it’s called insurance. How do you insure all these workers and how do the workers cover themselves in the gig economy? Step in Zego. This London startup has just raised just over £1 million in seed funding from investors, including LocalGlobe, with FTSE 100… Read More
You may know Jeremy Bloom from his days as an Olympian on the U.S. ski team or from when he was a professional football player. These days, he’s busy running an enterprise software startup for marketers. With clients like Salesforce and Dell, Phoenix-based Integrate has raised $8 million in funding from Iron Gate Capital and existing investors. Read More
The UK’s upper house of parliament is asking for contributions to an enquiry into the socioeconomic and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence technology. Among the questions the House of Lords committee will consider are how can the data-based monopolies of some large corporations, and the ‘winner-takes-all’ economics associated with them, be addressed? Read More
Amazon is today introducing a new feature called Amazon Pay Places, that allows customers to pay for in-store and order ahead shopping experiences using their Amazon app. That is, instead of using cash, check, credit or debit while shopping out in the real world, you can just use your Amazon account information. The first implementation of Pay Places involves a partnership with the TGI… Read More
TC Sessions: Robotics featured robots for as far as the eye could see, and several took the stage for special demonstrations. We were honored to play host as these innovative companies and teams showed off their latest creations. The videos are below are well worth your time.
The latest version of MIT’s Cheetah robot made its stage debut at TC Sessions: Robotics. It’s a familiar… Read More
Apple just launched a blog focused on machine learning research papers and sharing the company’s findings. The Apple Machine Learning Journal is a bit empty right now as the company only shared one post about turning synthetic images into realistic ones in order to train neural networks. This move is interesting as Apple doesn’t usually talk about their research projects. The… Read More
NBC News is bringing news broadcasts to Snapchat, the company announced today, with the launch of a twice-daily headline news show it’s calling “Stay Tuned.” The show aims to connect with younger viewers who no longer get their news from traditional television, nor connect with a trusted anchor during a nightly broadcast as generations before them. Read More
Clara Labs is announcing a $7 million Series A led by Basis Set Ventures. Slack Fund also joined in the round, alongside existing investors Sequoia and First Round. The startup will be looking to further differentiate within the crowded field of email-centric personal assistants by building in features and integrations to address the needs of enterprise teams. Read More
