Category: Tech news

 Another year, another Google I/O Keynote slammed with back-to-back announcements. Miss our liveblog earlier? Don’t have time to catch up on every last bit of news? Don’t sweat it: we’ve compressed the most important bits into bite-sized morsels for lightning fast perusal. Ready? Click to the right for the next slide if you’re on desktop, or just scroll on if you’re… Read More

 French startup Shift Technology just raised a $10 million Series A round from Accel, with existing investors Elaia Partners and Iris Capital also participating. Shift Technology uses big data and machine learning to detect patterns of fraudulent insurance claims. This way, insurance companies can save money. Read More

 More evidence of European VC stocking up before a potential LP winter. This time it’s the turn of e.ventures, which has closed a new $150 million early-stage fund to invest in European startups. Read More

 Google announced its new messaging app Allo at its I/O developers conference today, and it looks pretty cool. It’s a feature-rich interface with graphics and doodles, and it works with Google Assistant to make suggestions and schedule plans. Allo even has an option for users to send their messages using end-to-end encryption, a security feature that has become increasingly popular and is… Read More

 As Google announced at its I/O developer conference today, the company recently started building its own specialized chips to expedite the machine learning algorithms. These so-called Tensor Processing Units (TPU) are custom-built chips that Google has now been using in its own data centers for almost a year, as Google’s senior VP for its technical infrastructure Urs Holzle noted in a… Read More

 Many tech companies in Silicon Valley like to blame the lack of diversity on what they call the pipeline. Their argument is that there are simply not enough qualified female and/or underrepresented minorities qualified to fill these high-tech roles. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has effectively called bullshit on that. Of the people graduating from top engineering programs,… Read More

 Like a number of other bits and bobs announced at Google I/O thus far, there are still some important questions left unanswered about the Mi Box — but here’s what we do know about Xiaomi’s forthcoming set-top box. It’s sleek, it’s small and it’s apparently won the Chinese phone maker a couple of design awards already. The Mi Box is powered by Android TV… Read More

 Disrupt NY 2016 was full of fascinating panels on everything from dating apps to cybersecurity. Weren’t able to catch every second? The TechCrunch social media team has compiled the best of the best from the event. Enjoy! Read More

 Tesla — with a significant chunk contributed by Elon Musk — is selling around $2 billion worth of stock in an equity offering in order to accelerate production of the Model 3, according to a regulatory filing filed today. The company is selling 6.8 million shares in the stock offering, which at its current price of around $205 amounts to roughly $1.4 billion. Musk is selling… Read More

 As the co-founder of a “142-proof” software development agency in the Silicon Valley catering to pre- and post-money companies, I’ve observed quite a bit of variance when it comes to the development process. The capabilities range wildly, from hack-and-slash “oh shit commits” all the way to buttoned-down tests and infrastructure that makes us all giddy when we see it. Read More

 What’s worse than asking the Internet at large to name your product? Telling them it has to start with N. Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the stupefying magnitude of Google’s naiveté here. Read More

 In seemingly bizarre news out of the porn industry, PornHub is launching a new fitness system (wearable + workout videos) called BangFit. As its name suggests, it helps you bang to get fit. Here’s how it works: Users can join the game at this website, which will allow users to then sync the game to their phones. BangFit offers options for one player, two players, and three players.… Read More

 After announcing the expansion of Android Pay in the U.K. earlier today, Google also made a few additional announcements around its mobile payments service at its I/O developer conference today.
Pali Bhat, Google’s senior director of product management for Android Pay, told me that one and a half million users in the U.S. now set up Android Pay on their phones every month. Read More

 Google is launching a major update to its Play developer services today that should make life a little bit easier for Android developers. With 65 billion app installs in 2015, Google obviously knows a little bit about what its developers want; with this update, the company is focusing on giving developers more tools to test their apps before a new (or first) release. While Google Play… Read More

 The amount of Google Cardboard app downloads has doubled in just the past four months. Today, onstage at I/O, Google’s head of VR, Clay Bavor, announced that the company had seen downloads on the Google Cardboard platform from the Google Play store grow to 50 million from just 25 million downloads in January. “We think that’s pretty good for what is, after all, just a piece… Read More