Sony has a pair of new cameras for sale — though perhaps “new” isn’t the word, since they’re more like upgrades to existing devices. The price is upgraded, too. You’re not getting away for under a grand, though you’ll be getting a lot of camera for your money. The RX100 V is, as you might guess, the fifth iteration of this pocket-size powerhouse.… Read More
Flex, the tampon alternative you can wear during sex, has raised a $3 million seed round led by Vivek Ranadive’s new fund, Better Our World Ventures Fund, with participation from Cyan Banister of Founders Fund, Ellen Pao and others. This comes just a couple of months after Flex raised $1 million from Y Combinator, Amplify.LA and others. Flex plans to use the funding to fine-tune… Read More
Oculus co-founder and Trump troll financier Palmer Luckey was conspicuously missing from the keynote stage at today’s Oculus Connect 3 conference in San Jose, CA. That likely related to the backlash against news that Luckey donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Trump non-profit dedicated to bashing Hillary Clinton with offensive memes. Luckey typically dispenses high-level thoughts… Read More
Nike announced earlier this week that it will be releasing a new edition of the Nike Mags, its self-lacing shoes inspired by Back to the Future — but only 89 pairs, which will be raffled off (tickets cost $10), with proceeds benefiting the Michael J. Fox Foundation‘s research on Parkinson’s disease. I got a chance to (briefly) try on a pair of Mags and discuss the… Read More
Kodak accidentally teased an upcoming phone today in a now-deleted tweet. Fortunately, the image accompanying the tweet is also easily found at Kodakphones.com. Read More
A group of Democratic senators asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate cell site simulators like Stingrays to determine if the surveillance devices used by local law enforcement agencies are disrupting cellphone service for ordinary consumers and 911 calls. The senators are also asking the FCC to look into whether Stingray use disproportionately affects people of color.… Read More
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Snap — the now-parent company of Snapchat — is working on an initial public offering for as early as March that could value the company at $25 billion or higher. The company most recently raised $1.8 billion in a financing round in May this year. The company has around 150 million daily active users, and leaked documents reported by… Read More
Oculus wants to make sure the next computing platform isn’t dominated by white males like the last ones. The company has announced it will put $10 million toward supporting VR app and video creators of diverse backgrounds, including women and people of color. This comes alongside Facebook and Oculus committing to invest another $250 million to help developers accelerate the proliferation… Read More
VR has been pretty expensive to get going with, but it’s slowly getting cheaper. Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe announced some changes to the minimum PC spec requirements required for Rift at the company’s developers conference, a move that will likely open up the platform to a much wider audience. Now, a PC with an Nvidia 960 graphics card and an Intel i3-6100 CPU will be able to… Read More
Onstage at the Oculus Connect 3 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered a Facebook Messenger video call from his wife while in the new social VR environment. It appears that Facebook is finally confident enough with its VR arm that it’s willing to promote cross-network compatibility. The Messenger video call which came from his wife Priscilla Chan while she was at work, popped… Read More
After making us wait more than 16 months, Oculus finally clued us into some more details on their Touch motion controllers for the Rift virtual reality headset. Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe announced onstage at the company’s third annual Oculus Connect developer conference that Touch will be arriving December 6 for $199 with pre-orders going live October 10. The Touch controllers will… Read More
The internet was a revolution because it reorganized a large part of the economy and society around the network structure, becoming a fantastic medium for commerce, finance, power and culture. It also definitely changed our perception of time and space. We now live in a globalized and connected world where information flows at the speed of light. But what about data? Read More
Emburse launched in the Startup Battlefield last year seeking out businesses that wanted to handle one-time or a few expenses through issuing prepaid corporate debit cards. But it may be that the market, which is filled with a disparate different kinds of tools, needs a more generalized approach. So to move beyond that, Emburse said it is opening up its service to integrate with other… Read More
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage today at the Oculus Connect developers conference and showed off a taste of the company’s mobile VR future. The hallmark feature of the new prototype standalone headset is positional tracking. In a brief demo video, the headset appeared to be a modified Rift with a compute module embedded into the back of the headset. This positional… Read More
Twitter has performed incredibly well on the stock market for the past couple of weeks. But the honeymoon is over as it’s back to reality and correction time. Twitter shares are currently down 20.06 percent to $19.88 compared to yesterday’s closing price of $24.87. So what happened? Recode has published multiple reports saying that many of the companies that were looking at Twitter… Read More
Today on stage at Oculus’ Connect conference, Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated a new social VR experience that overlays VR avatars of friends who are elsewhere on top of your vision so you can hang out together Inside this social VR experience you can take real world scenes in the form of 360 photos, and visit them with your friends who appear as overlaid avatars in the scene. There, you… Read More
What is bitcoin? What is the blockchain? How does it work? Who is behind it? Find the answer to all of these questions and more by tuning into the six-episode series Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin & the Blockchain. The series features Nathaniel Popper, a New York Times reporter and the author of the book on which the series is based, along with various bitcoin developers, influencers and… Read More
Capital One is making another acquisition in the fintech space, this time snatching up the price tracking service Paribus, which helps online shoppers get automatic refunds when prices drop on items they purchased. Deal terms were not disclosed, but the acquisition involves bring both the team and the technology itself to Capital One. Launched in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt… Read More
Google is officially unveiling Code Next, its computer science lab for youth, today in Oakland. The program, which USA Today’s Jessica Guynn got wind of last month, is designed to offer young black and Latino people interested in tech an opportunity to learn how to code, as well as the fundamentals of computer science. That’s because 51% of black students and 47% of Latino… Read More
