Astronomers have a powerful new resource in the Pan-STARRS survey of the night sky, carried out over five years and half a million exposures from the top of Mauna Kea on Maui. The two petabytes of data released publicly today cover three quarters of the night sky and show billions of stars, galaxies, asteroids and other stellar objects. Read More
Ever wondered why your physician owns the information from your blood work? Or why your dentist owns your x-rays. Or some financial services company owns your credit information? Most people forget that social media companies own the messages, pictures and videos that they post everyday. The pervasiveness of this paradox is considerable. Why is this the case? Read More
HandUp, a startup combating homelessness, just announced the expansion of its gift card program in San Francisco. The $25 gift cards, which HandUp launched last August, enables homeless people to redeem them at Project Homeless Connect and Glide. Starting today, homeless people can also redeem the gift cards at the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, MSC South Shelter in SOMA and the… Read More
Samsung’s gone the simple route with its latest notebooks — right down to the Notebook 9 name, which likely unintentionally invokes a very Cat’s Cradle vibe. Less than a year after launch, the line’s 13- and 15-inch models are getting a refresh, because the company just couldn’t wait the few extra weeks for CES. The laptops are getting a new design, one that, from… Read More
Nintendo has not had a good past few days, despite its original superstar Mario finally hitting the iPhone. The company’s shares have dropped about 15 percent in the past five days, which once again shaves off a rather significant amount of the company’s market cap. On the year, Nintendo’s still up by more than 50 percent, but we can see below that it’s a rather… Read More
Automaker Hyundai wants you to know that it’s also embracing the race to autonomous driving — but it’s also hoping to do so in a way that differs from the approaches of most automakers, in striving for tech that will both be available in vehicles owned by individuals, and that will actually be affordable for a good portion of car buyers. Hyundai debuted its self-driving tech… Read More
Last month a strange story appeared in the Polish press. It was about an American consultant living in Denver who had been “preying” on Polish startups, promising them investor contacts and customers in America. The story started breathlessly enough. Here it is in translation:
The “American Dream” is something that grips the imagination of almost every startup founder. Read More
Eight in 10 Americans are now shopping online, according to a new study from Pew Research out this morning. That’s 79 percent of U.S. consumers who shop on the web or their phones, up from just 22 percent back in 2000. Over half (51 percent) have also bought something from their mobile phone, the study found, and 15 percent purchased after clicking through on a link shared on social… Read More
Facebook’s core attraction isn’t news articles you could find anywhere, it’s intimate posts from your real friends. That explains why Facebook is trying to make highly personal text statuses as eye-catching as photos with the new test of a colored background option.
The feature lets users select a color that appears behind their text status in place of the normally-white… Read More
Mark Zuckerberg set himself an ambitious personal project for 2016 – build a connected artificial assistant to help him automate certain tasks at home, including things like controlling the lights, watching for visitors and operating appliances. Zuckerberg said on Facebook that his task actually turned to be “easier than [he] expected” in some ways – which should come as… Read More
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday our daily guided tour of the biggest tech stories from the past 24 hours will appear here on TechCrunch.com. To get The Daily Crunch in your inbox every day of the week, sign up here and be sure to take a look at the rest of our newsletters while you’re at it. How did the tech industry rate in terms of diversity and inclusion in 2016? That answer and… Read More
Facebook published a blog post with plenty of year-end vanity stats about its open source project today, but in an email to us, the company also announced that it is about to launch the VR version of one of its most popular open source offerings: React. React VR, a Facebook spokesperson told us, will launch in preview later this week. Update: turns out, the Facebook spokesperson was wrong… Read More
We’re getting down to the wire in terms of getting holiday gifts, but if you’re looking for presents for a gamer in your life with big aspirations, but also don’t want to shell out for true top-end gear, we’ve got your back. This list has options for a more modest spender. The idea is to provide the best value, so not everything on here is super cheap. Instead,… Read More
Teen app sensation Houseparty will get some competition as Facebook Messenger is launching its own split-screen group video chat feature. Six users can appear in split-screen at the time and don Snapchat-style selfie masks, while 50 total can listen and talk over voice while sending text, stickers, emojis, and GIFs. The feature could make a Messenger a place to “livechill”… Read More
Social planning is a tough nut to crack, but a new app called Amigo is looking to make a difference when it comes to how we hang out with our friends.
The premise behind Amigo is that we spend too much time in back-and-forth communication with our friends about what we want to do, where we want to go, and when.
But Amigo aims to be a social secretary of sorts, helping out with all that… Read More
The Golden Globes’ red carpet is coming to Twitter. That’s right: not the award show itself, but rather the pre-show event where the celebs walk the red carpet and are interviewed by Hollywood press with questions about what they’re wearing, and who they want to win, among other things. Now, Twitter users will be able get in on that action, too. The new deal will also see… Read More
European financial regulators are worried that big data techniques might result in restrictions on consumer access to products and services in future, and are considering whether new rules might be needed to tackle the risk of more granular algorithmic analysis leading to discrimination. Read More
Blade Runner‘s sequel is nearly upon us, and now we have a first official trailer to help whet our appetites. The Denis Villeneuve-directed sci-fi epic looks like it’ll retain a lot of the atmosphere and grit of the 1982 original Plus, Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford show down already, in case you didn’t have to get enough to be excited about. Blade Runner 2049 is slated… Read More
The quest to achieve diversity and inclusion in the tech industry is still in full swing. In the past year, we’ve seen some progress made on the D&I front, but not without hiccups along the way. Believe it or not, people are still racist! And sexist! And homophobic! And transphobic! Among leading tech firms in Silicon Valley, 57 percent of executive employees were white, 36 percent… Read More
One of the more clever apps to launch on the iMessage App Store is Momento, an app that automatically turns your photos into GIFs for easy sharing. Now this app is available in a standalone format to all iPhone and iPad users, outside of iMessage. It also arrives with an expanded feature set, including the ability to decorate your photos with filters, stickers, text, and other effects,… Read More
