If nothing else, you can’t really argue with the price. Announced this morning, the latest version of Acer’s 15.6-inch Chromebook gets a couple of key upgrades over its predecessor, but none might be quite as welcome as the fact that the company has dropped its starting price by $50, down to $199. The other key feature here – as with all Chromebooks – is battery life.… Read More
CoreOS today announced that it has hired the founders of Redspread, a Y Combinator-incubated company that helps enterprises deploy their software on Kubernetes container clusters, and that Redspread’s open source tools are now part of the CoreOS family.
In its announcement today, CoreOS simply said that Redspread is “joining” CoreOS. Even after repeated prodding, the… Read More
Google’s airfare search destination Google Flights already offered a variety of features aimed at helping you find low-cost tickets, but today it’s rolling out one more: it will show you when prices are expected to increase for certain flights, so you can book before the tickets become more expensive. It’s also rolling out other tips that will help you shop for the best… Read More
You can imagine the hypothetical advisory board meeting at Y Combinator can’t you. “So, Peter, you know that latest allegation of sexual harassment against Donald Trump? Well, we have a womens’ safety startup in the next cohort. As you’ve met him, do you think The Donald could help us beta test it?” This bizarre, imaginary scenario might sound utterly… Read More
A stinging series of articles by the Wall Street Journal soon followed, and in recent months, the government agency that oversees U.S. labs has banned founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes from operating a blood-testing laboratory for two years, and Theranos has shuttered its clinical labs and wellness centers. To make matters worse, company was last week slapped with a lawsuit by one of… Read More
TechCrunch Include Office Hours are happening in NYC on November 3rd! Richard Kerby and David Pakman of Venrock will join TechCrunch to provide valuable advice and feedback to startups. Launched in 2014, Include is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to take their startups to the next level. The Office Hours program… Read More
The oversight court for the UK’s intelligence and security agencies has ruled they operated unlawfully and breached domestic human rights law by harvesting bulk comms data and maintaining large databases of personal information on UK citizens for a decade and more. Read More
A new type of optical fiber – a channel capable of transporting light – developed by MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers could make it far easier to detect the onset of disease early, or track the progress of healing and treatment. The new “stretchy,” rubber-like optical fiber created by the team can be stretched and bent, and is made almost entirely of water in… Read More
Everyone has their hobbies. And Trevor Bauer, pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, likes to build racing drones. And anyone that has ever built racing drones know they need a lot of maintenance – manually installing and swapping out propellers, batteries etc. But Bauer had a slight mishap while repairing one of his drones last Thursday – less than 48 hours before he was supposed… Read More
Ebay this morning launched a new site, dedicated to shopping for furniture and other items for the home. Called eBay Collective, the site also takes advantage of technology from the company’s recently announced acquisition of visual search engine Corrigon, which it bought for under $30 million. On eBay Collective, the technology has been integrated to power a “Shop the… Read More
The public broadcaster PBS today unveiled a new plan to bring its children’s television programming to its young audience, who spend more time behind tablets than sitting in front of TV sets. It’s debuting its own branded tablet, called the Playtime Pad. The tablet, which is produced by Ematic will come preloaded with PBS Kids’ entertainment, including games, video clips,… Read More
Apple has been working on a not-so-secret car project for years. Project Titan, as it is called internally, has already gone through a bunch of leadership and roadmap changes. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the company is now scrapping plans to build an electric car. The car team is focusing on autonomous driving technology instead. Even more intriguing, it looks like Apple is… Read More
Rockstar is toying with the emotions of fans of its popular western adventure game Red Dead Redemption, with a couple of teaser images that are clearly leading up to a big announcement. Fans and industry observers suspect we could finally see the studio announce a sequel to the 2010 Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game. Red Dead Redemption was itself a follow-up to Red Dead Revolver, a… Read More
Cisco announced today that it was acquiring Worklife, a member of the Y Combinator winter 2015 class, for an undisclosed sum. Worklife was founded with the idea of improving online meetings, something that Cisco has been working on for years. It of course owns WebEx and has been trying to enhance that experience in recent years with Cisco Spark. Cisco intends to add the Worklife team to… Read More
Consumers have made a big shift to using mobile phones as their primary, and often sole, telephone, but as they have done so, they’ve also created something of a rift in the business world: many of the companies that count those consumers as customers are still using landlines — 275 million businesses in the U.S. alone — resulting in a feature gulf between how the two… Read More
Things are a little askew when we start referring to 5.2-inch handsets as “mini,” but then, that’s just the crazy, upside down world we live in. And really, for ZTE, it’s just a way of differentiating its new handset from its flagship, which, for the record is only just slightly larger at 5.5-inches, which was announced about a month or so before the Axon 7 Mini. But… Read More
The new ecobee3 lite cuts a full $80 of its namesake (and, for that matter, its chief competitor, the latest Nest), while maintaining the majority of the original’s functionality, minus ecobee’s room sensors, designed to locate hot and cold areas in the home. Otherwise, you’ve still got the same 3.5-inch color touchscreen display and third-party smart home compatibility… Read More
Last week, the White House held its Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh, with a focus on what the U.S. Government is doing for the future, in areas including space exploration, smart cities and more effective police accountability. President Obama ended the conference with a speech that included some real talk for startup founders and others in Silicon Valley who might think the White House… Read More
Tesla and Panasonic have agreed to begin production of photovoltaic (PV) cells for use in solar power home installations that works with Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack solar storage products. The arrangement is non-binding at this stage, however, and will depend on the Tesla acquisition of SolarCity going through to take effect. If the SolarCity/Tesla deal does close, Panasonic will… Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt in London is on December 5-6. Seen the HBO/Sky show “Silicon Valley”? Yes, this is the real-life version. But unlike the show, this can catapult startups into the stratosphere. And we have amazing content and speakers to match the startups you’ll see launched. Today we’re delighted to say Roxanne Varza is also joining. Varza is the Director of Station… Read More
