There’s nothing excessively bad about “Enola Holmes,” a new film about Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister Enola. But there’s nothing particularly good, either. The film was originally planned for a theatrical release from Warner Bros., but Netflix picked it up earlier this year, after the pandemic shuttered theaters around the world. “Enola Holmes” stars Millie Bobby […]
A lot has been made of the open memo that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published nearly two weekends ago, essentially barring political activism at work because he sees it as a distraction. He also made it clear that employees who disagreed with the decision — and he foresaw that some would not be happy — […]
The California judge in the legal skirmish between Epic Games and Apple has denied Epic’s request that Apple be forced to reinstate Fortnite in the App Store, but did affirm that Apple cannot take action against the Epic Games developer accounts used to bring Unreal Engine developers access to Apple devices. The court’s decision re-affirmed […]
Welcome back to Human Capital, where we discuss the latest in labor, diversity and inclusion in tech. This week’s eyebrow-raising moment came Wednesday when the U.S. Department of Labor essentially accused Microsoft of reverse racism (not a real thing) for committing to hire more Black people at its predominantly white company. And that wasn’t even […]
Picture yourself in the role of CIO at Roblox in 2017. At that point, the gaming platform and publishing system that launched in 2005 was growing fast, but its underlying technology was aging, consisting of a single data center in Chicago and a bunch of third-party partners, including AWS, all running bare metal (nonvirtualized) servers. […]
JB Straubel, the Tesla co-founder and former CTO, is often cast as the humble and pioneering engineer, the quiet one who toiled away in the background for 15 years on some of the company’s most important technologies. That characterization — which intensified as the hype and media attention on Tesla CEO Elon Musk grew — […]
Starting this weekend, everyone of voting age in the U.S. will begin seeing informational videos at the top of Instagram and Facebook, offering tips and state-specific guidance on how to vote through the mail. The videos will be offered in both English and Spanish. The vote-by-mail videos will run on Facebook for four straight days […]
China now has a tool that lets users access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and other internet services that have otherwise long been banned in the country — selectively. Called Tuber, the mobile browser debuted on China’s third-party Android stores this week, with an iOS launch in the pipeline. The landing page of the app […]
At our recent TechCrunch Mobility event, we spoke with Amy Gu, the founder and managing partner of Hemi Ventures, Olaf Sakkers, a founding partner at Maniv Mobility and Reilly Brennan, the founding general partner at Trucks VC. We discussed a wide range of things, from frayed U.S.-China relations, to the mobility industry’s eager embrace of […]
Twitter announced Friday a major set of changes to the way its platform would work as the social network braces for the most contentious, uncertain and potentially high-stakes election in modern U.S. history. In what will likely be the most noticeable change, Twitter will try a new tactic to discourage users from retweeting posts without […]
Mojiit, the Los Angeles-based company behind the popular avatar generation service Mojichat, has landed one of its highest-profile users with the launch of Odell Beckham Jr.’s live stream over the weekend. As Odell Beckham Jr. did his first live stream with the gaming superstar Dr. Disrespect, he turned to Mojichat to create the pop-up onscreen […]
Polestar is a young automaker spun out of Volvo and Geely. Now, just four years old, it has two cars on the market with more launching soon. Like many startups, the company is weathering early storms coming from government regulators and early recalls. Earlier this week, the EPA released its findings on the Polestar 2’s […]
This morning, YCharts, a financial data and charting service, announced that it has been purchased by LLR Partners, a private equity firm. The companies are dubbing the transaction a “growth recapitalization,” indicating that the smaller firm won’t be stripped of its talent in hopes of driving near-term positive EBITDA. The deal was an all-cash transaction, […]
The road to sustainable vehicles likely ends at electric cars, yet the route to this goal isn’t clear. There are multiple ways to get there, and Porsche is looking at synthetic fuels as a potential path. These so-called eFuels are produced from CO2 and hydrogen. If produced using renewable energy, they can help vehicles powered […]
So much for progress. New data out this week from PitchBook indicates that the number of rounds raised by female-founded and co-founded companies fell year-over-year, with dollars invested in those rounds collapsing to 2017-era levels. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every […]
Pakistan has banned popular short video app TikTok, citing circulation of videos that it deemed “immoral and indecent.” The move comes months after the South Asian country raised serious concerns about the nature of some videos on ByteDance’s app and the impact they posed on society. Pakistan issues ‘final warning’ to TikTok and blocks Bigo […]
Heading into the third quarter and earnings season, TechCrunch is excited to announce that Yext CEO Howard Lerman will join us for a live Q&A next Tuesday as part of our continuing Extra Crunch Live series. The series recently hosted pairs of investors from Accel and Index Ventures and has hosted business leaders, from Mark Cuban to […]
The advent of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data has paved the way for millions of social media influencers in India to amass a following of tens of millions of users in recent years. These influencers, also known as creators, share their daily vlogs, thoughts on a wide range of issues, and […]
