As Facebook, the social network with 1.7 billion users, has come under fire for how it has handled its editorial role as a “media” company, it is also trying to launch more ways for people to control their experience on the platform. Today the company unveiled a redesigned Safety Center, now localised into 50 languages, aimed at helping people set their privacy controls on… Read More
Co-managed by Turner and the NBA, NBA League pass is the league’s product that lets users live stream every game all season long. The product costs $199.99 for every team or $119.99 for one team, and games can be watched on most connected devices including your phone, tablet or smart TV. But here’s the thing: the stream that League Pass gives you to watch on your 5-inch phone is… Read More
A coordinated botnet attack effectively choked internet access to a large number of popular sites last week, and the attack itself was made possible in large part due to the spread of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Yet a new survey just released by IT security firm ESET and the National Cyber Security Alliance found that a good portion of Americans are not conformable with said… Read More
Netflix has proposed a new offering of $800 million in senior notes, the company announced today. The proposed $800 debt raise follows a similar $1.5 billion senior notes raise priced in February, 2015. Netflix’s stated aim in raising the new funding is to provide liquid assets it can use to acquire content, make investments, acquire targets and engage in strategic transactions, as well… Read More
Driverless technology moved closer to becoming an everyday reality last week in the U.S. thanks to Tesla, but in Singapore it’s already expanding from testing with taxis to testing with full-size city buses in real-world situations. The new bus program will see two electric hybrid buses begin to ferry passengers between Nanyang Technological University and CleanTech Park, and… Read More
Samsung is stepping up its brand damage limitation efforts in the wake of the flaming battery disaster of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone by offering owners of the recalled device in South Korea the ability to upgrade to a Galaxy S8 or Note 8 device next year if they trade in their Note 7 for a Galaxy S7 now. Read More
The “Uber for weed” startup Eaze has grown quite a bit over the last year and it intends to expand even more. To get it there, Eaze has closed on $13 million in Series B funding from Fresh VC, Doll Capital Management (DCM) and Tusk Ventures. Eaze launched in July of 2014 to help medical marijuana patients order cannabis on demand. It soon expanded to allow people to get a medical… Read More
The very long wait is over, hackathon fans. Disrupt London 2016 is just around the corner, and we’re thrilled to announce the release of the first wave of tickets to the Disrupt London Hackathon. The Hackathon takes place December 3-4 at London’s beautiful Copper Box Arena, and we hope you’ll join us. Those of you looking to spend the weekend before Disrupt coding and… Read More
Honeycomb, a TV and video ad management platform founded by James Carpenter and Richard Carter, who both previously founded Adstream, has raised £3 million in Series A funding. It follows a £1 million “friends and family” round in May this year. Read More
While many people are arguing that the proposed $85 billion AT&T and Time Warner deal would be bad for consumer choice, billionaire Mark Cuban has a contrarian viewpoint. The merger would lead to “more competition” he tells TechCrunch. Cuban, who made his money through a different media acquisition, thinks the combination would help challenge the tech giants like Facebook,… Read More
It’s no coincidence that Alan Turing, one of the most influential computer scientists of all time, started his 1950 treatise on computing with the question “Can machines think?” From our science fiction to our research labs, we have long questioned whether the creation of artificial versions of ourselves will somehow help us uncover the origin of our own consciousness… Read More
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, hosted a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” this afternoon. He noted that the AMA should focus on SpaceX’s plans for Mars, which Musk revealed during the International Astronautical Congress last month. This will be under /r/spacex, not the general AMA. Meant to be supplemental to the IAC talk. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 23, 2016… Read More
The NFL has a distinguished history of successful partnerships with upstart media companies. When it became the home of Sunday Night Football in 1987, ESPN’s unprecedented growth accelerated. In 1993, the NFL sold its NFC Sunday afternoon package to Fox, firmly establishing it as the fourth major broadcast network in the U.S. This fall the NFL is working with another new media partner… Read More
The 2013 Snowden documents revealed UK intelligence agency GCHQ to be tapping into the undersea cables that carry Internet traffic, covertly gathering vast amounts of digital comms data under a surveillance program code-named Tempora — apparently with the help of commercial partners. Read More
It’s been 15 years since Apple first released the classic iPod. It was the first device to usher in what would become, in many respects, the age of Apple. Since its launch Apple’s mobile products have become (to many people) the gold standard. Other folks had launched digital music players before Apple. But none had Apple’s cache, or the weight of iTunes’ amazing… Read More
Artificial intelligence allows machines to reason and interact with the world, and it’s evolving at a breakneck pace. Now consider that most of our data, the best minds in the business and more computing power than you could ever imagine sit with just a handful of companies. Indeed, only a few companies in the world are able to understand the true potential — and the current… Read More
By the 2020 election driverless cars will have become ubiquitous, according to Rahul Sonnad, a co-founder of the zero-emission ride-sharing startup Tesloop. The impact, he predicts, will be “completely transformative.” Read More
There’s a reason Americans feel dispossessed by their government. We citizens have fewer and fewer opportunities for substantive interaction with our leaders. Corporate-funded organizations and narrow interest advocacy campaigns stand in as proxies for citizens as the distance grows between leaders and those they represent. This distance changes the dynamics of democracy. Read More
