Category: Tech news

 The days of Google Talk are quickly coming to an end. As the company announced today, the messaging service that allowed Gmail users to talk to each other since it launched in 2005, will now be completely retired. Read More

 The Tesla Model 3 will eventually get a more performance-oriented option, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk says we can probably expect in around a year or so. The Model 3 tuned for better performance might inherit more of the muscle of the Model S, in a smaller, lighter package, but Musk says not to expect it to ever top the Model S on acceleration, since the original Tesla electric luxury sedan… Read More

 Uber is expected to publicly release its first-ever diversity report sometime next week. But it turns out that Uber’s demographics were also unknown to members of its recruiting team, Bloomberg reported earlier today, citing several sources. According to Bloomberg’s report, although some members of Uber’s recruiting team are tasked with hiring diverse people, those members… Read More

 The Tesla solar roof tiles the company unveiled last year, which look like regular roof tiles and yet have roughly equivalent efficiency of traditional solar power gathering cells, will be up for order starting in April, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. These are a key step in Tesla’s combined vision for its solar energy generation and storage business, along with its electric… Read More

 After years of stubborn caution, Facebook is finally embracing the animated GIF. Next week Facebook will begin testing a GIF button that lets users post GIFs from services like Giphy and Tenor as comments, a source told TechCrunch. We inquired with Facebook, which confirmed the GIF test is coming with this statement: “Everyone loves a good GIF and we know that people want to be able to… Read More

 Have you ever wanted to know what makes a fintech startup tick, but didn’t have the chance, or the right person, to ask? Well, we’ve got you covered: Mike Cagney, the co-founder and CEO of one of the hottest fintech businesses around, is coming to Disrupt in New York for a fireside chat, and we want to hear what you’d like to know. More on that below. But first, allow me to… Read More

 There’s really not much difference between political canvassing and the door-to-door sales pitch. Startup Polis is leveraging its campaign experience to help large companies woo customers with that personal touch that can mean so much. The American consumer has come a long way since the days of Willie Loman and the door-to-door sales pitch, but despite all of the online and retail… Read More

Apple creates a new video editing app called Clips, large electronics are now banned from flights to the U.S. coming from 13 countries and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies starts building full-size passenger pods. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 Over 15,000 founders from 7,200 startups applied to this batch of Y Combinator. It chose just over 100 with founders from 22 countries to go through its accelerator program. Today, the second half of those companies launched on stage, and we have breakdowns of all 51 of these businesses. Oh, and the ACLU. The 97-year old legal activism non-profit is far from a startup, but went through YC to… Read More

 Gas is the biggest cost for airlines. The easiest way to reduce these costs? Don’t use gas at all. That was the pitch from Wright Electric, a startup building an commercial passenger plane that runs on batteries and can handle flights under 300 miles. These short-haul trips make up 30 percent of all flights and a $26 billion market. Today Wright Electric gave its first preview to the… Read More

 Uber held a special press call on Tuesday, hosted by board member Arianna Huffington and staffed with three of its highest ranking female staff. The call was pretty clearly an attempt to counter-message some of the negative press Uber has faced, specifically around its culture and accusations of sexism. Read More

 You can hack your IKEA furniture to be more awesome. You can hack video games to make your fellow gamers hate your guts. And with the help of Macchina — now on Kickstarter — you can teach your car a few new tricks, too. What could possibly go wrong? Read More

 A New York City startup called The Mednet today launched a platform that gives physicians a knowledge-sharing tool that’s as easy to use as Quora, but provides them with expert answers about the latest research in their field. The site has focused, so far, strictly on cancer. Read More

 Uber held a press conference on Tuesday to discuss some of its ongoing issues, including what it’s doing to rectify its workplace cultural problems and the state of its business. The press conference also saw Uber share some details about the business impact of its string of bad news from early in 2017. Read More

 Amazon has quietly rolled out the “Send to Kindle” feature to its Kindle for iOS application that allows you to save to the app articles and documents found on the web. That means your Kindle device or app can replace your preferred “read it later” application — like Pocket or Instapaper, for example — apps where regular web readers often store the longer… Read More