Category: Tech news

 Google’s AlphaGo — the AI developed to tackle the world’s most demanding strategy game — is stepping down from competitive matches after defeating the world’s best talent. The latest to succumb is Go’s top-ranked player, Ke Jie, who lost 3-0 in a series hosted in China this week. The AI, developed by London-based DeepMind, which was acquired by Google… Read More

 Spotify made a few moves this week that could put them in a better position to join the stock market. On Thursday, it was revealed that the company added four people to its board of directors. The music streaming startup has brought on former Disney COO Tom Staggs; Padmasree Warrior, a Cisco vet who runs an electric car business; Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube’s former head of product;… Read More

 We’ve received word from Uber that the Kalanick family suffered a tragic event this weekend. CEO Travis Kalanick’s parents were in a boating accident in Fresno yesterday and his mother Bonnie Horowitz Kalanick has passed away. His father Donald Kalanick was also injured. The company provided the following statement. “Last night Travis and his family suffered an… Read More

 After decades spent funding technologies tailored to deprive us of sleep (see: streaming video, gaming, social networks and 24/7 online shopping), the venture capital industry has decided to direct its considerable capital reserves at helping us get more shut-eye. Read More

 British Airways has yet to fix the IT outage that caused them to cancel all flights at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports earlier Saturday. They originally thought they would be back online by about 6pm GMT, but they’ve now acknowledged that operations will remain suspended through the rest of the day. Following a major IT system failure this morning, we've cancelled… Read More

 In the latest installment of Judah vs The Machines, Judah ventures down to Anki, a company combining augmented reality and artificial intelligence to entertain fans of racing games. Anki utilizes smartphone cameras and a dedicated app to recreate the imagery of racing battles happening on a real physical track in front of you. Judah challenges three autonomous Anki cars to a death match… Read More

 Gunderson Dettmer is the law firm a good majority of tech startups turn to in the Valley for fundings, mergers, licensing and other deals and it’s been in the business of offering tech companies everyday legal advice to everyone from Oracle to DoorDash since the dot-com boom. It was ranked the “most active law firm globally” in PitchBook’s recently-released… Read More

 Once again there are indications the UK government intends to use the law to lean on encryption. A report in The Sun this week quoted a Conservative minister saying that should the government be re-elected, which polls suggest it will, it will move quickly to compel social media firms to hand over decrypted data. Read More

 Write about technology for any amount of time, you’ll get run through the hype wringer. It’s impossible to avoid. After all, it’s the excitement of new technologies that drew so many of us to this field in the first place. And when DJI debuts a product like the Spark, the word “game changer” gets tossed around a lot, just like it did with last year’s… Read More

 British Airways has a problem. Its new IT system has completely crashed five times inside a year, and today it added a sixth global crash to the roster. All flights from Heathrow and Gatwick have been cancelled until at least 6pm in London tonight, affecting all BA flights globally. The airline is asking passengers not to come to the airports. The system failure also took out the BA website… Read More

Sprig is shutting down, Sergey Brin is building a giant airship, Nielsen’s latest data show a ton of people still watch content on TV and bitcoin experiences an outage from all the bitcoin ups and downs. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman announced today that he’s making a big bet on Change.org, the site for social justice petitions. Hoffman is leading a $30 million round, with other investors including big names like Bill Gates and Y Combinator president Sam Altman. “Change.org, the global hub for collective action, is a crucial democratizing force in this era of growing… Read More

 Google has launched a new venture capital program focused on artificial intelligence, Axios is reporting. Google declined to comment on the report, which states that the initiative will be led by longtime Google VP of engineering Anna Patterson and involve a rotating cast of engineers instead of the venture investors who work for Alphabet Inc.’s corporate venture unit, GV. It… Read More

 TechCrunch Disrupt NY was one of the best yet, and we had a lineup of fascinating speakers discussing everything from CRISPR to online media. Here are a few of the highlights. Read More

 This week, DJI announced a brand new drone, Mark Zuckerberg delivered the Harvard commencement speech and Airbnb’s internal data science program was announced. These are the top stories of the week. This post is also a newsletter, so you can sign up to have it delivered to your inbox on Saturday mornings. Read More