The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a series of university partners are developing an earthquake early warning system called ShakeAlert, which aims to provide the general public with alerts up to 10 seconds before an earthquake hits. The system is not yet public, but it is now undergoing testing in California, Oregon and Washington. “There is a similar test effort for an earthquake… Read More
Big data is hardly new at this point — nor has it wrought anywhere near its potential effects on many companies and institutions insulated by inertia and red tape. A summer program at the University of Washington called Data Science for Good shows that fresh eyes and good code can make more in 10 weeks than some have done in as many years. Read More
Trying to get more followers on Instagram? If you follow a few verified banks and financial institutions, you’ll suddenly end up with dozens of new followers. There’s just one drawback: Your new followers are trying to scam you.
Instagram has become a hotbed for so-called “money flipping,” according to a study by the social media security firm ZeroFox. Read More
The Google equivalent in every major market where Google doesn’t really play is making a self-driving car of some kind, and Russia is the latest to join the fray. Yandex is the company in question, which operates Russia’s leading search engine, along with a host of other going concerns. Add to that list a driverless minibus, which the tech company is creating in partnership with… Read More
Launching with a marketplace for landscaping, snow plowing and other home care and repair services, Plowz & Mowz has raised $1.5 million from the Los Angeles-based startup studio Science and undisclosed angel investors. On the heels of the firm’s successful exit from Dollar Shave Club, Science has turned to the marketplace industry for its next investment. The idea for the… Read More
Twitter’s “Trends” are often confusing. Why is #MPBMS or #TechMunch trending? You had to click through and figure it out for yourself. When Facebook copied Twitter’s trends in 2014, it vastly improved them by adding human-written descriptions right below so you knew if you cared or not. Today Facebook is removing those descriptions, and claims it’s to increase… Read More
This is a LIVE recording session of The Gillmor Gang – today with: Robert Scoble, Frank Radice, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Today’s LIVE recording has concluded.
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The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an office under the Department of Homeland Security, put forward a proposal today that would allow the U.S. Government to offer parole (temporary permission to be in the country) to foreign entrepreneurs starting their businesses in the United States. The proposal specifies that a founder can qualify if they started a company in the U.S. in… Read More
Google today is stepping up its battle with Venmo, Square Cash and other person-to-person payment applications with an update to its Google Wallet mobile app, which now allows for automatic transfers to your bank account. That is, transfers will no longer require you to cash out money from your Wallet balance first. This will speed up the time it takes for Wallet users to gain access to… Read More
Domino’s Pizza Enterprises has demonstrated delivery of hot pizzas by drone in Auckland, New Zealand.
The company has a long history of embracing high-tech concepts. Last year, they tested out a four-wheeled, driverless pizza delivery vehicle. And in 2012, Domino’s launched a casual build-a-pizza game that also let players order the pizza they built digitally for real life… Read More
San Francisco-based education startup StudySoup, which calls itself “a peer-to-peer learning marketplace,” announced it has raised $1.7 million in seed funding.
The company works as an online study group where students can sell or purchase class notes and study guides. “We realized that a lot of students come to college on very different levels,” Sieva Kozinsky, 26… Read More
Well that was fast. Just one day after WhatsApp revealed a sea-change in its attitude to user data, by detailing plans to share the mobile numbers and last seen status of its users with parent company Facebook for ad-targeting and marketing purposes, the UK’s data protection watchdog has fired a warning shot across Zuckerberg’s bows by announcing it intends to investigate the… Read More
A personalized video channel for Apple TV, Rheo, has now closed on $2.3 million in seed funding, the company announced this week. It has also updated its application and expanded its content lineup, thanks to a new deal with Vimeo which brings the network’s catalog of short videos, including its “Staff Picks,” short films, animations, music and more, to Rheo’s service.… Read More
Mobile ad startup AppLovin is in talks with a Chinese buyer for an acquisition of around $1.5 billion, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the company. We have not confirmed the identity of the acquirer. The deal is not yet finalized and details may change. Founded in 2012 by CEO Adam Foroughi along with Andrew Karam and John Kyrstynak, San Francisco-headquartered AppLovin operates… Read More
Google has a new director at its self-driving car unit: Shaun Stewart, former head of Airbnb’s vacation rentals business, and CEO at TripAdvisor prior to that. Stewart’s entire career has essentially been spent in the hospitality industry, which makes him an interesting pick for the role at Google, where his role will be to help with the commercializations of Google’s… Read More
Want to attend the Disrupt SF Hackathon but don’t have a ticket yet? We’re excited to announce the release of a fresh batch of tickets. And this hackathon comes with a twist. For the first time, there will be a special hackathon track dedicated to hacking on TechCrunch. In partnership with Automattic’s WordPress.com VIP team and CrunchBase, we’re granting access to all… Read More
Rackspace, which is still best known as a hosting company even as it has expanded aggressively into offering services for businesses that use other platforms, went public in 2008. Now, however, it’s going private again after accepting a $4.3 billion offer (or $32 per share) in cash from private equity firm Apollo Global Management. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval and… Read More
We are often told that starting a startup on your own is madness. There are thousands of articles out there that tell you that and why why you need a co-founder. Probably solid advice, but data from CrunchBase shows a different side of the story. More than half of startups with an exit did so with just a single founder. The average is 1.72 founders. Read More
MIT and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) teamed up to create a new kind of structure that can “remember” its original shape, and return to that state even after being deformed or otherwise bent out of shape. This could be hugely beneficial in applications like creating drugs that can lie dormant until it detects a change in body temperature indicative of… Read More
FOX Sports GO has now arrived on Apple TV, allowing viewers to watch up to four games at the same time, thanks to an innovative split-screen interface that lets you arrange video feeds side-by-side, picture-in-picture style, or in a mosaic pattern. With the app, you’ll be able to stream from channels including Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Deportes, and Fox College… Read More
