Tag: Daily Crunch

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Daily Crunch: Jony Ive is leaving Apple

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Jony Ive is leaving Apple to launch a new firm

The man who won over decades of Apple fans with iconic product design and his pronunciation of “aluminum” is out at the company.

The executive will begin transitioning away from Apple at the end of 2019, launching a new project titled LoveFrom next year. In a press release, Apple noted that it will remain a client of his new design firm.

2. Amazon launches Counter in-store pick-up in the US, starting with 100 Rite Aid locations

The longer-term plan for Amazon is to expand the pick-up option to 1,500 stores (including non-Rite Aid partners) by the end of 2019 — a very quick ramp-up in the next six months.

3. Google Maps can now predict how crowded your bus or train will be

This is a new prediction technique Google has been perfecting for over half a year. Starting in October, the company began to ask Google Maps users who traveled between 6am to 10am for details about their journey.

4. Apple’s Sidecar just really gets me, you know?

Darrell has been trying out Sidecar, the feature that lets you use an iPad as an external display for your Mac — and he says it’s just about everything you could ask for.

5. Niantic is throwing a Harry Potter: Wizards Unite fan festival this summer

Niantic has been doing in-person “anomaly” events around the world for their first title, Ingress, for years, and the company has also held dozens of real-world events for Pokémon GO.

6. My six months with $30/month email service Superhuman

A $30-per-month email service capturing the adoration of investors and founders in Silicon Valley is perhaps an unsurprising story in a subscription-obsessed landscape, yet we’re only now hearing how stealth-y startup Superhuman has captured major funding.

7. The rise of the new crypto ‘mafias’

Drawing on the idea of the “PayPal mafia,” this article examines the formation and flow of talent within the crypto landscape today. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Reddit quarantines Trump-focused community

It’s NEWSLETTER TIME get pumped! I know I am – it’s my first Daily Crunch in over a year. That’s right, your friendly neighborhood Anthony Ha is otherwise occupied today so I’m back to deliver this baby to you, devoted readers. And there’s news: Plenty o’ News.

1. Reddit puts r/The_Donald in a corner

Reddit has long had an uncomfortable relationship with one of its communities, a subreddit called r/The_Donald which focuses on all things related to the current U.S. President (still seems like a totally crazy thing to say).

quarantined

The so-called ‘front page of the Internet’ has finally had enough – or at least, the stage before truly ‘enough.’ It’s quarantined r/The_Donald, meaning that its content won’t ooze beyond the community into the rest of Reddit’s multi-community surfaces. So you have to choose to wallow in that filth, going in eyes wide open.

2. Apple makes a key chip talent hire

Apple loves using its own chips in its products, and keeps adding more chips all the time to handle things like on-device security and wireless connections with accessories. Now it’s brought on a leading ARM chip designer, which is obviously fuelling speculation that Apple could replace Intel with its own ARM-based processors to power next-generation Macs.

3. Live stream selling app expands to in-person sales

NTWRK is a weird hybrid of QVC and HQ Trivia, with people selling you stuff via live stream. The app is now expanding into physical events, which I guess will resemble flash sales mixed crossed with concerts?

4. Station F is launching a co-living space for startups

Station F is a gigantic co-working space in Paris that seemed like an unlikely proposition when it was first revealed. It got made and has been operating for years now, however. So maybe there’s a chance that its new ‘Flatmates’ co-living space, which can house up to 600 people in shared apartment arrangements, can do the same.

5. Amazon debuts counter pick-up at Rite Aid

Amazon is introducing a new counter pick-up service for packages at stores in the U.S, starting with 100 Rite Aid locations. Amazon has hollowed out the bodies of its retail hosts and is now parasitically using their corpses to propagate.

6. TripActions raises $250M and is now valued at $4B

That’s four unicorns stacked atop one another, if you’re counting. TripActions is an enterprise booking platform, which is big business, and if it’s at all an improvement over the various legacy ones I’ve used over the years, then it’s probably worth that high value assessment.

7. Volkswagen launches all-electric car sharing

A car sharing network made up of only electric vehicles?! Now there’s one from Volkswagen, called WeShare. It’s only live in Berlin as of today, and it probably isn’t destined for U.S. shores anytime soon, but it’s definitely a sign of the times.

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Daily Crunch: SF moves towards e-cig ban

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. San Francisco takes the final steps toward becoming the first U.S. city to ban vaping product sales

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance that prohibits the sale of e-cigarettes within the city.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who co-sponsored the ban, told Bloomberg that products will be allowed to be sold in the city again if they receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

2. Lifestyle goods resale marketplace StockX raises $110M, pushing valuation past $1B

StockX rode the sneaker culture boom of the past half-decade or so, as the startup first focused exclusively on acting as a resale source for shoes with high levels of hype. Its unique value prop was offering a verification service, so that you knew when you were buying the real deal.

3. FTC, Justice Dept. takes coordinated action against robocallers

In the so-called “Operation Call It Quits,” the Federal Trade Commission brought four cases — two filed on its behalf by the Justice Department — and three settlements against parties said to be responsible for making more than a billion illegal robocalls.

4. 300M-user meme site Imgur raises $20M from Coil to pay creators

Coil is a micropayment tool for creators, and Imgur says it will eventually launch a premium membership with exclusive features and content reserved for Coil subscribers.

5. ‘The Office’ is leaving Netflix in 2021 because NBC wants it back

By far the most popular show on Netflix in 2018, “The Office” was bound to leave the service eventually — or, at the very least, see some huge contract renegotiations. NBCUniversal, meanwhile, sees it as an important asset for its upcoming streaming service.

6. MIT AI tool can predict breast cancer up to 5 years early, works equally well for white and black patients

MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has developed a new deep learning-based AI prediction model that can anticipate the development of breast cancer up to five years in advance.

7. How to scale a start-up in school

If you’re serious about starting and scaling your business in school, treat your time in school like an extended incubator. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: We preview new Apple operating systems

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. iPadOS preview

Brian Heater checks out the new, forked version of iOS with tablet-specific features like a richer Home Screen, support for multitasking within a single app and giving iPad users more control over their files.

In addition, we’ve got initial impressions on macOS Catalina (with new ways for Apple to serve up content) and iOS 13 (with a gorgeous Dark Mode).

2. Hackers are stealing years of call records from hacked cell networks

According to researchers, the hackers have systematically broken in to more than 10 cell networks around the world over the past seven years to obtain massive amounts of call records — including times and dates of calls, and their cell-based locations — on at least 20 individuals.

3. SpaceX records another first for reusable rocketry by catching Falcon Heavy fairing with a boat

The maneuver saw a SpaceX-owned barge called Ms. Tree rigged with a giant net. It then navigated to a point off the Florida coast to await a falling nosecone from the Falcon Heavy launch.

4. SoftBank-backed Getaround acquires Norwegian car rental startup for $12M

Nabobil, which first launched in 2015, has 180,000 registered users and reached 130,000 bookings in May. For now, the startup will keep its name, and its full team will remain in place in Oslo, Norway.

5. Live like a robber baron for a night with Airbnb Luxe

The price varies from $600 to $1 million per night, and what you get ranges from castles in France to award-winning homes in New Zealand and South Africa.

6. Monzo, the UK challenger bank, raises £113M Series F led by YC’s Continuity fund at a £2B post-money valuation

Monzo’s new funding round should be viewed within the context of not only fast growth and increasingly convincing product-market fit in the U.K., but also recently unveiled plans to launch across the pond.

7. Apple says Spotify exaggerated how much ‘App Store tax’ it pays

Specifically, an Apple filing says that Spotify only pays a 15% “app tax” (revenue share) on just 0.5% of its 100 million premium subscribers.

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Daily Crunch: Details on the new Raspberry Pi

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. The Raspberry Pi Foundation unveils the Raspberry Pi 4

While the Raspberry Pi first started as a simple computer designed to teach kids how to code, it has become a versatile device with many different use cases.

When it comes to physical design, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B looks like the previous flagship model. It’s a single-board computer with a lot of connectors that is the size of a deck of cards. But everything has been updated.

2. Echo Show 5 review

Brian Heater says that if you’re looking for a smart home hub to double as an alarm clock, the Lenovo Smart Clock is your best bet. But if video playback and chat are important, Amazon’s got you covered.

3. Google’s new media literacy program teaches kids how to spot disinformation and fake news

The company is launching six new media literacy activities for the curriculum that will teach kids things like how to avoid a phishing attack, what bots are, how to verify that information is credible, how to evaluate sources, how to identify disinformation online, spot fake URLs and more.

4. Who’s going to use the big bad Libra?

If you’ve been wondering who’s actually going to use Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency, Jon Evans has some thoughts.

5. The power of Ravelry’s stance against white supremacy reaches beyond the knitting community

This weekend, Ravelry enacted a policy that explicitly bans support of Donald Trump and his administration in content posted to the site, including project entries, patterns, forum posts and profiles.

6. Transitioning from engineering to product with Adobe’s Anjul Bhambhri

An interview with the vice president of platform engineering at Adobe. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The Equity team discusses the role VCs have played in the development of Facebook’s Libra, Original Content reviews the Netflix series “When They See Us” and most importantly, Mixtape is back with a conversation with Uber’s Meena Harris.

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Daily Crunch: Google’s not making any more tablets

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Google says it’s not making any more tablets

“For Google’s first-party hardware efforts, we’ll be focusing on Chrome OS laptops and will continue to support Pixel Slate,” the company said in statement.

Google SVP Rick Osterloh took to Twitter to emphasize that while Google’s hardware team will be “solely focused on building laptops moving forward,” the company will still be working with partners on Android and Chrome OS tablets.

2. Slack’s value rockets as stock closes up 48.5% in public debut

At the close of trading yesterday, Slack’s market cap sat well above $20 billion, or nearly 3 times its most recent private valuation of $7 billion.

3. One of NASA’s robotic astronaut helpers just flew on its own in space for the first time

The robot — called “Bumble” and one of a series of Astrobee robots that NASA developed to work along with astronauts on the ISS — is the first ever to fly on its own in space.

4. Samsung exec says the Galaxy Fold is ‘ready to hit the market’

Just last week, Huawei noted that it was holding off on its own Mate X release. But Samsung, at least, may finally be ready to unleash its foldable on the world, two months after the planned release.

5. Meet your new chief of staff: An AI chatbot

Mailbox’s founders are back with their second act: An AI-enabled assistant called Navigator meant to help teams work and communicate more efficiently.

6. Terry Gou resigns as Foxconn’s chairman to run for president of Taiwan

Gou, who founded Foxconn 45 years ago and is also its biggest shareholder, will remain on the company’s board.

7. A chat with Niantic CEO John Hanke on the launch of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Built in collaboration with WB Games, Wizards Unite is a reimagining of Pokémon GO’s real-world, location-based gaming concept through the lens of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Slack makes its Wall Street debut

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Slack prices IPO at $26 per share

Slack is debuting on the New York Stock Exchange today. Trading hasn’t opened yet as I write this, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has set a price of $26 per share.

The enterprise communication company is pursuing a direct listing, eschewing the typical IPO process in favor of putting its current stock on to the NYSE without doing an additional raise or bringing on underwriter banking partners.

2. Waymo takes its self-driving car ambitions global in partnership with Renault-Nissan

Waymo has locked in an exclusive partnership with Renault and Nissan to research how commercial autonomous vehicles might work for passengers and packages in France and Japan.

3. UK age checks for online porn delayed after bureaucratic cock-up

Digital minister Jeremy Wright said the government failed to notify the European Commission of age verification standards it expects companies to meet. Without this notification, the government can’t legally implement the policy.


4. iRobot acquires education startup Root Robotics

Root Robotics is the creator of an eponymous coding robot, a two-wheeled device designed to draw on whiteboards and other surfaces, scanning colors, playing music and otherwise playing out coding instructions.

5. SaaS data protection provider Druva nabs $130M, now at a $1B+ valuation, acquiring CloudLanes

Druva has made a name for itself as a provider of cloud-based solutions to protect and manage IT assets.

6. Why all standard black Tesla cars are about to cost $1,000 more

Tesla will start charging $1,000 for its once-standard black paint color next month, according to a tweet by CEO Elon Musk.

7. Tally’s Jason Brown on fintech’s first debt roboadvisor and an automated financial future

We sat down with Tally’s founder and CEO Jason Brown to discuss a new funding round, Tally’s growth strategy and the company’s vision for an automated financial future. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Slack makes its Wall Street debut

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Slack prices IPO at $26 per share

Slack is debuting on the New York Stock Exchange today. Trading hasn’t opened yet as I write this, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has set a price of $26 per share.

The enterprise communication company is pursuing a direct listing, eschewing the typical IPO process in favor of putting its current stock on to the NYSE without doing an additional raise or bringing on underwriter banking partners.

2. Waymo takes its self-driving car ambitions global in partnership with Renault-Nissan

Waymo has locked in an exclusive partnership with Renault and Nissan to research how commercial autonomous vehicles might work for passengers and packages in France and Japan.

3. UK age checks for online porn delayed after bureaucratic cock-up

Digital minister Jeremy Wright said the government failed to notify the European Commission of age verification standards it expects companies to meet. Without this notification, the government can’t legally implement the policy.


4. iRobot acquires education startup Root Robotics

Root Robotics is the creator of an eponymous coding robot, a two-wheeled device designed to draw on whiteboards and other surfaces, scanning colors, playing music and otherwise playing out coding instructions.

5. SaaS data protection provider Druva nabs $130M, now at a $1B+ valuation, acquiring CloudLanes

Druva has made a name for itself as a provider of cloud-based solutions to protect and manage IT assets.

6. Why all standard black Tesla cars are about to cost $1,000 more

Tesla will start charging $1,000 for its once-standard black paint color next month, according to a tweet by CEO Elon Musk.

7. Tally’s Jason Brown on fintech’s first debt roboadvisor and an automated financial future

We sat down with Tally’s founder and CEO Jason Brown to discuss a new funding round, Tally’s growth strategy and the company’s vision for an automated financial future. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: A closer look Facebook and Libra

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Libra currently looks more like a fiat currency than a cryptocurrency

Facebook unveiled a cryptocurrency called Libra yesterday. Romain Dillet looks at the company’s announcement and concludes that the current governance model and blockchain implementation seems closer to banks than bitcoin.

In other words, it looks like a blockchain but it’s not a real blockchain. It’s not truly decentralized.

2. Apple expands authorized repairs to ~1,000 Best Buy stores

In the past three years, Apple says it has expanded repair coverage to three times as many U.S. locations, thanks to third-party partnerships. Those locations now include almost 1,000 Best Buys.

3. Google announces $1B, 10-year plan to add thousands of homes to Bay Area

The housing crisis in the Bay Area, particularly in San Francisco, is a complex and controversial topic, with no one-size-fits-all solution — but a check for a billion dollars is about as close as you’re going to get.


4. Apple Watch’s own built-in apps can be deleted in watchOS 6

Good news for Apple Watch owners who don’t want to clutter up their Watch with unused apps.

5. Still in stealth mode, Duffel raises $21.5M in Series A from Benchmark for its travel platform

Duffel says it will be a B2B offering, allowing individual travel agents at large online travel management companies and tour operators to offer a “seamless travel experience” to their end customers, making the booking experience simpler, faster and cheaper.

6. YouTube’s new AR Beauty Try-On lets viewers virtually try on makeup while watching video reviews

The feature is designed to be used in a split-screen experience while YouTube viewers watch a makeup tutorial.

7. A diversity and inclusion playbook

The examples of tech companies “doing it right” on diversity and inclusion are few and far between, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Facebook unveils Libra cryptocurrency

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Facebook announces Libra cryptocurrency: All you need to know

Facebook has finally revealed the details of its cryptocurrency Libra, which will let you buy things or send money to people with nearly zero fees.

The company won’t fully control Libra, but instead get just a single vote in its governance like other founding members of the Libra Association, including Visa, Uber and Andreessen Horowitz, which have invested at least $10 million each into the project’s operations.

2. Amazon’s Twitch acquired social networking platform Bebo for under $25M to bolster its esports efforts

Bebo lives!

3. The future of diversity and inclusion in tech

Silicon Valley is entering a new phase in its quest for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. Some advocates call this part “the end of the beginning,” as Code2040 CEO Karla Monterroso put it.

4. Palm’s tiny phone is available unlocked at $350

The phone’s available “at only” $350. That’s cheap compared to many full-sized, mid-tier handsets, but cheapness is a relative concept — this still seems like a high price for a second phone.

5. Carmen Sandiego returns to Google Earth with a new caper

Google Earth first made use of its rich global 3D visualization as a backdrop for a Carmen Sandiego tie-in back in March, but today there’s a new adventure to explore.

6. Google Calendar is down, it’s not just you

Maybe it’ll be back up by the time you read this newsletter.

7. How to negotiate term sheets with strategic investors

Negotiating a term sheet with a strategic investor necessitates a different set of considerations. (Extra Crunch membership required.)