The Startup Battlefield finalists have been announced, but there is still a full day of Disrupt left. We’ll be joined by serial founder Jason Goldberg, Citymapper’s Azmat Yusuf, and Facebook’s Julien Codorniou, among many more. And then we’ll head into the Battlefield finals, where our five finalists companies will battle it out for the ultimate prize: the Disrupt Cup.… Read More
German hotel booking site Trivago updated its plans for a U.S. IPO in a filing that came out on Monday. The company expects to price its shares between $13 to $15, a $428 million offering at the top end of the range. Officially named Travel B.V., the company will change its name to Trivago to match its popular web property, before completing the IPO later this month. Expedia will still own… Read More
The U.S. federal appeals court has ruled in United States v. Mohamud, a case that began with a 2010 holiday bomb plot and will end with unique implications for the private digital communications of American citizens.
Digital privacy advocates had hoped that the appeals case might prompt reform for a contentious portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) known as Section 702. Read More
It’s Computer Science Education Week, in case you didn’t know, and in honor of this hallowed period Microsoft is publishing the thoughts of a few of its scientists and engineers on what will change in the tech world over the next decade. Read More
A survey asking users about “misleading language” in posts is the latest indication that Facebook is facing up to what many see as its responsibility to get a handle on the fake news situation. Read More
Web-hosting firm GoDaddy is beefing up its services after it acquired WP Curve, a startup offering services and support for WordPress websites. The deal is undisclosed, but it will see NYSE-listed GoDaddy pick up WP Curve’s customer base, assets and “a few dozen” of its 39-person team, the firm told TechCrunch Read More
Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube today announced they would cooperate on a plan to help limit the spread of terrorist content online. The companies said that together they will create a shared industry database that will be used to identify this content, including what they describe as the “most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos” that have been removed… Read More
Can social media even exist without political debate? What about trolls? Hacker News, the social news site run by Y Combinator, is trying to find out.
The head of the Hacker News community since 2014, Daniel Gackle (whose HN handle is “dang”) on Monday initiated a site-wide “Political Detox Week.”
To introduce the temporary ban on political content, Gackle… Read More
IDC’s latest world wide wearable numbers are in, and everything looks to be coming up Fitbit. As smartwatch numbers declined, the larger wearable space is up overall, thanks in no small part to the Charge manufacturer. According to IDC’s numbers, Fitbit commanded nearly a quarter of the entire category at 23 percent, a year-over-year increase of 22 percent, with total device… Read More
Sometimes you see a gadget and think simultaneously, “that’s insanely clever,” but also just “that’s insane.” The RokBlok was one of those situations for me: Who but a mad genius would have thought of a record player that propels itself along the groove like a little remote control car? Read More
Artificial intelligence is all around us. It’s in our cars, our homes and our pockets. With all this information, this intelligence, at our fingertips and lips, shouldn’t our educational system catch up? Teaching not rote facts and figures, but instead teaching students the paths to find this knowledge on their own. Teaching students — as we do with computers through AI… Read More
Android 7.1.1 starts going live today as an over-the-air update — a roll out that will continue through the next several weeks to a select number of Google-approved devices, including the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus Player, Pixel C and General Mobile 4G (Android One), along with devices enrolled in Google’s Android Beta Program. Those devices… Read More
Netflix’s decision to introduce an in-app subscription option in its iOS app over a year ago has helped the streaming service steadily gain more subscribers, and surge up the Top Grossing charts in the Apple App Store. Back in November of last year, the app hit the Top Grossing chart for the first time, reaching the No. 9 position. Today, Netflix has reached another milestone, as the… Read More
Every parent’s worst nightmare is a student spending more time playing video games and surfing the web than studying for school. But the team over at OpenAI believes that a “fun parent” approach could actually bring us all one step closer to the elusive generalized intelligence. Its new tool, Universe, was created to train and measure AI frameworks with video games… Read More
There’s no shortage of entrepreneurs in Africa, but their ambitions are often hampered by the lack in many countries of reliable and affordable digital payment systems. Moneywave wants to empower individuals and small merchants to take part in the thriving digital economy by letting them accept payment however it’s offered, and receive it instantly in whatever form they choose. Read More
Disrupt London Day 1 was a massive success. DeepMind’s Mustafa Suleyman taught us about the future of AI. Autonomy founder Dr. Michael Lynch mocked HP’s $5 billion lawsuit against him. And Boston Dynamics’ Marc Raibert showed off his four-legged robotic friend, SpotMini. But the heart of Disrupt has always been the Startup Battlefield, and this year’s London crew was… Read More
Imagine a computing platform that would have no single point of failure and would be resilient to the cyberattacks that are making the headlines these days. This is the promise behind blockchain, the distributed ledger that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum and challenges the traditional server/client paradigm. Read More
Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world’s largest makers and marketers of meat products, has announced the formation of a $150 million venture capital fund to back food and agriculture startups.
According to Tyson’s Executive Vice President of Strategy and New Ventures, Monica McGurk, the fund will seek to invest in startups solving problems around food production, distribution… Read More
Netflix is making headway on its ambitions to fill half its library with original content. According to Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, the company is planning to release about 20 unscripted series next year, bringing it closer to its goal of having 1,000 annual hours of original programming available on its service in 2017.
That’s more than the amount of original… Read More
How could Dr Michael Lynch raise a $1 billion venture capital fund while being sued for $5 billion over alleged fraud in the $11 billion sale of his company Autonomy to HP? “The reality is, that doesn’t take much time” since he has a team of lawyers on the case, Lynch said on stage during TechCrunch Disrupt London.
HP originally paid Lynch $730 million for his stake in Autonomy. Read More
