Penguin’s business-focused imprint Portfolio plans to publish a book recounting the legal dispute between Gawker Media and wrestler Hulk Hogan (whose real name is Terry Bolea). The currently untitled book was acquired by Portfolio’s Niki Papadopoulos for what the publisher said is a “significant” sum. It’s scheduled for release this winter. Read More
Recent reports have indicated that AT&T’s new streaming service, DirecTV Now, may be seeing slowing growth. But don’t count it out just yet. This week, AT&T announced it’s expanding its distribution strategy for the service by bundling in with the wireless carrier’s Unlimited Choice plan for only $10 more per month. The move is largely meant to entice customers… Read More
Perhaps you’d like to visit an out of the way restaurant or smoke a unique cigar. Perhaps you’d like to take part in native dances or infiltrate a foreign government at a classy cocktail party. ViaHero, a new app that lets locals help plan your trips abroad, can help. The founders, Greg Buzulencia and Ben Preston, have raised $210,000 from investors and Pittsburgh’s… Read More
So far, 2017 is shaping up to be a pretty good year for technology unicorns. Private investors are minting about one new unicorn a week this year, roughly the same pace as 2016. More existing unicorns are going public. And for those remaining private, capital continues to flow in while disclosed valuations are mostly holding up. Read More
People can disagree about the scientific premise behind climate change, but it’s an inescapable fact that the world is driving ahead to replace carbon energy with clean energy anyway. That makes advanced energy technologies one of the biggest business opportunities of the next couple of decades. The companies and nations that take the lead will become the next economic superpowers. Read More
On YouTube, you have to either know what it is you watch to watch and seek it out, or you can click through the site’s suggestions of popular or trending content. A startup called Rheo, founded by ex-Apple product veterans, has a different take on video discovery. Instead of browsing by genre, publisher or chart position, viewers can browse by mood. That is, you can seek out videos to… Read More
Google Home is now available to pre-order for Canadians. Google had announced at I/O this year that it would be coming to the country this summer, but now the smart home speaker with Google Assistant built-in is available on Google’s own online store, as well as at retail partners including Best Buy. In Canada, Google Home is selling for $179.00 CDN, which is actually pretty much in… Read More
Alphabet-owned Waymo, the autonomous driving technology that began life as Google’s self-driving car project, is evaluating a move into self-driving trucking. The company told BuzzFeed that it’s currently conducting a “technical exploration” of how its “technology can integrate into a truck,” a test which involves use of a single truck, being driven only… Read More
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s premier venture capital-focused podcast. This week the News Gods disbursed unto the crew a juicy morsel: Blue Apron filed to go public minutes before we sat down to chew over what’s been happening. As you can imagine, it took up a chunk of our time. But no episode of Equity is complete without our own Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley,… Read More
Fine timepieces are usually staid affairs. A little gold here, some enamel here, and a nice movement are enough to please some of us but it’s clear that a minority need hand-cut crystal domes, scurrying aliens, and enough luminous material to make a deep-sea angler fish jealous. The new MB&F HM6 is a version of Max Busser’s popular Horological Machine series but features a… Read More
For parents today, a company called Greenlight is offering a smart debit card that can be given to their kids, instantly reloaded with funds from a mobile app, and place restrictions around merchants their children can make purchases. Read More
Important news for Switch owners, Nintendo has spoken up to confirm a number of details around the online service for its new console.
Online is an essential component to gaming these days, and the Switch service will grant subscribers access to a library of classic games as well as unlocking the option to play with friends online, set up game appointments and chat. The second half of the… Read More
LG announced plans for its own mobile payment service way back in November 2015, and today it finally went official with the launch.
The LG Pay service is initially limited to the G6, LG’s flagship smartphone, via a software update, but it is only available in Korea. There is launch support for cards from Shinhan Bank, KB, BC and Lotte, and LG plans to cover all of Korea’s card… Read More
‘House Of Cards’ is back streaming on Netflix with its fifth series, but another Netflix Original created around the same time as the political blockbuster is being put out to pasture. ‘Sense8,’ which the streaming company announced with much fanfare in 2013, is not returning to the service after two seasons.
The title was the first TV production for the… Read More
Snap’s Spectacles are going on a summer tour across Europe. Starting today, anyone in Europe can buy a pair of sunglasses on Snap’s website or in a vending machine. With this launch, Spectacles are available outside of the U.S. for the first time. European Spectacles are exactly the same as the ones that launched in September 2016 in the U.S. While the excitement around Spectacles… Read More
Following a backlash around brand advertising on controversial content, YouTube is making a move to clean up which videos are part of its ad network.
The Google-owned has updated the guidelines that govern which YouTube videos can run ads to prevent previous mismatches and assuage both its community of video makers and advertisers. High-profile YouTubers were up in arms last year after the… Read More
High Times magazine sells 60 percent of company, Skype gets a complete revamp, Apple has paid $70 billion to developers and Walmart’s fix for last-mile delivery. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Donald Trump took to the White House Rose Gardens this afternoon to announce his plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, and reactions from the leaders of some of the world’s biggest companies have been pouring in since. Within hours, Tesla CEO Elon Musk followed up on his promise to depart the president’s advisory team if we withdrew. Shortly thereafter,… Read More
OneLogin, a major access management service (think corporate-level password manager) alerted its users yesterday of “unauthorized access” to the data of its US-based users. That kind of thing isn’t always serious… but it turns out this one sure was. An update posted today reveals the hacker may have had very deep access indeed. Read More
The U.S. is buttressing its paperwork walls with new requirements for social media disclosures as part of revised visa applications. Reported by Reuters earlier today, the decision from the U.S. government’s Office of Management and Budget was made over strenuous objections from education and academic groups during a public comment period. The new questionnaire will ask for social… Read More
