Since first uploading a YouTube teaser video of its tech five years ago, Magic Leap’s presence in the augmented reality industry has been controversial. Some have lauded the team’s ambitions, while others I’ve talked to say the company’s posturing has dissuaded investors from taking chances on other AR hardware startups, which has hampered the industry’s […]
China-based electric car startup Byton has furloughed about half of the 450 employees who work at its North American headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., putting the release date of the automaker’s upcoming M-Byte vehicle into question. Byton told TechCrunch the furloughs were the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The intention is to bring these furloughed […]
Ever since it first started rolling out, 5G skeptics have attempted to link the next-gen cellular technology to all manner of health issues. Most recently, it’s become an easy scapegoat for the global COVID-19 pandemic, given the rapid rise of both. Conspiracy theories have gained such a foothold that vigilantes have taken matters into their […]
Google’s data centers run 24/7 and suck up a ton of energy — so it’s in both the company’s and the planet’s interest to make them do so as efficiently as possible. One new method has the facilities keeping an eye on the weather so they know when the best times are to switch to […]
SpaceX has launched another big batch of Starlink satellites, the low Earth orbit spacecraft that will provide connectivity for its globe-spanning high-bandwidth broadband internet network. This brings the total number of Starlink satellites on orbit to 422, though the company plans to de-orbit two of those (the first two prototypes launched) shortly. Already, SpaceX is […]
Facebook’s major bet on Jio Platforms could create a headache for mobile payments services that have amassed tens of millions of users while struggling to find a business model in the world’s second-largest internet market. The $5.7 billion investment, Facebook’s second-largest to date, could also further its dominance in India — its biggest market by […]
AT&T gave a first look into how the pay TV business is faring amid the coronavirus pandemic…and it’s not great. The company reported today as a part of its Q1 2020 earnings that its traditional pay TV services, including DIRECTV and its newer streaming option AT&T TV, saw a combined net loss of 897,000 subscribers […]
The Los Angeles Cleantch Incubator is rebooting its incubator program and moving from rolling applications to a cohort model beginning with 16 new startups. Los Angeles’ not-for-profit incubator exchanges sweat equity in the form of services and office space, and the promise of $20,000 in funding for local pilot projects, for a 1.5% to 3% […]
Ask any woman and she will tell you that most of her bras do not fit her optimally. In fact, a majority of women end up wearing the wrong size. A large part of the problem is that sizing is standardized, unlike women’s bodies. With every passing year, more people are also shopping online, meaning […]
Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health has released updated projections of when we can expect U.S. case numbers of COVID-19 infections to peak and decline, based on different levels of social distancing measures. The updated projects, which take into account the most recent information, show that with around a 30% decrease in social contact […]
The tech industry (and the world at large) is not experiencing temporary anxiety — the uncertainty we’re all coping with is the new normal. Sudden shifts in behavior have made some startups targeting slow-moving, old-school industries more relevant than they could have imagined, such as those in telehealth, distance learning and remote work. Most, however […]
SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk said on Twitter on Wednesday that the cause of the failure of a single Merlin engine during the most recent Starlink launch (which didn’t prevent the launch from ultimately succeeding at its mission) was the result of an undetected, “small amount” of a cleaning fluid that ignited during the […]
Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed that it had begun pulling down select COVID-19 protests, citing violations of state-enforced social distancing. The social media giant was attempting a sort of diplomacy, noting that all rallies/protests would be assessed on a case by case basis, and crosschecked with local government. CNET today noted that Eventbrite has begun […]
Apple will patch a newly discovered iPhone vulnerability that security researchers say hackers have already used to steal data from their victims’ devices. News of the vulnerability dropped Wednesday by security firm ZecOps. Zuk Avraham, the company’s chief executive, said the firm found the bug last year during a routine investigation. At least six organizations […]
Facebook today is introducing another feature aimed at making it easier to see who’s behind the posts published across Facebook and Instagram. The company says it will now display the location of the Facebook Page or Instagram account with a large audience on every post it shares, so end users have a better understanding of […]
It’s launch day for yet another batch of Starlink satellites, which will bring the total launched by SpaceX to 422. With each launch, there’s renewed discussion around the impact the growing constellation of low Earth orbit small satellites has on night-sky visibility and scientific research, and SpaceX has said it’s making changes to attempt to […]
A year ago, back in the days of in-person conferences, Google officially announced the launch of its Anthos multi-cloud application modernization platform at its Cloud Next conference. The promise of Anthos was always that it would allow enterprises to write their applications once, package them into containers and then manage their multi-cloud deployments across GCP, […]
Facebook makes a $5.7 billion investment in Reliance Jio, Netflix’s latest quarter was even better than expected and Patreon lays off 30 employees. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 22, 2020. (And happy Earth Day!) 1. Facebook invests $5.7B in India’s Reliance Jio As China’s fast-growing ByteDance (owner of TikTok) emerges as a formidable competitor […]
Two months ago, seemingly out of nowhere, CrowdStrike’s co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch decided it was time to depart. Alperovitch, who served as the cybersecurity giant’s chief technology office since its 2011 debut, said he was leaving to launch a non-profit policy accelerator. CrowdStrike named Michael Sentonas, who managed the firm’s tech strategy for three years, as […]
As smartphone sales began to plateau and slow over the past couple of years, many device makers arrived at the same conclusion: people want cheaper phones. It’s clear why companies like Apple and Samsung took the message to heart, as the smartphone market downturn appeared to coincide with the standardization of $1,000 premium devices. While […]
