Michel Morvan is the CEO of The CoSMo Company, a big data service provider and insight generator. He knows how to use AI to help C-level execs make decisions and he thinks the current crop of AI is just the beginning. Morvan doesn’t believe AI will become “self-aware.” Instead he speaks of “augmented intelligence,” robots that help us think better and make… Read More
First responders found a body floating in a hot tub. The home’s resident, James Andrew Bates, told authorities he’d found the body of Victor Collins dead that morning. He’d gone to bed at 1 AM, while Collins and another friend stayed up drinking. Authorities subpoenaed Amazon over the case — they hoped Bates’s Echo might hold some insights into what happened the… Read More
Four former reporters and entrepreneurs are attempting to fix India’s “broken” business media landscape and simultaneously prove that there’s an audience — and business — for paying for quality journalism in the country. Subscription-based media is thriving in the West. The New York Times has seen its digital subscription base swell following the… Read More
Jennifer Doudna, co-inventor of CRISPR Cas9 technology, or the ability to program genes using a special enzyme, spoke about the promises of this technology on stage at SXSW this afternoon. In a keynote today, Doudna noted that while this technology is very young (less than five years old), “it’s been deployed very rapidly for existing applications,” she said. For example,… Read More
Passing by the glittering, luxury cars, with models draped elegantly over the hoods, you might get the impression that you were witnessing the height of power for the automotive industry. Not only has the internal combustion engine reached dizzying heights of refinement, but the plethora of electric, hybrid and fuel cell engines could leave you wondering if anything more need ever be… Read More
Completing almost 8 years at Facebook, Director of Product Management Peter Martinazzi has left the company. His last product, Messenger Day, shipped on Thursday. A Facebook “OG”, Martinazzi was well-liked and respected at the company. He worked with the growth team in some of Facebook’s breakout years before the IPO, and ran all of Messenger product during its modernizing… Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Michael Arrington, Keith Teare, John Taschek, Frank Radice, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, March 10, 2017. The Gang blends fake tech news with real media disruption and machine learning-aided AI. Plus the latest G3 with Denise Howell, Francine Hardaway, Mary Hodder, and Tina Chase Gillmor.
@stevegillmor, @arrington, @jtaschek, @kteare, @fradice
Prod/Dir… Read More
Bolt Threads creates a tie made from spiderwebs, Oculus’ CTO is suing ZeniMax for money never paid to him and Google has a new startup competition. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
The newest Zelda game, Breath Of The Wild, is — and I say this without any attempt at being hyperbolic — an instant masterpiece. I won’t go so far as to call it the best game of all time — but if such a title can exist objectively, this one is certainly in the ring. It’s rare to see something like this thrust into the world and have it so quickly and widely… Read More
The SEC just issued their ruling on the Winkelevoss bitcoin ETF, and it wasn’t good news for enthusiasts of the digital currency. Regulators rejected the proposed application, mainly because of the lack of regulation currently surrounding bitcoin. Read More
It’s hard to get too worked up about unequal voting rights, which are seen by public market investors as giving founders too much control, while viewed by founders as necessary to protect their companies from short-term shareholders. The reality is that only a minority of companies can command these terms, most famously Google, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and now Snap. The majority of… Read More
In its quest to embrace a virtual world, Oculus has had to spend a lot of time navigating the legal world. Today, they seemed to have caught a good break. A lawsuit filed against Oculus by Total Recall Technologies (TRT) was dismissed by a northern California court. Read More
And a bar called SPiN, where photos of them playing ping-pong have the tech media in a great mood this Friday morning. The reason? At the same time as Houston’s ping pong birthday fun, SPiN was also holding a (wait for it… it’s totally worth it:) “Babes & Balls” party with “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” as the theme. Read More
This week saw two huge tech funding rounds for Airbnb and Instacart, Google held its Next event in San Francisco to outline its cloud strategy moving forward and we got a glimpse at Tesla’s Kauai solar installation. These are the top stories from this week. Read More
The Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets doubled its membership this week. But rather than adding more car manufacturers and tech stars, the coalition added organizations that have a real stake in the implementation of self-driving cars: Mothers Against Drunk Driving, National Federation of the Blind, United Spinal Association, the R Street Institute and Mobility 4 All. Read More
Verizon Ventures and R/GA are announcing a new program called the Verizon Media Tech Venture Studio.
Stephen Plumlee, R/GA’s global COO and managing partner of R/GA Ventures, explained that the interactive agency’s “venture studios” started out similar to other startup accelerator programs, but they’ve expanded to provide access to “financial capital… Read More
Hulu’s forthcoming live TV streaming service is starting to shape up. Today, the company announced it scored a deal with A&E Networks, which will bring six more channels to the core package, including A&E, History, Lifetime, LMN, FYI, and Viceland. The deal follows others Hulu has made with CBS, 21st Century Fox, and Disney which, combined, add 40 networks to its service… Read More
Waymo has taken the next step in its suit against Uber, which it says took confidential proprietary information regarding how to make its custom-built LiDAR components for use in Uber’s autonomous driving technology. Read More
Prison spending is 5x more than higher education, and ~10 percent of the U.S. prison population is in California. Part of the reason why people return to prison after they are released is because they have no access to education while they’re incarcerated. On today’s Breaking Into Startups episode, we talk about an educational program that is paving the road to success,… Read More
Remember Vigilante? The controversial crime reporting app was kicked out of the App Store in November shortly after its release because Apple believed it encouraged private citizens to engage in, well…vigilantism. Now the app is back, under different branding. Read More
