The Washington D.C. Fire and EMS Department is considering a plan to use Uber to transport low priority 911 callers, according to NBC Washington. It’s a horrible idea.
Washington’s plan is to hire a team of nurses who could evaluate a caller’s condition over the phone and direct them to an Uber if they are deemed stable. Already this is odd given that the purpose of an… Read More
One of the striking things about the Juno probe, I remarked to one of its creators, is its simple and streamlined design — compared to other spacecraft, at least. The engineers had a hell of a time packing everything in there, but it helps when critical sensors have shrunk in size from “breadbox” to “soup cracker.” Read More
PostGhost was a service that stored and displayed the deleted Tweets of celebrities and politicians. Created as a way to keep public discourse honest, Twitter shut it down with a cease and desist warning citing a failure to comply with API rules. The resulting brouhaha led me to track down the anonymous founder and ask him or her a few questions about what happened. TC: Who are you? How… Read More
After users and press noticed that Pokémon Go on iOS requested “full access” to a user’s Google account when signing up, Niantic promised an update to modify the permissions required. Now, less than 24 hours after Niantic made that promise, the update is live, and limits asked-for info to just “Know who you are on Google” and “View your email… Read More
A controversial law that authorizes the government’s bulk collection of internet data is being tested in a federal appeals court, giving anti-surveillance advocates hope that reform might be on the horizon. The 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments last week about the warrantless surveillance of an American, Mohamed Mohamud. Mohamud was convicted of planning to bomb a… Read More
Recently departed Hyperloop One co-founder Brogan BamBrogan has filed a restraining order against the company’s former head of legal Afshin Pishevar and a lawsuit against both Afshin and his brother and BamBrogan’s former startup partner Shervin Pishevar. Hyperloop One, the brainchild of Elon Musk to transport people and goods across the country at 700 mph in a vacuum tube, has… Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt SF is taking place at Pier 48 September 12-14, and we can’t wait to see you. In honor of the occasion, we’re giving away a pair of tickets to one lucky TechCrunch reader (a $5,990 value). You can earn extra entries to the contest by sharing the giveaway link with friends and following our social accounts.
Disrupt is one of the most anticipated technology… Read More
Human locomotion has traditionally been a tough nut for roboticists to crack, but the team at Georgia Institute of Technology looks to be doing so in stride with the DURUS, a humanoid (or, rather, three-quarters of a humanoid) ‘bot that has taken to the AMBER Lab’s treadmill like a robotic fish to water.
DURUS replicates human walking in a manner much more accurately than past… Read More
Google is giving more tools to retail and travel businesses hoping to promote themselves through search results and ads.
These new features were announced at a New York City press event this morning, and then outlined in an AdWords blog post.
On the retail side, changes include a new Showcase Shopping ad format. The company says those ads are designed for broader shopping search terms like… Read More
Spending too much time on your phone? Moment can help. The mobile application that’s designed – ironically – to help you battle your smartphone addiction, can now train you over the course of a couple of weeks to change your habits and spend less time staring at your tiny screen. Launching today, Moment’s latest release offers a “Phone Bootcamp” course… Read More
The hoverboard wars are all but over with casualties on either side. Swagways, Segaways, Wamboards, and Zoomers have all been relegated to the back of the garage and now that most of these things are recalled and new ones can’t be sold. There is a vacuum forming in the “dumb little Segways for your feet” category so enter the granddaddy of two-wheeled locomotion, Segway,… Read More
Everyone likes a good vibration — which is why recording artist Timbaland teamed up with SubPac, a Los Angeles-based startup that has created a wearable device set to redefine entertainment through new immersive physical-sound technology. Read More
Twitter and Bloomberg Media have announced today that they signed a deal to live stream three Bloomberg shows, as well as the network’s markets coverage. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The shows included in the agreement are “Bloomberg West,” which broadcast technology news, “What’d You Miss?”, which delivers global financial news at the close of… Read More
Nobody has ever accused AWS of being too easy to use. While Amazon’s cloud computing platform is extremely powerful and launches feature updates on an almost daily basis, all of that power comes with a lot of complexity. Even if you only want to set up a basic WordPress install on a single machine, getting started with the AWS Management Console can be daunting. Cloud With… Read More
Applications are now open for student groups to attend Disrupt San Francisco at Pier 48 on Tuesday, September 13 or Wednesday, September 14th. The program is part of Include, TechCrunch’s diversity program aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to gain better access to the startup scene. For the past several Disrupts, TC has worked informally with… Read More
Despite all the capital that venture firms have managed to raise in the first and second quarters of this year, VCs at an investor panel at Fortune’s Brainstorm conference this morning said that early-stage valuations are softening, reality is “setting in” for unicorn companies that are too richly valued to be acquired and too immature to go public, and that there’s… Read More
Pokémon Go used Google-incubated AR MMO Ingress as a functional model, but the same model doesn’t make sense when applied to Mario, Zelda or Animal Crossing. Investors are looking at Pokémon Go as a sign that Nintendo’s ready to unlock its mobile value, but the wrong move would be to assume a one-size-fits-all approach will be the best way to get there. Instead, it can look to… Read More
Amazon Prime Day has arrived – the sales holiday the internet lovingly dubbed last year as Amazon’s online garage sale, in reference to consumers’ disappointment with the deals’ quality. The company still broke sales records, despite complaints. This time around, Amazon is aiming to best last year’s deals with a good handful of price drops on Amazon devices… Read More
The last couple of decades haven’t been particularly kind to the Polaroid brand. The once mighty king of instant photography (which had a heck of a mid-to-late 70s) declared bankruptcy in 2001 and again in 2008. These days, the brand name is licensed out and mostly shows up third-party products of varying degrees of quality.
Polaroid Swing is certainly one of the more… Read More
Oculus says it has resolved its shipping delays to the point where new orders now ship in two to four business days, which is a considerable improvement to where things were at just a short while ago, if you’ve been paying attention. The reason things are improving is that the virtual reality company has finally caught up with the pre-order backlog incurred by its hardware, the Rift… Read More
