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SpaceX successfully flies its Starship prototype to a height of around 500 feet SpaceX has been developing Starship, its next-generation spacecraft, at its site in Boca Chica, Texas. The company has built a number of different Starship prototypes to date, include one prior version called the Starhopper that was essentially just the bottom portion of the rocket. Today, the company flew its first full-scale prototype (minus the domed […]
Anthony Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison, as new $4B lawsuit against Uber is filed Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been sentenced to 18 months on one count of stealing trade secrets. Judge Alsup said that home confinement would “[give] a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets. Prison […]
‘Mulan’ is coming to Disney+ on September 4, for an additional price of $29.99 Those wondering whether The Walt Disney Company would eventually give up on a traditional theatrical release for “Mulan” now have their answer. While the coronavirus pandemic prompted Disney to accelerate the streaming release of some movies like Pixar’s “Onward,”and to send certain lower-profile movies like “Artemis Fowl” straight to Disney+, until now the company has […]
Disney+ grows to more than 60.5M subscribers Disney+ had more than 60.5 million paying subscribers as of yesterday, according to The Walt Disney Company’s CEO Bob Chapek. Chapek shared the number during a call to discuss the company’s latest earnings report, which covered the company’s most recent quarter ending on June 27. He was essentially offering an update on the 57.5 million […]
Software stocks set new records despite earnings, pandemic You might have missed it, but amidst the current political-M&A-pandemic-election-disinformation news cycle we find ourselves in this week, SaaS and cloud companies reached new public market records. Yesterday, the Bessemer-Nasdaq cloud index closed at 2,035.54, a new record finish for the basket of software companies. And, today, the index broached the 2,040 mark before ceding […]
Parental control app Boomerang repeatedly blocked from Play Store, losing business Apple isn’t the only one accused of kicking out competitive solutions from its App Store. Google did the same — for over a month at least — or so alleges parental control app maker Boomerang. The company’s product competes with Google’s own Family Link solution for controlling screen time and children’s use of mobile devices. […]
Apple’s veteran marketing chief Phil Schiller moves to smaller role inside company After more than three decades climbing Apple’s ranks, marketing chief Phil Schiller is taking a step back at the company, being replaced by a long-time product marketing leader inside Apple. Schiller is taking on a new role as an Apple Fellow, where he will continue to lead the App Store and the company’s events, a […]
More thoughts on growingpodcasts Plus: how to monitor and fix Facebook/Instagram ad fatigue, and using mobile app ads to drive landing page conversions.
Qualified raises $12M to make websites smarter about sales and marketing Qualified, a startup co-founded by former Salesforce executives Kraig Swensrud and Sean Whiteley, has raised $12 million in Series A funding. Swensrud (Qualified’s CEO) said the startup is meant to solve a problem that he faced when he was CMO at Salesforce. Apparently he’d complain about being “blind,” because he knew so little about who […]
Decrypted: How a teenager hacked Twitter, Garmin’s ransomware aftermath A 17-year-old Florida teenager is accused of perpetrating one of the year’s biggest and most high-profile hacks: Twitter. A federal 30-count indictment filed in Tampa said Graham Ivan Clark used a phone spearphishing attack to pivot through multiple layers of Twitter’s security and bypassed its two-factor authentication to gain access to an internal “admin” tool […]
Rocket Lab boosts Electron rocket’s lift capacity to 660 lbs Rocket Lab has managed to engineer a significant payload capacity bump into its existing Electron space launch vehicle, the company revealed today. Electron can now fly as much as 300 kg (660 lbs) to low Earth orbit (or around 440 lbs to a higher, sun synchronous orbit), and that’s mostly due to battery technology advances, […]
Microsoft, Amazon back a SoCal company making microchips specifically for voice-based apps Microsoft’s venture capital fund, M12 Ventures, has led a slew of strategic corporate investors backing a new chip developer out of Southern California called Syntiant, which makes semiconductors for voice recognition and speech-based applications. “We started out to build a new type of processor for machine learning, and voice is our first application,” says Syntiant […]
Rigetti raises $79M Series C for its quantum computing platform Rigetti Computing, the quantum computing startup that is challenging industry heavyweights like IBM, Microsoft and D-Wave, today announced that it has closed a $79 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Alumni Ventures Group, DCVC, EDBI, Morpheus Ventures and Northgate Capital. Bessemer’s Tomer Diari […]
Vectrix is developing cloud security marketplace built for and by security pros In a typical security team, engineers write one-off scripts to track a particular problem on a cloud vendor such as an unauthorized user on your GitHub account, and while engineers are capable of writing such scripts, it’s not exactly an efficient or scalable way to deal with the range of security problems these pros need […]
Autonomous vehicle reporting data is driving AV innovation right off the road All AV all disengagement reports have one thing in common: their usefulness is ubiquitously criticized by those who have to submit them.