MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has come up with a way to fill those few seconds of waiting everyone experiences while their social media apps load, or their phone connects to WiFi. It may not seem like much, but filling these gaps can can a significant aggregate effect, given how much time we spend on our devices. To fill this time with… Read More
Google has reached a settlement with Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) agency in the antitrust case the Russian search rival Yandex had originally filed, claiming Google had violated local competition rules. The case revolved around how Google had required handset makers to pre-load their devices with Google apps and services in order to also gain access the Google Play… Read More
Google has acquired a significant piece of land in Nevada, near Reno and Tesla’s Gigafactory site, which will house a future data center, and could also host a testing track for Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous driving company. The purchase of the 1,210 acres in Nevada’s Tahoe Reno Industrial Center was reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, and follows the filing of… Read More
A lot of top-tier video games enjoy lengthy long-tail lives with remasters and re-releases on different platforms, but the effort put into some games could pay dividends in a whole new way, as companies training things like autonomous cars, delivery drones and other robots are looking to rich, detailed virtual worlds to provided simulated training environments that mimic the real world.… Read More
Microsoft’s business-centric IFTTT competitor Flow and its ‘low-code’ PowerApps platform are both getting major updates today. While these are obviously different services that solve different issues, both aim to help non-developers make better use of their existing data and services without having to write their own code. While Flow, at its core, uses the… Read More
After a lackluster year for enterprise technology venture capital investments, 2017 kicked off with a record breaking quarter for enterprise technology startups. Following 4 straight quarters of decreasing investment, investors poured a record-breaking $5 billion dollars into enterprise technology startups in the first quarter of 2017 alone – a nearly 80% increase from the previous… Read More
Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate company focused on financial services, appears to have finally won its battle with Euronet to acquire MoneyGram, the U.S.-based cross-border payments service, after it increased its bid to $1.2 billion. Read More
Facebook has issued a statement after a video showing a fatal shooting was uploaded onto the social media network by the alleged murderer. Cleveland Police say that Steve Stephens broadcast the killing of an unidentified elderly man on Facebook on Sunday evening and is the target of a manhunt as of this writing. Read More
Richard Florida is most frequently associated with the concept of the rising creative class and his books have described how these high-paid knowledge workers are slowly changing the face of our cities. In his first book he foresaw the growth of high tech hubs in places like San Francisco and Pittsburgh and in his new book, The New Urban Crisis, he describes the dangers we face when… Read More
Whenever you watch a video, post a picture, or send a message, those bytes are analyzed and tallied by your internet provider. But what if some of those data-heavy services just didn’t count towards the cap? That’s what’s called “zero rating,” and while it sounds good in theory, it’s rather problematic in practice. How does it work, who does it, and why… Read More
Now, meal kit companies are facing an onslaught of competition from newcomers and big food brands alike. Turning a profit has proven elusive. And somewhat embarrassingly, it looks like meal kit companies need to emulate the brick-and-mortar groceries and online retailers they once criticized for overwhelming shoppers with choices. To go truly mainstream, they need to diversify their… Read More
Everything we do is terrible, says the trope. We’re oppressive. We’re exploitative. We’re sexist, racist, classist. We deify horrible frat-boy brogrammer assholes, while funding, and celebrating, morally bankrupt apps that exist to stand in for their mothers and/or servants. We destroy jobs and displace the working class. We cater to the rich and privileged urban elite, while… Read More
Altra’s Torin IQ were inevitable. Sensors integrated into articles of clothing have long been acknowledged to be the next step in wearable tech, and the Utah-based footwear maker just happened to beat most of its competition to the finish line with a pair of running shoes that bake tracking directly into the sole. But unlike the scads of smart clothing that’s almost certainly on… Read More
The battle isn’t over car sharing. It’s not over bus sharing, either, though that, too, is a growing focus for investors and automotive companies that are desperate to understand how cities and transportation are changing. This clash is over the latest wrinkle in urban bike-sharing – dockless bike sharing. And it has founders and VCs around the globe seeing dollar signs,… Read More
Microsoft researchers were working late into the hours the Friday before this holiday weekend looking to address yesterday’s Shadow Brokers dump of Windows exploits. In a message sent to TechCrunch overnight, the company said it has addressed the issue for systems running Windows 7 and later. “We’ve investigated and confirmed that the exploits disclosed by the Shadow Brokers… Read More
The European Union is in the process of reforming copyright laws that date back to 2001, as part of a wider strategy to establish a Digital Single Market across the 28 Member States of the bloc, aiming to break down regional barriers to ecommerce. Read More
For years we’ve been hearing about the promise of customer experience management, the notion that you can understand your customer at a highly detailed level and serve them the content, products, services and even ads that matter (or at least make sense) to them.
Today’s marketing software is bringing that idea closer to reality.
But technology is only part of the brand-consumer… Read More
Uber plans to close its UberRush courier service to restaurant deliveries, according to a report in Quartz. Instead, restaurants will be encouraged to use UberEats, the company’s food delivery service, instead. Read More
The Last Jedi Star Wars trailer is released, Facebook runs ads in French newspapers educating people on fake news and Apple gets permission from the DMV to start testing self-driving cars. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
If you have 20 minutes to spare before you begin your weekend — or after, for that matter — you might enjoy this short film about a small team of content moderators in India. Thousands of such people make sure you don’t come across gore and porn while on social or dating sites, so the least you can do is see what their job is like! Read More
