TechCrunch

 A number of Australia’s top banks have come together to challenge Apple and its Apple Pay service in the country. Read More

Stefan Etienne tries out a very real meaty veggie burger, Hailo sells 60% of company to Daimler, eHarmony CEO steps down, Solar Impulse completes record flight around the world on only solar electricity, and Mobileye and Tesla will be going separate ways. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 The quantum leaps in productivity created by the car, train, ship and plane have dramatically changed our lives and movements. But today, we’re at the forefront of a new revolution in mobility, from on-demand ride-sharing and navigation, to car ownership and autonomous connected vehicles. And like most industries in which software is eating the world, Israeli innovation is playing an… Read More

 TechCrunch is pleased to bring you TechCode‘s Demo Day today, Tuesday July 26th from Mountain View, California. TechCode’s U.S. accelerator program focuses on artificial intelligence and hardware startups that already have a prototype. The goal is to help expedite commercialization for these startups by introducing them to partners and investors. TechCode also provides supply… Read More

 We can’t all be botanists, unfortunately, but most of us do have smartphones, and that may be a start. A computer vision system built by Microsoft Research Asia can identify thousands of species of flowers with nothing but a picture. Read More

 The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a preliminary report on the fatal crash involving a 2015 Tesla Model S and a 2014 Freightliner Cascadia truck in Williston, Florida in May. Unfortunately, the report yields no major new insights. The report confirms that the driver of the Tesla was going 74 miles per hour just prior to the crash, and on a highway where the speed limit was… Read More

 Apple’s third quarter results came out today. They’re pretty good! Or, at least, not bad — and good enough to keep investors happy. Very happy, actually: the stock jumped more than 7%, recovering pretty much all of the value it lost when it reported a complete whiff of a second quarter. It’s no monster crash or jump like Twitter regularly experiences, but 7% is enough… Read More

 Jerusalem-based Lightricks knows what it takes to stand out amongst the thousands of photo apps. They’ve done it twice — with Enlight and also Facetune, which is currently the top photo app in the U.S. according to App Annie. We caught up with CEO Zeev Farbman for a video interview when we were in Israel. He showed us some tricks to using the Lightricks photo apps and explained why… Read More

 The big takeaway from today’s Apple earnings call: The company is investing in the future. While it’s true that revenue took a dip from $49.61 billion this quarter last year down to $42.4 billion, Cupertino’s research and development spending continues to trend upward. Over the past nine months, the company spent $7.475 billion on R&D — that compares to $5.847… Read More

 China impacted Apple’s bottom line quite a lot this quarter — and not in a good way. But the company still plans to invest in the country, Apple CEO Tim Cook said right after the company announced its earnings for Q3 2016. Read More

 By now, it’s pretty clear that Russian hackers are responsible for breaches of the Democratic National Committee networks that occurred last summer and in April of this year — several forensic security firms have found evidence that traces the breach back to Russia. Now that DNC emails harvested during the breaches are starting to appear on Wikileaks, pundits are speculating… Read More

 On September 8, NASA will launch the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a mission to an asteroid and return a sample of it back to Earth — NASA’s first mission of this type. In doing so, NASA hopes to learn more about the early formation of the solar system and, possibly, the origin of life. OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security… Read More

 In January Venmo announced that users will soon be able to use Venmo to pay inside other apps, similar to how most e-commerce apps already offer PayPal or Apple Pay as payment options. And now (well, technically tomorrow) the feature is leaving beta and will be available to all Venmo users. The feature will make it easy for anyone with Venmo to quickly pay in other apps. Users will first… Read More

 Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between science and technology ó almost all the time when it has to do with the brain. But this research from MIT that allows for vastly improved scans of the networks inside the brain is too cool to pass up, whether it’s tech, science, or somewhere in between. Read More

 Twitter has a new number that’s killing its share price, down 9.5% in after-hours following grim earnings. First there was the user growth problem that still plagues it. Twitter’s monthly user count grew less than 1% this quarter and just 3% this year to 313 million MAU. But now its ad revenue growth issue has festered. Now Twitter is facing a total revenue growth crisis. Today… Read More

 Apple just reported earnings for Q3 2016, and the company soundly beat analyst’s expectations. However, there was one number that we’re not used to seeing. Apple’s cash on hand actually decreased for the first time in seven quarters. Cash on hand this quarter amounted to $231.5 billion, which is down $1.4 billion from the $233 billion on hand at the end of Q2. As a… Read More

 Apple just reported its Q3 2016 earnings, and investors are sending its stock through the roof. While the company managed to beat analysts’ expectations, Apple is selling less iPhones, iPads and Macs than last year during the same period. The long period of endless growth on all product lines is definitely over. Read More

 With an IPO on the horizon, subprime lender Elevate will have an additional $545 million credit faculty to support its growing customers. Elevate’s niche right now is providing loans to borrowers with creditscores between 575 and 625. As the company expands, it wants to provide loans to customers with even lower credit-scores. Ken Rees, CEO of Elevate, is quick to note that 65 percent… Read More

 In 2016, Forbes reported there were 159 technology billionaires, and four of the 10 richest people in the world made their money in the tech sector. We believe there are opportunities for these technology developers to play a differential role in philanthropy — one that brings together their ability to invest wisely and their acumen for using technology to change the world. Read More

 Thiel sees the American government locking down innovation and keeping it out of the hands of the American everyman. Instead of innovation for all, he described a dystopian world of governmental incompetence and stifled innovation. But Thiel is wrong. Our government is more innovative now than it has ever been, and inventiveness is on the rise. Peter Thiel grew up in a time when the… Read More