TechCrunch

 HOOQ, a Netflix challenger in Southeast Asia, has raised $25 million in capital from existing investors Singtel, Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers. Read More

 After news broke that YPlan had been acquired by Time Out Group for significantly less than the approximately £31 million that the London startup had raised, you’d be forgiven for thinking there would be little appetite for a new events discovery and booking platform. However, that isn’t stopping Revl, a new events marketplace app for iOS, leaving stealth mode today and… Read More

 Good news for those getting tired of hearing Galaxy Note 7 warnings before every flight they take, those pre-flight announcements can now cease of today. Read More

 The world of mobile payments continues to consolidate and mature, and today one of the leading players among European mobile payments startups has raised a significant round of money to help keep itself on top. iZettle, the Swedish company that offers a card reader that works with your smartphone or tablet, plus a suite of financial services for the small businesses, is announcing that it… Read More

 Alibaba is continuing its efforts to get into and modernize offline retail after the e-commerce giant lodged a $2.6 billion offer to fully acquire Intime. Read More

 The saga of Housing.com, once a red-hot tech startup in India, has reached a conclusion of sorts after the company was sold to rival PropTiger in a deal announced this week. Read More

Fitbit acquires the Vector smartwatch, Marissa Mayer is resigning from Yahoo, Apple plans to consolidate server construction, Consumer Reports settles its differences with Apple and Ellen Pao joins Kapor Capital. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 Tonight in Chicago, President Obama bid his final goodbye. The 44th president’s political career began in the city, soaring with his election to the Illinois State Senate, and he fittingly addressed a mournful audience in the place he still calls home. “Every day, I have learned from you. You made me a better President, and you made me a better man.” —@POTUS… Read More

 Memos reportedly written by a “former British intelligence operative” and circulated throughout the U.S. intelligence committee allege that the Russian government has collected compromising information about President-elect Donald Trump over several years. They also claim that Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, met with Kremlin officials to orchestrate the release of… Read More

 In a Senate hearing described as a “lovefest” by one attendee, General John F. Kelly testified about his nomination to become the fifth secretary of the Department of Homeland security. The relatively concise and often openly warm hearing got underway as Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill thanked Kelly for his prompt compliance: Unlike some of the other nominees, Kelly got his… Read More

 Smartwatches aren’t for everyone. That much has been clear since day one, a fact seemingly confirmed by a recent stagnation in the space. Too many are designed to be once-size-fits-all, but ultimately are just too bulky and flashy with too many battery life compromises for most wrists. As someone who tries on a lot of these devices, I’ve always been partial to the hybrid. I used… Read More

 BMW had a story to tell at CES this year, a story of what our lives might look like when there’s more continuity between what we do at home and what we do in our cars, thanks to new features coming to market, including connectivity and self-driving capabilities. I became a part of that story as I drove a prototype 5 series (fun even in manual mode) onto a public Las Vegas highway, pressed… Read More

 Centrifuges are found in medical labs worldwide. But a good one could run you a couple grand and, of course, requires electricity — neither of which are things you’re likely to find in a rural clinic in an impoverished country. Stanford researchers have created an alternative that costs just a few cents and runs without a charge, based on a children’s toy with surprising… Read More

 The first sequencing of the whole human genome in 2003 cost roughly $2.7 billion, but DNA sequencing giant Illumina has now unveiled a new machine that the company says is “expected one day” to order up your whole genome for less than $100. Illumina’s CEO Frank deSouza showed off the machine, called the NovaSeq, onstage at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in downtown… Read More

 Sen. Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s nominee for the position of U.S. attorney general, is being grilled by the Senate today about voting rights, immigration, civil rights, prosecutorial ethics and his own voting record. But when asked about issues related to technology — including hacking, surveillance, encryption, and law enforcement access to data — Sessions’ answers… Read More

 Tesla has a new vice president heading up Autopilot efforts — Chris Lattner, whose departure from Apple was reported only earlier today. Lattner worked at Apple for 11 years, where his chief contribution was creating Swift, Apple’s most recent programming language, which is relatively easy for beginners to pick up and begin using to create apps for macOS, iOS and beyond. The role… Read More

 What does artificial intelligence have in common with the price of eggs? At the store, you may find one carton drawing your eye with promises of being “all natural.” This is meaningless, of course: no one has defined what “natural” is, so anyone can put it on there. The same problem is now happening in tech — but with AI. Read More

 After nearly a decade and a half as the chief executive officer of the hardware company he co-founded, John MacFarlane has announced his resignation as the head of Sonos. The move had reportedly been planned for some time, with the executive citing a number of personal reasons. That decision was delayed, however, due in part to increased and unexpected competition by Amazon’s line of… Read More

 If you want to cure all disease and educate everyone, you’re going to need the government’s help, even if you’re as rich as Mark Zuckerberg. Today, he and his wife Priscilla’s philanthropic vehicle the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced it’s hired away Uber’s chief advisor and former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to lead its policy and advocacy team. Read More

 Roi Carthy has been a mover and a shaker in the Israeli tech scene for years. Most recently he joined as head of marketing for Shine, a smart ad blocker for mobile. This week on Technotopia we talk about the future of media, where revenue comes from and the prospect of peace in the Middle East. It was a far-reaching conversation and one of my favorite chats. You can subscribe to Technotopia… Read More