Saturday, November 30, 2019

Daily Crunch - Thanksgiving online shopping spikes in 2019

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Friday, November 29, 2019 By Darrell Etherington

Black Friday! Consumerism!

It’s that time of year when things are discounted, mostly all at once, and among all those things there is a subsection of things that is probably actually worth purchasing, especially if you genuinely have a use for it and it’s not typically on sale at any other time of the year.

That day also just happens to come right after Thanksgiving, which is slowing being absorbed into Black Friday and the amalgam entity it has formed with the increasingly meaninglessly-named Cyber Monday. But things are still happening in technology news, as you can see in The Daily Crunch today.

Thanksgiving shopping tops $4.2 billion

Yeah a lot of people aren’t waiting for Black Friday to buy stuff online this year – early 15% more stuff than last year, in fact. And it’s unsurprisingly happening more on mobile.

Is this good? It is if you’re in the e-commerce business. It probably isn’t if you bought another discounted gadget that will go into a drawer or closet, never to be retrieved.

 

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Thanksgiving shopping tops $4.2 billion image

Image Credits: imagedepotpro / Getty Images

Save big on our best Android phones

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Mixcloud data breach exposes 20 million user records

The Mixcloud data breach happened in November, and TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker broke the story today. 20 million is a lot of records, and the UK-based streaming platform hasn’t said anything about the dump just yet. The good news is that the passwords data exploded appears to be SHA-2 scrambled, which means there are slim chances of unscrambling those passwords.

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Intel says Qualcomm unfairly killed its modem business

Intel isn’t mincing words: It places the blame squarely on Qualcomm’s licensing practices as having killed the modem business it spent many years and billions of dollars to build, only to then sell the scraps to Apple after being unable to turn it into a going concern.

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Intel says Qualcomm unfairly killed its modem business image

Pixpay aims to take on big banks with a focus on teens

Teens as the basis for an upstart banking business? Maybe those teens end up being lucrative eventually, but it does seem like a small market to get started with.

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This startup is attracting investment by tracking your food via AI

Foodvisor has raised $4.5 million on the back of 2 million app downloads, based on the concept that people will want to trust deep learning-based algorithms to identify their food and tell them about it. Which, of course, means it’ll have lots of data direct from users about what they’re actually consuming on a daily basis, if all goes to plan.

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This startup is attracting investment by tracking your food via AI image

Will the future of work be ethical?

Extra Crunch’s Greg Epstein kicks off a series with a look at ethics and the future of work, the initial and very extensive anchor piece of which is free for all to read. He dives into more specific perspectives in additional Extra Crunch paywalled content, if this very detailed overview leaves you wanting more.

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Thursday, November 28, 2019

Daily Crunch - Twitter will delete dormant accounts

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Wednesday, November 27, 2019 By Anthony Ha

Happy Wednesday

Twitter says it’s freeing up handles by deleting inactive accounts, Facebook buys the VR studio behind the popular Beat Saber and an Indian scooter startup raises $150 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for November 27, 2019.

By the way: There will be no newsletter tomorrow, and Darrell Etherington will be filling in for me on Friday. If you celebrate, have a great Thanksgiving!

Twitter will free up handles by deleting inactive accounts

“As part of our commitment to serve the public conversation, we're working to clean up inactive accounts to present more accurate, credible information people can trust across Twitter,” the company said.

Sounds like a smart move, with one big catch: If someone with a Twitter account died more than six months prior and no one else has their login, their account will be deleted. So hopefully, Twitter will come up with a way to memorialize these accounts.

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Twitter will free up handles by deleting inactive accounts image

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Facebook buys VR studio behind Beat Saber

Virtual reality doesn't have many hit games yet, but Facebook is buying the studio behind one of the medium’s biggest titles. It says Beat Games will join Oculus Studio but will continue to operate independently.

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Indian scooter rental startup Bounce raises $150M

Bounce, formerly known as Metro Bikes, allows customers to rent a scooter for as little as Rs 1 (0.1 cents) per kilometer and Rs 1.5 per hour. Sources told us the new financing round values the startup "well over $500 million.”

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Indian scooter rental startup Bounce raises $150M image

Netflix leases New York's Paris Theatre

Netflix is expanding its theatrical presence by signing a long-term lease for a historic single-screen venue in New York City. This follows reports that the streaming company is also working to buy the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles.

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Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince is coming to Disrupt Berlin

Back in 2010, web performance and security company Cloudflare launched on-stage at our Disrupt SF Battlefield. And as Prince loves to remind us, the company came in second.

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Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince is coming to Disrupt Berlin image

Gift Guide: STEM toys for your builders-in-training

Yep, it’s gift guide season. Here’s our updated roundup of the latest wares clamoring to entice and inspire kids with coding tricks and electronic wizardry.

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We're democratizing information about startups with Extra Crunch

The Daily Crunch includes links to Extra Crunch stories just about every day. But if you’re still wondering what exactly TechCrunch’s premium membership program offers, here’s a 45-second video explaining everything you need to know.

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Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Daily Crunch - Google fires employee activists

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Tuesday, November 26, 2019 By Anthony Ha

Happy Tuesday

Google fires four employee activists for alleged security violations, Facebook launches a new market research app and we’ve got the full agenda for Disrupt Berlin. Here’s your Daily Crunch for November 26, 2019.

Google employee activist says she's been fired

Employee activist Rebecca Rivers (who was involved in a campaign pressuring Google to end its contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection) said yesterday that she’d been fired. Google declined to comment but confirmed an internal note published by Bloomberg, which said the company fired a total of four employees for repeatedly violating its data-security policies.

Earlier this month, Google put Rivers and Laurence Berland on leave for allegedly violating company policies. Ahead of an employee rally last week, however, organizers said the "attack" on Rivers and Berland "is an attack on all people who care about transparency and accountability for tech."

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Google employee activist says she's been fired image

Image Credits: Mason Trinca / Getty Images

Join the Zendesk for Startups Program

Sponsored by Zendesk for Startups

Whether it's customer support, sales, or everything in between, give your customers the experience they deserve with Zendesk. Qualifying startups get Zendesk products free for a year through the Zendesk for Startups Program. Apply now.

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Facebook Viewpoints pays users for well-being surveys & tasks

People in the U.S. who are over 18 can now download Viewpoints and participate in a survey to help Facebook can learn to "limit the negative impacts of social media and enhance the benefits." Other opportunities include completing online chores on behalf of Facebook or trying out new apps or devices ahead of launch so Facebook can refine them.

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Announcing the complete Disrupt Berlin agenda

Join us December 11 and December 12 as we sit down with CEOs from big-name companies such as UIPath, Samsung and Naspers, as well as leading investors from Atomico, SoftBank and Index.

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Announcing the complete Disrupt Berlin agenda image

Leavy.co, the app for millennials who want to rent out their room while traveling, discloses $14M funding

The Leavy.co app is described as a "travel community and marketplace" that wants to help millennials travel more for less. At the heart of its offering is a way for travelers (dubbed "Happy Leavers") to rent out their room or apartment when they are away to help fund their trip.

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NASA's second free-flying assistant robot gets to work

NASA activated a free-floating autonomous robot called 'Bumble' earlier this year, and now Bumble has a new companion called Honey. Both are Astrobee robots, cube-like "robotic teammates" for ISS astronauts, that are designed to help with experiments, day-to-day activities and more.

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NASA's second free-flying assistant robot gets to work image

Image Credits: NASA

Argentine fintech Ualá raises $150M led by Tencent and SoftBank

Founder and CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri, a Buenos Aires native and Harvard University graduate, says his ambition was to create a platform that would bring all financial services into one app linked to one card. As it exists now, Ualá is linked to a prepaid, global Mastercard and allows users to transfer money, invest in mutual funds, request loans, pay bills and top-up prepaid services.

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The herd sours on unprofitable unicorns again

Wasabi CEO David Friend looks at why venture and private equity funds have been chasing unprofitable unicorns, and why they’ve soured on those unicorns lately. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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