More tough news for GoPro as it pre-announced its first-quarter earnings earlier today. While the company announced that revenue for the first part of 2017 will hit toward the high end of guidance, the positivity was tempered by its plans to cut 270 more jobs. That number that comes in addition to the 100 it announced in January 2016 and 200 back in November, amounting to seven- and 15-percent… Read More
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and California Representative Ted Lieu are pressing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on a mobile network vulnerability that they consider to be a systemic digital threat. Read More
When someone invents a robot specifically made to drill into the skulls of unconscious, immobile humans, you’d be forgiven for feeling a natural reaction along the lines of “for the love of God, why?” But trust me, this particular robotic trepanation station is a good idea. Read More
Photos apparently stolen from Emma Watson, Amanda Seyfried and other female celebrities have been posted on 4Chan and Reddit, drawing comparisons to a 2014 hack, grossly dubbed “The Fappening” that exposed nude photos and video of several celebrities. Read More
Big news, folks! Today, TechCrunch is announcing a new series of events: Sessions. These events will dive deep on a single topic, bringing together experts in the field and those interested in the theme to discuss what matters. Obviously, this is going to be huge! These events will be single-day affairs with limited seating. Some will have intimate discussions with audience participation.… Read More
Simon Vallee is exactly the kind of person who venture capitalists like to keep on their radar. He’s Canadian, for one thing. (Everyone knows how nice Canadians are.) He has also co-founded — and sold — a number of small companies over the last decade. First, there was SiteMasher, a site-creation platform that was purchased a couple of years later, in 2009, to Saleforce… Read More
Lending platform Credy is looking to change the way people gain access to personal loans in India. The company, which is currently a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2017 batch, is digitizing the process and improving access to capital for residents by opening up peer-to-peer loans to a wider group of borrowers and lenders. Read More
One of the hackers alleged to be responsible for a 2014 hack of Yahoo that affected half a billion users also manipulated search results in his favor to make some money on the side, according to the indictment filed today by the Justice Department. Read More
This week on Bullish, I sat down with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu to talk about the future of on-demand food delivery. In January, DoorDash teamed up with Starship Technologies to test food delivery via robots. On this episode of Bullish, Xu and I discussed the evolution of the on-demand space, challenges to profitability, predictions for the future and autonomous delivery. Read More
Wi-Fi, DSRC, Bluetooth, NFC — there are so many ways to connect without cables that ethernet seems retro, like a flip phone. But ethernet is staging a comeback in our cars. Manufacturers are using this old-school technology to connect the sensors that allow for advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) and baby steps toward self-driving cars. Read More
The chips in our devices are powered by transistors and circuits so small they can barely be detected by our most advanced imaging techniques. How chip makers manage to do quality control when they can’t even see what they’re working on is a really good question. Read More
A startup called LimeBike has raised $12 million in venture funding to make Chinese-style bike sharing mainstream in the U.S. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, joined by IDG Ventures, DCM Ventures and other investors who declined to be named. Read More
The Snapchatification of everything has resulted in backlash for WhatsApp, prompting it to revive its text Status option while keeping its image-based replacement. The move shows how social apps must quickly react to feedback if they make a false step in modernizing to adapt to visual communication. In mid-February, WhatsApp removed the feature that let you set an away message, and then gave… Read More
The U.S. Department of Justice has confirmed earlier reports and accused two Russian FSB officers and two criminal hackers of being behind the hacking of at least 500 million Yahoo accounts. Read More
500 Startups is increasing its commitment to global investing with a new Latin America fund, targeting $10 million, going by the name of Luchadores II, the Spanish word for wrestlers. The fund is 500’s second aimed at the region and one of a growing number of its seed investment vehicles targeted at underserved markets across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Read More
Check your kid’s phone for this app, ASAP: Wishbone. This popular quiz app for kids, tweens and teens has been hacked, according to a report from Motherboard out this morning. The hack involved 2.2 million email addresses, as well as 287,000 phone numbers, many of which are from kids under the age of 18. Read More
Biomatics Capital Partners, a new healthcare and life sciences venture firm, has closed its debut fund with $200 million, it’s announcing this morning. This new effort is particularly interesting given its two founders and managing directors: Boris Nikolic and Julie Sunderland. Read More
Airbnb, Lyft and 56 other tech companies filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief this morning seeking to block President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban from going into effect tomorrow. Read More
McDonald’s began testing mobile ordering and payments on Wednesday in select U.S. markets — the first to receive the technology as part of a pilot test aimed at working out the kinks ahead of a full rollout across the U.S. and to other international markets by year’s end. Read More
So much for super-private, high-end phones for the super-rich? Sirin Labs, the startup that makes the Solarin, an Android-based smartphone released last May with a $14,000 price tag and promise of extreme security for its owner, is laying off one-third, or 30, of its staff after seeing just $10 million in sales since launch. The startup is now weighing up a pivot of the business to… Read More
