Rigged

facebook-machine The Facebook bubble just popped. Half the country today is still in shock. Reality crashed down and many were presented with a world that didn’t match up with the one they’ve inhabited in the months leading up to the U.S. election. As it turns out, that was Facebook’s world. The social media network has become an outsize player in crafting our understanding of the events… Read More

SentiOne raises $3.5 million to monitor social media

screen-shot-2016-11-09-at-5-16-53-pm While it’s not exactly sentient, SentiOne sure sounds like it should be. This Polish company watches social media for brands allowing you to create an instant monitor for any topic. Founded by Bartek Bazi?ski, Michael Brzezicki and Kamil Bargiel, the company raised $3.5 million from Venture TFI and Trigon TFI Group to build out their platform internationally. The company has been working… Read More

LeEco’s Super Bike isn’t electric, but it sure has a lot of gadgets attached

img_3024 The LeEco Super Bike may be the perfect analogy for the company that created it. It’s a strange amalgamation that patches together a lot of disparate ideas in a less than elegant way. It’s clearly trying really hard and will no doubt alienate some people with its over-eagerness. Also, weirdly, it’s not electric. That last point was the first thing a rep mentioned to me… Read More

Hey, Brooklyn, let’s meet up tomorrow

brooklyn bridge nyc seagull Hello, Brooklyn! I’m restarting my series of micro-meetups in New York with a special tasting at the Van Brunt Stillhouse. The founder, Daric Schlesselman, is a friend of TC and showed off his wares at the last New York Disrupt and he’s offering us a special tasting on Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 7:00 PM. It’s way down in Red Hook, so put on your hiking shoes and… Read More

Here are the tech policies Trump promised to implement as president

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09:  Republican president-elect Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States.  (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Trump’s not a tech guy, that much we know. He reportedly doesn’t have much time for a cell phone or email. During a CNN town hall moderated by Anderson Cooper, he said that he largely composes tweets by, “shout it out to one of the young ladies who are tremendous. I’ll just shout it out, and they’ll do it.” But while he’ll never be an early adopter… Read More

Adam Bain departs Twitter, Anthony Noto will take over as COO

twitter-transparency Twitter just announced that Chief Operating Officer Adam Bain is departing.
Bain has been with Twitter since 2010, building the company’s ad business and becoming COO last year at the same time that founder Jack Dorsey was named CEO. Bain tweeted that he’s now “ready to change gears and do something new outside the company,” while adding, “I look at what… Read More

A serial founder on Trump: “He’s a startup that disrupted the establishment”

ORLANDO, FL - NOVEMBER 02:  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally the Orlando Amphitheater located at Central Florida Fairgrounds November 2, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. With less than a week before Election Day in the United States, Trump and his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, are campaigning in key battleground states that each must win to take the White House.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Fabrice Grinda, a longtime New Yorker, has helped create hundreds of jobs for Americans and others. Among the companies he has started is OLX, one of the largest free classifieds sites in the world — one that was acquired over time by the African conglomerate Naspers for $250 million. Grinda more recently co-founded Beepi, the peer-to-peer used car marketplace based in California;… Read More

Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs, but robots won’t let him

A vector illustration of a robot ironing clothes For Americans struggling with stagnant wages, under- or un-employment, one of Donald Trump’s most appealing campaign promises was to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
Navigating the complexities of policy, tariffs and geopolitics would make that hard enough already for the president elect. But technology will make this promise nearly impossible to fulfill.
Why? Because… Read More

LeEco offers a budget take on Gear VR

img_2973 LeEco is a weird company and the ExploreVR is a weird headset. It’s essentially a Gear VR competitor that promises to deliver a low-end virtual reality experience for a fraction of the price of Samsung’s peripheral. It is, of course, not the company’s first VR headset. In typical LeEco fashion, the company’s already got a bunch on the market already – because… Read More

Bikeshare conference brings pedal power to the people

Capital Bikeshare in DC As the North American Bikeshare Association begins its annual conference in Austin, Texas, participants will be focusing on social equity. If you’re wondering what that means, wonder no more, thanks to a statement from the NABSA’s project manager, Matt Martin: “Social equity in bikeshare means making a healthy and versatile form of transportation accessible to those who… Read More

This Indian team plans to be the first private company to land on the moon

team-indus-feature TeamIndus, a private company located in Bangalore, India, is the one and only Indian entrant into the Google Lunar X-Prize, the international competition to land a private spacecraft on the moon.
For TeamIndus, there are a few, exciting things at stake. If they’re first in the competition, they’ll win $20 million and become the first private company to land on the moon. If… Read More

Watch Acceleprise’s Demo Day here

acceleprise-logo TechCrunch is pleased to bring you Acceleprise’s Cohort 5 Demo Day, today, November 9th, starting at 10:00am PT. Acceleprise is a SaaS-focused accelerator based in San Francisco led by partners Nick Mehta (CEO of Gainsight), Tien Tzuo (CEO of Zuora), Karen Appleton (Early Box Exec, current Apple VP) and Rowan Trollope (Senior Exec at Cisco) . With smaller cohort sizes, Acceleprise… Read More

Counting endangered sea cows is hard, so we’re going to make AI do it

dugong-30fwdf2f2_dsc2458 Can you spot the lone dugong in this image? Look closer. Closer… still no? Try this larger version. Give up? Here it is. Now do that with 45,000 more. If that sounds tedious, then perhaps you, like researchers at Murdoch University, would prefer to delegate the duty to a specially-trained computer. Read More

Losing the future

ORLANDO, FL - Democratic Nominee for President of the United States former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to and meets voters during a rally at Frontline Outreach and Youth Center in Orlando, Florida on Wednesday September 21, 2016. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images) There’s a story that Silicon Valley likes to tell about the future. Part of that story, of course, is the idea that technological change will continue to accelerate and make our lives better. But when I talk to entrepreneurs and investors, I hear a broader narrative of progress — a belief that society is becoming more diverse, meritocratic and rational. Things are getting… Read More

Google ‘strongly’ recommends against third-party fast charging technology on Android

Google Pixel XL Everyone, it seems, is going the fast charging route these days. Thanks to the nearing ubiquity of USB-C on flagship devices, the feature is quickly becoming a standard – “standard” in the sense that everyone is doing it, not so much that there’s any consistency to the tech. All in all, it’s a nice addition to manufacturers’ newfound focus on battery life.… Read More