TechCrunch

 A few months after Jeffrey Siminoff left his position as VP of diversity and inclusion at Twitter, the company has brought on Candi Castleberry Singleton to lead Twitter’s diversity efforts. Read More

 Ransomware attacks are bigger than ever, but the payouts appear to be shrinking. While the ransomware suspected to be a variant of Petya makes headlines around the world, whoever set it loose isn’t really making a whole lot of money, especially if they paid for the software to begin with. Read More

 Last month, a team of MIT engineers launched Jungle Hawk Owl from the back of a compact car. It was the first flight for the 24-foot-wide drone, which the team believes is capable of staying in the air for five days on a single tank of gas. The craft was designed to address a challenge posed by the U.S. Air Force. Read More

 Dating apps are, in their own way, a form of social networking – especially as they expand into new areas like friend-finding or professional networking. So it only makes sense that they would adopt video as well, given the growing popularity of the format on social apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, as well as the industry’s larger embrace of “Stories” as a… Read More

 Keith Horwood wants to be known in tech circles as an agent for good, and he seems to be working toward that end with StdLib, his roughly two-year-old startup that abstracts away infrastructure using “serverless” architecture, allowing developers to write everything from simple functions to complex business logic, then deploy their code as scalable, fully­ documented web APIs. Read More

 Token’s ring uses a combination of fingerprinting and an optical proximity sensor to ensure that a user’s credentials can’t be accessed by a third party. Using an app, Tokenites can pair the ring and their biometric information with anything from their credit cards to their car keys. Read More

 Thirteen years after launching and less than five years after hitting 1 billion, Facebook now has 2 billion monthly active users. If getting to 1 billion was about building a product, and getting to 2 billion was about building a user base, Facebook’s responsibility is to build empathy between us at it reaches for 3 billion. Read More

 A month after the WannaCry ransomware attack paralyzed connected systems worldwide, a new threat appears to be spreading quickly. As reports emerge, today’s attack paints a picture of businesses and governments around the world held hostage by a second major wave of ransomware. Read More

 Target announced this morning it’s opening to consumers a new, next-day home-delivery service called Target Restock. The company said in May the service was live and being tested with company employees ahead of a consumer-facing pilot program that was due to arrive sometime this summer. The service is initially available to Minneapolis-area customers. Read More

 Following its Verizon acquisition, Yahoo today is rolling out a revamped and rebuilt Mail application for its 225 million monthly active users. The update includes a new design, feature set, and technology stack, as well as a new subscription plan for desktop and mobile called Yahoo Mail Pro. The news is part of several changes ahead for Yahoo, under its new corporate parent  – Oath,… Read More

 Sometimes I see something that makes me wish we’d never evolved our technological graphics capabilities beyond where they were at in the 1980s. This shot-by-shot remake of the Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer is such a thing. Created by Twitter user Wahyu Ichwandardi, this was created using a vintage Apple IIc computer from 1984, using Dazzle Draw, a bitmap paint program from the same year. Read More

 Acquired.io launches today with a funding round of $2M. Founded by the team behind AppScotch (acquired by App Annie), they claim to be taking the grunt work out of user acquisition. It allows publishers to manage user acquisition channels from a single place and also help them discover new ones. The investors include Jonathan Zweig, founder of AdColony (acquired by Opera), and John… Read More

 Following rumblings of a shakeup over the weekend, Pandora confirmed today that co-founder Tim Westergren is stepping down from his role as CEO. Naveen Chopra, who stepped in as the company’s CFO back in February, will be filling in the top spot as interim CEO while the board of directors looks for a permanent replacement. Read More

 When you hear about companies raising tons of money for “smart glass,” the first thing that hits your mind might be something augmented reality-related like the HoloLens. But View, which just closed a $200 million funding round, is using smart glass to make better windows that adjust to the outdoor environment. Read More

 JASK is emerging from stealth today with $12 million in the bank and a machine learning technology that automates network monitoring and management for overtaxed security teams. The thesis behind JASK’s service is the somewhat depressing (and frightening) thought that these days there aren’t enough security experts to meet the demands of running a modern business. Read More

 Facebook M, the company’s AI-powered assistant that lives inside Messenger, was launched widely back in April, giving suggestions to users based on the context of their conversations. Today, M is getting a bit smarter and more socially capable. Read More

 The global app economy will be worth $6.3 trillion by 2021, up from $1.3 trillion last year, according to a new report this morning from app analytics firm App Annie. During that same time frame, the user base will almost double from 3.4 billion people using apps to 6.3 billion, while the time spent in apps will grow to 3.5 trillion hours in 2021, up from 1.6 trillion in 2016. These figures… Read More

 Whale, the Q&A app backed by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, has gotten a major update and refreshed design that makes it easier to discover video content on the service. The iOS-only app launched in October 2016, pivoting from a music app after Kan was inspired by Chinese Q&A service Fenda. The goal was to enable users to ask questions or get advice from subject matter experts, such… Read More

 People already rent housing and lease cars, why not rent the furniture, as well? Read More

 If none of what’s in the above headline makes sense, you probably haven’t been following the biohacking trend for the last couple of years. But Silicon Valley is brimming with tech execs trying to become faster, stronger and smarter by “hacking” their genetic code through various experimental methods called biohacks. Read More