SpaceX has successfully launched a Falcon 9 to orbit during its BulgariaSat-1 mission Friday. The launch reused a first stage booster first employed during an Iridium Communications mission in January of this year, after that Falcon 9 first stage was recovered and refurbished. The mission on Friday was to delivery Bulgaria’s first ever geostationary communications satellite into orbit,… Read More
If you’re anything like me, you spend a significant portion of the day wondering about the paths viruses take when they’re cruising around your internals. Luckily for us, a newly developed microscope from Duke researchers can show the exact path taken by the little critters (?), down to the micrometer. Read More
Yesterday The Information reported on allegations made by half a dozen women working in the tech industry who say they have faced unwanted and inappropriate advances from Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Justin Caldbeck, co-founder and managing partner of Binary Capital. Read More
SpaceX is attempting to re-launch a Falcon 9 it used first in January, taking off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center with a two-hour launch window opening at 2:10 PM EDT today (UPDATE: The launch is now set for 3:10 PM EDT as SpaceX will be conducting additional ground checks). The mission, BulgariaSat-1, will attempt to deliver a geostationary orbital commercial comms satellite,… Read More
Here’s a promising metric for Amazon, in terms of its ability to maintain its current lead in the voice computing market: 42 percent of smart speaker owners have two or more devices, according to Edison Research. This figure is seemingly growing, too. Last year, there were about 1.18 Amazon Echo devices per Alexa household, but this new finding pushes the number to around 1.5 to 1.6… Read More
Samsung is preparing to launch its most expensive smartphone yet this September, VentureBeat reports. Notably, this launch timeline for the Galaxy Note8 places it in the path of when the new iPhones will likely be revealed. The phone will retail for €999 according to the report, a number which will likely translate to around $900 stateside considering past pricing differentials.… Read More
They say if you fold 1,000 origami cranes out of individual sheets of paper your deepest wishes will be granted. I tried it once – I was a lonely college kid – and I ended up with pink eye. However, a new paper out of MIT describes a way to possibly make 1,000 origami cranes out of one piece of paper, a unique feat that is now a possibility thanks to a new origami algorithm.… Read More
Here’s a surprise announcement from Google: It will stop scanning the inboxes of Gmail’s free users for ad personalization at some point later this year. Google already doesn’t do this for business users who subscribe to its G Suite services, but until now, it routinely scanned the inboxes of its free users to better target ads for them. It then combined that information… Read More
Until now, Posts on Google only allowed a small number of celebrities, sports teams, sports leagues, movie studios and museums to post social network-style updates about their activities right to Google’s search result pages. Using this, these organizations and individuals could post images, videos, GIFs and text and use that to drive traffic to their sites. Starting now, local… Read More
I’ve been following the multiple “easy” brewing systems available online for a while now and have never found one that truly spoke to me. Devices like the Minibrew seem great but price and shipping problems have always kept them out of my boozy little hands. So, rather than wait for the perfect automatic system, I decided to look at the Catalyst Fermentation System, a $199… Read More
Space tech company Satellogic has raised $27 million in a Series B round led by Chinese internet giant Tencent, and with participation by CrunchFund (disclosure: co-founded by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington). The company also launches its sixth micro-satellite into orbit on June 15, aboard a Long March-4B rocket that took off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. What Satellogic… Read More
On the heels of a major redesign of its desktop site which delivered an overall cleaner look-and-feel and a “dark mode” for nighttime watching, YouTube this week announced it will soon roll out an update to its mobile app, as well. The new app will better support video shot in other formats and orientations, by dynamically adapting its player to whatever video you’re… Read More
Nissan will be bringing its ProPILOT Assist ADAS features to the brand new Nissan LEAF, the redesigned version of its pioneering EV, which is still “coming soon” and mostly still a secret. We do, however, expect it to have around 200 miles of range on some models, which is more than double the current version. The ProPILOT features will provide semi-autonomous acceleration, braking… Read More
YouTube TV, Google’s $35 per month streaming service aimed at a younger demographic of cord cutters and cord-nevers, is expanding to ten more markets, the company announced this week at VidCon. The service had initially launched in April offering streaming live TV and DVR functionality to just five major metros: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. In just… Read More
Logitech has a long history of making keyboard accessories for iPad, and it has a new product out in time for the release of the latest iPad Pro 10.5 and 12.9 updates. The Slim Combo, which is available for either size device, includes a back cover case with an integrated Apple Pencil sleeve, and a keyboard that uses the iPad’s Smart Connector.
The two piece approach results in a slim… Read More
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a weekly podcast of high finance gossip and low GAAP intrigue. It’s TechCrunch’s show focused on all things venture capital. This week, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and I — Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Cyan Banister, a prolific investor on her own (Uber, Postmates, the list goes on), and partner at Founders Fund, a team with more… Read More
Super Mario Bros. is iconic, so it’s a natural target for augmented reality development, where everything nostalgic is new again. This demo, created by Abhishek Singh, really is amazing, however. Singh recreated the first level of Super Mario Bros. as an augmented reality game on Microsoft HoloLens, giving himself a first-person perspective into a unique 3D look inside the classic… Read More
IBM is working with the U.S. Air Force to improve its TrueNorth line of chips designed to optimize the performance of machine learning models at the hardware level. The new 64-chip array will consist of four boards, each with 16 chips. IBM’s chips are still too experimental to be used in mass production, but they’ve shown promise in running a special type of neural network… Read More
Word recently spread that Google had quietly launched a new fund for investing into AI companies. Now this fund has made its first (or at least its first public) investment, leading a $10.5 million Series A into Algorithmia, a marketplace and enterprise solution that allows developers to easily tap into its catalog of 3,500 algorithms, functions and machine-learning models. Read More
Razer has invested close to $20 million into Malaysia-based online payment firm MOL Global as part of a push to establish its virtual currency for gamers in Asia. The deal sees Razer subsidiary ZV-Midas buy equity from existing backers MOL Investment and Hotel Resort Enterprise in a deal that values the MOL Global business at around the $100 million mark. Gaming company Razer, which made… Read More
