The mobile security market is taking off due to high-profile hackings. Is there such a thing as an unhackable phone? Consider this: The smartphone in your pocket is 10 times more powerful than the fastest supercomputers of just 20 years ago. The complexity is mind-boggling — and so are all the security vulnerabilities. Anyone claiming to sell an “unhackable phone” is… Read More
Samsung’s media arm continues code red damage control in the wake of the latest report surrounding a faulty Galaxy Note 7. The incident, which occurred on a Southwest flight earlier this week, further complicates the matters for several reasons beyond the already troubling fact that it played out on a plane – which, thankfully, was still at the gate. The device involved in the… Read More
Salesforce has been on a shopping spree this year, spending in the neighborhood of $5-6 billion on 10 companies. That’s why it was interesting to hear company president, vice chairman and COO, Keith Block talk about what they look for in an acquisition target at a press conference at Dreamforce this week. This is particularly true in the context of rumors that Salesforce was interested… Read More
Since the 1999 launch of Napster’s music-sharing platform, the music industry has been in near-constant turmoil, with dipping revenues, lack of transparency, piracy problems and feuds over the fair distribution of dividends. The blockchain has drawn the attention of investors and professionals in different industries, and is now showing promising signs to change the music industry. Read More
Oh, Yahoo. We’re not just mad at you. We’re also really, really disappointed. First it took you two years to figure out that you were hacked by a nation-state. Then you allowed another nation-state — the US government — to scan all of your user’s emails … using a buggy Linux kernel module … without ever telling your security team. Seriously, Yahoo? Read More
The workforce of the 21st century has been changing for years. Government, only recently perceiving the movement from a traditional workforce to an independent contractor model, is stifling innovation and hurting workers in the process. From Boston to Seattle, we are seeing a myriad of impulsive efforts to regulate everything from how an individual may use their vehicle to whom they allow… Read More
Verizon wants a $1 billion discount on the Yahoo deal, Facebook launches a standalone Events app, Poland is testing some roads that glow blue at night for cyclists, carriers are accepting Note 7 replacement trade-ins and Maserati is working on an electric vehicle. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
I wrote last year about the broad, secular shift to online food ordering, and the significant capital inflows into the space that we were seeing. Fast-forward a year, and we’re now looking at a very different funding environment: international inflows of capital to the food delivery category dropped 69 percent in Q1 ’16, and then dropped another 49 percent in Q2 ’16. Read More
Panoramio, the location-centric photo sharing service Google acquired in 2007, will show its last image on November 4. For the longest time, Google used Panoramio to augment its Google Maps and Google Earth services with crowdsourced imagery. Now that the company has integrated photo uploads into the Google Maps mobile apps and launched its Local Guides program, Panoramio clearly isn’t… Read More
The opaque, confusing and highly volatile practice of valuing a private SaaS business is frustrating for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Furthermore, the lack of transparency adds a tremendous amount of friction to a capital raise or the sale of a company. The reality is, it’s not all that hard to get a quick read on your SaaS company’s valuation. Read More
Garbage in, garbage out — that’s always been a rule of computing, and machine learning systems are no exception. These elementary AIs only know what we tell them, and if that data carries a bias of any kind, so too will the system trained on it. Google is looking to avoid such awkward and potentially serious situations systematically with a method it calls “Equality of… Read More
Netflix announced a new theater distribution deal with iPic Entertainment, a theater chain with 15 locations throughout the country. The deal will put 10 Netflix original films (a substantial portion of Netflix’s original films this year) in iPic’s New York and Los Angeles theaters. Getting their content into theaters around the country is a smart move by Netflix, for more reasons… Read More
Snapchat is fighting back against Instagram Stories, which rocketed to 100 million daily users by spotlighting the cloned feature atop the feed. To make Snapchat more “friends first,” it’s moving friends’ Stories above Discover where they used to be to make sure you don’t miss people you care about. And to make it easier to watch all your favorites… Read More
Being synonymous with a particular product category is a mixed blessing. Mophie is undoubtedly the best-known name in the battery case business, but the company has been keen to distance itself from the space a bit — or, at the very least, let it be known that it has more to offer the world. Mophie released a whole bunch of new power banks a few weeks back. Necessary, sure, but… Read More
The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed today what cybersecurity companies have asserted since emails from Democratic National Committee employees leaked online over the summer: State-sponsored Russian hackers are responsible for the breach. “The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian government directed… Read More
New Lab, which co-founder David Belt described as “a collaborative workspace” for companies in fields like robotics and artificial intelligence, officially opened last month.
The facility is located in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, in a building that was once used to assemble ships. Belt said he wanted to bring the building back as a manufacturing center, except updated for… Read More
Self-driving car testing in California is becoming a badge of progress for companies working in the space. Only 17 companies in total have the honor, including two just added to the list: Wheego Electric Cars and Valeo North America. The Wall Street Journal reports that both of these new companies now have approval to run tests with a single vehicle each and four drivers per team. That might… Read More
We’re hearing from several sources that a secondary financing round is in the works for GitHub, following its last $250 million financing round that valued it at $2 billion in July last year. However, there’s a little bit of interesting chatter beyond that they’re raising a secondary for potential liquidation of investors or employees, we hear. There are two parts to the… Read More
There are certain kinds of photos users of dating apps tend to loathe, and the suggestive mirror selfie tends to be at the top of that list, somewhere near photos of guys holding a fish and gym selfies. That’s why today, the dating app Bumble has taken action to ban selfies of users posing in their underwear, or while wearing swimsuits indoors. In addition, you can no longer upload… Read More
