Category: Tech news

 Palantir — that $20 billion secretive outfit that provides government, finance, healthcare and other organizations with analytics, security and other data management solutions — has raised another $20 million in funding, according to a new SEC filing. It’s a relatively modest amount for the company. In its last fundraising, in December 2015, Palantir closed off… Read More

 One of the primary reasons for Thanksgiving was always the celebration of the end of the harvest and the promise of new growth. Home gardens wilted in the first November rains and the apples and herbs died out around the ides. The land goes from oregano and blanched green bean to tan and dust and brown and the leaves cover everything in preparation for snow. I’m no outdoorsman. Our… Read More

 Zvooq, a music streaming service in Russia and CIS countries backed by major Western labels, is suing Yandex for $29 million. It accuses the Russian search giant of poaching key Zvooq staff for its own music streaming service, in contravention of an NDA the two parties allegedly signed in February of this year. Zvooq, which is run out of Moscow but legally based in Cyprus, charges Yandex… Read More

 Maserati was said to be looking at 2020 as the target timeframe for its first production electric vehicle, and now the company has confirmed to Autocar that a battery-powered electric drivetrain option will be made available in 2020 for its Alfieri two-seater sports car. The EV version will follow the convention fuel-based V6-powered Alfieri makes its product debut sometime in 2019. Part of… Read More

 LeEco would like nothing more than to be everything to everyone. The impulse is no better demonstrated than with the company’s grand U.S. debut a few months back, which included everything from phones and flat-screen TVs to a bicycle, an electric car, a VR headset and, yes, a cameo by Michael Bay directly from the set of the latest Transformers. Of all the products unveiled during… Read More

 Livestreaming 360-degree video is rarely the right way to go if you’re thinking about doing live broadcast for an event – but Verizon’s (disclaimer: Verizon owns TechCrunch via AOL) use of it to show the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade actually makes sense. Especially if you happen to have a Daydream View headset, Google’s new first-party mobile VR hardware. The… Read More

 Dyson’s V8 cordless vacuum is the latest in a long line of the company’s portable category, and it has a more powerful motor that drives more suction than ever before, as the name implies. It’s also a premium-priced device, but that suction combined with its battery life and lightweight design make for a pretty unbeatable combo in the vacuum world. Right-sized power The V8… Read More

Snap, the social media company formerly known as Snapchat, has launched a Spectacles pop-up shop in NYC. Inside the store, there is a Snap Bot (a vending machine full of Spectacles). Outside the store, there is a line — a long, winding line of people who stand out in the freezing cold to buy a pair of Snapchat-capable sunglasses. Personally, I have trouble justifying standing outside in… Read More

 U.S. digital health company Provata is one of several hoping to harness virtual reality’s power as an escapist medium by using it as a backdrop for guided meditations. Read More

 TechCrunch Disrupt in London is on December 5-6. Grab tickets here. As well as speakers and panels, we’ll be featuring some demos by some amazing tech companies. The first will be by Boston Dynamics. Yes, folks, delegates to Disrupt London will get to see one of those amazing BD robots up close and personal, almost literally in the flesh (if they had any flesh, that is). Marc Raibert,… Read More

 The Hackathon at Disrupt London 2016 is so close we can almost taste it. Soon, thousands of founders, investors and tech enthusiasts will storm London’s Copper Box Arena for the best startup show in Europe. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that the next wave of tickets to the hackathon is available now, and you can get your free hackathon ticket here. The hackathon kicks off at… Read More

 Say what you will about the merits of Facebook’s Internet.org and Free Basics — it’s pretty cool that they’re building a huge, solar-powered, laser-shooting drone to deliver it. But a “structural failure” that occurred on the Aquila’s first test flight may be more serious than Facebook made it out to be: The NTSB is conducting an investigation,… Read More

 IBM today announced that it is launching four new data centers in the U.K. This brings IBM’s total data center footprint in the U.K. to six, in addition to 16 other locations across Europe. This is yet another example of the company’s increasing infrastructure investment. The first of these new U.K. locations in Fareham will go online in December, with the other three U.K.… Read More

 DeepMind Health, the division of the Google-owned AI company that’s focused on building links to healthcare providers to drive the application of machine learning algorithms for preventative medicine, has inked a fresh data-sharing agreement with the NHS Royal Free Hospital Trust in London. Read More

 Everyone talks about rooms being an underutilized asset in the hospitality industry. But what about meeting space? Almost all four- to five-star hotels, even boutique ones, have at least one meeting room. These can be 10-person conference rooms or 1,000-person banquet halls, but the concept is the same — it’s an empty space that the hotel wants business people to rent. But the… Read More