Category: Tech news

 One day, things in the tech startup world are ticking along nicely. The next, investor Bill Gurley is calling private valuations “fake,” billion-dollar companies are losing their sheen, and venture capitalists are allegedly getting cursed out for passing on startups. For those us based in the Bay Area, it’s hard to know what in the world is going on. You can probably… Read More

 The Ad Council and a cohort of tech companies shed some light today on an eye emoji that has been perplexing Apple watchers since the release of iOS 9.1. The eye — which was rumored to mean everything from the Department of Homeland Security is watching you to “talking with your eyes” — symbolizes an anti-bullying campaign that launched in conjunction with… Read More

 Facebook engineering manager Ari Grant has posted an explanation for the recent issues with the app gorging itself on power. Grant says that the battery issues were caused by a series of bugs including one that ate up extra CPU cycles, causing Facebook to use up more of your iPhone battery than it should. Read More

 Today, Alphabet beat Q3 earnings projections.
During the earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the (micro)phone (for the first time) to discuss the business and product highlights from the quarter. It was a pleasant addition after a strong showing at last month’s hardware event. Read More

 How did Alphabet come up with the weirdly specific number of $5.099 billion for its buyback of class C shares? By taking the square root of 26, which not-so-coincidentally is the number of letters in the alphabet. @lexnfx It's the square root of 26 e18th. Those Google guys! They have so much fun with numbers. — George Anders (@GeorgeAnders) October 22, 2015 The big stock… Read More

 Solu is a coaster-sized cloud-based portable computer that fits in your pocket. A team of Finnish engineers behind the device hope Solu will change the way we think of using our digital operating systems. Sure, we already have our portable computing devices such as iPads and smartphones, but Solu founder Kristoffer Lawson wants us to stop lugging all our heavy laptops and notebooks around… Read More

 After the market closed Thursday, online music streaming service Pandora reported a third quarter loss of $85.9 million.
The company lost 40 cents per share. Pandora met street estimates and posted an adjusted profit of 10 cents per share. Its revenue of $311.6 million narrowly missed estimates of $313 million.
Shares were down 20% in after hours trading following Pandora’s… Read More

 Today Microsoft reported the financial performance it recorded during the first quarter of its fiscal 2016. Microsoft generated $0.67 in adjusted per-share profit off non-GAAP revenue of $21.66 billion in the three-month period. Analysts had expected the Redmond-based software shop to earn an adjusted $0.59 per share, on revenue of $21.03 billion. Microsoft also reported GAAP revenue of… Read More

 We’re back. Hardware Alley is TechCrunch’s premier hardware event and will be taking CES by storm again this year. Applications for TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield are now open. Submit your application by November 18 at 9pm PT to compete for free demo space at the Consumer Electronics Show, $50,000 prize and the Metal Man trophy.
For those of you following along at home… Read More

 Amazon — once again — surprised investors by beating analyst expectations for its third-quarter earnings report, bringing in $25.4 billion in net sales and earnings of 17 cents cents per share. Analysts were expecting a loss of 13 cents per share on sales of $24.91 billion. Shares of Amazon promptly shot up as much as 11% in extended trading. The company is expecting revenue… Read More

 Today following the bell, Alaphabet reported its third-quarter financial performance, including revenue of $18.68 billion in revenue, and adjusted per-share profit of $7.35. Analysts had expected the company to earn an adjusted $7.21 on revenue of $18.53 billion. The company’s revenue ticked up 13 percent compared to its year-ago quarter. Cash flow sits at a strong $6 billion. Up over… Read More

 For years, Chris Farmer worked as a venture partner at General Catalyst Partners, helping develop its then-nascent seed-investing program while simultaneously working on a big idea: a database that could help screen engineering talent. Read More

 Theranos continued playing defense this morning with a much more in-depth post on what the company claims the news organization got wrong in two damning articles published last week. One WSJ article alleged Theranos was outsourcing most of its technology to test blood samples on its 240 blood tests and that the company was in fact only using its proprietary ‘Edison’ machine for… Read More

 You’re on Twitter.
You’re on Vine.
Now, people who follow your tweets will be able to reach your Vine profile and vice versa. Read More

 Happy Thursday, dear readers. Once again I come to you with news about TechCrunch Radio, our weekly radio show on Sirius XM where John Biggs and I discuss everything new in the world of tech. But that’s not all! Each week on the show, we hold a TC Radio Pitch-off, where five companies get exactly 60 seconds to pitch their startup to a panel of judges, including a guest VC. After a… Read More