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Jeff Bezos details his moon colony ambitions Jeff Bezos has big plans for the moon, if he can just get there. With a little elbow grease our trusty satellite could become a platform from which to build out the space industry — and while a partnership with NASA, the ESA and others would be best, Blue Origin will do it solo if it has to. |
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Pornography and the butterfly effect “Whatever happens to musicians happens to everybody,” said Bruce Sterling years ago, referring to the effects of free downloadable music on their industry; and so it has come to pass for pornographers, as depicted by the great Jon Ronson in his equal parts charming and spellbinding podcast series “The Butterfly Effect.” Pornography, however, is much […] |
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Amazon leads $12M investment in India-based digital insurance startup Acko Amazon appears to be restarting its funding efforts in India afterAcko, the digital insurance startup in India, confirmed that the U.S. retail giant led a new round of funding for its business. Amazon — which has been linked with an Acko investment since the start of this year — backed lending startup Capital Float last […] |
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Location-based virtual reality is increasing its footprint in the U.S. Earlier this year, in a small, grey-walled storefront inside a very large mall in Torrance, Calif. (just past the AMC Center) , the virtual reality game-maker Survios planted its first flag in the market for location-based gaming. It’s one of several companies (many based in Los Angeles) that are turning the city into a hub […] |
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‘The Expanse’ finds a new home on Amazon Prime After an outcry among fans following Syfy’s discontinuation of the series on its network, The Expanse will be getting a fourth season on Amazon Prime after an announcement from Jeff Bezos. Bezos revealed the news at the International Space Development Conference where members of the show’s cast were amongst those in the audience. I'll just […] |
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Here is where CEOs of heavily funded startups went to school CEOs of funded startups tend to be a well-educated bunch, at least when it comes to university degrees. Yes, it’s true college dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates can still do well. But Crunchbase data shows that most startup chief executives have an advanced degree, commonly from a well-known and prestigious university. |
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CommerceDNA wins the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech It’s been a long night at VivaTech. The building hosted a very special competition — the very first TechCrunch Hackathon in Paris. Hundreds of engineers and designers got together to come up with something cool, something neat, something awesome. The only condition was that they only had 24 hours to work on their projects. Some […] |
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What President Trump Doesn’t Know About ZTE David Kline Contributor David Kline is a journalist, author and intellectual property strategist. More posts by this contributor Where human intelligence outperforms AI A new (old) way for product makers to defeat patent roadblocks Although top senators, including Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Marco Rubio, are urging the administration not to bend on ZTE, President […] |
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Trump says ZTE will pay $1.3B fine and overhaul its management to continue US business U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that Chinese telecom firm ZTE will pay a $1.3 billion fine and undergo a significant overhaul of its management team in order to remain operational in North America. ZTE looked to be in dire straits when it ceased its business in the U.S. earlier this month after a Department […] |
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Twitter will give political candidates a special badge during US midterm elections Ahead of 2018 U.S. midterm elections, Twitter is taking a visible step to combat the spread of misinformation on its famously chaotic platform. In a blog post this week, the company explained how it would be adding “election labels” to the profiles of candidates running for political office. “Twitter has become the first place voters […] |
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Apple will add government App Store takedown requests to transparency reports Apple’s set to up the ante with its transparency report. The same day it dropped the latest version of the twice-yearly document, the company committed to including in future updates government takedown requests for the App Store. The report covering July 1 through December 31 of this year, which is due out in 2019, should […] |
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Former journo Alexia Bonatsos unveils her new venture fund, Dream Machine Five years ago, Alexia Bonatsos, ne Tsotsis, was co-editor of TechCrunch, a job that made her renowned in startup circles and familiar with a wide number of startups and their founders. What she really longed to do, in fact, was invest in some of them. “I was among the first people to write about Pinterest […] |
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Collections is a better way to organize those photos you snap as mental notes Wi-Fi password sticker on your router? Snap. Cute sweater in a store’s window display? Snap. Party invitation? Snap. Cool gift idea for mom? Snap.If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you probably also use your iPhone’s camera to take photos of the things you want to remember – maybe even more often than […] |
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Tesla brings on new VP of engineering from Snap Tesla announced a number of new hires today, including Stuart Bowers, who is joining as VP of engineering. Bowers is joining Tesla from Snap, where he worked as VP of monetization engineering.Other new hires include Neeraj Manrao, who left Apple to become Tesla’s director of energy manufacturing, and Kevin Mukai, who is now director of […] |
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Facebook has a very specific Pepe the Frog policy, report says Facebook doesn’t ban fictional characters with hateful content as a rule, but interestingly Pepe the Frog is well enough established as a hate speech symbol that Facebook has a very particular policy devoted only to the cartoon frog. Motherboard got their hands on some content moderation policy documents from Facebook that show Pepe, a cartoon […] |